Tide Knot

by Helen Dunmore

  “How far is it to Saldowr?” I ask at last.

  “It’s not far to the current that will take us there. And then half a day’s journey.”

  We make our journey on a current that is broad-backed and immensely strong. It is much too strong for us to enter it directly. The force would knock us aside or even injure us, Faro says. Instead we join it by means of a smaller current, which flows into the larger like a tributary into a river. The three of us swim close, pressed together inside the surging rope of water that hauls us through Ingo a hundred times faster than we could ever swim. Ingo swirls around us. The seabed is so distant, it’s invisible. Inside the current, at its heart, there’s a strange peace. We rush onward, facedown, staring into the Deep below us.

  “Have you ever been to the bottom of the ocean?” asks Conor.

  Faro says the Mer can’t swim down that far, or the pressure of the Deep would crush them. Only strange creatures that have adapted themselves to the dark and the weight of water can live at such a depth. Sometimes they float to the surface like monsters.

  “I thought you’d be able to go anywhere in Ingo,” I say, surprised.

  “Can you go anywhere on Earth?”

  I remember Everest and the Antarctic and the Sahara. “I suppose we can, but it’s not easy. You have to have special clothing and equipment.”

  “Typically human,” Faro remarks. “Show you a place where you aren’t meant to live, and immediately you want to go there.”

  “We aren’t meant to live in Ingo, and here we are.”

  “Of course you’re meant to be here,” says Faro, as if he’s stating the most obvious thing in the world. “Do you think that every human creature who ventures into our world gets such a welcome? No. From the moment my sister first saw your brother—”

  But at that moment the current humps its back like a snake and begins to whip round on itself in circles that whirl faster and faster, dragging us with it. Faro’s face changes. With a shock I realize that for the first time since I’ve known him, he’s afraid.

  “Rogue current!” he shouts. “We’ve got to get out! Sapphire, kick out! Swim for it!”

  Faro lets go of me to grab Conor with both hands. One moment we’re together, and then I’m torn away by the current. I catch a last glimpse of them whirling away from me, and then they vanish. The current snatches us apart like the wind blowing rubbish along a gutter. I tumble over and over, blinded by my own hair, rushing down an endless tunnel in the current’s roaring heart.

  I’ll never know how far I traveled. I think I must have lost consciousness. I don’t remember anything except what felt like a hand wiping across my mind, wiping me into sleep.

  I wake in the dark. Hollow, booming, echoing dark. But it’s not complete darkness. There are grains of light in it. Thick shadows loom and then vanish. I try to move my hand, but it’s so slow, so heavy. The water weighs me down, as if a mountain had fallen on top of me.

  Painfully, I turn my neck, searching for Conor, Faro. Nothing but dense dark water everywhere. I peer upward, searching for the brightness of the surface. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong direction. I’ve got to find the surface. That must be the seabed down there. But no, perhaps I’ve been tossed over and over so many times that I’m floating upside down without knowing it. If I swim toward what I think is the surface, then I might be swimming down into the depths of the ocean.

  Conor would never be able to breathe down here. He must be with Faro; he’s got to be. When the current struck, Faro knew he had to help Conor. That’s why he grabbed hold of Conor with both hands and let go of me, because he knew I could survive alone. Yes, Faro and Conor must be together, safe, searching for me. No other possibility is going to enter my mind.

  I’ll swim in any direction for a while and see what happens. If it grows darker, I’ll know I’m heading the wrong way, down to the seafloor. If it grows lighter, then that must be the way to the surface.

  And what good will it do if you come up to the surface hundreds of miles from home?

  I’m not going to think of that. I am strong in Ingo. I am Dad’s myrgh kerenza, his dear daughter. I’m here to speak to him, that’s all. It’s not a crime.

  Perhaps the current heard us planning Dad’s freedom in our minds. Perhaps it knew we intended to frustrate the law of the Mer. Perhaps that’s why it went wild, breaking its own law to hurl me into the Deep.

