The Seventh Tide (26 page)

‘D. D.!’

In the bell of silence, no one heard his cry.

Hurple launched himself with all four paws and hit the ground running.

‘– ?!’ Eo started to turn, not understanding what was happening.

‘Hurple, NO
! Jay shrieked silently, keeping tight hold of the G’s hand.
‘Come back
?

Then the Traveller was there, and took them.

15
The Travellers’ Return

This time, instead of shrinking as it approached, the Traveller streaked across the exposed sand and seaweed and on to the G beach at full size – and exploded in mid-air, soaking everyone and flinging three bodies hard on to the sand. Eo was up at once, spitting grit out of his mouth, throwing himself at the Queen.

‘
What have you done to my friend
?’ he screamed. ‘
Where is he?
!’

Even in his frenzy he stopped short of touching her. Nevertheless, the Kelpie rocked back on her heels a little. She was not accustomed to being menaced by filthy, wet, half-crazed boys. From the main vortex, her minions clacked and wailed in agitation till she gestured abruptly and they subsided.

‘Your
friend
is where you left him. As you can see.’ And she indicated the G’s viewing disc, shimmering on the sand.

Eo flung himself down on his knees and peered frantically into the disc.

‘There’s nothing there,’ he shrilled. ‘I can’t see him! You’re lying! There’s nothing –just grey and –’ He broke off and, before anyone could stop him, he’d plunged his arm, up to the shoulder, into the viewing disc.

‘
Where are you
?’ he grunted, groping blindly about. ‘
Where – are –you –
HA!’ There was a jolt from an unseen source that shook his whole body, so violent it was as if he’d been knocked free of the earth’s pull for a moment, so that there was nothing to keep him from being dragged down into the disc…

Eo’s head and both shoulders had already disappeared when Adom hit him. The tackle had a lifetime of hard manual labour behind it and it dragged Eo back out of the disc with a horrible sucking sound and smashed him on the G beach. Hurple, clutched by the scruff of his neck, came too, but the crash-landing loosened Eo’s grip and the ferret flew in an arc over the heaped boys. He hit the sand like a wet sock and lay there without moving.

‘Is he…?’ gasped Adom.

‘Hurple!’ cried Jay.

She rushed over, scooped him up and cradled him in her arms. There wasn’t a great deal of dignity in his position, on his back with all four legs in the air like that, but there was no mistaking her concern. Eo and Adom stumbled over, and the adult G clustered around as well.

‘Give him here, girl,’ said Market, not unkindly.

‘He’s breathing, anyway.’

‘Thank goodness for that. I wasn’t looking forward to doing mouth-to-mouth!’

‘Why won’t he wake up?!’ wailed Eo.

‘How can you ask such a thing?
Collars
don’t wake up. How odd, to call a collar your
friend.
An
unusual
collar, that speaks and moves and
interferes
through six full Tides, and now has excited such conjecture over its
heatth
! The Queen was livid. ‘You’ll find that
that
is a collar that will
not
wake up. I may choose to revive the creature when our entrance to your world is established, since a conscious soul is so much more… tasty. Fear is by far the best sauce. Yes, I suspect I will choose to wake him then – but not before!’

Her voice had risen to a shriek on the last words, but she regained control of herself.

‘Now you have another reason to regret
your
choice,
boy.
If you had paid the forfeit of your own poor soul at the start, all these others would not now be facing the consequences
when you fail
in the Final Challenge. When you
fail
to find your way through the mazes of the Dry Heart to the Centre, to the place that can shut the door –’

Behind her, the Kelpies spun faster and faster, wailing and beating their fists against the wall of water, their hunger made even more desperate now that their release into the world of the G was so close.

‘Not long, not long,’ the Queen called over her shoulder, never taking her eyes off Eo. ‘We will play out the last act, even when the end is self-evident.
We
will not stoop to cheating.’

‘What do you call that bright idea of burning them all up in lava? Or drowning them? Or letting them die of cold?’ yelled Interrupted indignantly.

‘Er, I think you’re upsetting the children,’ murmured Gladrag. And indeed, the three were looking pretty appalled.

‘L-lava?’ quavered Jay. ‘Nobody said anything about
lava
!’

‘Now, now,’ said Market reassuringly. ‘We were here the whole time.
And a fat lot of good it did too
,’ he added in an undertone.

Eo mumbled something.

‘What was that? Did it speak?’ sneered the Queen.

‘I said, I’m not going to fail.’ Eo’s voice sounded thin and desperate, but he kept it from quavering.

‘That’s right!’ Jay came and stood at his shoulder and tried to glare at the Kelpie without entirely succeeding.

Adom came to Eo’s other side. ‘You are a demon. Hell is where you belong, with all the fallen angels.’ He was doing his best not to look at any part of the Queen below the neck, but she was completely aware of how much she was disturbing him and smiled smugly.

‘I’ll consider myself warned, then, shall I?’ she said, mocking them all. Then she drew herself up, tall as a storm cloud. ‘It is almost time.’

There was a panicky chorus from the G.

‘Hang on!’

Just a minute!’

‘Wait!’

She paused and looked at them scornfully. ‘Well? What is it now?’

Market spluttered, ‘Um, er, right. How do they get to the Island? The Traveller
exploded
, for crying out loud!’

The Queen smiled and gestured towards the Kelpie vortex. ‘Why with me, of course.’

‘NO!’ Eo, Adom and Jay yelped.

‘No,’ said Hibernation Gladrag, more quietly but no less emphatically.

