Stormswept (18 page)

I hold Digory tight. What’s happened is so bad I can’t even begin to think of a way to sort it out. If only Digory hadn’t been so determined to play his violin to Malin. If only Bran hadn’t guessed that something more was going on than a little kid practising. If only he’d believed Digory when he said it was just a game. But Digory thinks Bran heard the Mer music. That can’t be possible. Digory must be confused.

But whatever really happened, it’s clear that Bran suspects something, and that he’s a danger to Malin. I’ve got to get to Malin as soon as I can, and tell him King Ragworm Pool isn’t safe any more.

I wipe Digory’s face again and give him a biscuit. When he’s calmed down, I lead him quietly upstairs to bed. He looks exhausted. He must have been awake nearly all night, scared to death because he thought he’d betrayed Malin. None of this is his fault. He’s got caught up in it, like a little boat getting swept into a storm.

“Poor old duck,” I whisper, as I tuck his duvet round him.

“Are you going to tell Jenna?” he whispers sleepily.

Fear runs through me. “No,” I say. “We won’t tell Jenna. She’d be scared, wouldn’t she?”

“And we can’t tell Mum and Dad, can we?” mutters Digory. “Cos humans catch the Mer. They told me that. That’s why no one must know,“ he yawns so widely that the words are almost swallowed, “about… Malin…”

“That’s right. You go to sleep. I’ll work it out.”

I go back into our room. Jenna is sleeping peacefully. My sister. My twin sister who knows everything about me, who can even read my thoughts. Unless I stop her reading them. I was hurt when Jenna said we shouldn’t be so open with each other any more, but now I’m glad. There is far too much I need to hide from her.

And so I don’t wake Jenna and tell her everything. I slip back into my bed and lie awake, my head pillowed on my hands, thinking furiously. I have got to work out what to do.

But what I don’t know is that someone else is up at first light, and already that person is on his way down to the shore, moving as silently as a shadow in the dawn. And I tell Jenna nothing, because I don’t trust her, and yet she is the one person, maybe, who could have stopped what is about to happen. This is my first big mistake.

y second mistake is to fall asleep. One moment I’m lying there, staring at the ceiling, my mind buzzing, and the next my eyes have closed. I’m still not quite asleep though, because I know that I’ve got to get up, got to get to Malin as soon as I can, got to find out what Bran knows, got to make sure Digory doesn’t say anything… got to… got to…

I sleep. I sleep for two whole hours, as if someone has put a spell on me. I dream of Malin, not injured and trapped in King Ragworm Pool, but free and strong. In my dream he flies through Ingo, riding the currents, carrying messages from ocean to ocean. Water rushes past him, green and blue, turquoise and storm grey. I see dolphins and porpoises, minke whales and bull sharks. They swim with Malin like friends, or brothers. Far above, the hulls of ocean liners and oil tankers cast shadows down into the water. Malin swims on, faster than the fastest of them. Sometimes he sleeps for a while, rocking inside a current. In my dream I am there too, swimming as Malin swims, as if the ocean is my home.

I smile in my sleep. I don’t know what’s happening outside the world of my dreams. If I knew, I’d be out of bed, out of the house, through the village and down to the shore. I’d scream out a warning.

Sometimes a dream turns to a nightmare and you want to scream but you can’t. Suddenly my dream changes. A huge, dark shadow advances over Ingo and I can’t see Malin any more. I try to call to him, but water fills my lungs. I choke and struggle, but the dream still holds me.

The light is strong outside our window. I wake suddenly, with a jolt that makes me sit up. My heart is banging. I try to calm down but my dream clings to me, full of panic.

“Mum!” I shout.

The door opens, but it’s Jenna. She’s up and dressed. She frowns at me. “What’s the matter? Why were you shouting?”

I feel myself flush. “It’s nothing. I just had a bad dream.”

Weirdly, Jenna doesn’t look as if she cares much. “You’d better get up,” she says, “it’s the funeral today.”

“I know that.”

“Mum wants us to wear our black school skirts and white shirts. We’ve got to be at the church at quarter to ten, but you’d better use the bathroom quickly cos Dad’ll want a wash.”

“Where is he?”

“Gone to check the crab pots. Mum’s at the church helping Marie with the flowers.”

A thought strikes me. “It’s a bit strange that he’s being buried here, isn’t it? Adam Dubrovski, I mean. You’d think his family would want him buried at home.”

“His grandparents brought him up, and the rest of his family emigrated, so his friends thought he should be buried here,” says Jenna, in an annoying “You should know this” voice, even though she’ll only be echoing what Mum told her. “Get up, Morveren, it’s late. Digory’s had his breakfast and he’s all ready.”

“Do you have to be so bossy?” I mutter as I push back the duvet.

“Yes, I do!” shouts Jenna. “I do everything while you lie in bed doing nothing! I’m sick of it.”

I stare at her in amazement. She’s pale, maybe with anger, but I think there’s something else in her face. Something has happened to upset her a lot. With a conscious effort not to fly into a rage myself, I ask, “Jen… Is something wrong? What’s happened?”

“Nothing’s wrong!” she snaps.

“It’s something to do with Bran,” I think, and immediately realise I’ve spoken my thought aloud. Jenna’s face floods with colour.