  I’m alone. Completely alone. Not just alone until Mum comes home or alone because I don’t want to be with the others. Alone. If I died here, nobody would know. The pressure of the sea bearing down on me is so strong that I don’t think my body would even float to the surface. No one would ever guess what had happened to me. I could call for Faro, but he wouldn’t hear me. Faro said that the Mer don’t come to the deep ocean. There’s no one to help me here.

  Only yourself, says a small voice inside my head. Only yourself. The words sound hollow and lonely. I can’t even see my fingers. It’s too dark.

  But I’m still here. I’m not dead. I’m not even hurt. My body is able to bear the weight of the Deep. Perhaps it is not so deep after all.

  Faro told me that monsters live here. Giant squid with tentacles as long as a basking shark…

  He must have been teasing. Of course he was. Don’t think of tentacles now. I have still got myself, even if that’s all I’ve got. I must keep my head clear and not let panic crowd its way in and stop me from thinking. I’ve got to be brave, like Conor when he entered Ingo without knowing whether I could keep him alive here. Be brave, Sapphire.

  I’ll start swimming, and I’ll keep on until I find something or somewhere that lets me know where I am. I won’t think about the weight of water above my head.

  Only yourself, repeats the cold little voice in my ear.

  Yes, myself! I’m angry now. I’d rather be angry than terrified.

  I swim along cautiously, feeling my way through the thick dark water, trying not to use up too much energy. I can’t swim fast anyway. My arms and legs seem to have weights on them, dragging me down. It’s the pressure.

  Conor’s safe. He escaped the current with Faro. I’ve got to believe that. The alternative is too terrible. For a second I see Conor’s body turning over and over as it sinks slowly into the mouth of the Deep, and then I shut my mind. The Deep can’t hurt Conor. He’s safe with Faro. The Deep doesn’t want to hurt me either. Probably it doesn’t even know that I’m here. I’m like a gnat on the shoulder of an elephant. I’ll keeping swimming along, not too fast, not too slow, at a pace that I can keep up for hours if necessary. If you believe things, sometimes they start to happen. I’m going to believe that I’m swimming to safety.

  The whale sees me before I see it. I am quite close before I realize that the whale is anything but a deeper part of the darkness. And then the whale’s body slowly swings. Water swirls against my body. The whale is denser than a shadow and alive. I’m looking at one of those puzzle book pictures where a shape is hidden. As soon as you find the shape, you can’t believe that you ever missed it. The whale shape comes out of the dark. Blunt, squared off, looming head, body still in shadow.

  The whale is so huge that I’m like a dinghy in the path of a tanker. It’s lucky that the whale is swimming slowly. Maybe it has to conserve energy too. I wouldn’t like to be caught in the onrush of a whale traveling at full speed.

  I don’t know what kind of whale it is. I rack my memory, trying to recall what Dad used to tell me about whales. It’s too dark to be sure, but this must be one of the biggest. Blue whales are so rare now. What’s the other big one called that Dad said could dive a thousand meters deep? They don’t come often to our waters, but they do sometimes. I can’t remember their name.

  The strange thing is that I’m not afraid of the whale’s vastness. It is like meeting a friend in an alien world. A distant cousin maybe. This whale is a creature of warm blood, a breathing creature like me. A fellow mammal.

  I lift my hand in greeting. It sounds crazy,
but I find myself so glad to see the whale that I start talking to it, telling it my name. I don’t know whether I am speaking Mer or not, but I believe that my words reach the whale. I feel something like a wave of intelligence flowing over me, questioning what I am and what I’m doing here. I repeat my name. “I’m Sapphire. I’m looking for my brother and for Faro. The current drove me here.”

  The intelligence probes me again. It wants more.

  “I don’t want to be here. This is too deep for me. I need to be back where the Mer are, in Ingo.”

