The DEEP

by

Helen Dunmore

Copyright

HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in hardback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2007 First published in paperback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2008

Copyright © Helen Dunmore 2007

Helen Dunmore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007464128

Ebook Edition © October 2012 ISBN: 9780007369287

Version: 2017-03-28

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Deep: More than a Story

Sapphy and Conor’s Cornwall

∴ St Piran

∴ Mining in Cornwall

∴ Cornish Language

∴ Cornish Myth and Legend

The Deep

∴ The Mariana Trench

∴ Creatures of the Deep

∴ The Kraken

Sea life Spotting

Marine Conservation How can I help?

Investigate Your Local Beach

∴ What can you find washed ashore?

∴ Beach-time Fun!

∴ Save Your Beach

About the Author

In this Series

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

It’s April, and the sun is warm. I’m sitting on a rock with Faro, way out at the mouth of the cove. The water below the rock is deep enough for Faro to swim, even now when it’s low tide. I scrambled out over the jumble of black, slippery rocks to get here.

The sun glitters on the water. Everything’s so bright and alive and beautiful. I’m back in Senara, back at our cove, back where I belong. Faro and I have been talking for ages. Not about anything special, just talking. That’s one of the best things about Faro. We start a conversation and it flows so easily, as if we’re picking up each other’s thoughts. Sometimes we are.

Faro’s tail is curled over the edge of the rock, and every so often he pushes himself off with his hands, and plunges into the transparent water to refresh himself. The muscles in his arms and shoulders are very powerful, and he can pull himself up again out of the water and on to the rock again without much effort.

Faro can’t stay out of the sea for too long. The skin of his tail, which is usually as glistening and supple as sealskin, grows dry and dull. Faro says that if the Mer get too much sun on their skin it cracks, and then they get sun-sores which are hard to heal.

But I’m sure that Faro’s able to stay out of the sea longer these days. Maybe it’s something to do with Faro growing older, and more resilient…

My thoughts drift away. Luckily, Faro’s one of those people you can be silent with, too. He hauls himself up on to our rock again, dripping and glistening.

A new summer is about to begin. For my brother Conor and me, there’ll be days and days of swimming and sunbathing and long evening walks with Sadie. Sadie loves swimming, too, and with only her nose above the water she looks more like a seal than a Golden Labrador. In the evenings we’ll build driftwood bonfires on the sand, and have barbecues where we cook mackerel which we’ve just caught off the rocks.

I don’t want to think about the past. I want to live now. But no matter how hard I try, the memory of the flood in St Pirans keeps coming back. Floods change people, even after the water’s gone down. You don’t feel safe in the same way, once you’ve seen fish swimming in and out of the car-park gates, and houses like caves full of salt water.

Conor and I have never talked to anyone about what happened to us the night of the flood, when the Tide Knot broke. Nobody would believe us, anyway.

The Tide Knot is sealed again. The sea can’t come raging in over the land.

But I shiver. I know Ingo’s power.

We moved back to our cottage here in Senara in January. That was one good thing that came out of the flood: our rented house was an uninhabitable wreck. And Mum didn’t want to live in St Pirans any more. She thought we’d be safer back in Senara, high up on the cliff.

If you’ve never been in a flood, you can’t imagine what St Pirans looked like afterwards. The streets were full of mud, sand, rocks and every kind of rubbish. Wheelie bins, smashed cars, street signs, hundreds of plastic bags, soggy sofas, wrecked computers, TVs with shattered screens, filthy clothes and books turned to mush. There were waterlogged oranges everywhere. You wouldn’t believe there could be so many oranges in one town. There were lots of dead fish too, stranded when the water fell.

The smell was the worst part. The whole town stank of rotting food, rotting seaweed, dead fish and sewage from broken pipes.

There were muddy tide marks on the houses higher up the hill, but ours was completely underwater during the flood so it was dirty all over. There was even a branch of seaweed sticking out of the chimney. Our front door hung off its hinges. All our possessions had swilled around in the flood water. Some had disappeared, and most of the rest were ruined.

Mum was really upset about losing our photo albums. Conor and I searched through piles of stuff, trying to find them, but in the end we had to give up. We did find just one framed picture of all the family, face-down in the fireplace under a tangle of seaweed. In the photo Mum and Dad were standing close together, with Dad’s arm around me, and Mum’s arm around Conor. It was taken a few years ago, and it was always Mum’s favourite.

But after Dad disappeared, nearly two years ago now, she put the photo into a drawer.

The photo frame was smashed, but the photo wasn’t damaged. Conor and I dried it carefully, then we gave it to Mum.

That was the only time Mum cried. But she said she was being stupid, because she had us safe and who cares about photo albums if you’ve got the real thing?

She hasn’t got Dad, though. She still believes Dad drowned nearly two years ago. When she talks about him, it sounds as if that part of her life is closed. I’m scared that her boyfriend Roger is slowly and surely taking Dad’s place.

I sit bolt upright at the thought, clenching my fists. Faro gives me a quizzical smile.

“Do you want to fight, little sister?”

“Sorry, Faro, it’s not you, it’s just something I thought of…”

“Watch me instead. I’m going to do underwater somersaults.”

He dives in a pure, fluid line. I’ll never, ever be able to dive like that, no matter how much I practise. And those somersaults – his body is a blur, whipping the water into foam. Round and round, faster and faster until he breaks the surface, tosses back his long hair and calls triumphantly, “Did you see that, Sapphire?”

“It was great, Faro.”

He climbs out of the water again, and settles to watching sea anemones in a tiny pool on top of our rock. Faro can watch rock pools for hours. So can I usually, but not today – my thoughts keep pulling me back.

So we came back to our cottage in Senara. The Fortunes, who were renting our cottage, moved out when they heard we were homeless. They’ve rented another cottage nearby. Gloria Fortune came round on the first day we were back, with an apple pie. She knocked politely on our kitchen door as if she’d never lived here at all.

Everybody in Senara brought us furniture and food and clothes and blankets, as if we were refugees. It’s true that all our clothes were gone, and we didn’t have money to buy new ones, but I didn’t want to wear other people’s old stuff. Mum got an emergency payment from the insurance, so now at least we’ve all got new trainers and a set of new clothes each.

The restaurant where Mum worked has closed, like all the other restaurants in St Pirans. Mum’s got a temporary job at the pub here in Senara, four evenings a week.

We’re home again. We are really home.

Sometimes I can hardly believe those words. I wake up and expect to find myself in the little bedroom with the porthole window in St Pirans. But here I am, in my own bedroom with the ladder leading up to Conor’s attic. I feel something I can hardly describe. It’s like when you panic because you’re late and it’s Monday morning, and then you remember that it’s half-term. It’s like the sun coming out. Home. All the sounds and smells of our cottage are just right. I know where all the scuffs on the furniture have come from. I know why the living-room door doesn’t shut properly (because Conor smashed into it when he was learning karate). I know which birds sing in the tree outside the kitchen door. Every object in our cottage is like part of the family.

