“But you like it, Dad! You want to be here.” I hate the idea of Dad not liking his life.
He nods. “I do. I didn’t want to make the break with all that’s gone before, that’s the truth of it.”
All that’s gone before… There’s a row of granite headstones in the churchyard, with our name on it. I suppose that’s what Dad means. But it’s not because of them that I want to stay on the Island. Well, maybe a little bit. My DNA and the Island soil are all mixed up together.
“Well, you’d better get off to do your homework then. I suppose that’s what Jenna’s doing.”
How I’d love to tell him that in fact Jenna has gone for a walk with Bran Helyer. But, like telling Dad about Malin, it’s impossible.
Jenna and Bran are gone for a long time. I sit by the window, vaguely doing some maths because in a weird way I don’t want to lie to Dad about working. Digory’s curled up on the floor behind me, watching TV. At last I see them, walking very slowly and close together, heads bent. They are so absorbed in their conversation that they don’t seem to care who sees them. They stop about twenty metres away. Jenna’s back is turned to me, but I can see Bran’s face. He is very serious. They talk a little more and then they part. Jenna walks towards our cottage, but halfway, she turns and gives him a little wave. He waves back, and then he goes off towards the harbour. He’ll be getting the boat back to the mainland. I bend over my work and try to concentrate.
The back door bangs. I hear Jenna talking to Mum in the kitchen, and then she opens the living-room door.
“Digory!” she says. “Do you want to play garages?”
Clever Jenna. Digory leaps up. The game of garages is so tedious that usually Jenna and I have to be nagged for ages before we’ll join in. He can’t believe his luck.
“And then the red car goes in here – and it reverses to the inspection pit – and the engine goes VVVRRRMMM—”
Digory can go on like this for hours. Maybe he is so fascinated by cars because all we have on the Island are tractors and a few beaten-up Jeeps that don’t mind potholes. Jenna thinks she has found a very neat way of evading any questions about where she’s been with Bran and what’s going on. But never mind, my dear sister. I can wait.
“…And then the garage-man says, ‘Your red car is very badly damaged, Mr Malin, you’ll have to leave it here for a long time while we do work on it.’”
“Digory! You promised!”
Digory goes very red. “I only said that name when I was playing.”
“Not when you’re playing, not any time. You promised me and Jenna.”
“It’s all right, Mor,” says Jenna soothingly. “There’s only us here. He didn’t mean to.”
“You be careful, Digory. You wouldn’t like anyone to be hurt because of you, would you?”
Digory shakes his head hard. I feel incredibly mean. “Why don’t you call the man in the red car Mr Helyer?” I suggest. Jenna shoots me a dagger look. “I expect his car is damaged because he drove it too fast and smashed it up.”
It’s night. I lie in bed, very still, looking at the line of moonlight around the shutters. Jenna’s asleep, at least I think she is. For once, I can’t be sure. Mum and Dad are in bed. The wind is getting up again, sighing around the walls. I can’t sleep for thinking of Malin. It’s as if there’s a link between us, hard to see but as powerful as water. I’m afraid for him. He wants to be free, not trapped in King Ragworm Pool. Maybe he’s awake too, listening for the vibration of footsteps in case someone is coming to get him. Maybe I could go to him now. Creep out without Jenna noticing. I’ll take the torch.
I must have moved because Jenna’s voice comes out of the darkness.
“Mor?”
“Yes?”
“Are you awake?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so scared.”
I sit up and try to see her face through the darkness, but there’s only a pale blur. “What are you scared of?”
“I feel as if something terrible is going to happen. I wish you’d never found him.”
“Nothing’s going to happen, Jenna. He’ll get better, you’ll help me carry him to the sea, and he’ll be free. We’ll never see him again.” As I say those words a pang of pain shoots through me. I’ve only just met Malin but it feels as if I’m going to lose a brother. “I’ve had an idea about what he might eat,” I go on quickly. “Samphire. I’m sure that would be all right for the Mer.”
“Where’d we get samphire in November?”