  A ripple passes through the water between me and the whale. The whale is laughing. Not mocking laughter, but the way Mum used to laugh when I pronounced words wrong when I was little. I used to say “windowsilver” instead of “windowsill” and I didn’t know it was wrong until I went to school. Mum said she liked it so much that she didn’t want to tell me it was wrong. Suddenly I am absolutely sure that this whale is female.

  The whale’s laughter changes. It turns into sound, shapes, syllables. She fills the dark water with pulses of meaning. She is talking to me.

  “You say you need to be back in Ingo, little one. But this is Ingo. How could it not be Ingo where I am?”

  “But I thought…The Mer don’t come here, do they?”

  “Ingo is more than where the Mer are. But what’s a little barelegs like you doing down so deep?”

  “The current brought me.”

  “You said that. But the Deep doesn’t let little barelegs live, so how are you here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And where are you going?”

  “I want to leave the Deep, but I don’t know which way to go.”

  “Poor little barelegs. Don’t they teach you which way is up?”

  The Deep trembles with the whale’s enormous joke.

  “Nothing they teach us works here.”

  “Come here, little one.”

  I am extremely hesitant about this. A whale is a whale. And it’s quite possible that whales hold their memories in common even though they are not fish. They might remember terrible things about humans harpooning them, dragging them for miles, with blood pouring from a dozen wounds, and then cutting up their carcasses for oil and blubber. Something nags at my mind. Those whales—the ones that could dive deep—were hunted for a particular reason. I wish I could remember their name.

  “I don’t think you are big enough to cause me harm, little barelegs,” rumbles the whale.

  Clearly she thinks I am about six years old, and she also doesn’t seem to realize that my legs aren’t bare at all, since I’m wearing jeans. But she offers my only hope of help, and there is something about her that I can’t help trusting. I swim cautiously toward her flank.

  “Come closer.”

  Her body is like a cliff. I brush against it, and it feels rough, like a huge shriveled orange. I swim up over the landscape of her skin, toward her head. It is much too dark for me to see her eye, but she seems to see me.

  “Why do you swim so weakly?” she asks.

  “I can’t go any faster. My arms and legs are so heavy.”

  “Your mother should have taught you better.”

  Now that I’m in the shelter of the whale, I feel safer. She is an air breather, though she can stay underwater for a long time. I wish I could remember how long. But she will have to go home to the Air, and maybe she’ll take me with her.

  “So slow, so slow,” grumbles the whale. “Come up to my forehead, little one.”

  I climb higher, feeling my way along the pitted surface of her skin.

  “Would you like me to swallow you, little barelegs, and spit you out again once we leave the Deep?”

  My body shrinks with horror. My mind babbles with panic.

  “I am not serious,” says the whale reprovingly. “My children would have known that I was not serious.”

  For a second I imagine the whale’s children rolling their eyes at yet another of their mum’s not very good jokes.

  “I must leave the Deep,” I say. “I have to find my brother and Faro and go to see Saldowr.”

  “Saldowr?”

  “He’s a teacher, a wise one.”

  “I know who Saldowr is,” says the whale.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “I know a current that will take you to where he is. But are you sure, little barelegs, that this is what you want? We whales never visit Saldowr. He has too much knowledge.”

  “But I want to know something.”

  “Of course,” muses the whale. “I was forgetting, little barelegs. I was thinking of you as one of my own. Your world is full of knowledge. As soon as you meet any creature, you have to know what is inside it.” Her voice has changed. It is full of a sadness as profound as the Deep.

  My memory clicks open. Whales like her were hunted and killed in the thousands because the hunters had learned that inside their bodies was oil and a precious wax called ambergris. I remember asking Dad what the wax was used for.

  Perfume, he said.

  But Dad, how could people ever have discovered they could make perfume out of whales?

  By killing enough of them.

  “So you must go to Saldowr and find your answer,” the whale goes on, “whatever pain it causes. And I must rise.”

  “Do you need to breathe?”

  “Yes, I need the Air. I have filled my hunger for food, and now my hunger for air begins to grow. Rise with me, little barelegs, unless you prefer the Deep.”

  “But how can I?”

