Tide Knot

by Helen Dunmore

  The surface of the water trembles and then settles. There’s nothing left but granite boulders, leaning over the edge of the pool.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I can’t believe that Granny Carne isn’t going to ask what happened last night. Surely she didn’t sleep through it all, like an ordinary old woman? But instead of questioning me, she keeps on doing her morning tasks—riddling and feeding the stove, feeding Sadie, making breakfast.

  “Did you sleep well, my girl?” is all she says. Her face is inscrutable, and it doesn’t invite conversation. I nod and fill my mouth with bread and honey so I won’t have to say anything. But there’s a glint in Granny Carne’s eye that makes me suspect that she’s teasing me. I’m glad to be teased. It relieves the dead feeling I have in my heart from meeting Dad.

  I had no idea how I was going to get back into the cottage last night. It was easy enough to jump out of the window onto the bank, but it wouldn’t be so easy to climb back in. I had all kinds of plans in my head: I’d wait until morning, then pretend I’d been out for an early walk; I’d find a ladder in the shed; I’d manage to open one of the downstairs windows. But when I tiptoed up to the cottage door and tried the handle, it turned as smooth as silk. The door swung open without a sound. Maybe Granny Carne never locked it, or maybe she knew that I had gone out and had left it open for me. I crept up the stairs, opened the door of the slip bedroom, and slid into bed.

  It felt as if a hundred years had passed since I’d said good night to Sadie and Granny Carne. My heart was still beating hard. I was back in bed, safe, I told myself. Calm down, Sapphire. The booming of my blood in my ears was so loud, I was sure Granny Carne could hear it.

  I wasn’t safe. Nothing was safe. Dad was in Ingo, and he wasn’t like my dad anymore. He wouldn’t come out of the water. No, it was worse than that: He couldn’t, even if he wanted to, because he’d made his choice. He belonged to Ingo now and not to us. The only way I could live with him was if I chose Ingo too. That was too huge and frightening to think about.

  I’d been waiting so long for him to come home. Month after month after month, when everyone else had given up hope, we’d kept the faith. Conor said, “As long as we keep the faith, we’ll find Dad one day.” We swore and promised that we wouldn’t rest until we found Dad. Now what am I going to tell Conor?

  I’d found Dad—or he’d found me—and it had solved nothing. We didn’t hug and kiss and cry. I didn’t even touch him. Did he even ask about Conor? Not really. Not the questions a father should ask about his son when he hasn’t seen him for a year and a half. But I remember what it’s like being in Ingo. The human world fades quickly.

  I turned over in bed restlessly. Maybe my heart was booming so loud because it was empty. Away in Ingo. My dad could never come out of Ingo now. Unless—unless there was some magic that could change him back again into a human being. Earth magic. Granny Carne’s magic. Surely there was some hope.

  Away in Ingo…away in Ingo…

  But now you know where he is, you can go to him. You can slip through the skin of the water and into Ingo. You can go where he is.

  I tossed in the bed as if there were lumps of rock in the mattress. I would never be able to sleep. How was I going to be able to tell Conor about Dad? I should have asked more questions. I should have made Dad tell me everything that had happened to him from the moment he left us. Maybe Conor would blame me for being so stupid, but with the moonlight and everything being so mysterious and terrifying, I didn’t have time to think of questions.

  No excuses. You had the chance, Saph, and you let it slip away. As for telling Mum, that would be out of the question. Even if she believed me, she wouldn’t be able to help Dad. She’d hate him for abandoning us. She might even say we were better off without him.

  Poor Mum, I thought. She didn’t choose to fall in love with Roger and go to St. Pirans to live. It was all chosen for her because Dad left. And I’d blamed her so much, almost hated her sometimes when she smiled at Roger and sang so cheerfully around the house in the mornings.