‘What’s the matter, don’t you
trust me
? Very well, then.’ And she crooked a finger. Immediately the two viewing discs detached themselves from the beach and cartwheeled into her hands. With a flip of the wrist she combined them and set them spinning in mid-air and then, like a potter working with clay on a wheel, she shaped them up into a brother to the Traveller. ‘There. The little darlings’ own private transport.’

The ‘darlings’ didn’t look much happier than they had been about entering the main vortex, but at least they wouldn’t be with
her.

‘What other questions have you? What other pathetic attempts at delay?’

‘Who throws it?’ asked Interrupted.

‘No one. There is only one possible destination this time. The Traveller knows where to go.’

‘The Island.’

‘Yes. And that is the last prevarication that time allows.’

Before anyone could move, she turned on her heel and flung the second Traveller directly at the children. There was just time for expressions of horror to register on their faces and then they were gone. The thing launched itself into the sky and headed north.

The three G stood on the beach, an unconscious Hurple in Market’s arms. They looked as they felt: pathetic and unwell.

‘I’ll see you there, on the Island,’ purred the Queen. ‘Or not. It won’t make any difference to the outcome.’

As she moved towards the main vortex, she looked back at them over one shoulder.

‘Sure I can’t offer
you
a lift?’ she said with a sneer.

There was an audible gulp. Then Gladrag hastily got a grip. She shook her head. ‘No. No, thank you. We’ll, er, make our own way. Uh, see you there!’ she concluded brightly.

The Queen was still staring at them contemptuously as she stepped into the vortex, and it folded round her and spun into the night.

For a moment, the three G didn’t know why they suddenly felt so good. The air tasted delightful, and the night breeze was almost silky, and the sand felt wonderful under their feet. Even their hair began to relax out of those tight emergency buns.

‘It was that blasted vortex, wasn’t it!’ exclaimed Market. ‘It was spoiling everything, just by being there!’

‘I’d honestly forgotten what it was like before,’ murmured Interrupted.

Gladrag was taking deep breaths of the clean sea air. She nodded, and then frowned as a thought struck her.

‘You know that thing the boy did – with the viewing disc?’ she said, turning to the others.

‘Yes?’

‘Did the Queen know, do you think? That you could do that?’

‘I’m pretty sure not,’ said Market. ‘She looked as shocked as anyone when the boy dived in like that.’

‘Yes, I think so too. But…’ Gladrag’s face was troubled.

‘But what?’

‘She knows now.’

There was an anxious pause.

‘There’s no viewing disc on the Island, though, surely?’ said Interrupted.

‘No, no. Sufficient unto the day, eh?’

‘Eh?’

But Market was frowning now too.

‘Did either of
you
know you could do it?’ he asked.

Gladrag and Interrupted shook their heads.

‘And if we
had
known, would we have been tempted to, you know, stick anything in there?’

The G thought about those vertiginous depths and shuddered.

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Market. ‘And,’ he added with a sigh, ‘that’s “the last prevarication that time allows”, as our dear friend so sweetly put it.’

The three looked sheepishly at each other. It was so peaceful to just be on their own beach, alone with the sky and the waves.

‘What about poor old Hurple?’

Market looked down at the lifeless ferret cradled in his arm.

‘We can’t just leave him out in the open,’ said Interrupted anxiously.

So they carried Hurple to the high ground beyond the grass dunes. Interrupted made a sort of nest and they tucked him away in the shelter of the rocks. There was nothing more they could do for him now.

‘Gulls?’ suggested Gladrag, but the others shuddered.

‘Too cruel. That’s the Queen’s territory!’ said Market.

‘What, then?’

‘Oystercatchers,’ said Interrupted firmly. ‘I’ve always liked oystercatchers!’

‘Daft and cheerful,’ Market agreed. ‘Much more
us
!’

Without fuss, the three G shifted into the clown-coloured feathers of three oystercatchers and took off into the onshore breeze. They made a brief circle over their well-loved island, then moved away northwards under the rising moon on purposeful wings.

‘That really
is
low, even for a spring tide,’ said Market, looking down. ‘It doesn’t look… normal.’

‘Well, it’s a chancy time of year, isn’t it?’ said Gladrag uneasily. ‘I’m sure Supernova Tangent would remind you of the details if she were here!’

‘I could do with one of her lectures on Samhainn, spring tide and orbital perigee round about now – and I never thought I’d hear myself say
that
!’ said Market.

‘Do either of you know when we’re due another eclipse?’ asked Interrupted.

Market tried to count on his fingers, but stopped when he began to lose altitude.

‘Oh, boy’ he said.

They looked anxiously up at the full moon. It was still white and clear, but as it reached its high point in the sky, the G knew that would change. The shadow of the earth would gradually fall across its face and the moon would darken to orange, then red. ‘Blood Moon.’ That’s what it was called.

And strange, uncanny things happened under a moon like that.

The Island was in sight now, looking like a weird loaf of bread that hadn’t risen properly in the oven. Towering hexagonal columns of basalt were capped by turfed overhangs, and the whole place slanted south to north like a gigantic wedge. Normally the sea broke against the jumble of ancient lava, surging into innumerable caves and crevices and leaving the black basalt scoured grey up to the high-tide mark. But this night it was different. Stretching out with the Island as its centre was an expanse of mud, rock and weed. Forests of kelp, several storeys high, majestic in their proper element, drooped now under their own weight and lay like dank hair over the rocks. Creatures not normally exposed to the air scuttled and gulped and dragged themselves away. The deepest places still held water, salt rivers and lakes between the jagged mountains and valleys of the sea bed. This was low tide as it was not meant to be.