“Don’t you remember, Mum pickled loads of it? She won’t notice if we take a jar from the back.”
I hear Jenna sigh and turn over restlessly. “You still don’t get it, do you? You keep trying to make it all sound normal, as if he’s a – I don’t know – a French exchange who likes different food from us.”
“Go back to sleep, Jen.”
“I haven’t been asleep.”
“Jen… What did Bran talk to you about?”
I hear her take a breath. “Nothing.”
“Don’t you trust me any more?”
“You don’t like him. You always think the worst of him.”
“He doesn’t like me, either.”
There’s a short silence.
“Is he going to come here again?” I ask after a while.
“I don’t know.”
“Because it might be dangerous for Malin—”
“Bran wouldn’t hurt Malin.”
“No… But he might without meaning to. If he found out – maybe heard Digory talking or something – then he might tell someone else.”
His father, for instance. I hadn’t thought of that before. If Bran’s dad thought there was money in it, he’d do anything.
“He won’t,” says Jenna confidently. “You don’t understand Bran, Mor. I used to think he was, you know, a bad boy and all that. But when you get to know him he’s completely different. When he’s on his own with you.”
When he’s on his own with you, I think, but I don’t say it. Jenna always thinks the best of people, that’s the trouble. Maybe that’s why Bran likes her. He sees himself reflected differently, in her eyes.
“His eyes are the same as his mum’s,” says Jenna abruptly, as if she’s read my mind, but not quite correctly.
“What do you mean?”
“Bran says when his dad’s had a few drinks he can’t look at him, because of Bran’s eyes. He can’t be in the same room with him.”
I try to remember what Bran’s mum looked like. I know that she was pretty, because people say so.
“Sometimes Bran sleeps out in the yard,” says Jenna quietly.
“His dad sounds a complete creep.”
“Bran doesn’t think so.”
I think about what it would be like if Dad wouldn’t look at me because I was too much like Mum. It’s not the case – I’m more like him – but I can see that it wouldn’t be a good feeling.
“Did he tell you all this stuff today?”I ask her.
“Some of it.”
I stare at the ceiling, taking in the idea that there have been other conversations before today’s. Suddenly a lot of things fall into place.
“His dad hits him, doesn’t he,” I say. It’s not a question, because I’m sure of it.
“Yes.”
“He ought to tell someone.”
“He has. He told me.”
“I mean a teacher or someone.”
“He won’t. They’d have to take action. Bran still wants to be with his dad, even though…”
Her voice tails off. I can’t think of any answer to that. It’s all too tangled and awful. But I refuse to feel sorry for Bran Helyer. He would hate it anyway. Maybe it’s not true. Maybe he just said that about his dad hitting him to get Jenna’s sympathy. Anyone can tell she’s the kind of person who would want to help you and look after you when things were bad.
Now I feel scared too. Jenna is too nice, and too willing to see the best in everyone. She shouldn’t be friends with
someone like Bran. I turn over again, restlessly, and then nearly laugh when I suddenly realise that my suspicion of Bran is the mirror image of Jenna’s suspicion about Malin. Even when we’re not trying to be twins, we can’t help it.
meant to get up at dawn to see Malin, but Jenna and I talk so late into the night that I oversleep. Digory’s finishing his breakfast by the time I go downstairs. Mum’s gone to the harbour to fetch the post and Dad’s already at the boat shed.
“Mor?” says Digory.
“What?”
“You know those Mer people who were playing music to me?”
“No one was playing music to you,” I tell him firmly. “You were just pretending in your head, like you do with the garage.”
“One of them was waving to me.”
“Waving to you?”
“Yes. Like this.” Digory stands up and waves with both arms, slow and wide, in the way no child would think of waving. I have the horrible feeling that someone else is using his body to send a message to me.
“Where was this person?”
“In the sea of course,” says Digory. “Quite far out but I could see his face and his neck and his shoulders as well as his arms. He was waving because he wanted me to come to him.”