  I would never be able to sleep. I would have to lie awake until morning. Or was it morning already? The sky seemed to be growing lighter, but perhaps that was the moon—

  I woke with a shock to hear Sadie barking joyously downstairs. I didn’t know where I was, and then everything jumped into place. White walls. Granny Carne’s cottage. Was Sadie better? She sounded better. She was barking as if she had never been ill in her life.

  And now here I am in Granny Carne’s kitchen, eating bread and honey while Sadie sits on the flagstone floor beside me, quivering with life, her eyes fixed on me. Sadie looks as if she’s been dipped in a pool of sunlight. Her coat gleams; her eyes are bright and moist; her tail is a golden plume. She can’t wait for the day to begin, with all its adventures, and she can’t believe that I’m being so slow and dull, munching breakfast when I could be outside, leaping downhill, chasing rabbits.

  “She’s got plenty of life in her this morning,” says Granny Carne, looking up from her green notebook. While I’ve been eating, she has been writing steadily with an old-fashioned pen that she dips into a bottle of ink. I’ve never seen a pen like it. I did try to read the writing from upside down, but I couldn’t. It is black and spiky, and there are long letters that look like f ’s without the line across. It’s probably her spell book, I think. Eye of newt and toe of frog, like in Macbeth, which is the play we are studying at school. Something must show on my face, because Granny Carne looks at me quizzically.

  “Um, are you writing a recipe?” I say quickly. Anything to distract Granny Carne from what I’m really thinking.

  “No,” says Granny Carne. “I’m writing Sadie into this life book.”

  “Is that like a biography?”

  “A life book’s more than that. A biography’s all about the past.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sadie’s got her past, but she’s young yet. Her future’s dominant.”

  “Do humans have a life book, as well as animals?”

  “Of course. Every one of us is written in the book of life.”

  As soon as Granny Carne says this, I long to see inside the book, to know the future, as Granny Carne does. If only I could see Dad coming back to us—not Mer, but human.

  “Does anyone ever read inside the life book, Granny Carne?”

  “No,” says Granny Carne. She puts down her pen. “Never try that, my girl. These words can blind you.” Her eyes blaze at me.

  I take a deep breath. My voice squeaks with nerves, but I’m determined. “I need to, Granny Carne. I wouldn’t ask otherwise. I really need to.”

  “No, my girl.”

  “Please! You don’t know how important it is.”

  Granny Carne stares at me hard. “You don’t know what you’re asking.” She weighs the book in her hand; then suddenly she seems to change her mind. She holds up the green notebook, open and facing outward.

  It’s just a book with writing in it. Not a spell book or anything ridiculous like that. Granny Carne’s magic isn’t of that kind.

  “The life book has no power of its own,” says Granny Carne slowly. “It’s what you put into it. What you put into it, my girl.”

  The writing faces out toward me. I can’t read it, though. The writing is too small, or maybe it’s too difficult for me.

  Granny Carne begins to turn the pages, slowly at first and then faster. There are far more pages than a small notebook could possibly hold. The pages flicker as if a strong wind is blowing them. I stand up and lean forward, desperate to pick some words out of the blur, to catch just one drop of the future. But instead of making sense, the words swarm like bees all over the creamy paper.

  Can words move like this once they’ve been written? They’re writing themselves, coiling and clustering and buzzing all over the page. They’re angry. Angry bees that have been disturbed by a stranger at their hive. Any moment now they will fly off the page and straight at me, stinging and stinging until I’m blinded
. I put my hands up in front of my face to ward them off. The hum of the words rises dangerous and threatening, filling my ears. I step back. A chair clatters. I stumble, reach out to get my balance, and nearly fall. The word bees are swarming close, ready to attack.

  “Granny Carne! I didn’t mean it! Don’t let them—”

  Suddenly, the noise is gone, as if a door has been shut on it.

  “It’s all right now, my girl. The book is closed.”

  Slowly I let my hands fall. Granny Carne’s green notebook is shut. It looks so innocent.

  “You have to handle things right,” says Granny Carne. “Go to the bees in anger, and they’ll give you anger back. This book is not for your eyes, Sapphire, no matter if you put your life into it. It’s not for you to read. Remember that, no matter what the temptation.”