The Fortunes hadn’t changed much inside our cottage, but they did loads of work in the garden, getting it ready for spring planting, just as Dad used to do. I’m planting stuff every day now, all the things Dad used to plant: carrots and lettuces and tomato plants up against a sunny southern wall, and some strawberry runners that Granny Carne gave me. She gave me lots of seeds, too. Granny Carne doesn’t ever buy seed in packets, from shops. She saves it all from year to year, she says. She has seed you can’t get nowadays.

Dating back to the sixteenth century, I expect, I wanted to say, but I kept my mouth shut. You have to show respect to Granny Carne. Besides, it makes me dizzy when I try to think of all the time Granny Carne must have seen. All those lives coming and going.

Granny Carne went on carefully sorting seeds and putting them into brown wage envelopes marked in her strange, spiky handwriting. Finally she said, “If you can’t feed a family from a plot of land as good as you’ve got here, there’s something wrong with you.”

She bent down and crumbled a clod of earth between her fingers. “Respect the earth and give it back what it needs, and it’ll always feed you,” she said. The birds sang loudly, as if they agreed. Granny Carne touched an apple branch. “He’ll be covered with bloom this year,” she said. “Look at the buds.”

I hadn’t noticed how many buds there were, fat and ready to burst into flower. Or were they really there before? I wasn’t certain. I stared hard at Granny Carne’s brown fingers, which looked as if they could bring life out of a dead branch if they wanted to.

“Yes, this branch will be bending down with fruit come September,” murmured Granny Carne, and then she left the apple tree and went over to the rowan that grows near our door.

“Do you know why this tree’s here, my girl?”

“No, Granny Carne,” I answered meekly.

“Your ancestors had the good sense to plant the rowan close by their threshold, because they knew the rowan keeps away evil. The rowan’s a powerful tree, Sapphire, full of Earth magic. Never hurt the rowan, or cut it down without great cause. Let it live out its natural life in peace, and the rowan will always give you its protection.”

I stared at the rowan with new respect. It’s not a big tree. No tree grows tall up here because the winter gales blow them sideways and the salt stunts their growth.

“No evil shall pass this threshold,” muttered Granny Carne, with one hand on the trunk of the rowan.

Evil? What evil does she mean? I thought, and fear jagged through me.

“Put your hand on the bark, my girl,” Granny Carne urged me. I lifted my hand. But it felt as if a wall of solid air lay between me and the rowan. I pushed hard, but I couldn’t get through it. My hand dropped to my side.

“I can’t touch it, Granny Carne.”

Her fierce owl eyes swept over my face. I thought she was going to be angry with me, but then her expression changed.

“Is it that you don’t want to, or that you can’t?”

“My hand won’t. There’s a barrier.” I looked down at my hand nervously, and then back at Granny Carne.

“Granny Carne, it’s not… it’s not because I’m evil, is it? You said that no evil could get past the rowan tree. Is that why I can’t touch it?”

Granny Carne’s wrinkled face looked meditative. “No, my girl. Most likely it’s the Mer blood in you that won’t touch the strong Earth magic of the rowan. Not that the Mer have much love for any tree.”

“Why not?”

“Maybe because trees are rooted in the Earth. You remember this, my girl. It’s not evil that separates Earth and Ingo, it’s difference. But there are plenty who want to make evil out of difference. Be warned, Sapphire.”

Her face was set and harsh. She stared into my eyes as if she was searching for something.

“Be warned, my girl,” she repeated, and a shiver like the flood-memory shiver ran down my back. “Go careful, on Earth and in Ingo, when you meet those who seek to make their power out of the differences between us all.” Her voice had risen, as the wind rises before a storm. Suddenly it dropped again. “I’ll leave you to get on with your planting now,” she said, and turned her back on me.

“Granny Carne—”

But she was gone, striding up the lane as if she were as young as Mum, and not as old as… as old as…

The rowan tree?

The hills?

Roger’s living in our cottage, too. Well, not completely – he’s got a studio flat in St Pirans as well. But he’s spending most of his time here. He sits in Dad’s chair at our kitchen table, just as I was always afraid he would.

Roger wants us to have a boat. He says it’s crazy not to when we’ve got such a good mooring down at the cove. And Conor and I are both old enough to be sensible. The fact that our dad disappeared when he was out in the Peggy Gordon shouldn’t be allowed to stop us from ever having a boat.

I know that this is Roger’s opinion because I happened to hear him talking to Mum when I was digging in the garden and they were talking in the kitchen. Mum didn’t agree.

“Give me time, Roger,” she said. “I know you mean well, but I can’t bear the idea of them taking a boat out on their own. The weather changes so fast. I can’t risk losing them.”

Roger said, “You hold on to those kids too hard, Jennie.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? But Sapphire can be so impulsive. So wild. So like…”

“Like her dad?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t change that. Sapphire’s pretty tough. Look at the way those kids coped during the flood. God knows what they went through that night. They’re good kids. You think about it, Jennie. I know where I could get them a boat. A real little beauty.”

The trouble with Roger is that you can’t hate him for long – even though I want to hate him, for not being Dad…

“You’re thinking about that diver again,” says Faro. I jump, and nearly fall off the rock. Faro grabs my arm.

“I wish you wouldn’t break into my thoughts,” I say crossly.

“You let me,” he says.

It’s true. I can keep Faro out of my mind completely if I want to. I only have to put up a mental portcullis, like the ones that guarded the entrance to castles in the olden days.

“Roger’s not just ‘that diver’, Faro. He’s my mum’s boyfriend.”

“Is he still your enemy?”

“I don’t know. I used to hate him. I still do hate him sometimes…”

“I could deal with him for you,” says Faro, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Next time he’s in the sea, I can be there also.” He flexes his shoulders, and the muscles ripple.

“No, Faro.” Sometimes it seems that Faro might do anything.

He frowns darkly. “Your enemies are my enemies, Sapphire.”

But just at that moment something distracts him. There’s a flurry of foam on the calm water about a hundred metres out beyond the mouth of the cove, in deep water. Mackerel maybe. Or perhaps – perhaps even a dolphin…

Faro leans forward, watching the water intently as if he’s reading it. The surface breaks into a shower of glittering drops. I think I catch the shadow of a tail under the clear water.

“It’s a dolphin, Faro.”

“No. It’s one of my people.”

My heart thuds. One of the Mer. One of Faro’s people.

“It’s not my sister,” murmurs Faro. “No, it’s a signal. I must go.”

He turns to me, his eyes glowing with excitement. “Wait here. Don’t move.”

