It cleaves itself along the edges, chorusing and phosphorescent. It comes from the dark. Piles of bladderwrack seaweed line the road, thrown up in another storm. It is the winter solstice and I am following the impulse to journey outside. A waning fullness clutches at the tide, the haunches of a supermoon thick in the air. At East Tarbet beach, a man walks from a prism of shells. I wave at him because I feel I have to.
I get back in my car and drive, until I am back at the endpoint and watching everything unfold. I see them, all whirling into one, nine sisters rooted in the southerly wind, as I look across to Ireland, then the Isle of Man. I am moored here, called from the corners of my dreams, from a texture at the very edges of my consciousness. My hair begins to flee in vertical strands from my scalp. I struggle to stand still in one place.
I long to be delivered, delivered to the water—the waves. I let the wind jostle me.
the tides are nine witches are nine women
I watch the birds as they float from the crevices—shags, cormorants, and black-headed gulls. I hum out loud as they take flight then climb down to a small clearing below the foghorn. I check the warning lights aren't on before traversing down, careful with my step in a place of unpredictable gusts. Precipitious cliffs frame Carrickcarlin Point, but I am uncharacteristically calm, as if I have done this before. I have done this before.
Carrick means 'rock' and Carlin is a Scots word for 'witch' or 'woman'. Witch Rock. This is the closest habitable point to the water at the Mull. I imagine slipping from here, into the gesture that so divinely calls me. I see myself, jumping from the silver tongue of the cliff edge and into the water, soaking in the complete essence of this place. I dance in the mayhem and dry myself afterwards.
apple/ rock
eve/ witch
Snake
Skin
The Mull is a line of ambulating coast. Of earth meets sky meets water. On a plaque at Lagvag Point I read: "Legend says that the tides were conjured up by nine witches of The Mull of Galloway in an attempt to shipwreck a witchfinder on his way across the sea from Ireland." It is just after low tide, so I record the phenomenon on my phone, deciding landscape is the best frame for such a moment. I watch through the camera in my hands before drawing my eyes back to the bare scene. After a few minutes of this, I put my phone back in my pocket. I walk.
Winter is a time when the dark is round, and the shadow has a belly. Here, in this season, I feel compelled to close my eyes more—this helps me get a clearer picture of things. Here I see the moon, over and over
orchestrating the water
and my body attached to thin string
a girl on the back of an ocean
I have to walk.
Our spines are really echoes of original movement, of the snake. We come from the water, our amphibious paws careening out of the ocean, taking contralateral steps into the unknown. I breathe in and out, in respect of deep time and evolution. The oceanic fluid of my body rises and falls. A circle in my hips emerges, the shape of my predecessors yawning in the dark. It moves up into my coccyx, rattling the shadow of my tail. I open my lips, sipping in the air. The gesture radiates further, encapsulating my spine. The serpent sensuality of my spine, awakening fully now. I lift my arms into the vastness and my neck and my jaw, as if waking from a senseless hibernation, suddenly sharpen up. I see the tides for what they are—the antithesis of habitual motion. They are alive. They are the witches moving in every direction. I yawn then release a howl that begins in my feet and comes from nowhere.
I get a call from my mother. Then a text. She is worried about me being out on a day like today, where the wind is building. There will soon be a yellow weather warning in place. Then amber. Then red. The winds could reach up to 115mph. Everything eventually turns to red.
Tranquility. Fertility. Nectar. Crises. I look to the moon for answers, like many women before me have. The seas of the moon, the lunar maria, are ancient basins caused by lava flow, less reflective to sunlight due to their iron-rich composition. Early astronomers looked up at these shadows and interpreted them as oceans, the promise of a watery labyrinth in orbit of their own. A place without ocean—all rock. That is the nature of the moon, whose nature is the tides. We are all inextricably wound up in this cycle. And yet, we forget this cycle.
Did the nine women look at the moon, as they cast their spells? Isn't the moon the witch I seek?
Witch. Rock. I lay my body down and take a bite from the earth around me. As gravity pulls at me, the wind runs up and inside my trouser leg and for once I do not shy away from the sensation. I let the wind drag at my skin until it becomes my skin, caressing everything, like a lover might. I let her in.
I walk because it soothes me; when I reach the river after cleaving through woods; when I am on the edge of the tide and the edge of me is edging closer and closer. Thicker and thicker. When the wind is so high it is dangerous for me to be here, but I am here anyway. And ovulating.
I leave the edge and begin the drive back home, stopping back at East Tarbet. Facing Luce Bay, it is more sheltered here, so I pick up strands of seaweed, organising them into a circle where I subsequently place stones. In the centre, I rest two shells from my pocket. As the sun sets on the horizon behind me, I offer up my intentions, what I hope to release in the dark. When I get home, I Google Map the moon, drawing my cursor across an unfathomable grey. Outside, her waning face is rising behind the mist. I send the video of the nine tides to a friend before closing my phone.
This is the rhythm. The Mull is a place I live and a place I dream of. The wind is its nature. It is becoming mine too, but a crisis is ensuing. I look to the moon to remember.
Emily Alice Spivey
Emily Alice Spivey is a somatic artist exploring how the body exists in language through spokenword, performance and writing. Rooted in her relationship to remote landscapes, writing is an embodied practice for Emily, with the intent of translating a planetary fabric of moving forms onto the page. She studied her Masters in Creative Writing at The University of Cambridge, has had work published in Propel Magazine, Litro Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Haus-A-Rest. In 2025 her non-fiction debut My Body Is An OS Map was shortlisted by The Emma Press.