  I nod. I feel too shaky to answer.

  “You want to make things go back to what they were before last summer, but the pages have turned.” Granny Carne’s voice is stern now. “You cannot turn them back except by blinding yourself. Go forward, my girl. There’s good and bad coming that won’t be cured by looking back. I can’t see the scope and nature of it yet, but I can read its power. Keep your eyes open. Ingo is growing strong, and the Mer blood in you is racing to meet it.

  “But remember something. Remember that you are Earth too, even when you are angry with her, as a girl is angry with her mother when she’s growing away from her. That’s what you carry, my girl, the gifts of both sides. Two ways they can be used: to split you in half or to heal what needs healing. There are hard times coming. Troubled times.”

  We stand frozen for a few moments. Granny Carne’s amber eyes are as wide as the eyes of an owl hunting in the dark. Sadie is like a statue, and I can’t move or speak. And then the spell breaks, and we’re just an old woman drinking tea, a girl eating bread and honey, and a dog who wants a walk.

  “Go on home now,” says Granny Carne. “Best you don’t stay here any longer. Hurry now—the bus’ll be at the corner at ten past nine, and if you miss it, there’s another two hours to wait.”

  But I go straight past the bus stop on the road to the churchtown. I keep my head down, hoping that no one will recognize me, but of course people do. First the post van stops for a chat; then Alice Trewhidden is on her way up to catch the bus; then the vicar appears at the church gate just as I’m going by.

  “How you doing, Sapphire girl? How’s life down in St. Pirans?”

  “Your mum all right, then? She like it down there?”

  “Ah, Sapphire, good to see you! How are you all? How is your mother?”

  “She’s all right.”

  The vicar’s face is smiling, but his eyes are sharp. He drops his voice, and suddenly it’s a person talking to me, not a vicar. “It’s hard,” he says. “Don’t think I don’t know that.”

  I don’t know what to say to this. “’S okay,” I mumble. The trouble is that whenever I see the vicar, my mind flashes back to Dad’s memorial service. I don’t want to think of it.

  “Give your mother my love,” he adds, and I don’t know what to say to that either. Mum always liked talking to the vicar. Dad never went to church, but Mum did sometimes, just on her own.

  By the time I get away, I wish I’d caught that bus. But I can’t go back to St. Pirans without seeing our cottage. It doesn’t matter if the people who are living there now see me. They won’t know who I am. When they came to look round, before they decided to rent it, I went out for a long walk. I didn’t want to meet them.

  I reach the top of the track that leads down to our cottage. Everything is so familiar yet slightly different. Even the baling twine tied round the gate is a different color: green now instead of orange. There is a jeep parked outside the cottage. It’s old and dusty, but it looks in good condition. Dad always wanted a jeep.

  Our front door is open. Radio music spills out into the garden. To my surprise the vegetable patch has been completely dug over. The gooseberry bushes have been pruned, and the roses. The window frames are freshly painted.

  The curtains Mum made are no longer blowing at the kitchen window. Instead someone has put up smart new curtains, the color of cornflowers. I try not to like them, but I do.

  Sadie sniffs eagerly around outside the gate. I walk very slowly, trying not to dawdle too obviously, trying to make it look as if I’m just having a relaxed walk with my dog. “Come on, Sadie girl,” I say loudly in case anyone inside is listening. But Sadie is more intelligent than to believe I really want her to move on.

  I drink in every detail of the cottage. It’s so nearly the same and yet completely different, because we don’t live there anymore. This must be what it’s like to die and come back to haunt a place you used to love.

  “Can I help you?” asks a voice. I jump violently and feel a blush start to spread over my face.

  “No, no, I’m fine, my dog’s just—”

  A woman swings out of the doorway. She’s on crutches, but she handles them easily, as if she’s been using crutches for a long time. She’s younger than Mum, wearing a long red skirt and a sweater. “Were you looking for something?” she asks. Her eyes are penetrating. Has she guessed who I am?