And in a second he’s gone, pushing himself off the rock, slipping beneath the surface in one smooth, strong dive. I watch him swim deep, his tail driving him out towards the mouth of the cove, and then he disappears.

I wait. I know he’ll come back. Faro always does everything he says. I look up and see a scud of cloud coming in, covering the sun. It’s past low tide now. Soon the water will be rising. I mustn’t stay too long or I’ll get caught by the tide. Soon it’ll be time to climb the steep, familiar path over the rocks, back up the cliff to home.

Conor’s in St Pirans, helping our friends Patrick and Rainbow to clean out their cottage, which is right on the beach. The full force of the flood hit it, and they’ve lost everything, even the windows and doors. Everything inside their cottage was smashed to pieces.

Conor took Sadie with him because Rainbow was desperate to see her again. She loves Sadie. Thinking about Rainbow makes me feel guilty because I haven’t seen much of her since we moved back here. She wants to be friends, and I want to be friends, too, but it’s complicated. I keep thinking, would Rainbow still want to be my friend if she knew the truth about me? If she knew that I had Mer blood and half belonged to Ingo? If she could see me sitting on this rock, now, with Faro? I’m afraid Rainbow might blame me for what Ingo did to St Pirans that night.

It’s all too complicated. I’m not going to think about it any more. Mum and Roger are buying stuff over in Porthnance. I didn’t use to be allowed to come down to the cove without Conor, but I’m older now, and Mum hasn’t said anything about it since we’ve been back. And anyway I’m not on my own. I’m with Faro. No one could keep me safer in the sea than Faro.

At this moment, Faro’s head breaks the surface, sleek and shining. He pushes back his hair.

“Sapphire! Come quickly!”

“The water’s freezing, Faro. It’s only April. I’ve got human blood as well as Mer blood, remember? I’ll get hypothermia.”

Faro shakes his head impatiently. “Come on, Sapphire. I’m not talking about the swimming that humans do. Come to Ingo with me.”

To Ingo. I won’t feel the cold there. The water will envelop me, and feel like home. I’ll dive beneath the surface, through the skin of the sea, and my lungs will burn just as Faro’s burn when he enters the Air. But not too badly. Like Faro, I don’t feel the change so much these days. The sea change. A thrill of excitement runs through me. But I still hesitate. Time in Ingo isn’t like our time. I might be in Ingo and think only an hour had passed, while it could be a whole human day. Mum has had enough fear and worry. Conor and I haven’t been into Ingo since the night of the flood. We’ve kept close to home.

“Quickly, Sapphire! My friend is here, waiting. There’s an Assembly.”

“What’s an Assembly? Is it like a Gathering?”

My heart quickens again. When I was in Ingo with Faro last autumn I saw crowds of the Mer in the distance, their beautiful cloaks of shell and net glimmering around them, on their way to a Gathering. It sounded like a wonderful party, but Faro wouldn’t let me go. I didn’t even get close enough to speak to the Mer. But maybe this time I will. I’ll get to know Faro’s people. Maybe I’ll have a cloak, too—

“No,” says Faro, “a Gathering is for pleasure. An Assembly is more… more serious. My friend has been sent to summon you.”

“Summon me!”

I stand up on the rock, and draw myself to my full height. “Summon me, Faro? Who is he to summon me?”

Faro looks up at me, and I look down. I feel the power in him. Mer power, strong as a magnet. But I feel the power in me, too, rising to meet his. I’m his equal. We stare at each other, and neither of us looks away.

At last Faro says, “They’re asking you to come, Sapphire. They need you there.”

“That’s not what ‘summon’ means, Faro.”

“Maybe that was the wrong word. Don’t be angry.” A persuasive smile flickers on Faro’s face. “Come, Sapphire. Come.”

I look behind me. The white sand of the beach, and then rocks and boulders rising almost to the lip of the cliff. The way home. I look back at Faro’s face, and then beyond him to where I think I see a shadow waiting, deep in the water. One of Faro’s friends. The Mer want me to go to an Assembly.

Maybe this means that the Mer are letting me deeper into Ingo now. An Assembly… If it’s for something serious, as Faro says, maybe Saldowr will be there. Surely they’d need him there, because Faro says Saldowr is the wisest of the Mer. I want to see him again. I hope the wound in his shoulder has healed. He was so badly hurt in the struggle to seal the Tide Knot again that I was afraid he would die.

So far, even though I’ve been to Ingo many times, I’ve only met Faro and his sister Elvira and Saldowr, and seen the shadows of other Mer swimming in the distance. There are bound to be a lot of them at the Assembly. Hundreds, maybe. And I’ll meet them face to face.

Excitement pulses in me like a rising tide. Senara, Mum, Conor, Sadie are already shrinking in my mind. They’re just as clear, but small and distant, like images at the wrong end of a telescope. Ingo is holding out its arms to me.

“I’ll come,” I say, and I swing my arms forward, and dive from the rock.

CHAPTER TWO

As soon as we’re out of the cove, the sea bed plunges away beneath us. We dive deep, through the turquoise surface water and into the rich blue-purple that lies beneath. Faro’s friend swims ahead. I watch the swish of his tail from side to side as it drives him through the water. Sometimes I think he glances back to see if we’re following, but I’m not sure.

The power of Ingo sweeps through my body and I race after him. I could never swim this strongly in the human world, up on the surface. My body cuts through the water. I feel as sleek and fast as a seal, and I’m not tired at all, even though we must be more than a mile out from land already.

Now there’s the first tug of a current. It seizes us in its strong arms, and drags us southward. Slowly at first and then faster, faster, until the water flies past us and the sea bed below us is a blur.

But no matter how fast we go, Faro’s friend is still ahead of us. There he is, just visible, riding the current’s crest. He’s not going to let me catch up with him. Faro could, easily, but I’m not fast enough.

“Why won’t he wait for us, Faro?”

Faro’s white teeth show in a teasing smile. “He’s shy of you, Sapphire.”

“He can’t be!”

“You’re human, don’t forget. Morlader’s not like me. He’s never spoken to a human, or even seen one up close. Most of the Mer are like that. You don’t realise how unusual I am,” he adds with self-satisfaction.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you different from the others?”

Faro frowns. “You wouldn’t understand, Sapphire. It’s a Mer thing.” Streams of bubbles play over his face, half-hiding it. He’s close, but he looks far away. A Mer thing. His words hurt, but the water of Ingo surges around me, and my own Mer blood tingles with excitement. How fast is this current taking us? How far? We must be miles and miles from land now. It’s like flying underwater. I’ve never travelled so fast in Ingo, but I’m not afraid. I’m elated. How can Faro think I won’t understand?

“I’m not all human, Faro,” I say. “You know that.”

