Stormswept. Part 10

"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 a 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 sh.o.r.e 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 a 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 a most humans a 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 a but it cannot be true, it must be a legend a 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.

"Oh Malin! You should have said! You told us you got food a nourishment a from the water."

"I do. But this water is very small," he says, looking round at the pool. "I can live without more food if I have to. It was my stomach speaking."

"I'll get you food! Jenna and I were talking about it. We've got lots of samphire. Mum pickles it because you can't freeze it. It's a bit like seaweed but it grows in the estuary. Mum always goes on about it being full of goodness."

I'll go home now and get the samphire. There must be other stuff he can eat. There are shops in Marazance which sell dried seaweed and stuff. That might be good for Malin. If he eats lots, and exercises, then he'll heal even more quickly- My thoughts race ahead. Already I can imagine Eselda flying through the water towards him. Malin's story is going to have a happy ending.

"Malin... What is your work?" I ask him curiously.

"I carry messages. I have the gift of speed which comes from my mother. I fly through Ingo like my brothers the dolphins."

It would be boasting if a human boy spoke like that, but Malin makes it sound natural.

"She did swim very fast," I say thoughtfully.

"I am faster."

e've got to get some food to him tonight."

"We can't, Mor. Look how dark it is."

"We'll take Dad's big torch."

"Mum and Dad are going to notice soon. You keep going out and not saying where."

"They won't if we're careful. He can't spend another night being hungry. I thought you wanted to help him get better."

Jenna sighs and gives me a long-suffering look, as if I'm failing to comprehend something that's obvious to her. It is one of her most annoying looks.

"It'll only take an hour," I snap. "I'll go on my own if you won't come."

But Jenna knows me too well. She knows that I'll be afraid of the soft, solid dark. Tonight the sky is covered in thick, heavy cloud and there's not a trace of moonlight or starlight. There isn't a street light on the whole of the Island, and once people close their shutters the blackness is complete.

"You won't," she says with irritating sureness.

"Yes, I will! You always think I won't do things, even though today I-"

I break off. There hasn't been time to tell Jenna about going to Ingo and meeting Eselda. I'm not sure how to tell her, anyway. It all sounds so... so incredible. Or if not incredible, then crazy. She'll say I shouldn't have taken the risk.

"Today you what? Mor, you didn't go in the sea!"

"I thought you wanted to stop us knowing what each other is thinking."

"I do, but a Mor, you've got to be more responsible."

"And you've got to stop sounding like Mum," I say furiously, shutting down every barrier in my mind that I can think of, so Jenna won't find out any more. I hate the way she makes me feel sometimes. It's like when Mum and I are having a row and I catch sight of Jenna's "Of course I'm your sister but maybe Mum has a point" face.

I make an effort, and calm down. I really want Jenna to come to King Ragworm Pool so that I don't have to go alone in all that vast and creepy dark.

"I'm going to go," I tell her, "whether you come or not. I'm not so scared that I'm going to leave Malin hungry all night."

"OK then," says Jenna grudgingly. "As soon as Mum and Dad are in bed. But I'm only going straight there and straight back, and you are not to go in that pool, Mor. You've got to promise or I won't come."

I promise. We slip into bed without getting undressed, and turn off the light. I'm so tired that I daren't curl up in bed like I usually do, in case I fall asleep. We wait, and wait. It takes Mum and Dad for ever to go to bed. They b.u.mble around for hours, making cups of tea, riddling the stove, and then having a long conversation at the foot of the stairs about something they heard on the news. It was an item on fishing quotas, which is a subject you'd think Dad wouldn't want to talk about, since it makes him so angry. But no. On and on they go, Dad rumbling, Mum agreeing. Just when we think they're finally coming upstairs, Mum announces that she's got to iron Digory's shirt for tomorrow. Creak, click goes the ironing-board. Dad tramps upstairs and then down again, saying, "Can you do these while you've got the ironing-board up?"

"I'm losing the will to live," I whisper to Jenna.

It's way past midnight by the time we slip out the house with a jar of pickled samphire wrapped in kitchen roll. We've rearranged the row of jars so Mum won't notice it's missing a or not for a while, anyway. Unlike our parents, Jenna and I can move as stealthily as cats, and we don't talk at all. Jenna eases open the door noiselessly, and we're out. Even then, we remember to walk lightly down the path, and not let the gate swing wide because it creaks. We'd make excellent burglars.

No one's about. Even on the darkest night, there is just enough difference between sky and land that we can see the bulk of cottages. Our feet know the track and we keep to it. It's not safe to switch on the torch until we're past the village hall and on our way down to the sh.o.r.e.

Jenna grabs me. "Hush! What was that?"

I listen. The still night air is full of rustlings. All at once there's a sharp, terrible scream. Jenna's hand relaxes. "It's a rabbit."

