Stormswept (27 page)

“Mor!” His face suddenly darkens with panic.

“It’s OK, we’re nearly back home. Hold on tight now and we’ll swim in.”

But Digory shakes his head impatiently. Getting home isn’t what he’s thinking about.

“Mor, that’s the girl who took my fiddle. Where is it? Where did she put it?”

“It’s fine, Digory, she’ll have put it somewhere safe where it won’t get hurt. You’ll get it back.”

“Is it in Ingo?”

“You know it is. She’s hidden it in the hall I expect.”

“But I can’t go back to the human world if my fiddle is still in Ingo.”

His words chill me. Since when did a seven-year-old talk about his home as “the human world”? 

“Yes you can,” I tell him. “Of course you can. It’ll be fine, Digory, I swear it will.”

“I can’t,” says Digory stubbornly.

I’d like to shake him but then I have a flash of inspiration. “Your fiddle – I mean Conan’s fiddle – wants to be in Ingo,” I tell him. “Didn’t you hear how happy it was when it was playing in the hall?”

He thinks about it. Slowly, reluctantly, he nods.

“You’ll play it again soon, I promise. But there’s no time now, we’ve got to go.”

We are only a couple of metres below the surface now. Everybody is still, silent, listening. Shockwaves come through the water: they carry the thump of waves on rock, and behind it the roaring of the surf. The sea’s growing wilder. Venvyn swims up to me.

“I will swim in with you as close to the shore as I can,” he says.

“It’s fine. I can do it. I’ll swim in with Digory, and find Jenna.”

He frowns. “Listen. The wild water is fighting with rocks and sand. It will fight you and you will be weighed down by the child. You need my help to reach safe water.”

“But it’ll be dangerous for you. The sea will be too shallow.” Horrific images of Venvyn beached and trapped float before my eyes. If that happens, what can I do? It’s going to be tough enough to rescue Malin. A full-grown, heavy Mer man like Venvyn would be impossible.

“It is necessary,” says Venvyn, as if he reads my mind. “If you drown before you reach the shore, then there is no hope for Malin.”

And
I’ll be drowned, let’s not forget that. I nearly smile even though there’s nothing to smile about. 

“Take hold of the child,” orders Venvyn.

“I’m not a child, I’m Digory,” mutters my brother rebelliously. 

“Never mind that,” I soothe him. “You climb on my back, hold on tight round my neck and wrap your legs round me. Not like that, you’re strangling me. Now you’re OK.” I can feel the bumping of Digory’s heart. He must be scared even though he’s pretending not to be. “Hold on really tight and we’ll soon have you home,” I say reassuringly, trying to remember how Dad talked to me when we were out in a rowing boat and a squall blew up.

Venvyn seizes my wrist and I feel the power of his strong Mer tail as we dive deeper, out of reach of the pounding surf. Rips tear at me, trying to drag me this way and that. Digory clings tight, his nails digging into me as the water tries to peel him away. Suddenly a choking mouthful of sea makes me splutter. I cough and try to breathe and choke again, because the salt water has turned into my enemy. With a thrill of terror I know I’m not in Ingo any more. I’ve got to rise, I’ve got to get to the surface, I’ve got to breathe. Digory’s weight pushes me down and Venvyn’s hand is pulling me horizontally through the water now. I pull away desperately but he’s too strong for me. My lungs are bursting, burning. I daren’t take another breath from Ingo and there is no air…

“Venvyn! Let go of me, I’m drowning!”

I can’t cry out the words but somehow they reach him, or maybe he feels the panic thrumming in my wrist. His grip changes. The next moment, the force hurls me upward as Venvyn gathers all his strength and with a lash of his tail shoots us all above the surface. I have a split-second vision of Venvyn’s face, in the air, dark, mysterious, streaming with moonlight and sea, and then he vanishes.

I breathe and choke, breathe and choke. Digory clings desperately. I tread water, reaching down as far as I can, and for an instant my toes brush the sand. I turn to see the shore and for a moment think that one of the Mer has followed me. A girl is there, chest-deep in water, her long hair sleek and glistening, her arm raised as she peers out to sea. And then I know her.

“Jenna!”

She turns. I can’t see her face but she sees me and recognises me. She plunges forward and starts to swim for us, and at the same moment I catch a dark shape from the corner of my eye. I turn. A huge wave has begun to form, rearing up beyond the surf. It rises and rises, shaping itself, and as I watch in horror its crest curls into foam. It’s going to break. I’ve no chance of riding it and with Digory on my back I can’t duck-dive through it. Jenna is struggling to reach us but she won’t make it. She’s seen the wave but she still won’t turn back.

“Jenna!” I scream, as the wave hangs over us, dark as midnight and bigger than any wave I’ve seen in my life, and then smashes down, wiping us out.

I am on sand. Everything hurts. I lift my head painfully. Where’s Digory? 

“Digory!” I choke.

“Mor!” comes Jenna’s voice, and I turn. There she is, flat out on the sand farther up the beach. She’s safe.

“Have you got Digory?”

“No – is he with you?”

It’s like a nightmare. I want to scream out his name but my voice won’t work. I cough up more water, and get up on my knees. I feel awful. My chin hurts. I’m going to be sick…

I retch up water until there’s nothing left. All the time I can hear Jenna crying as she leans over me, holding my hair back from my face. Trembling, I wipe my mouth and look up fearfully to scan the moonlit sand. The waves are huge. Digory hasn’t got a chance if he’s still in the sea.