  “No, no, I’m going for a walk with my dog…down to the cove maybe—”

  You idiot, Sapphire. Why did you mention the cove? Maybe they haven’t discovered it yet.

  “The cove,” repeats the woman. “Do you know it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’d really like to see it. I can get to most places, but I can’t do that climb down just now. The only way I’ll get there is if they swing me over the cliff in a basket. I’m on these crutches for the time being.”

  She smiles, a quick, warm smile that I can’t help responding to, even though I had no intention of liking the person who’s living in our cottage.

  “Do you live here on your own?” I ask her.

  “No. My husband works up in Exeter with the Met Office. He stays there during the week.”

  “It must be lonely,” I say, testing, probing. But she shakes her head.

  “Lonely’s in your head. I don’t find it so,” she says. “The neighbors are good. I wasn’t sure, coming down here.”

  “What’s the Met Office?”

  “Meteorology. Weather forecasting. Rob doesn’t do the day-to-day stuff, though. Long-term climate change is his thing, and the role of extreme weather occurrences.”

  “So he looks into the future,” I say, without knowing I’m going to say it.

  “Yeah, in a way he does. You interested in climate change?”

  I think of the sea horses and sunfish that come into Cornish waters now, where they never used to come. The changes Faro has talked about and the dangers they bring.

  “Yes.”

  “You must meet Rob. D’you live around here?”

  “Yes—I mean no, um, not very near.” The words stumble over one another just when I want them to be smooth. Suddenly she’s looking at me closely. Her face changes. Something comes into it that shouldn’t be there: recognition.

  “I know who you are. You’re the girl with the seaweed hair.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what I call you. Rob calls you the little mermaid.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ve really messed this up, haven’t I? You didn’t want me to know who you were. It’s that picture of you, the one that’s set into the cabinet.”

  “Oh. Oh.”

  “You know the one.”

  I know the one. Dad took it about three years ago. It’s a color photo, and I’m wearing a sea green dress that I wore to a New Year’s party. My hair is loose and very long. I’m not smiling. Dad always loved that photo. He said I looked as if I came from another world. He had the photo made into a tile and set it into the kitchen cabinet. We couldn’t take the cabinet with us to St. Pirans because it was built into the wall.

  I look down. I feel so stup
id. She’ll think I came here spying on her. But her voice doesn’t sound angry. “It’s a beautiful picture; you should be proud of it,” she says. “Rob says you look like you came from another world.”

  “Oh! That’s exactly what Dad used to say.”

  “He took the picture?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. The real estate agent told me about the…accident.”

  She has found the kindest word she could, but I still have to clench my hands and dig my nails into my palms.

  “We should introduce ourselves. I’m Gloria Fortune.”

  “I’m Sapphire Trewhella.”

  “Of course. I should have remembered. Mary Thomas told me your name.”

  I’m not sure I like this. Mary is our neighbor.

  “It must have been tough, leaving this place. Every day I wake up and look out of the window, I have to pinch myself, it’s so beautiful.”

  “It’s my home.” I’m not angry anymore. I don’t even want Gloria Fortune to leave our cottage. It’s just that coming back here has made me know for sure that no matter how long I live in St. Pirans, it will never be home.

  “Then you’ll come back,” says Gloria, looking into my face.

  “Do you see into the future?”

  “No.” She smiles. “But I know a single-minded person because I’m one myself.”

  “I must go.”

  “You going down to the cove now?”

  I glance down at Sadie and gently stroke her head. No, Sadie doesn’t deserve that. As soon as my feet touch that hard white sand, I’ll look at the rocks at the mouth of the cove, and I’m sure I’ll see a figure there, and then I won’t be able to stop myself. The cove will be too powerful for Sadie. That’s where Conor and I first entered Ingo. The cove is a gateway, I am sure it is, and it’s another reason we’ve got to come home. Dad left the human world through the cove, so perhaps the cove is his way home.