“Why don’t you think about someone else apart from yourself for once and just get out of bed,” she says furiously. “I’ve got Digory ready and cleared the kitchen and done everything as usual. Ynys Musyk is playing at the funeral, in case you’d forgotten.”

“I hadn’t forgotten,” I say coldly, turning my back on her. I can feel her standing in the doorway, hesitating. Maybe she’s wondering if we’re going to make up. But we’re not, not until much later, when we see the bank of white and yellow chrysanthemums that Mum and the others have arranged with such care around the altar where Adam Dubrovski’s coffin will stand, and Jenna bursts into tears.

No one else notices. Jenna has her head down. I can see her shoulders shaking, just a little. Jenna’s crying, and she hasn’t got a tissue. She sniffs and wipes away her tears with the back of her hand. The gesture makes her look about six years old, and even though I’m still angry with her, my heart melts.

“Jenna,” I whisper, and I pass across the old cotton hankie of Dad’s that I keep in my violin case. That’s one of my traditions. Jenna wipes her face, blows her nose and glances sideways at me.

“You OK?” I mouth silently, and she nods, swallowing hard.

“Good,” I whisper.

I don’t think she’s crying about Adam Dubrovski, even though the church is full of flowers and sadness. She picks up her flute.
Don’t cry any more, Jen, you won’t be able to play if you do,
I think, and I know that the thought reaches her, because she gives me a small, watery smile.

I’m wearing my school swimming costume under a long-sleeved white T-shirt, and then my school black skirt and white blouse. The T-shirt is so that the swimming costume won’t show through the blouse. I wish I could have put on my short wetsuit as well, but I’d have been way too hot in the church. I’m pleased with myself for planning ahead like this: I even put some spare underwear in my jacket pocket.

Matt Jackson plays his A and we all tune to it. Whenever it’s damp my violin goes out of tune. I have good pitch, but not perfect pitch like Digory. Tamsin Mellon leans across to me.

“Your Digory’s playing the lament, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know.”

The bearers are at the door. They are carrying Adam Dubrovski’s coffin on their shoulders as they pace slowly up the short aisle of our little church, and then they lay the coffin down gently on its bier.

The church is full. Adam Dubrovski’s shipmates stand in the front pew, in new black suits. A priest has come over from the mainland, and when he stands up to give his sermon, my heart sinks. The tradition on our island is that if there’s a funeral, everybody goes, and so I’ve already been to quite a few. I don’t like it when they talk about the dead person, because it never seems real. But this priest doesn’t pretend. First he talks directly to the surviving sailors, about the saving of their own lives, and the loss of their friend’s. They he says that many of us are here to mourn a young man we didn’t know. But we, like Adam Dubrovski, make our living from the sea and so we feel not only human sympathy but the special solidarity of sea-going people. He says that the one thing the sea teaches us is that we do not control life. People in cities who flick on the central heating may keep the illusion that they are in control, but a man out at sea in a storm knows that there are forces far more powerful than he is.

The priest glances at the coffin as he speaks, as if he’s talking to Adam Dubrovski too. He says that we must all die, and that this young man already knows more than the oldest of us here. It’s not the usual kind of funeral sermon at all. For some reason it makes me think of Malin too. The sea took him, just as it took Adam Dubrovski, but instead of drowning him, the sea flung Malin on to land. The Mer can drown in air, just as we can drown in the water. It’s so strange, how we live side by side with the Mer but never know them. As if they are foreigners… but much more than foreigners, even though they share the same world with us…
Many of us are here to mourn a young man we didn’t know…
But if Malin had died, would we have mourned him, or would we have taken him away to a laboratory to investigate him, as if he were a different species that didn’t have thoughts and feelings like our own?

We play a Polish hymn. Only the sailors know the words, but the tune is easy and we’ve practised it beforehand. It’s like folk music, not church music, slow and mournful. The sailors stand very upright, heads thrown back, eyes closed, singing with all their hearts in deep, resonant voices. I close my own eyes and the song surges into me. I wonder if the familiar tune makes Adam Dubrovski feel as if he’s being buried with something from home.

At the end of the service, as the coffin-bearers leave their seats, Digory steps forward. Tamsin is right. He must be going to play the lament, as the coffin is carried out to the churchyard.

I put down my violin, and everybody else in Ynys Musyk puts down their instruments, ready to follow the coffin. Digory raises his bow, and strikes the first note. I’ve never heard this music before, and I wonder where he heard it? Digory only has to hear a piece of music once, and he can play it. It’s a lament, and it’s very simple, but it has the sea in it, and the noise of the wind. It sounds like the sea when it’s quietening itself after a storm. The priest leads the procession out of church, and Digory walks forward, still playing, and follows the coffin. We all follow after him.

It’s soft and still outside. The grave has been dug close to the granite wall that encloses the churchyard. The church is built on high ground, and from the churchyard you can see the sea stretching to the horizon. Everybody walks slowly through the old graves and the turf, while the sound of Digory’s violin swells over the crowd. Jenna glances at me to see if I’m going to follow her, but I shake my head. I wonder where Bran is? I thought he’d be here. The whole island is gathered, and his nan would expect him to come, if he’s staying with her. It’s a mark of respect to the dead. Maybe Bran not being here has got something to do with Jenna crying…