Faro turns to me. His hair flows past his shoulders, plastered to his skin by the force of the current. His eyes scan my face, intent, anxious – and maybe even a little fearful. He isn’t hiding from me now. Suddenly I remember the first time we met.

“You weren’t ever shy of me, Faro.”

“No.”

“Why weren’t you? You’re Mer too.”

A strange expression crosses Faro’s face. “Yes,” he says, more hesitant than I’ve ever heard him, “yes, of course I’m Mer. But Sapphire, there’s something—Look out!”

He grabs my hand and hurls us sideways out of the grip of the current, just missing a jagged spear of rock. In the calm water, he lets go of me. There are white marks on my hand where his fingers dug into the flesh. I could never have got out of that current on my own. Faro’s strength is almost frightening sometimes – but he did it to save me.

Faro looks shocked. “It nearly got us. I must have been dreaming. I can’t believe I let that happen.”

“Scary,” I say weakly as I try to calm the pumping of my heart. Usually Faro is as quick as a fish. He senses danger at the first shadow of it. That rock would have killed us, and we only missed it by a few centimetres. If Faro hadn’t dragged me sideways, I’d be drifting down to the sea bed now, my body broken and bleeding. For the first time, I really understand that only a second separates life from death, and it’s very easy to die. My heart thuds so hard I can feel it in my throat.

Faro rubs his hands over his face, as if he’s wiping away a nightmare. He takes hold of my hand, lifts it, and examines it. There are the marks of his nails, too, in my skin. My hand is bleeding.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, little sister,” he says.

“I’m all right. We could have died, couldn’t we? I think you saved my life.”

Faro glances around quickly as if someone might overhear him. “This place could eat us alive and still be hungry,” he whispers. “Its spirit is bad – drokobereth. We must hurry.”

I glance around fearfully. Now the rocks look as if they are clawing the water, reaching out for prey.

“Where’s Morlader gone?”

Faro points ahead where the rocks rise up sheer, towering into an under-sea mountain range. I thought that the Bawns near our cove were huge, but these are ten times higher. They are bleak and barren. They look as if they’ve crowded together deliberately, so there won’t be a way through them. They don’t want us here.

“Morlader has gone ahead of us, to the Assembly,” says Faro.

“Where’s that?”

“Farther on. It’s no use being afraid of the mountains, Sapphire. There’s no other way except through them.”

“I’m not afraid!”

“Of course you are,” says Faro. His face is very serious. “And so am I.”

“If it’s so dangerous, why do the Mer hold their Assemblies on these mountains?”

“Not on the mountains: in them. Our Assembly cave is deep in the heart of the mountains. Our ancestors chose it, because we could hide from our enemies there for a thousand years if need be. We could defend ourselves with only a handful of warriors.”

“What enemies?”

Faro glances round again, quickly, cautiously. “We can’t talk about it here. Come on, Sapphire. It’s not solid rock, there’s a way through. We’d be safer approaching from the south, but we haven’t got time to swim all the way round now.”

“Do you know the way?”

“Of course,” says Faro. I’m sure I can hear doubt in his voice, but there’s no choice. We’ve got to go on.

“Careful,” whispers Faro. “Even a scratch from these rocks can turn to poison.” We swim forward very slowly, gliding cautiously around the razor-sharp flanks of the rocks.

Before long the rocks have closed around us. Ahead, the rising mountain blocks our sight. There’s no clear water anywhere, only channels between dangers. I’ve never felt cold in Ingo before, but these rocks cast an icy shadow. There is no sign of life. No flickering fish, no glowing sea anemones, no graceful herds of sea horses. There isn’t even any seaweed clinging to the rocks. The valleys are empty and the peaks bare. Below us the sand is dark, ashy grey.

We swim on, barely disturbing the water. Now the rocks on either side of us look as if they’ve been split open by a giant hammer.

“The tides did this when they broke loose,” says Faro, steering me past a shattered fang of coral. We slow down even more, so that we can ease our bodies through the wreckage without getting trapped in it. Besides, I don’t want to disturb these waters, for fear of what might come out.

“Why can’t we swim higher up in clear water?” I whisper.

“We have to go this way,” says Faro. “Mind your hand, Sapphire! That’s where the eels have their holes.”

I snatch my hand back, shuddering. So there is something alive here. Roger told me once that divers have to watch out for conger eels. They live in crevices like these. If they get your arm in their jaws, they won’t let go. What else is hidden away in the holes and crevices?

“Search every crook and granny,” I murmur.

“What?”

“It’s meant to be ‘Search every nook and cranny’ – Conor got it wrong when he was little and so we always say it like that.”

“Why would you search a granny – you mean, your mother’s mother?”

“Never mind, Faro, it’s not important.”

It’s like trying to tell a joke at a funeral. Everything is so eerily silent. The split rock glimmers like oil. At the corner of my eye something flickers.

“Faro!”

But when I turn my head, there’s nothing.

“Faro, I’m sure someone – something was there.”

A flash of alarm crosses Faro’s face.

“Just keep swimming,” he whispers in my ear. “Pretend you haven’t seen them.” He takes my hand and pulls me with him. “Don’t look back.”

I wasn’t going to look back. I swear I wasn’t. But somehow my head turns, and the flicker of movement behind me becomes real, solid—

“Faro, look! Look at her!”

“No, Sapphire!”

“But she’s so beautiful!”

So beautiful. She’s sitting on the knife-sharp edge of the rock, but it doesn’t seem to hurt her. Her shining hair drifts around her shoulders like a cloak of glass. Her smile glows with welcome and her arms are open wide as if to embrace us.

“But, Faro, she’s Mer. She’s one of your people. Why won’t you look at her?”

Her eyes fix mine. They are huge and hungry. She wants me. She wants me to come to her.

“She’s not Mer!” says Faro, his voice full of revulsion.

“Just look for a minute. She’s so lovely,” I plead with him.

“All right then, Sapphire, you look at her if you want to! Look!”

Her beautiful face, her sloping shoulders and swirling hair – her—

“Look, Sapphire!”

She twists her body free of the rock. She pushes off with her hands. She’s coming towards us…

Where a tail should be if she were Mer, where legs would be if she were human, there is a claw. A single claw, steel blue and gleaming. An open claw that snaps as the creature swirls towards us—

Faro raises both hands, fingers crossed, and touches them to his forehead. The creature stalls in the water.

“Get behind me,” he mutters, “and whatever you do, don’t look at it again.” Very slowly he begins to swim backwards, still holding his hands in place and shielding me with his body. I scull myself backwards with trembling hands, keeping my eyes fixed on Faro’s back. I won’t look at – at it – again. It’s not going to make me look at it. A faint sound drifts through the water. Clack. Clack. The claw, I think. It’s opening and shutting the claw, getting ready to snap—

“Don’t be scared,” murmurs Faro. “Feel behind you.” My back is against the wall now. A sheer, gleaming wall of rock that blocks our way.