"Come on."

Even on the stillest night, you can hear the sea. There it is ahead of us. Even if I didn't know it was there I would smell it. And I'd also know because of the way I feel when I'm close to it. Safe, somehow, no matter how wild it is. And free of all the things that trouble me, and even the ways in which I trouble myself. If that makes sense.

It feels like a long. long way in the dark of the night. Now that we're well away from the houses, I switch on the torch, but keep its beam pointing down.

"No one can see us out here," says Jenna.

"I know, but-" I don't want to tell Jenna that it's not just Island people who might see the wavering light of our torch. Those shadowy figures waiting out beyond where the waves break might rise up to the surface and see it too. "Better safe than sorry."

We don't shine the torch once we're up on the rock, in case it scares Malin. The pool is so still that it's hard to believe there is anyone there. I lean over and call softly: "Malin! It's me, Morveren."

He comes up to the surface and I switch on the torch, angling it so the light won't glare in his face.

"We've brought you the samphire. Shall I drop it into the water for you?"

"Give me a little first."

I take off the lid, pull out a little and give it to him to try.

"It's pickled, that's why it tastes of vinegar."

Malin puts the frond of samphire in his mouth and chews it cautiously, then swallows. "It tastes like Mer food. Give me more."

Jenna holds the torch while I shake more samphire into his hands. It seems very strange. Mum's pickle jars are so... domestic. They belong on shelves in the larder. They make me think of Mum and the way she always tries to save money by making marmalade and pickles and even some rhubarb wine that went horribly wrong. And here's Malin, in the cold dark, picking out strands of her pickled samphire to keep him alive. I have the feeling that he's so hungry he's longing to cram the samphire into his mouth and devour it, but he won't do so in front of us. I wish he would talk to Jenna or even look at her. He treats her as if she's not quite real.

"We'll go now," I say. "We'll leave the samphire." I leave the jar on the ledge just above the water where he can reach it easily. Malin watches me, his face impa.s.sive in the glancing torchlight. There's no friendliness in it. He doesn't seem like the person I was talking to and laughing with earlier.

"Farewell," he says.

"You mean goodbye," I answer. "Farewell is when you aren't going to see someone again." But Malin doesn't accept the correction. His eyes follow me as I leave, as if he can see in the dark.

"It's hard to understand him, isn't it?" says Jenna as we hurry back along the sh.o.r.e.

"What do you mean?"

"The way he speaks. It's like when French people think they are speaking English, but they have such strong accents you can't understand them."

"I think he speaks really clearly."

I can almost hear Jenna shrug her shoulders. "Maybe it's because their tongues are different from ours," she says, as if Malin belongs to a different species. "Oh well, he seemed to like the samphire."

There is something about the way she says this that stirs my sleeping anger with Jenna to flames. As if Malin were a dog that had been given a new type of dog-food.

"He didn't have much choice, did he?" I snap. "He's starving, and it's all we've got to give him."

"I wish you didn't have to be so angry all the time, Mor. People get tired of it."

"Do they? Which people? Or is it just you?"

"Not just me," says Jenna in a gentle, "I'm saying this for your own good" voice. "It happens a lot at school."

With superhuman self-control I manage to say only, "Well, we're not at school now."

No, Jenna, we are not at school. The sea is on my left hand, breathing and stirring with little waves. Eselda is out there, I'm sure of it. She won't leave until Malin is safe. And all the others will keep a vigil too. This is another world and the things that happen in it are wilder and stranger than anything they dream of at school. And I'm glad of it. I don't care if it's dangerous. It makes you alive.

We are almost back in the village when a shape detaches itself from the deeper darkness and moves in front of us.

"All right, Jenna?"

"Bran!"

I say nothing. My mind's working too fast. Has he been here all the time? Has he been following us in the darkness?

"Bran, where've you come from? How did you know we were here?" asks Jenna.

"I thought you were going back to the mainland," I say, to remind her that Bran said he was leaving. He lies, Jen, even to you. Don't you understand that?

"I can stay over with my nan, can't I?" says Bran. "I don't have to ask your permission."

"Of course," soothes Jenna. "But Morveren's right, you did say you were going back home."

"Morveren's right! You say that to me? Isn't this my home, as much as it's yours? Don't I belong here? I'm an Islander, same as you are, and your sister has nothing to do with it."

There is so much anger and bitterness in what he says, as if it's been stored up for years and is just waiting to explode. He barely knows me. Why does he hate me so much? Maybe he's chosen me to take his anger, because I'm not Jenna. As if the more he likes Jenna, the more reason he has to hate me...

But that's not what matters. I need to know what he's seen and what he's heard.

"I can't talk now, Bran, we've got to get home," says Jenna, sounding so panicky that I'd be suspicious if I were Bran. "It's way past midnight."