by Lari Don
“But I’m nervous about the map guardian. We don’t find out what kind of creature the guardian is until we get there. It could be anything. I’m worried I might just give up when I see the guardian, if it’s big, or scary, or …”
Lavender said insistently, “How will the others do against their map guardians?”
Rona shrugged, trying to wipe tears from her eyes. Helen, who never understood why selkies made dresses without pockets, dug a hanky out of her jeans, and shoved it at Rona.
Lavender turned to the centaur. “Yann, how will they do in a fight?”
“Tangaroa made peace rather than fight me at the feast, but I think that was good sense not cowardice. He’s strong and ruthless, so I’m sure he’ll beat his guardian without much trouble. I don’t know about Serena. She could be vicious under all those simpers, though perhaps only when she’s got friends to back her up. The sea-through could be that friend …”
Yann stepped closer to Rona. “So for you to have a chance of finishing your quest before either of them, Rona, we need to work out how you can defeat the guardian.”
“No,” said Lavender, “it’s simpler than that. For you to win, we need to help you defeat the guardian.”
“Actually help me?” Rona was shocked out of her silence. “Actually fight it with me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s cheating! I’m meant to do it on my own.”
“You would do it on your own if this was just about you winning a title. But this is about preserving the balance between land and sea and about saving lives. We have to help.”
Yann interrupted, “Lavender, this is wrong. Rona can’t cheat. We can’t cheat. This is an ancient, honourable contest. We can’t ruin it.”
“Why not? Roxburgh and his dad cheated. Tangaroa may have been conspiring with the sea-through today. Serena might be waiting for help tomorrow.”
“So if Rona is the only honest contestant, then let her stay that way.”
“Don’t be daft, Yann! As the only honest contestant, she’ll lose!”
Yann shook his head. “It’s better to lose honestly, than win dishonestly.”
“Don’t be such a prat, Yann,” said Helen. “Most of the people in Sutherland and Caithness live by the sea. If a battle forces flood waters a mile inland, think of all the villages and towns which will be destroyed. And what if the battle moves around? Then coastlines everywhere will be hit. This battle could destroy hundreds, thousands of villages, towns and cities. We have a chance to stop that destruction before it starts.
“This isn’t about honour or honesty, Yann. It’s about survival. Anyway, it isn’t what you think that matters. Rona, what do you think? Will you accept our help to win? Will you cheat?”
Chapter 23
They all stared at the selkie. She shivered. “I don’t care about winning the contest. I don’t want to be Sea Herald. But I don’t want caves flooded, cliffs ripped down and lots of humans drowned. What belongs to the sea and what belongs to the land meet at the coast; the sea can’t have it all. We have to defend our coastline, even if it means cheating.”
“Why not just tell the elders?” pleaded Yann. “Then you wouldn’t have to cheat, they could stop the sea-through and bloom interfering, they could make sure the winning Sea Herald is honest.”
Lavender laughed. “What? The mighty quest warrior Yann Smith wants to let the grown-ups sort it out!”
Helen said more soothingly, “Yann, we know Sinclair is conspiring with the sea-through, so we don’t know if we can trust the other elders.”
“Anyway,” said Rona, “a bloom isn’t easy to defeat. A girl and a centaur can defeat one sea-through, but it would take several sea tribes to deal with a large bloom. There may not be time to defeat it that way.”
Catesby squawked at Yann’s face, and Yann whacked him out of the way. “No! I am not trying to get out of a fight!” The centaur whirled away, and took a couple of deep breaths. Then he turned back with a grim smile. “Accusing me of being a coward won’t turn me into a cheat.”