Clack, clack.

Surely the sound is fainter now?

“Faro – Faro – has it gone?”

“Wait.”

We hang still in the water, backs to the wall, and wait.

“Don’t look, Sapphire. It’s not safe yet.”

Clack, clack.

It’s almost gone. At last Faro’s shoulders slacken with relief. His hands drop to his sides.

“It’s gone back to its hole,” he says. “But we’ve got to be quick. There’ll be more of the Claw Creatures around here and I can’t hold off more than one at a time.”

“Can’t we swim straight up the rock, Faro?”

“No. We’ve got to go through. There’s a passage here somewhere. I used to know where it was, but since the Tide Knot broke, everything’s changed. Even the routes we’ve used for a thousand years. Come round this way, Sapphire. Squeeze through. That’s it. Good, the Claw Creatures can’t get in here.”

We’re in a small cave. The back of it is blind, and there’s no passage through the rock.

“We’ll rest here for a while,” says Faro, and closes his eyes. It’s very gloomy in the cave, but there’s enough light to see how drained he looks.

“At least now you know never to look at one of the Claw Creatures,” he says lightly.

“If you hadn’t been there—”

“Shall I tell you what would have happened, little sister?”

“No, don’t. I can guess.”

We are quiet for a while, resting. I wonder how much farther we’ve got to go. Faro says that everything’s changed in Ingo since the Tide Knot broke.

“But the tides went back,” I say aloud.

“Ingo is slow to heal.”

Like the human world, I think. St Pirans is shadowy in my mind now, but I can’t forget the destruction of the flood.

“Ingo er kommolek,” I say suddenly, without realising that I’m going to speak. Just as suddenly I remember where those words came from. The dolphins spoke them, that day last autumn when they came into the bay, and we were out in the boat with Mal’s dad. But the words were different then… Ingo er lowenek… was that it?

My brain doesn’t know what the words mean, but something deeper in me understands. There’s a shadow over Ingo now. Grief and destruction have spread through Ingo like currents of rushing water.

“Ingo er kommolek… kommolek… trist Ingo… trist, trist Ingo…”

Faro is staring at me.

“How do you know those words, Sapphire?”

Power rises in me again, as it did when I was standing on the rock, back in our cove.

“I learned them from the dolphins.”

“You’re coming on, little sister,” says Faro in his mocking way. “You are becoming a daughter of Ingo.”

His words thrill through me.

“Sometimes I think that won’t ever happen. Just when I feel I’m part of Ingo, I’m pushed away again.”

“I don’t push you away.”

But there’s a lot you never talk about. How little I know about Faro’s history – and I still feel I can’t ask him quite ordinary things like where he was born, who his parents are…

“Sapphire?”

“What?”

“Wake up. It’s time to move on.”

CHAPTER THREE

We come out of the cave, and stare up the sheer face of the mountain. It’s just as forbidding, but now there’s a challenge in it, too.

“Morlader must have found the passage.”

“Yes,” Faro agrees.

“But then why didn’t he wait for us?”

Faro shrugs. His eyes are dark and grim. “You think all the Mer are one family, Sapphire. But it’s not as simple as that. Sometimes we… we test one another.”

“You mean Morlader’s testing us to see if we can find the way?”

“Not Morlader alone,” says Faro. “He’s been sent, and told what to do. And I think I know who sent him. Come, little sister, we have to take this path.”

He points around the shoulder of the rock face. We edge along it, keeping close to the rock without ever touching it. Faro takes my hand and steers us both onwards with barely a flicker of his powerful tail. The rock is no longer barren. Weed clings to it, and in crevices there are limpets crusting its smoothness. Long trails of weed catch at my feet. It’s a dark, smooth green, like bottle-glass. It hangs from the rock in swaying curtains, so thick that we can’t see through them.

“The entrance is here somewhere,” says Faro. He lets go of my hand, pushes aside the curtain of weed, and vanishes.

“Faro!”

“Come on, Sapphire, it’s this way.”

His voice sounds muffled and hollow. Where is he? Gingerly, I touch the weed. I’ll have to push my way through it, and I don’t want to. It’s like going into a trap.

The weed sways like an animal being stroked. Suddenly the fog that hides the human world when I’m in Ingo clears for a moment, and I see Sadie standing in a patch of sunlight. Sadie! Thoughts of her flood my mind. Her warm smooth coat, her brown eyes, the way she scans my face to work out what I’m saying. Dear Sadie. My hand falls to my side. What am I doing here? Her eyes plead with me to come home. Why am I pushing my way through a slimy curtain of weed?

“Sapphire!”

Faro sounds farther away now, and impatient. He’s going on. He’s not waiting for me. I can’t get left behind here on my own – but I can’t go in. Rocks and icy shadows and cold unfriendly water press in on me. Get out of here, a voice says in my brain. Get out now, while you still can.

Suddenly I hear another sound. It’s very faint, but as soon as I hear it a prickle of terror races over my skin.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

I’m imagining it; of course I am. But Faro’s not here to help me now. Don’t look back, Sapphire. Don’t risk being trapped by that beautiful face and that lethal claw.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

It’s coming closer. Frantically I scrabble at the curtain of weed, trying to find an opening. The weed resists, then suddenly it parts and I fall through it.

It’s dark in here, a shadowy greenish murk. I blink, and slowly my eyes adjust. There’s Faro, about a hundred metres ahead. The rock face curves inward at the bottom, and the weed hangs down, creating a secret space.

“Quick, Sapphire! Here!”

I swim forward, and see a narrow hole in the rock. It must be the opening of the passage Faro wants us to go through. It’s just wide enough for our bodies, but we won’t be able to swim. We’ll have to use our hands to pull ourselves through. But it’s so narrow – what if we get stuck?

“Hurry!” says Faro in an urgent whisper. “They’ll scout up and down the weed, searching for us. They’re stupid, so they probably won’t find us. But you can never be sure. Come on. I’ll go first.”

“But, Faro—”

“It’s the only way. Come on. They can’t come into the tunnel because their claws get jammed.”

His eyes are bright in the gloom as he squeezes my hand. “It takes us to the Assembly chamber. I know it does. Trust me, Sapphire.”

He swims down to the hole and grips both sides with his hands. With a sinuous, supple movement he squeezes his body in, and disappears.

It’s all right for you, I think angrily. You’ve done this before. And besides, you’re Mer.

My heart is beating fast again. I’m frightened but I push the fear down. In a place like this it’s not safe to show weakness. That creature with the claw can’t get into the passage; Faro said it couldn’t—

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Am I really hearing it?

Stop it, Sapphire. Don’t think about the claw.

Faro’s tail has vanished. I’ve got to follow him.

