Stormswept (15 page)

Malin’s mother must have seen the change in my face. She seizes my arm and with a single stroke of her tail we surge upwards. We break the surface and I gulp at the air like a puppy that’s desperate for water. But as the air enters me I start to cough and choke again. It feels as if air and water are fighting in my lungs and they don’t care what happens to me. The battle is between the two of them.

If Malin’s mother hadn’t been there, I think I might have drowned. Through the red mist of choking her strong arms hold me up, keeping me above the water. I cough and splutter and spit out water. At last the world steadies itself. Air has won. I’m breathing again. I wipe tears and salt off my face while Malin’s mother pushes my hair back so I won’t choke on that as well.

“Morveren,” she says gently. Suddenly I like her very much. She’s worried to death about her son but at this moment she seems to be thinking only of me. I give her a weak, half-drowned smile, and she smiles back. She points to herself and says, “Eselda.”

“Thank you, Eselda,” I say, and I think she understands, because she smiles again. I look round for the line of the shore, beyond the rocking horizon of water. It seems very far away, and I’m so tired. But Eselda isn’t going to let me swim alone. She grasps my wrist firmly, her tail sweeps the water and we surge forward.

I’ve never swum like this before. It’s like being part of the sea rather than having to work against it in order to move. Eselda doesn’t seem to make the slightest effort, but we skim the water like dolphins. She doesn’t take me underwater, but her own face is below the surface, taking in water and not air. I wonder how long she can stay in the air?

The sea races past me, bubbling. I wish I wasn’t wearing a wetsuit. It would feel so amazing. The shore is coming towards us, growing clearer and sharper every second. There are the dunes, and there are the rocks, rough and black. There’s so much sea everywhere, and so little land. You could easily miss our island, and swim on…

I catch myself.
Don’t be stupid, Morveren, you can’t live in the sea. You’d drown. Haven’t you just learned that? If Eselda hadn’t been there to help you, you would have drowned like the Polish sailor.

The Mer could have saved him
, I think suddenly. Eselda could have held him up, just as she held me up when I needed her. She’s probably strong enough to bring a grown man to shore, even in a storm. But the storm was too powerful, even for Malin, I tell myself quickly. I expect it wouldn’t have been safe for the Mer to help the sailor, even if they’d wanted to.

Or maybe… Maybe they didn’t want to. Eselda helped me, but then I am helping her son and I am his only chance of returning to Ingo. Otherwise, maybe I’d be just another human to the Mer. Alien, not part of their world.

Eselda slows, and stops. We are only about a hundred metres offshore now, and she keeps low in the water. Her head doesn’t break the surface. Even a coastguard with binoculars wouldn’t see her… Or if he did see a dark, sleek shape beneath the waves, he would think it was a seal.

We don’t say goodbye. She squeezes my wrist in farewell, and then lets go. Instantly, she dives. In a few seconds, she has disappeared.

I swim in to shore. I’m not quite as tired now. It feels as if swimming with Malin’s mother has given me strength. The colour of the sea changes beneath me, as it becomes shallower. The sun is out and there are glints of turquoise and cobalt. Now I can see my own shadow, swimming along on the sea floor.

I wade out of the sea, and all at once I have no strength left. My legs are so heavy that I can barely push them through the water, but I don’t feel cold until I’m out of the sea and the wind blows my wet hair, chilling me until I shiver. The beach is empty. I look at the sun, but it’s still low in the sky. I haven’t been in the sea for as long as I thought. Time hasn’t sped up this time, but slowed down. I feel clumsy with exhaustion as I make my way over to the rocks and scramble up them.

There’s Malin. He’s not resting against the ledge today, but swimming in a slow circle. The instant my shadow touches the water, he dives. I lean over so that he can see me rather than the shadow of a predator, and he swims up to the surface again. I take a deep breath. Malin’s not going to believe what I’m about to tell him.

“You look different, Morveren,” he says. “You have a new skin.”

“You must have seen a wetsuit before. Don’t the Mer see people surfing?”

Click, click go the thoughts behind Malin’s eyes, as he tries to pretend he’s always known what a wetsuit was. I laugh. “You thought the wetsuit was part of them, didn’t you? Go on, admit it. Do all the Mer think that?”

