The wind off the Moray Firth had a voice of its own, sharp as a gull’s cry and mournful as church bells fading over water. In the small fishing village of Findhorn, that voice carried stories—old ones, whispered over nets and pints, half-believed and wholly feared.
One such tale was of the Bell of Findhorn, a sound said to rise from the depths of the bay when the dolphins came.
No one agreed on its origin. Some claimed it was the voice of the Sea Queen, heralding peace between the land and the deep. Others muttered it was a warning, a curse placed on the village after some long-forgotten betrayal. But all agreed on one thing: when the bell rang, something always changed.
The last person to hear the bell and live to speak of it was Isla Matheson.
She’d grown up in Findhorn, her life marked by the rhythms of tide and wind. Her mother had died birthing her. Her father, a fisherman like most in the village, was a quiet man with hands like rope and eyes like storm clouds. He never spoke of Isla’s mother, only said she had “sea blood in her,” as if that explained anything.
Isla, slender and sea-eyed, often wandered the shore alone. She spoke to gulls and seals. She sang to the surf. Other children avoided her. They said she heard things no one else could—whispers from the waves, lullabies from beneath the sand.
On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, the dolphins came.
They were a familiar sight in the Moray Firth, but this pod was different. They moved slowly, almost mournfully, surfacing just once before circling the bay and disappearing. And then, just as the tide turned, the bell rang.
It was unmistakable.
A deep, resonant tolling—not from the church, but from beneath the waves. It rang once. Then again. Then a third time, low and long.
Isla stood barefoot in the shallows, heart hammering, water lapping at her ankles. She felt it more than heard it—a vibration in her bones, in her chest, in her blood.
Behind her, the villagers had frozen. No one spoke. No one moved.
Later that day, old Rab Souter was found dead in his boat, eyes wide and mouth agape as if he’d heard something he couldn’t bear. A storm rose that evening, sudden and fierce. By morning, three lobster pots and a trawler were gone.
They blamed the bell.
Isla, though, wasn’t afraid. Something in her stirred, something ancient and aching. That night, while the village mourned, she walked alone to the edge of the pier, where the water whispered secrets to those who dared to listen.
And it was there she saw him.
Not a man. Not quite. A figure rising from the water, draped in kelp and shadows, skin shining like wet stone. His eyes were sea-glass green, his hair trailing like seaweed.
“You heard it,” he said.
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
“You carry her voice,” he said. “Your mother. She was one of us.”
Isla took a step back. “One of who?”
“The Sea Queen’s kin.”
She wanted to laugh. Wanted to run. But she didn’t.
“She left the water for your father,” he continued. “But the sea doesn’t forget its own. And now, it calls to you.”
“The bell?”
“A summons. Or a warning. It depends on your choice.”
He vanished beneath the waves without a sound. Isla stood alone, drenched in moonlight and uncertainty.
She didn’t tell her father. Didn’t tell anyone. But the bell rang again the next full moon, and this time, it was louder. More people heard it. More boats vanished. Fish disappeared from the nets. The sea grew angry.
Then came the whispers—quiet but insistent. That Isla was cursed. That her blood stirred the bell. That her songs at the shore brought the dolphins. Old Morag Maclean threw salt at her feet in the market. Father Callum stopped her at the church steps and said, “There’s something unnatural in you, child.”
Her father drank more. Spoke less. Until one night, in a voice hoarse with grief, he told her the truth.
Her mother, Ailsa, had come from the sea. He found her on the rocks one spring morning, naked and shivering, her skin warm with sunlight but her eyes empty as the tide. He fell in love. Kept her secret. Married her. But she never quite belonged.
“She sang to the bay,” he said, tears in his eyes. “Like it was her first love, not me.”
When she became pregnant, the sea grew restless. Storms battered the coast. Nets came up empty. Boats sank. The bell rang for the first time the night Isla was born.
“She walked into the water a week later,” he whispered. “Smiling.”
Isla said nothing. The next night, she walked to the pier.
The dolphins waited.
And the sea-man rose again.
“You’ve heard the bell,” he said. “Three times now. The Sea Queen waits.”
“I’m not like her.”
“You are. But you’ve been raised wrong. Dry. Afraid.”
She looked out across the dark water. “What does she want from me?”
He didn’t answer. He only offered his hand.
She took it.
The water closed around her. Cold, sharp, cleansing. Her breath vanished. Her thoughts quieted. And then she heard it—not just the bell, but a choir of voices, ancient and vast. Songs in languages she knew in her bones. Memories that weren’t hers.
When she surfaced, dawn had come. She stood on the rocks, not soaked but radiant, hair slick with salt and eyes lit from within.
The villagers watched in silence as she walked back into town. No one dared stop her.
That day, the fish returned. The dolphins danced. The wind softened.
Isla never spoke of what she’d seen, but she walked daily to the shore and sang. She mended nets with silent hands and stared into the horizon like it might speak back.
And once a month, when the bell rang beneath the waves, she stood alone on the strand, listening.
She did not fear it.
Years passed. Children grew. The sea stayed calm.
But one spring morning, Isla was gone. Her shoes left on the pier. A trail of kelp where her footprints should have been.
And from that day on, when the dolphins came, the bell rang not in warning, but in welcome.
The villagers still speak of her—Isla of the Sea, born of land but called to salt. A girl who heard the bell and answered.
And on quiet nights, when the tide breathes deep and the Firth glows silver, the bell tolls soft and slow, and the people of Findhorn listen—not with fear, but with reverence.
For they know the sea remembers. And it always comes for its own.

• Original tales adapted by Nick Kimber