I swim down to the tunnel entrance and scull the water as I try to peer inside. It’s very narrow. I can only just fit in. There’s hardly any light at all. My fingers look ghostly.

Do it, Sapphire. You’ve got to go in.

I reach for the entrance of the tunnel. My hair floats around my face, blinding me for a second. What if my hair gets caught and I’m trapped?

I shut my mind, swim down, feel for the sides of the tunnel, and haul myself in.

I can’t see anything. My body blocks out the light behind, and Faro must be blocking the light ahead.

“Faro?” I whisper. I don’t dare call out. Anything might be listening. A conger eel would love to coil itself away here, and wait for its prey. Maybe there’s a labyrinth of tunnels leading away from this one. Tunnels full of hidden creatures. Octopuses, giant squid, crabs and eels—

“Faro!”

I’m not making a sound. I’m trying to reach Faro with my mind. Where is he?

Hurry up, Sapphire. Human toes are a rare treat for conger eels down here.

He’s heard my thoughts. I’ve never been so glad to be teased in my life. Somehow Faro turns the conger eels into cartoon creatures. But under the teasing, I sense that Faro’s afraid too. Not of eels or octopuses, but of something deeper. Something formless, shadowy. A flicker of his fear brushes over my mind and I shudder.

I’m not going to let fear win. I’m going to fight back, like Faro.

Those conger eels don’t care about toes, they’re after your tail, I shape my thoughts to tell him. I know how proud Faro is of his strong, supple tail.

I’d like to see them try. One blow from my tail and they’d never move again. Feel your way along the rock with your hands, Sapphire. If you find a hold you can pull yourself along.

He shows me a mental image of what he is doing. His strong hands grasp the sides of the rock and propel him forwards.

I reach out cautiously, but the sides of the tunnel aren’t slimy, as I feared. They’re just smooth, and hard, and unforgiving. My nails scrape for a hold. I pull myself forward a little, then my hold breaks. There’s just enough room to put my hands down by my sides. Palm outwards, my hands push and propel me forward.

But now the tunnel’s getting narrower. If I’m not careful I’ll get stuck with my hands wedged by my sides. I won’t be able to bring them up to protect my face.

Don’t panic, Sapphire. If you panic in here you’re in real trouble.

Very cautiously I roll on to my side, and push backwards until I’m pressed against the tunnel wall. Carefully, I work my right elbow loose underneath me until my right arm comes free, and then I roll and do the same for my left.

You’ve done it, I tell myself. You kept calm and worked it out. That’s what you’ve got to do if you’re going to get through the passage.

It feels safer with my hands stretched in front of me. I can’t move as quickly, but I can shield my face. Faro’s quite a way ahead now. He must be moving more easily than me, with the force of his tail to push him on. My head knocks against the roof. Slow down, Sapphire. Take it easy. Faro’s bigger than you and he didn’t get stuck.

My foot catches on an outcrop of rock on the tunnel roof. For a desperate moment I struggle to pull it free, but it won’t go the right way. The rock’s holding on to me. It won’t release me.

I’ve got to think. Think. Use your mind instead of going into a blind, blank panic. You won’t ever get free if you struggle; it’s like pulling a knot tighter. Maybe if I push backwards a little, it’ll take some pressure off my foot.

Very gently I push back against the sides of the tunnel until the grip on my foot eases. I wriggle my foot sideways, and the rock lets me go.

I mustn’t let it catch me again. I scull hard with my hands to bring my body down as close to the floor of the tunnel as possible, and then I edge forwards with my feet together. I won’t kick any more, in case I get trapped again.

It works. I’m moving, slowly and steadily. But there’s no time for relief. I’ve got to catch up with Faro. If I lose him—

What if the tunnel divides and I don’t know which way to go?

It’s cold as well as dark. It feels as if the tunnel walls are breathing out a dead, freezing mist. Every time my fingers touch the rock they get more numb. Got to keep moving. Faro’s up ahead; I know he is even though I can’t see him. I can’t even find him with my mind. Keep going, Sapphire. Pull yourself along. One handhold. Another handhold. Keep going. The water feels cold and lifeless, but it isn’t really. You’re still in Ingo.

My worst fear is that the tunnel’s going to squeeze shut, closing me in. I could never find my way backwards, all the way to the entrance. I’d get stuck, and then I’d be trapped in the tunnel for ever.

As if the tunnel senses my panic, it starts to crowd me. My hands scrabble for space. My feet kick against the tunnel roof.

Faro!

There’s no reply. My thoughts bounce emptily around my mind. Faro has left me. I’m alone.

A wave of panic wipes me out. The rock bulges, crushing me. My fingers scrape at the surface but this time I can’t move. The tunnel has got me and it’s never going to let me escape.

But as the tide of panic roars, a small, quiet voice speaks deep inside me. I don’t know if it’s my voice, or Faro’s. Think, Sapphire. Use your brain. You’re not trapped as long as you think.

I remember how I freed my foot. Ease backwards. Don’t struggle, because it only ties the knot tighter.

It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. When you’re trapped, every cell of your body screams for you to fight free. But I’ve got to do it, because even Faro can’t help me now. He’s up ahead, waiting for me, I’m sure he’s there, but the tunnel’s too narrow for him to turn and pull me free.

Somehow just the thought of Faro waiting makes the rock face move back a fraction. The roof of the tunnel doesn’t press down quite so hard.

You survived the Deep, Sapphire. None of the Mer can survive the Deep, but you did it. This isn’t so terrible, compared to the Deep.

That’s when I first see the light. It’s a tiny greenish glimmer, so faint I’m not sure at first if it’s real or not. As I watch, another tiny light springs out on the rock face, like a signal. Don’t be afraid. We’re here with you.

Like fairy lights. But they can’t be fairy lights because there’s no electricity down here. I peer through the darkness and then I see them. They are small, worm-shaped creatures, clinging to the rock. The glow of light comes from their heads. As I watch, another point gleams out, and then another. They light the passage, showing the way onwards.

“Thank you,” I whisper, and the lights glow more strongly, as if the little creatures have heard and are glad to help me.

Slowly, slowly, the rock lets go of me as I relax. I’m easing myself forwards again. There is clear water between the rock and my body. I carry on doggedly pushing myself along. A few centimetres, a few more. The tunnel is curving round to the left, and surely it’s growing much wider now…

There’s a shimmer of light ahead, and a shape, moving—

A conger eel!

No. A familiar shape, strong and supple and like a seal’s tail. Faro’s tail. He’s swimming up ahead of me.

“Faro!”

“Little sister, I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you. I tried to reach you with my mind but all I could find was rock.”

I swim up alongside, so overwhelmed with relief that I’m afraid I’ll cry if I try to talk. Faro turns and smiles impishly.

“So those conger eels didn’t eat you up after all.”

I laugh feebly.