“Of course not,” he replies haughtily, and I feel a bit ashamed. Why
should
the Mer know about wetsuits or anything else about humans? We know nothing about the Mer, apart from fairytales and myths. Malin thinks I’m mocking him. I shouldn’t be wasting time anyway. He needs to know about his mother.

“How are you, Malin?” I ask him cautiously. Better make sure he’s not going to collapse from shock or anything. “Are you feeling better?” I brace myself, and look down at his tail. I hate seeing the wound there.

The angry red ridge is darker. It’s beginning to look less like a raw wound, and more as if the edges of the gash are joining together. In time it will be a scar.

“I am swimming to make myself strong,” says Malin, with a touch of pride that makes me feel terrible. This pool is so tiny, compared to the wild, free ocean. Now that I’ve experienced the strength of the Mer in their own world, I know how seriously the wound has weakened Malin.

“That’s really good… Malin, listen…” My tongue feels thick in my mouth. Suddenly it seems almost impossible to tell him that I’ve been where he longs to go, and seen the person he must long to see. I can’t do this when I’m leaning over him from a rock. I push away, and let myself drop into the water. Instantly, as if he’s been longing to dive beneath the surface too, Malin sinks to meet me. We are face to face, and once again I’m doing that breathing/not-breathing thing as the water enters me and makes its home in me. Malin is smiling now. He takes my hand and says, “You came to me, Morveren. You are my friend.”

“Malin, listen… I’ve been to… Well, to— to Ingo.” The word tastes of salt in my mouth.

Malin goes quite still. His smile dies and he drops my hand. The pupils of his eyes dilate until all I can see is blackness. “Ingo? How do
you
know what Ingo is, Morveren? What gives you the power to travel there?”

He’s angry with me. He thinks I’m trying to invade his world, not help him. I point towards the open sea. “It’s out there, isn’t it? Ingo, where the Mer live.
Pobel Malin,”
I add, pronouncing the words as carefully as I can, and trying to remember how the Mer man said them. Hope and amazement leap into his face.

“You speak my language! Morveren, you have Mer name? It is not only the live water that makes you free here. Maybe you are partly Mer and you never told me?”

In his excitement his English sounds more Mer than it did before. I shake my head. I don’t want even a trace of a lie between us.

“No. I’m one hundred per cent human.”

“Humans cannot enter Ingo,” he says flatly, as hope drains out of his face. He thinks I’m making up a stupid lie.

“I met your mother in Ingo.”

Malin’s eyes flash. His hand clutches my arm, digging in. “My mother? If you are lying to me, Morveren, I will kill you.”

“Of course I’m not lying, you idiot! Why would I do that? Why can’t you trust me? Just because I’m human, you think I’ll do anything and say anything.”

“Just because you are human
…
”
repeats Malin, scanning my face. His grip on my arm hurts but I’m not going to tell him. He’d probably be glad. “If you were Mer, you would not say that, Morveren. There is no ‘just’ with humans. Why do you say you have met my mother? This wound is beginning to heal, but you want to rip it apart.”

“I have met her. She told me her name.”

“Tell me,” raps out Malin.

“She’s called Eselda.”

Malin lets go of me. His hands come up and cover his face. He doesn’t want me to see his emotion. I wait, saying nothing. I am frightened. I don’t know how to handle this. For the first time that day, I wish I was at home. Slowly, slowly, Malin uncovers his face.

“How is she? How is my mother?”

“She’s well. She was very… sad. You know, because of you disappearing. But now she knows you’re alive, and with me.”

“How does she know? My mother does not speak human language. Are you sure it was my mother?”

His questions batter me like stones in a storm wave.

“You’re hurting me, Malin, let go of my arm. She told me she was called Eselda, and that’s how I know her name. Why can’t you believe me?”

He relaxes. Colour floods into his face. “It is my mother,” he says to himself, very quietly but with such intensity that I realise he must have feared he would never see her again. “Was she alone, Morveren?”

“There was a man with her, a Mer man. I don’t know what he was called.”

Malin frowns. “My father is far away. I wonder who would come with her? My father speaks your language well, Morveren. It is from him that I learn it, but my mother does not speak it. She does not want human things in her head.”

