by Lari Don
Helen and Roxburgh started up again, louder, faster, more confident, though they were being lashed by wind and spray.
Now he’d grasped the idea, Roxburgh was giving it everything: huge volume, huge emotion, and singing like the world was listening poised to applaud. Finally, he had the confidence to add his own notes to the tune, and that was when the storm really started to batter the coast.
“It’s too near,” warned Yann. “We have to move back.”
“No,” shouted Helen, “we have to stay here, we have to hear the sea, or we can’t sing the storm. You can move back through.”
But Yann dug his hooves into the turf and shielded them, as the storm, the waves and the bloom got closer.
Helen watched the bloom being thrown towards them, looking like a heap of soggy old pink party balloons trailing poisonous ribbons.
The waves rose higher, so it wasn’t just spray and wind hitting them now. Solid sheets of water were falling on their heads. Helen hunched over, trying to protect her violin.
Below them, the two stacks, the Old Man and Old Woman of Skerness, were channelling the waters, breaking the waves into a chaos of white and grey, then pink and purple. Sea-throughs were being ripped off the tattered edges of the bloom.
The bloom was being lifted so far up by the waves that at the highest point, when Roxburgh reached the highest notes, the bloom was opposite them, hundreds of sea-through eyes staring at them in shock and hatred. Then the wave crashed down again and the bloom was dragged away.
Helen had an idea, and started to play high and low notes in a relentless rhythm. Roxburgh copied her and between them they raised the incoming waves even higher and the crashing falls even lower.
Helen yelled, “Stop, on four!”
As they played the next high notes, the bloom was lifted so far into the air that they could see underneath it to all its dangling tentacles.
Then Helen and Roxburgh stopped, suddenly, on the same beat.
The wave fell.
And the bloom fell.
Right onto the stacks. Right onto the Old Man and Old Woman of Skerness.
The stacks stabbed through the centre of the bloom like two spears, and the bloom disintegrated.
All the sea-throughs let go, and slid down the stacks, or landed in jellied heaps on the headland, or crashed down onto the rocks, or clutched the cliff edge and pulled themselves up, struggling to change into their landforms as they slithered around.
The western stack, the Old Man, split in two, and crumbled into the sea.
Catesby squawked, pulled himself free from Yann’s protective arms, and flew straight into the wind.
The phoenix soared over the stacks, dodging falling jellyfish, and seized the green bottle, which had been thrown up and out of the ripped bloom.
But as the phoenix struggled to stay airborne with the weight of the bottle in his claws, a transparent hand snatched him out of the air.
The tall sea-through stood near the edge of the cliff, surrounded by creeping and scuttling sea-throughs. Helen saw it was twice the size of the others from the bloom, which were sliding off the cliff, escaping into the water below.
Catesby held the bottle, and the sea-through held Catesby.
“The message is written in squid ink on fishskin,” hissed the sea-through. “And the bottle came from a wreck. The sea wants them back. They will come with me, back to the sea. And the bird in my hand comes too.”
Catesby pecked and struggled, but couldn’t get free of the long stretchy fingers.
The sea-through laughed, and took one step back. Yann stepped forward. “The bird doesn’t belong to the sea.”
“It does now!” giggled the sea-through and took another step.
Then Helen saw a wave rise silently out of the sea behind the cliff. Not a long line of surf, but a narrow finger of water.
The wave wrapped itself round the sea-through’s neck, lifted it high into the air, and as fast as Helen had ever seen water move, slapped the sea-through down onto the edge of the cliff, like a bird smashing a shell on a rock. The sea-through flung open its hands in shock, dropping the phoenix and the bottle.
The wave pulled the squealing sea-through down to the sea.
Immediately Yann ran forward to lift the gasping Catesby, and Helen grabbed the bottle before it rolled over the edge.
They saw the narrow white wave drag the sea-through between the stacks, the tall Old Woman and the stump of the Old Man, and down deep into the sea.