An icy shiver trickles through my body. I kneel down beside Digory and cup his face in my hands. “He didn’t want you, Digory. It wasn’t you he wanted to come to him. It was me. He just wanted you to give me the message, that was all. Do you understand?”
“Am I giving you a message now?” asks Digory.
“Yes, you are. But you mustn’t ever, ever go with someone if you don’t know them.”
The trouble is, Digory’s so used to knowing everyone on the Island. Anyone here would help him if he was in trouble, or give him a drink, or something to eat if he was hungry. That’s why everything’s so different when you have to go to school on the mainland. You have to learn about strangers, and that you don’t smile at everyone or talk to everybody you meet. Digory doesn’t think of these dangers.
“Do you know that man who waved to me, Mor?”
“Umm – I’m not sure. Maybe. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about it, I’ll sort it out. But where were you exactly, when you saw this man?”
“On the beach.”
“Yes, I know that. But where?”
Digory looks guilty. “Quite near those rocks where Malin is. I was playing my violin for him, but I couldn’t climb up the rocks with it in case it broke. That’s why the man was waving at me, because he heard me. He wanted to talk to me.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s why he was waving.”
You can go round in circles with Digory for hours. I fix a smile on my face, although I’m feeling sick. What if Digory had gone into the sea?
“You go upstairs and wake Jenna now. Tell her I’ve gone out. I’ve got some stuff to do.”
I wait while his feet trek up the stairs, across the landing and into our bedroom. A moment later I hear Jenna’s sleepy voice. He’s safe with her. I grab my wetsuit and an old school swimming costume of Jenna’s from the cupboard under the stairs, think for a minute and pick up a bodyboard too. Then I’m out of the door and on my way down to the sea.
Of course the Mer will come looking for Malin. Why didn’t I think of that? They won’t know what’s happened to him. They’ll have searched everywhere, afraid that they’ll find his body. They must have realised that he is not in the sea, but on land, and they’re hoping against hope that he’s still alive… just as we hoped that the Polish sailor might still be alive. The Mer know that they need human help, and that’s why that man was signalling to Digory. But he can’t have thought Digory was old enough to come into the sea on his own. He must have meant Digory to tell someone… Deep in thought, I swerve past the village hall, down the track that crosses rough salty grass until it meets the dunes and then the sea.
I glance behind me to check no one is following, and then duck behind a rock to change into my wetsuit. It might look a bit weird to come here with wetsuit and bodyboard, when it’s not the surfing beach, but there’s no one to see me.
I have a sense deep inside myself that the Mer man will still be there. He’s seen Digory, and he knows that Digory has seen him. So he knows that he’s made contact, and he’ll wait to see what comes of it. I wade into the sea, knee-deep, then waist-deep. Although it’s not very windy, the sea is no longer flat. Waves push against me as I shade my eyes and scan the swell beyond the breaking waves. Almost immediately, I see a dark shape, just beneath the surface and closer inshore than I expected. It’s a couple of hundred metres away at the most. I shrink back. Instinct tells me to get out of the water as fast as I can. As I watch, the figure rises, just as Digory described, until head and shoulders and arms are lifted above the water.
No human being could do that. You would need a tail, as powerful as the tail of a seal or a dolphin. I’m too far away to see his face clearly, but I can see the hair streaming over his shoulders. He lifts his arms high and sweeps them out until they almost touch the water, up above his head and down to the water again. It’s a signal. He’s seen me. He must have been waiting patiently all night long, for some sign of life from the shore.
I glance behind me, at the safety of the beach. I’m only waist-deep. Even if he came after me he wouldn’t get to me in time. Mer people can’t go on to land. If they are thrown up on to the beach, as Malin was, they’re helpless. The Mer man sweeps the air with his arms again. What strength he’s got, to be able to raise himself head and shoulders above the water like that.
I’ve got to go to him. He doesn’t want to come any closer inshore. He wants me to come to him.