“You’re bigger than me, Faro, however did you get through so easily?”

Faro shrugs. “We’re used to it. Our bodies know their way through rock passages. As long as you don’t think about it, you’ll always get through.”

The tunnel’s opening up like a flower from a stalk. In the distance there’s a murmuring ripple of sound. Faro takes my hand.

“Wait, Sapphire.”

We float, listening. The light is even stronger now, and I see that the sides of the tunnel aren’t black at all. They are a deep, rich ruby red. It looks as if the tunnel is carved out of a huge jewel. Faro’s face glows with reflected light.

“We’re close to the Assembly chamber,” he whispers. “Listen. You can hear my people.”

So the murmuring ripple isn’t the far-off noise of the sea. It’s the sound of Faro’s people, gathered together.

“How many are there?”

“Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Listen to the echo. You can tell that the chamber is full.”

“What are they doing?”

“Waiting.”

“What for?”

“For us, of course. Or strictly speaking, my dear little sister, for you.”

I stare at Faro in horror. “You’re joking.”

“They’ve been travelling for days to get to this Assembly.”

“How do you know? Morlader only just came to – to fetch us.”

“I know the ways of my people,” says Faro proudly.

For a second I even wish that I was back in the tunnel again, talking to the worms. I try to imagine stepping out in front of hundreds – maybe thousands – of Mer. How disappointed they’ll be when they see that I’m just an ordinary girl, with no special powers at all.

“They’ve got it wrong, Faro. They can’t be waiting for me. Let’s go back—”

“What? Back through that tunnel? You’ve got to be joking. Even for me it was a close thing.”

“Were you scared, Faro?”

“Me? Scared?” His eyes glitter indignantly. “I was – extended, my dear Sapphire.”

“So was I. Very extended indeed.”

The murmur of voices seems louder now. I try to imagine what they look like, all those hundreds and thousands of Mer gathered together. Suddenly I’m curious as well as nervous. I’ve always wanted to meet the Mer face to face. Faro’s people. Maybe my people, too, in a way.

“Will my father be there?” I ask abruptly.

“No.”

“Why not? He’s Mer now, isn’t he?”

“He’s still recovering.”

“Recovering! You didn’t tell me he was ill.”

“You knew that he was hurt when the Tide Knot broke. His body felt the anger of the tides.”

“But I thought he’d be all right by now – I didn’t know it was serious. Why didn’t you tell me? What’s wrong with Dad?”

Faro touches his right arm, just above the wrist. “The bone was broken here. He had broken ribs too, and cuts and bruises all over his body where he was hurled against a rock. My sister’s teacher has been healing him. She is a great healer.”

“Oh.”

I feel sick at the thought of Dad being hurled against a rock. I know what it’s like when a current seizes hold of you. It must have been terrible to be caught in the full force of the escaped tides. I knew Dad was hurt because he didn’t come back to help us in the flood, but I didn’t realise how bad it was.

“And his mind is heavy,” goes on Faro quietly, as if he’s confiding a secret.

My father is trist, I think. My father is kommolek. The words are like shadows on my heart.

“Yes,” says Faro, reading them, “you are right, little sister. His mind troubles him more than his body.”

I wish I could reach Dad with my mind. I wish I could say to him, Hold on. We haven’t forgotten you. Conor and I will do anything to get you home.

But Dad can’t hear me.

I listen again to the murmur of voices.

“What about Mellina? Will she be there?”

“She may be. I don’t know.”

If she is, I’ll see Mellina face to face at last. The Mer woman whom my father loves. The woman who enchanted him away from our home, away from Mum and Conor and me and everything in the human world.

I wish I was away in Ingo…

Mellina sang that to Dad, and he believed it. He wished for Ingo, and his wish came true. When I saw Mellina’s face in Saldowr’s mirror she looked young and soft and gentle. But I’m not going to be tricked by her. I’m going to find out the truth, and tell Mellina that she’s got to let go of Dad, and allow him to come home.

“All right, Faro. Let’s go in.”

We swim to the edge of a thin screen of rock. I tread water to steady myself. Warily, keeping my body in hiding, I peer around the side.

It’s a vast underwater cavern, as big as a cathedral. The walls curve inwards and they’re carved into tier after tier, like rows of seats in a theatre. I wonder if the sea gouged out those tiers, or if the Mer carved them.

And there are the Mer. Hundreds of them, as Faro said. Maybe thousands. They are as real and solid as a football crowd, and as strange as a dream. Their tails glisten. Their long hair streams in the water, half veiling their bodies. Some are wearing shining cloaks of net and pearl, others bodices of woven seaweed.

The source of the light is above us. The light of the open sea filters down to the heart of the underwater mountains. For a second I think of the sun and its light, then I lose my grip on the thought. The human world feels as distant as China or Paraguay.

I stare around the chamber in wonder. The far wall shimmers with phosphorescence. The skin of the Mer glows too. There’s a tinge of blue in their skin that isn’t like any colour I’ve seen in a human. The same blue sheen ripples over their tails. I’ve never noticed that colour in Faro’s body. Maybe the light of the cave changes everything. They look so foreign, and so beautiful.

“My people,” says Faro, with such pride in his voice that I turn to look at him. His shoulders are braced, his hands are clenched into fists, and his face is stern.

“My people,” he repeats, “and I will give my life to defend them. You are the only human who has ever seen such an Assembly.”

“I’m honoured,” I answer quietly.

Faro’s face flashes into a smile, then he says urgently, “Sapphire, promise me that you’ll listen to them. Even if – even if what they ask sounds impossible.”

“I promise, Faro.”

We swim slowly forward, out of our concealment. First one head turns, and then another. A ripple of sound flows through the chamber.

So many pairs of eyes, fixed on me and Faro. So many faces scanning us, taking in every detail. It’s like being on stage, except that I don’t know the play, or what my part is.

Now everything’s still again. The water in the chamber is as clear as glass. There’s nowhere to hide, even if I wanted to hide. But I don’t. I swim forward. At long last I’m here, in the company of the Mer.

They stare at us, waiting. The atmosphere is tense with expectation. What are we supposed to do?

“Come farther forward, Sapphire. They want us to go into the middle of the Chamber. There, above the Speaking Stone.”

He points to a stone set in the floor of the cave. It’s pearl coloured, with veins of green and blue and crimson, like the veins in an opal. But it can’t be an opal. No precious stone could ever be that big.

“Follow me, Sapphire.”

We swim to the centre. It feels as if our bodies barely disturb the water. We’re part of its stillness. When we reach the Speaking Stone, Faro dives and touches it with his hand, as if he’s touching it for luck. As he rises again he says to me, “Dive down, Sapphire, and touch the Stone.”

“Why?”

“It makes us speak more clearly.”