They looked at the smaller sea-throughs, sliding off the rocks, bobbing in the waves. Not joining up again, swimming off separately.
“We had stopped playing,” Helen said slowly. “We didn’t sing up that wave. That wasn’t part of the storm.”
Roxburgh croaked, “No, that was the sea.”
“It was all the sea,” said Helen.
Lavender spoke from inside Helen’s collar, “He’s right. That was the sea. Doing what the sea-through always said the sea would do. Taking its own. But only its own. The sea has left us everything else, everything we need to stop the battle.”
Helen nodded. “If we’re going to stop the battle, we have to get the true message to Merras. Roxburgh, you’ll have to swim with it …” She turned to give the bottle to the selkie. But all she saw was a sobbing heap of sealskin on the ground.
Yann shook his head. “He would never have made a Sea Herald. He doesn’t have the stamina.”
“So who’s going to take it?” asked Helen.
Catseby, Lavender and Yann looked at her.
She sighed. “Alright. Let’s get the boat.”
As Helen slid off Yann’s back near the campsite, the centaur said, “We’ll all come.”
“No. And no arguments. I have to go alone. The boat is faster without you. You go inland. Save yourselves. If I don’t succeed, find some elders the sea powers will listen to, and get the truth to Merras and Thalas somehow, before the battle destroys the whole coast. But save yourselves first.”
She didn’t wait for goodbyes, she just clambered over the wall, and ran through the campsite.
The Scouts looked at her strangely as they slotted bikes into racks on the minibuses.
“You’re having an early start,” said Emily. “It looks nasty, you shouldn’t go out to sea.”
“I probably shouldn’t,” Helen agreed. “Where are you going?”
“We’re cycling up round the clearance village.”
“Excellent,” said Helen. “The views are best from really far inland. Get going now, before the weather gets worse.”
She ran for the boat, leapt in, wedged the bottle between her feet and grabbed the oars.
Helen looked back at the coast as she rowed out to sea, wondering if the campsite would still be there tomorrow, wondering if she’d ever see her friends again.
Chapter 29
Taltomie Bay was calm, sheltered from the storm by the island, so Helen rowed across easily. When she turned round, she could see a whirl of water and air on the horizon, and a sparkle of lightning in the sky. She and Roxburgh had only summoned the very edge of that storm to destroy the bloom. Most of it was still out there, still raging.
Could she row through that? Should she?
If she got through it, what would she find? What were the sea powers like? How could she tell which was Merras and which was Thalas? And was there any point in a human girl yelling, “There’s been a misunderstanding. Please stop trying to kill each other so you can read this tiny little message in this teeny little bottle”?
But they must be used to getting messages in bottles, even if they weren’t used to human messengers, so she kept rowing steadily.
Once she was past the selkies’ island, the waves and wind got stronger, and the boat was harder to control. But Helen just kept rowing, the bottle between her feet, and the rhythm of the sea in her mind.
Then she hit something.
She stopped rowing and jerked round. The bow wasn’t holed; the boat wasn’t sink
ing. What had she hit?
She noticed something floating by her left oar, groaning, and Helen reached into the churning sea and dragged out … Rona, who slipped off her sealskin and rubbed her forehead.
“Helen! What are you doing here? We have to get home! The message made Merras really angry and now they’re fighting. Turn round, row back!”
“Where are Serena and Tangaroa?”
“I don’t know. When Merras read the message, she started to stamp on the seabed and slap the surface. The waves ripped us apart, and I haven’t seen Tangaroa or Serena since. I have to get back and tell the elders something has gone wrong, so Strathy can work out what to do.”
“I know what’s wrong. You delivered the wrong message. Sinclair switched it last night. You delivered a terrible insult from Thalas to Merras, so they’re starting a real fight. But we’ve already retrieved the original message from the bloom. If we can get this true message to Merras, perhaps they’ll stop fighting before the battle reaches the coastline.”