I’m so afraid. I’ve never been so scared in my life. He’s so strong and he’s in his element. If he wanted to drown me he could do it without even trying. Maybe he thinks I’ve hurt Malin, or done what Malin thinks all humans do: try to kill the Mer, or sell them into captivity to make money out of them. But if he thought that, then why would he be signalling to me? He would hide until I was in deeper water, and then attack. No. He really is signalling to me. He must want to find out what’s happened to Malin.
I stop thinking. As the next wave comes, I dive under it, and the green water takes me into itself, as it always does.
As it always does… No, this time it is different. Maybe I still have that live water in me. I cut through the water to the ploughed ridges of white sand on the sea floor, and then up again. But I don’t rise to the surface, because I’ve still got plenty of breath. I swim on, fast and sure. I don’t know exactly where I’m going, but the sea knows where it wants to take me. My fear has dissolved into exhilaration. I have never, ever swum so far on a single breath. And even when I come up, breaking the surface and pushing my hair out of my eyes, it’s not so much because I need to breathe, as that I think I should need to breathe.
There he is. Three or four metres away and watching me. He’s even bigger than I thought. Broad shoulders, a craggy, watchful face. He does not smile or seem to greet me. An instant later, he disappears beneath the water.
I tread water, feeling stupid, and then afraid. He didn’t want to talk to me. He just wanted to lure me out here. I look back at the shoreline and I’m amazed at how far away it is. Much more than the two hundred metres I calculated. How could I have swum all the way out here without taking breath? If I start to swim back, he’ll catch me easily, because he’ll be so much faster than I am. As my thoughts scurry round, a second dark shape breaks the water, almost close enough to touch. A sleek, shining head rises, and a face looks into mine.
It’s a woman. Her skin is dark and faintly, strangely tinged with blue. Her eyes are the colour of mussel shells. Her hair is long and it swirls around her like a cloak. I look around to see if the man is with her, but there’s no one. Only me and the Mer woman, rocking on the swell.
Her eyes fix on mine. I think I have never seen such pain and desperation.
“Malin?”
she pleads, as if she hardly dares to say his name.
“He’s all right. He’s injured but he’s all right. We’re looking after him. He’s in a rock pool, quite safe.”
But from the way she’s looking at me I can tell she doesn’t understand more than one word in ten.
“Malin?” she asks again.
I nod vigorously, trying to reassure her. Her gaze seems to burn into me. I have an inspiration. I’ll try to act out what has happened to Malin. I scoop up water and throw it forward into a wave, while with my other hand I shape a small figure, riding on top of the wave. “Malin!” I say, and show her how the wave caught him and tossed him. I make a flat line for land, and make the wave hurl Malin on to it. I see her flinch, but I hold up my hand as if to say, “Stop, it’s not as bad as that.” I say “Malin” again, and point to her tail, where the wound was, then act out the gash on my own leg, to show her how deep it was. I try to show how weak he was, and in pain, and then I mime carrying Malin and releasing him into a pool of water. I’m not at all sure she understands, though. Maybe it just looks like a girl waving her arms around. I try it again, and this time her face clears and she nods as if to say, “That’s enough, you can stop now.”
Then she looks towards land and asks again, “Malin?” But this time I’m pretty sure she’s not asking me if he’s dead or alive. She wants to know where he is. I search carefully, locate the rocks which hide King Ragworm Pool, and point to it. She looks in slightly the wrong direction.
“No, not there. There.” I’m not sure if I should do this, but I take her arm and guide it until she is looking the right way. Her hand points, parallel to mine. Her hands are strong and sinewy. Her skin feels subtly but unmistakeably different from human skin. Suddenly I realise that she’s quite a bit older than I thought at first. She’s old enough to be—
Of course. She’s Malin’s mother. That’s why she looks so desperate. I touch her shoulder to bring her attention back to me. She turns, and I make a cradle of my arms and rock an invisible baby. “Malin?” I ask her, and point to her and then at the invisible baby. She looks completely baffled, but then again, suddenly she gets it. I must be better at drama than my teacher thinks.
The Ingo Chronicles: Stormswept Page 9