“It would have been a great help if she
had
learned a bit,” I say sharply. I don’t like the idea that human things are a kind of contamination.

“Do you speak Mer?” asks Malin coldly.

“An pobel er trist,” I say to him, “Ingo er trist.”

Malin’s face lights up as a flood of Mer pours from his lips.

“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s all I know.”

Malin sighs. “It was too much to hope,” he says, “but I will teach you more. You are my kowetha, Morveren.”

“What does that mean?”

“My friend. Are my people waiting for me?”

“Yes. There are lots of them, Malin. Quite far out, but they know where you are now. I showed your mother the rocks that hide this pool.”

“They will come for me, when I am strong enough,” says Malin confidently. He looks a hundred times more alive than he did yesterday. “They will wait for me beyond the breaking water.” Maybe it’s the healing effect of the live water, but I think it’s also the relief of knowing that he’s not alone and abandoned. His people have been searching for him all the time, and now they know where he is.

“I will swim all day to make myself strong,” he declares.

“Umm – maybe just part of the day would be a good idea?”

I feel happier than I’ve done since I first saw Malin, half-buried in sand. The fact that his people are close by is like a huge weight lifted off me. At the same time, I still feel echoes of the shock I felt when I looked through the water and there were shadowy Mer figures everywhere. There were so many of them. If they weren’t here to help Malin, but for another reason, it would be frightening.

Get a grip, Morveren
. They
are
here to help him, not for any other reason. They can’t come out of the sea to help us, but they are waiting, and as soon as he is in the sea, they will be there to swim with him as Eselda swam with me. I don’t think that it will take long now before Malin’s ready. In a few days, it’ll be safe for us to lift him out of the pool and carry him down the rocks to the sea. We can’t risk it yet, because the wound might re-open and then he could collapse once he was in the water. But it won’t be long.

“How did she look? Was she well?”

“Your mother, you mean?”

“Of course,” says Malin impatiently. “It’s a long time since I have seen her. You can give me news of her.”

“She was well. She swam so fast that she brought me to shore in a few minutes.” I decide not to tell Malin about the lines of sadness and suffering on his mother’s face. There’s still an eager, impatient look on his face. He’ll be forcing me to tell him more in a minute… He really is quite bossy. Besides, it can’t be that long since he saw his mother. The storm was only a few days ago…

“It is a year since I last saw her,” says Malin, as if he’s read my thoughts.

“Oh! Don’t you… I mean, don’t you live with her?” Maybe they have divorce in Ingo, just as they do here.

Malin laughs. His teeth really are amazing. I suppose there aren’t any sweets in Ingo. “Of course I don’t live with her,” he says, as if the idea is ridiculous. “I am not a child. She has her work to do and I have mine.”

But I’m sure he’s not much older than me. A few months maybe – or a year?

“Do you still live with
your
mother, Morveren?” he asks teasingly, as if it’s a joke, like asking someone if they still have a dummy.

“Of course I do. Most people – most humans – live with their parents until we’re about eighteen or twenty or even till we get married.”

Malin’s eyes widen. “So you are like killer whales!” he exclaims. “You live in family groups even when you are old enough to be independent. I never knew that.”

Once again I feel like the subject of a wildlife programme. “It’s normal for us,” I say crossly. “I expect we’re closer to our mothers and fathers than the Mer are.”

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I want to call them back, but it’s too late. Malin turns pale with anger. “You cannot know how the Mer love. We do not kill one another as you humans do. I have heard – but it cannot be true, it must be a legend – that you humans will even kill your own parents.”

“I’m really sorry, Malin, I didn’t mean you don’t love your mother. But what you said about us being killer whales wasn’t all that nice either.”

“You are strange, Morveren. You don’t want to think that you are like anything but other humans. At least a killer whale does not kill its own.”

I wonder miserably how much the Mer know about us. Do they know about wars? Or concentration camps? Malin has a way of making me feel ashamed to be human. There are other things about us, I want to tell him. Good things. But it’s not the time to start talking about Shakespeare or the internet, and I need to go home.

“I am hungry with so much swimming,” Malin remarks in a friendly way, as if he’s forgotten our argument.