Rona sighed in exhaustion. “Give it to me. I’ll swim back.”
“No, we should go together: one of us to hand over the real message, and the other to explain to Thalas why Merras is so angry. They can’t make peace unless they both realise what went wrong.”
So Rona shouted directions to avoid the worst of the unpredictable waves, and Helen rowed harder than ever to get into the heart of the storm.
As they got nearer, the boat seemed too small and light to withstand the beating of the water, but also too large and heavy for Helen to force it through the thrashing sea. And the cold white teeth on the edge of every wave bit down towards the girls.
But Helen kept driving the boat forward, away from the land, into the deep and deeper sea. The storm howled above their heads, ripping off the tops of waves, and mixing the sea with the wind. There was so much water in the air that Helen could hardly breathe, so much air in the water that the oars had almost nothing to push against.
Helen yelled, “I can’t row against these waves any more. Rona, can you calm the waters down a bit?”
“How?”
“You can sing them up, surely you can sing them down again. Try a lullaby …”
Rona started singing softly and Helen twisted round and watched the waves in front of the boat flatten. The surprised selkie smoothed a path for Helen to row towards the two battling powers. The boat sped forward through a tunnel of flat water with the spray and chaos of the storm arching over it.
Then Rona yelled, “Look round. Can you see them?”
Helen peered through the walls of spray, and saw two massive shapes, outlined by lightning against the dark clouds. A man and woman so tall they were standing only ankle-deep in the ocean. Merras and Thalas.
They were made of swirling water. Huge and hypnotic, beautiful and terrifying, just like the ocean. They had armour made of shoals of fish swimming just below the surface of their thin watery skin, and green arms with waves racing along them as they flexed their muscles. They had faces of foam, and hair of windblown sand.
That was how Helen could tell them apart. One had hair made of spiky black volcanic sand. He must be Thalas. The other had hair flowing to her waist, of golden sand like the long beaches of the Western Isles. She must be Merras.
They were screaming and throwing spears of broken masts and lumps of ripped up seabed at each other.
Helen shouted, “Why are they fighting up here if they’re deep sea powers?”
Rona yelled back, “How well they keep their shape in the air shows off their strength. Are you sure you want to get closer?”
Helen turned her back on them, and kept rowing, as Rona wore her voice out singing a safe path through the battle storm.
Finally they were right between the two fighting giants, hoping neither would drop their weapons onto the tiny boat below.
Helen picked up the bottle, and shouted, “I’ll get this to Merras, because the message should speak for itself. You talk to Thalas, because we don’t have anything to show him and he’s more likely to listen to a selkie than a human.”
“If he can hear anything,” screamed Rona over the roaring above and around them.
“But how do we get their attention? We’re down at their ankles!”
“I’ve done that already today. You dive into them.”
“Dive into them?”
“They’re made of sea and currents and tides. Just dive into them and you’ll be able to swim higher to where they can see and hear you. Watch me.”
Rona slid out of the boat, still in human form, swam swiftly to Thalas’s ankle, and with her hands together as if she was going to dive off a board, sliced through the surface of his skin and swam into his leg.
Helen watched, amazed, as a current drew Rona up his leg, towards his torso.
Taking a deep breath, she grasped the bottle, jumped out of the boat, and swam towards Merras’s right leg.
She snatched one more breath as she reached the pillar of water, linked her hands round the bottle, and dived forwards.
She was immediately grabbed by a warm tight grip, like a hug from someone much bigger, and thrust up the pillar. She could see that Rona was still moving through Thalas. Helen held her breath, held the bottle and let the water tow her along.
Suddenly she was in a much wider space, Merras’s belly, still moving upwards, then she was caught in a chaos of currents, which battered and confused her. Helen guessed she was in Merras’s heart, where all the currents met, so she kicked off towards an outstretched arm, and felt another current drag her along.