  “Have you seen dolphins ride the bow wave of your ships?”

  “Yes. No. I mean, I know that they do it.”

  “Dolphins are full of play. You have to be the cleverest of creatures to play as much as they do. We whales can’t complain, but our lives are heavy. The dolphins ride free. That’s their gift, little barelegs. They turn their whole lives to play.”

  “Don’t whales play?”

  “Certainly,” rumbles the whale, “certainly we try to play. We have many jokes, but everyone is afraid to laugh.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “That is the burden we whales have always borne.”

  There is certainly nothing playful about the way the whale brings me up from the Deep. Heavy surges of water throw me from side to side. It’s like being batted through the water by a giant in boxing gloves. The whale’s huge wake curls from her sides, and I’m tucked inside it, rolling over and over, blind and sick and dizzy but rising, rising, drawing away from darkness, slowly at first, then faster, faster, as the whale’s strength bursts the grip of the Deep.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I don’t want to say good-bye to the whale. In her company I feel as safe as if she were my mother. I wish that she would tell another of her ponderous whale jokes, and this time I would make sure to laugh. She’d be pleased about that.

  There’s no time left. She slows and halts about fifty meters from the bright surface. I can see her clearly now. Her skin is wrinkled, almost shriveled looking. I wonder if she is very old. She is like a mountain of protection at my side.

  “Leave me now,” she says. “You are safe here. Climb on this current, and it will take you where you want to go. I must rise quickly.” She needs to breathe. She’s probably risen more slowly from the Deep than she should have done, for my sake.

  “Good-bye, dear whale. Thank you thousands of times.”

  “Good-bye, little barelegs.”

  She backs away from me. Slowly, like an air balloon sailing up into the sky, her huge bulk rises with majestic grace to the surface.

  “Good-bye, dear whale!” I call after her. I wonder if we’ll ever meet again. I hope we will.

  There’s the current she told me to take. A warm, bright, bubbling current. I swim slowly toward it. Every muscle in my body aches with exhaustion. I feel weighed down, as if I still haven’t escaped the pressure of the Deep. I turn into the current, and a warm fountain of bubbles explodes against my skin. I stretch out, and the flow o
f water buoys me up like a pillow. Relax, the current whispers; I know where I’m going and I’ll take you there safely. Just relax and trust me. Close your eyes.

  And I do. I must be crazy. The last current I trusted turned on me like a tiger and dragged me into the Deep. But what choice have I got? I don’t know where I am. The whale has already disappeared. I wish I’d asked her name. I hope we meet again….

  It’s so peaceful. The current rocks me gently as it moves along. There are no monsters here. I can relax. In fact the light is so strong after the dark of the Deep that it stings my eyes. I’ll just close them for a little while….

  I slept. You know those warm, delicious sleeps full of dreams that are so wonderful that you never want to wake? That was the sleep the current gave me. Sleep full of sea colors and sea music. Sleep full of singing voices, so far away that I could only catch a few lines of the song.

  Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:

  Hark! now I hear them,—

  Ding-dong bell, ding-dong bell,

  Ding-dong….

  It was a sleep that felt as gentle as a rock pool after you’ve been swimming in rough, cold water. I must have traveled on for hours, or perhaps it was only minutes that stretched out to hours, as they do in dreams. Sometimes I felt myself rising to the surface of sleep, but then I drifted back to the lulling sound of the current in my ears. The current wrapped itself round me like a blanket. I almost forgot that I’d ever had another life except this one, drifting wherever the current wanted to take me. There was nothing to fear, nothing to grieve for, no more mystery to solve.

  I forgot Conor and Faro. My life in the Air was as remote as a toy I’d had when I was a baby. I dreamed of a woman with a seal-dark tail, singing her baby to sleep. I looked into the baby’s cradle and saw it had dark, feathery hair and little hands like starfish and a tail like its mother. I dreamed of a home deep under the waves and a bed made of sea moss and sea emeralds, curtained by swaying seaweed.