“Mor! Mor!” pipes a voice as thin as a sandpiper’s. “Mor! Mor!” My heart floods with relief.
Digory.
It’s him, he’s alive, he’s not in the water. I can’t see him but he keeps on calling: “Mor, Mor!”

“Wait, Digory, I’m coming!”

Jenna and I stumble towards the sound. The moonlight plays tricks and every ridge of sand looks like a body. We still can’t see him, and then suddenly a little dark heap that I thought was a pile of seaweed stirs into life. “Mor! Mor!” the voice pipes again.

I catch Digory up in my arms and squeeze the breath out of him. He’s crying and my heart pounds so loudly with terror and relief that it’s like a drum in my ears.

“Mor, Mor!” He is shaking with sobs. “Am I dead?”

“Of course you’re not dead. You got caught by the wave but you’re fine.”

“I thought I was going to be dead.”

“I know. Me too. Let’s get you home.”

I pick him up. He feels so little. The sea could so easily have swept him away. What would I have said to Mum if I’d come home without him?

“You’re so nice to me in Ingo, Mor,” he whispers in my ear.

“What do you mean?”

“You never get angry.”

“Oh…” I put this idea away to think about later, and walk slowly back with him over the flat wet sand, Jenna beside us, clinging on to me as if she thinks I’m going to disappear again. I can sense all the questions seething in her mind but she doesn’t ask them. On and on we walk, over flat wet sand – so much sand, shining in the moonlight as if the sea has gone way, way out, farther than it’s ever gone before…

The causeway! If the tide’s this far down, the causeway will be clear. They’ll be able to drive across and then—

“Jenna, there’s no time to take Digory back. The tide’s down and they’ll be coming. You’ve got to help me get Malin back into the sea
now.”

“But we’ve got to take him back to Mum first. She’s—”

“I know.” A vision of Mum’s terribly upset face floats in my mind, and there’s Dad too, exhausted, searching and searching for Digory as hope drains out of his heart. I push them away. “We can’t, Jenna. There isn’t time. Digory’ll have to come with us.”

That’s when I realise something else. 

“Jenna, how did you know we were in the sea?”

“I thought I heard you calling,” says Jenna in a quick, embarrassed voice, as if she doesn’t quite believe what she’s saying. “I kept hearing your voice. It was like you were pulling me here, pulling me to you.”

“I
was
calling,” I say slowly, remembering the moment when I cried out for her in my mind, “but I didn’t think you could hear me.”

“You know I always can,” says Jenna, very quietly.

There isn’t any time, but for a second we stop and hug as if we’ve been parted for a hundred years. My sister, the other half of me, my twin. How could I ever have thought of not trusting you? And then, as if there’s never been any doubt about what she’ll decide, Jenna says, “Quick, Mor, we’ve got to hurry. Is the groundsheet by the rocks?”

She’s coming, she’s going to do it, Jenna’s helping me… The thoughts jumble like flotsam on a tide of relief as we each take one of Digory’s hands and run towards the far end of the beach and the rocks that hide King Ragworm Pool. The cobbles will be glistening in the moonlight now, making a clear road to the Island from Marazance.

he moon is brighter than ever as we climb up the rocks. Digory’s promised to stay on the sand, and not move until we come down. Jenna goes up ahead of me, and her moon-shadow falls sharp on my hands. I glance behind me. The sea is wilder than ever, eerily tormented. There are no clouds in the sky but the wind is rising, tearing caps off the waves.

Jenna’s at the top. I grasp a spur of rock to haul myself up and at that moment Jenna’s moon-shadow must have fallen on the surface of the pool because it boils, thrashes, and Malin hurtles upwards with a stone in his upraised hand.

“Malin! It’s us! It’s me, Morveren.”

I’m still not sure he knows us. His face is a mask of rage and the muscles stand out on his arms and shoulders. His teeth are bared. I flinch and Jenna shrinks back because we both see that he’s ready to kill or be killed. I remember his words:
Where there are humans, there is always betrayal.

“Malin! It’s Morveren.”

“Ha!” he cries. It’s a harsh, guttural cry and it makes me even more afraid. His eyes meet mine in the moonlight. I put down the groundsheet and kneel on the rock, leaning over.

“We’ve come to take you to the sea.”

“To Ingo,” he says. There is water glistening on his forehead, or maybe they are drops of sweat. His eyes are very bright.

“Malin, please, we have to hurry.”

Very slowly, as if his rush from the water has been the last spurt of energy and he has no more, he swims to the rock. I reach out my hand for his and nearly cry out with shock. He has been in the water yet his skin is burning hot. Now he’s close to me I see that his eyes are blank and glittering with fever.

“Malin, it’s me.”

“I know you,” he says, frowning with effort.

“Can you climb out on to the rock? Jenna and I have got the groundsheet. We can carry you down.”

Even as the words leave my mouth I see there’s no chance of that. I’ll have to get in the water and help him. “Jenna, get down on the ledge. I’ll lift him. We can roll him on to the groundsheet. “Malin, is your wound bad again?” I ask him fearfully, but he shakes his head.

“I have fever for Ingo,” he says in a harsh, unfamiliar, dried-up voice.