“Yann, we can’t do this without you,” said Lavender. “Despite Helen’s display this afternoon, you’re our fighter. Whatever that guardian is, we need you. You wouldn’t just be fighting for Rona, you’d be fighting for the miles of coastline that would be sucked under in a sea battle. Really …” the fairy winked at Helen as she flitted in front of the centaur, “… really, it’s your duty to fight for her, for your friends, for your whole country. Like going to war …”
“War? Duty?” Yann shook his head. “You think of me as your warrior, your muscles, your fast transport, but apparently you also think I’m stupid. You think if you call me a coward I’ll do anything daft to disprove it. Or if you dangle a war in front of me I’ll leap into action. I’m not that easy to manipulate. I know what’s right and what’s wrong. This is wrong.”
“Fine.” Helen stood up. “If you prefer your code of honour to fighting baddies and saving the world, then we’ll do it without you. But we have to start now.”
“Why now?” asked Rona quietly.
“We need to steal the riddles now.”
“Why? I know you’re good at riddles, Helen, but I can solve it myself tomorrow.”
“Solving it tomorrow is too late. We need to know the map location now, because we have to be hidden there before the judges and the guardian arrive. We can’t just trot along behind you tomorrow. The judges are in Sheila’s kitchen, so let’s go and eavesdrop.”
“That really feels like cheating,” said Rona doubtfully.
“It is,” snorted Yann, as the others left the tent. “It is cheating, and you’ll regret it.”
It was just as well they didn’t have Yann with them, Helen thought as they crept up to the kitchen window, because centaurs aren’t great at sneaking.
They heard a selkie voice say, “Are the guardians in place?”
Another voice said, “Not yet. They have been paid, though, and have agreed to be in place before dawn. They were amused when I added the danger money in case they got hurt, and I’m not convinced they listened when I reminded them they were not to kill the contestants.”
Rona was shivering, and Helen slid her arm round her friend’s shoulders. Helen wasn’t feeling much better, because she’d just talked herself into fighting a creature which laughed at danger money and ignored health and safety instructions.
The first voice asked, “Do we have the final riddles yet?”
Another voice said, “Let me read out what I’ve written.”
The eavesdroppers huddled closer, Lavender whispering, “Remember every word.”
They heard paper rustle, then a voice spoke clearly:
“At my front pigeons coo,
At my middle water flows through,
At my top, cows go moo,
So the answer is …”
“No, that’s not correct,” said a new voice. “Sheep graze above, not cows.”
“But sheep don’t moo, and I need an ‘oo’ rhyme.”
Various voices chipped in with “boo?” and “loo?”
“The rhymes are too easy,” said the first voice, which Helen now recognised as Strathy’s. “We need something more cryptic, maybe about ‘that which made me still falling through me’.”
Another voice growled, “We don’t want to make them too hard, and anyway, the use of ‘through’ is clever because it does not look like a rhyme. If we write it down, it might take her a while to realise the words do all rhyme.”
“That’s an idea,” said the riddler. “We can confuse it with other ‘oo’ sounds, but different spellings. Like true, blue, glue, shoe, who …”
“How are we doing with the other two?” Strathy asked.
“‘Two’ rhymes as well.”
“We have enough ‘oo’s now. How is the lad’s one coming along?”
“I’ve got:
“Once houses, now heather,
Once byres, now grass,
Once full of talk, now sile
nt.
Is that clear? Or was it cleared?”
“Is it too complex?” asked Strathy. “The ‘clear’ and ‘cleared’ is clever, but he’s not local, will he know this area’s history?”
“Oh yes,” said a soft voice, “we had the same in the Western Isles. And we visited that village on the first day here, when you showed us the areas likely to attract human tourists. I’m sure he will get that.”
“And the final one?”
“It’s really elegant,” the riddler said, proudly.
“Sky over you,
Surface over you,
Rock over you.
When the upside down you is over you,
Your search will be over.”
“More puns,” said Strathy. “Is it too simple?”
“If we read it out, so she hears the fourth ‘you’ rather than sees it, that might be confusing for a minute or two.”
The elders agreed the final riddle, so Lavender gestured the friends silently back to the tent.
