Stormswept (14 page)

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.

“
An vamm Malin!
” she cries, and now she points to herself and to the invisible baby.

I’m amazed and quite proud of how much we’ve managed to communicate with only the word “Malin” between us, and then I realise something else and I’m even more amazed. I’ve been treading water, acting, talking, and not even needing to think for a moment about the effort of staying afloat. I’m as relaxed as I would be if I were standing on dry land.

I wonder if the man who signalled to me was Malin’s father. But if he was, why would he go? And why is it that Malin speaks English, but his mother doesn’t seem to know a word?

“I want to help you,” I say aloud, “but it’s so hard when we can’t speak to each other.”

Her bright eyes search my face, and then, without a word, she dives. Frustration rises in me. How am I ever going to communicate with these people if they keep disappearing? If she would just follow me, I could bring her to Malin. Or close to him, anyway. But still I don’t feel cold or tired, even though this is an old summer-weight wetsuit and the wind is blowing over my wet hair. I want to dive down after her, deeper into the sea. Maybe that’s the only way I’m going to find out what she wants. I let myself sink just below the surface, open my eyes, and look into the depths.

I don’t think I’ve ever been able to see this clearly underwater. I’ve swum out a long way, and the water is deep and dark. But it is perfectly transparent to me. There’s the sand, far below, and rocks, and a dense tangle of weed. A shoal of sardines flickers across my vision, and then two dark shapes swoop up through the water and the fish scatter. They are so sleek and streamlined that for a second I mistake them for seals, then their figures resolve into a Mer man and a Mer woman. Malin’s mother is one, and the other is the broad-shouldered man who first waved to me. They swim up to me at speed and then stop dead in the water. They are Mer, but nothing like any picture or story of the Mer that I’ve ever known. Their tails are sleek, tough, dark as sealskin and they look immensely powerful. Their skin is dark too, with the faint bluish tinge I’ve already noticed in Malin’s skin. I thought it might be because he was so weak, but it must be a Mer thing. They don’t look half-human. You can’t even clearly see where the tail ends and the body begins. They look wholly Mer.

“I need to breathe,” I think, but I don’t move. Whatever happened to me in King Ragworm Pool after Malin poured the live water on me has happened again. I am part of the water and the water is part of me. The woman is staring at me, alarmed. She gestures vigorously with her hands and points up to the surface. These Mer must know about humans. She’s afraid I’m going to drown.

“I’m all right,” I say. But that’s impossible. How can I speak without air in my lungs? I know that I’m speaking, though, and I know they can hear me, just as Malin could hear me. Sound is travelling in waves through the water, from my mouth to their ears. They both stare at me with shock on their faces. They hadn’t expected me to be able to breathe beneath the surface, and now I’m talking to them. They glance quickly at each other. Malin’s mother says something and at the same time she gestures with her hands so I almost catch her meaning. She’s explaining me to him, I think.

The man swims forward a little way and speaks to me in a deep voice that sounds echoey, like sound heard through a seashell. He speaks in English, but he’s not fluent. His voice struggles with the words as if they are stones in his mouth.

“You search Malin.”

He must mean that I’ve found Malin. “Yes,” I say.

“Malin – hurt.”

“Yes, he’s injured.”

“I speak human language. Malin mother speak Mer language.”

I wonder why they didn’t choose Malin’s mother to signal to Digory, and then to me? This man is so intimidating. I wouldn’t have been so scared of coming out here to meet a woman. She seems to pick up this thought, because she says something quickly to the man in Mer. The words ripple across my mind and vanish just before I can grasp them. The man says to me,

“In me no wish to make fear.”

“You’re Malin’s father?”

“No. Malin father far. Far from this place.”

Fine, don’t tell me your name then…
I point to myself. “Morveren,” I say. A quick look passes between the two of them, and the man repeats “Morveren?”

“Yes.”

“You have Mer name,” he says, with a trace of suspicion, “but you are full human.”

Although the situation is so serious, I have to hide a smile. He says it as if he’s describing a strange and not very attractive species of animal.

“Of course I’m human, what else would I be?”

Malin’s mother’s glance glints from him to me and back again. I can see just how frustrated she is not to be able to understand. I pillow my cheek on my hands to show her that her son is sleeping, saying once again, “Malin.”

“He must—” says the man, groping for words. “He must— healing.”

Another stream of liquid sound from Malin’s mother. This time it seems to come even closer until it grazes against my understanding and almost makes sense. But not quite. I point to myself again, keeping my gaze on Malin’s mother, willing her to understand. “I go to Malin,” I say very slowly, miming it as I speak. I am sure she understands. She reaches forward and clasps my hands between hers. Her grip is strong and her face imploring.

“I’ll tell Malin I’ve seen you,” I promise, hoping that the Mer man can translate for me, “and I’ll come back to tell you how he is. When he is better. We’re going to help him, I promise. Me and my sister…”

I’ve lost her. Her face is full of confusion and hope and her grip on my hands is desperate now. The man speaks to her, and her face clears a little. Maybe he understands human language better than he speaks it. The man speaks to her again and slowly she releases my hands. I hope that she can tell from my face how much I want to help her. The Mer man taps my shoulder, and then points down into the depths of the ocean. The sea-bed is further away than it was the last time I looked down. We must have been drifting out into deeper water. I should be frightened, but I’m strangely calm. There are shadows everywhere. Strong, sleek bodies which you might mistake for seals if you were far away and knew nothing about the Mer. Their faces are turned towards us. They are watching, waiting.

“Malin pobel,” says his mother, and this time I don’t need a translation. Malin’s people. The Mer. “An pobel trist,” she goes on.

“Trist?” The word sounds familiar. In French “triste” means sad. Maybe it’s the same in the Mer language. The people are sad. Malin’s people are sad. That would fit.

“Ingo er trist,” says the Mer man.

Ingo. Malin’s word.

“Ingo?” I ask, putting as much of my question into my voice as I can.
What is Ingo?

For the first time, Malin’s mother’s face breaks into a smile which transforms it. She opens her arms wide and spreads her hands as if she wants to embrace the whole ocean. “Ingo,” she says, and repeats it. “Ingo.”

I see. Ingo is where I am. Ingo means the sea – or maybe it’s something more. Those waiting shadows frighten me a little. There are so many of them: a whole people, all grieving for Malin. The power of it is overwhelming. Even the water seems to have grown dark. I feel more human and more alone than I have ever felt in my life. There is a choking, burning pain in my lungs. I’ve stayed down too long. I’ve got to get to the surface. I look up but it’s far away, twenty metres maybe – much too far.