When she could see the water splitting into five paths ahead of her, she surged through the surface of the water, pushed out into the air, gulped a breath, and stood on the palm of a huge woman made of moving water.
Helen looked up at the enormous, scowling face of Merras, with her glowing green eyes and coral white teeth. The deep sea power roared, louder than the storm, “Why do you disturb me in my fight against that insulting upstart?”
Helen looked round. Rona was shivering on Thalas’s palm, waving her hands, pointing to Helen. So Helen held up the bottle to Merras. “This is the true Sea Herald message. This morning’s message was a forgery, sent by the sea-through bloom, not Thalas. We’re delivering the true message to you, and an explanation to him.”
She offered the bottle to Merras, who picked it out of her hand and crushed it between her thumb and finger. As sharp fragments fell to the sea below, she peered at the message.
She spoke, in a softer, less angry voice: “This is more complimentary. He’s noticed my new hairstyle. This is in the usual words, from one equal to another. This is not an insult. This is the true message?”
Helen nodded.
“The insult this morning was from a cnidaree bloom?”
Helen nodded again.
“Your selkie companion is explaining this to Thalas?”
Helen nodded a third time.
Merras roared again. But this time it was a laugh.
“Hey, Thalas!” she shouted. “Thanks for noticing my hair.”
He boomed back, “Thanks for a great fight!”
“It is good to know we both still have the strength to fight a true fight.”
“Yes, but we don’t need to prove it again for many years!”
“Your turn to rule for six months, then,” said Merras. “I’ll send a politer message with the herald when I challenge you in the spring.”
Thalas said, “Peace, friend?”
Merras answered, “Shake on it.”
As the deep sea powers reached out their hands, with Helen and Rona still on their palms, Helen realised that the gesture of peace was going to crush them. So Helen reached out towards Rona, and as soon as the girls’ hands met in the air, they grasped each other and jumped, while above them Thalas and Merras smashed their palms together, and laughed loudly, creating one last pattern of waves rushing to shore.
Helen and Rona fell down into the deep dark cold sea, f
illed with dead fish and sediment. Helen swallowed water as she hit and started to sink, eyes fogged and brain too overloaded to work out which way was up. Rona wrapped her arms round Helen, pulled her to the surface and shoved her into the boat.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s go home.”
Rona and Helen took one oar each, their faces to the two powers, who were sinking slowly into the sea, voices whispering together, “Now where are those sea-throughs? We shall send those little pink squidges to every corner of the ocean. They will never join up in our waters again.”
The girls rowed quietly southwards.
There was no need to sing a calm path because the sea was rocking like a cradle, pushing them gently home to shore.
Chapter 30
Another selkie feast, thought Helen. They never just ate fish and chips on their laps. It was always something fancy.
But she didn’t complain. She had Yann, his hair and tail brushed to Lavender’s satisfaction, kneeling at one side of her; Serena and Tangaroa, both covered in bruises after being thrown on the rocks by the sea battle, sitting on the other; and Lavender and Catesby perched on the table in front.
Helen was watching Rona telling the gathering about the bloom’s plot, Sinclair’s bargain, and the journey through the storm to deliver the real message. Rona told the whole story, except the details of how she’d won the third task. When she finished, two selkie elders with stern faces marched a protesting Sinclair to an inner cave.
Then Rona reminded the gathering that Roxburgh had exposed his father’s plot and helped defeat the bloom, so Roxburgh found himself cheered as loudly as his father had been booed.
Yann whispered, “Those cheers should be for you, Helen. You brought the storm to shore just as much as he did.”
Helen just smiled, and waited for Rona to finish her speech so she could join them for more sponge fingers. But Rona wasn’t finished yet.
“I am honoured to be your Sea Herald, but I did not win the honour in an honest contest. The sea-through interfered too much with the tasks for any result to be legitimate. I am content with being a Storm Singer. So I resign as Sea Herald.”