Yann was still sulking, so Lavender took charge, just like Strathy in the kitchen. “We don’t have to solve the silence and cleared and village one, because it’s for Tangaroa.”
“No need to solve it, because it’s so easy,” laughed Helen. “The word ‘cleared’ and him knowing his history, it must be the Highland Clearances.”
“And if tourists visit it, it must be the clearance village in Strathnaver,” added Rona.
“The others aren’t so easy,” sighed Helen.
“Do the upside down one next,” suggested Lavender. “It should be a similar distance from here as Strathnaver, so that gives us a clue.”
“Rock over you …
Upside down you …”
They all murmured the riddle to themselves.
“Upside down you, that doesn’t make any sense, unless …” Helen dipped a fingertip in the puddle of water which had dripped from Catesby’s feathers, and drew a wet U on the groundsheet. “A letter U, look! If you turn it upside down …” she drew again, “… it’s an arch! With the sky, the rock and the surface over you … Rona, is there an underwater arch nearby?”
“Yes, Fenia’s Gateway. But,” Rona’s voice wobbled, “but how could you help me underwater?”
“Don’t panic,” said Lavender. “There’s still one more riddle, the rhyming one.” She repeated it out loud. Rona snorted. “Pigeons cooing and cows mooing. It’s like a nursery rhyme.”
“They suggested another clue,” Helen remembered. “‘What made me still falls through me …’ What could that mean?”
They sat quietly for a while, with the occasional mutter of “moo”, “loo”, “blue” …
Then Yann stamped his hoof. “It’s so obvious! It’s a cave! What made me, still falling through me, and water in the middle going through. Water, through rock, makes a cave!”
“Thanks for bothering to join in,” snapped Lavender, “but there are lots of caves round here, so that doesn’t actually help much.”
Helen said, “The answer must be a rhyme. Go through the alphabet.”
“Boo, coo, do …” They muttered their way through the alphabet, until Rona said, “Queue, roo, Sue, oh! Soo, smoo!”
The others stared at her.
“Smoo! Smoo Cave has a waterfall through it, and grass above it, and there are even pigeons nesting on ledges at the front. Smoo Cave! But how do we know which is mine? Smoo Cave or Fenia’s Gateway? And Smoo Cave …” Her voice fell. “It’s deep and dark and huge. And it’s half watery and half dry …”
“How deep is the water in the cave?” asked Helen.
“It’s really deep under the waterfall, but it flows out as a shallow river, just centimetres deep in places.”
“So this one is your riddle,” said Helen. “If it’s not deep water, then Serena can’t swim, she’d have to walk. The judges didn’t seem that bothered about your safety, but they did want the riddles to be equally difficult, so they must be trying to keep the quests fair. It wouldn’t be fair to give a mermaid a quest on land, because her legs are wobbly and sore.
“So he gets the village, she gets the arch, you get the cave. Now we have to decide how we can help you in the cave.”
“Not now,” said Rona. “We need to eat and sleep first.”
“No,” said a voice behind them. “No food. No sleep. We must go now.”
It was Yann. “We have to recce the battleground, and work out our tactics, before the guardian or the judge arrive.”
They were all staring at him.
“You’re coming with us?” said Rona.
“Of course I’m coming with you. Not because you’ve shamed me or teased me into it, but because I’ve realised it’s not really cheating to break rules in a contest that’s already broken wide open. Come on. Let’s get to Smoo Cave.” Helen rubbed her aching arm muscles. “Do I have to row a whole horse around the coast again?”
“No, because the moored boat would give away our location,” said Yann. “If we’re going to cheat, we’re going to get away with it. I’ll get us there much faster. It’s time I ran a race too, even if it’s only against middle-aged judges who’re probably still arguing about what rhymes with ‘moo’.”
Before Yann could rush them all out of the tent, Helen grabbed the packed lunches, which had been forgotten in the arguments after the race, so that Rona wouldn’t be starving as well as scared.
Then, in a storm of speed, they galloped along cliffs, over moors, round kyles, through sea air and darkening night, towards Smoo Cave.
Chapter 24
They arrived at a clifftop carpark after midnight.
“We’re definitely here before the judges,” said Yann, slightly out of breath. “Let’s go down and check out this cave.”
“But the guardian might be here already,” said Rona, shakily.
“Why?” asked Lavender. “It doesn’t need to be here until dawn.”
“Maybe it’s the kind of monster which enjoys lurking in deep dark drippy caves all night.”
Helen laughed. “Rona, you live in a cave. Don’t start building this guardian up into something from a horror film. It’s only a task, not a fight to the death.” Then she remembered the voice in the kitchen saying the guardians hadn’t listened when told not to kill the contestants.
“Helen, don’t downplay this creature,” said Yann, as they followed the tourist signs and Lavender’s lightballs along steep steps down the cliff. “It’s more dangerous to underestimate than overestimate an opponent. Let’s assume it’s nasty, violent and large, with an array of effective weapons, and prepare accordingly. If it’s actually a bunny rabbit with a sharp stick, we can laugh at our over-preparation once we’re safe. So think huge, dangerous, fast and predatory.”
“You’re not helping,” muttered Helen. “Rona’s very nervous. Stop using words like weapons and predatory, and stop sounding like this is fun!”
“Sorry,” he murmured.
They reached the foot of the steps, at the end of a long, high inlet, and crossed a wooden bridge over a river flowing out of a black hole in the cliff.
“There are two caves,” explained Rona. “The outer one is huge and mostly dry, the inner one is smaller and flooded, because the river running from the hills has broken through the roof. We’ll have to check both.”
Lavender whispered, “Should we use light in the cave?”
“I’m sure we’re first here, but even so, keep light and talk to a minimum when we’re inside,” said Yann. “Let’s go in, have a look round, come back out to discuss tactics, then Rona can head home and the rest of us will go back in and hide.”
So with Lavender’s lightballs looking unusually pale, they walked into Smoo Cave.
Rona led them past a wide pillar into a high arched cave. There was a big teardrop-shaped hole in the roof, with a few smaller holes at its tail, and when Helen stood under them, she could see through to the stars.
Yann paced out the cave, checking it was empty, then Rona led
them along a wooden walkway, through a tunnel, to a platform at the entrance to the inner cave. They were battered by spray and noise from a waterfall plunging through the high roof into a dark pool.
Lavender encouraged her lightballs to swoop round the cave. The walls were wet from the constant spray, and the wide sheet of water looked cold and deep.
Helen knelt on the planks of the platform to see if there was anything visible under the water, but she couldn’t see any shapes or movement.
Rona leant even closer to the dark choppy surface. She gasped, then turned and ran, not stopping until she was out in the clear night air.
They all ran after her, Yann bringing up the rear.
“What did you see?” asked Helen.
“Nothing! I didn’t see anything! We couldn’t really see anything in the shadows of the big cave, either. They could put the map anywhere: high on a ledge, or underwater in that black pool, or up on the roof where the river falls in, because selkie maps don’t mind getting wet.
“And the guardian could be anywhere and anything. It could be a monster from inland, because they must be using a land beast in Strathnaver. Or it could be a monster from the darkness of the far ocean, in that deep pool. It could be anything and I won’t know until it attacks and I don’t think I can do this!”
She sat down on a rock, near where the narrow river met the sea, and tried to gulp back tears. Helen crouched beside her. “We’ll be with you.”
“But you can’t be at the entrance or the judge outside will see you, so what if it jumps me when I walk in? And you can’t be in the water, so what if it’s swimming down in the dark?”
Rona was weeping now. “I wish I knew what it was, because at the moment it’s everything scary and dangerous all mixed up together! You know I’m not as brave as all of you. Walking into a cave to meet a creature which could eat me, which could bite and swallow and digest me … I just can’t do it. It’s my worst nightmare. I’m sorry. I can’t.”