I dive down, and touch the stone lightly. I’m expecting to feel some charge of power in it, like the power that surged in the Tide Knot, but it’s just a stone.

A tall Mer man with a strong, hawk-like face uncoils his body from the front rank of seats, swims forward and holds his hands out to us, palm up.

“Greet him, Sapphire,” whispers Faro, and I hold my own hands out in imitation. Faro does the same. With a quick, easy flick of his body, the man dives to touch the Speaking Stone, then swims back up to where we are. His hair swirls around his shoulders.

“I am Ervys, Morlader’s uncle,” he tells me. “We are sea rovers. We gather news from all the oceans, and bring it to our people wherever they are. You are welcome here. I have come to share with you the thoughts that I have, and the thoughts of our people. These are painful thoughts, dark and violent. You would not want them in your head or in your dreams, and so I will not pass them into your mind. We will speak our thoughts aloud at this Assembly.

His eyes are fixed on me. They are very clear. I’ve never seen human eyes with that silvery light in them. He looks more – more Mer, somehow, than either Faro or Elvira. More Mer than Saldowr, even. I push the thought down, to consider it later. I need to concentrate. All those faces, all those eyes. But somehow the fact that we are floating above the Speaking Stone makes the hundreds of watching Mer a little less intimidating.

“These are dangerous times for us all,” says Ervys, “since the tides turned and the Deep awoke. Or since the Deep awoke and the tides turned.”

Suddenly I’m impatient. After such a journey, I don’t want to hear clichés. I know that these are dangerous times. I know all about the aftereffects of the flood. They are like the aftershocks of an earthquake, and no one could fail to notice them. The tides turned and the Deep awoke. What’s that really supposed to mean?

My impatience must show on my face because Ervys says sharply, “Do you expect me to deliver all my thoughts in a moment?”

“No,” I say meekly, but I don’t feel very meek inside. Faro shoots me a warning glance, and I remember my promise. “I’m a friend of the Mer. I’m ready to listen,” I say, and this time Ervys’s face relaxes.

“You are very young,” he says, looking at me with a certain doubt in his expression. “But we have been told that you have a gift. Saldowr tells us that you have visited the Deep.”

I feel the hush in the chamber, the tension stretched out so tight it might snap at any moment.

“Yes,” I answer, “I visited the Deep, before the tides broke.”

A gasp runs around the chamber, followed by a murmur of voices. Ervys turns and raises his hand. Silence falls.

CHAPTER FOUR

I wish I had Conor by my side. Ervys is looking at me so intently. What does he want? His face is hungry.

The eyes of all the assembled Mer are fixed on me. It’s like standing on a stage with all the lights on you. The silence is eager. If only I knew what they wanted from me. I glance sideways at Faro for support, but he’s gazing down at the Speaking Stone, his head bowed as if in respect for the Assembly.

Maybe Ervys is waiting for me to speak first. If Conor were here, he’d know what to say.

“You visited the Deep,” repeats Ervys at last. “I was told that this had happened, but now I hear it from your own mouth. It seems… beyond our beliefs. Saldowr himself cannot enter the Deep. And yet it opened to you. Tell me how you did this. Tell me what force you used.”

“I – I don’t know.”

Ervys throws back his head. His hair eddies around him. “You don’t know!” His voice is full of disbelief.

“It just – it just happened. I was in a rogue current. It threw me off. It threw us all off. I couldn’t see Faro or Conor. They were dragged away from me… I don’t remember all of it,” I say slowly. “Maybe I was knocked out. When I woke I was in the Deep. It was so dark…”

My voice trails off. I should never have started talking about it. The memories claw at me. Everything is coming back. The crushing darkness and silence of the Deep. The weight of my hand when I tried to move it, as if my hand was made of lead. I was trapped, a prisoner of the Deep. If I hadn’t met the whale who rescued me…

“But you lived,” goes on Ervys sternly, like a teacher trying to find out what you’ve really been doing when he’s out of the classroom. “If Saldowr had not told us it was true, how could we believe it? How could a human do what none of the Mer can do?”

Suddenly my fear is swept away by anger. How dare he doubt me? How dare he think I owe him anything? The Mer want something from me. That’s why Ervys sent his nephew to fetch us. But Morlader didn’t even guide us safely here. He went ahead and abandoned us. We had to struggle through that tunnel on our own. What if Faro hadn’t found the way? I’d never have guessed that the tunnel entrance was hidden behind that curtain of weed. Those Claw Creatures could have got us.

Why do the Mer have to make everything so difficult and complicated? And now, after all that, they still refuse to trust me. The way Ervys is interrogating me, you’d think I’d committed a crime and was lying about it.

I clench my hands into fists, and dig my nails into the palms of my hands. I try to guess what Conor would say if he were here. Conor would keep his head and think clearly to the heart of what was happening. Conor doesn’t lose his temper and lash out like me. People listen to him.

I must be like Conor now. I can’t blurt out my anger. I must make it speak clearly, so that the Mer have to respect what I say.

Wait, Sapphire, wait. Let the silence stretch. Ervys needs something from you. All these Mer are here for a reason. Take control. You don’t have to let Ervys question you as if you’re on trial.

“It’s true that I’m human,” I say at last. My voice is reedy, but at least it doesn’t tremble. “It’s true that I’m not in my own world here. You knew I’d need a guide to find my way to this Assembly.”

“I sent my nephew to guide you.”

“But Morlader went ahead of us, out of sight. We had no guide.”

“Faro knew the way.”

“Not well enough for our safety. Was it a test, Ervys?”

I look straight into his eyes. He frowns, and for a moment I’m afraid I’ve gone too far and his anger is going to flare out. I don’t look round, but I sense that Faro‘s watching me closely now. He’s on my side, I know it for sure. Faro is Mer, but he is no friend of Ervys. The tension between me and Ervys stretches as taut as a guitar string. Then, slowly, Ervys’s face cracks into a smile.

“Saldowr gave us a true picture,” he says slowly. A ripple of relief goes around the chamber. They were worried, too. Does that mean the other Mer are afraid of Ervys? “Saldowr told us, ‘These human children look as helpless as seal pups on a rock. Don’t be deceived.’”

“Where is Saldowr?” I ask eagerly. “Is he all right? Has he recovered?” Surely the wound Saldowr took on the night the Tide Knot broke must have healed by now. Saldowr is so powerful. His magic is as deep as the ocean, just as Granny Carne’s is as strong as a rock. Even if no one else can heal him, Saldowr must be able to heal himself.

Ervys doesn’t reply. Instead he nods at Faro, asking him to speak. To my surprise Faro dives down and touches the Speaking Stone a second time, as if he needs more strength, and then turns to face the Assembly.

“You all know that Saldowr is my teacher,” he says proudly. I suppress the thought that the Mer seem to spend a lot of time telling each other things that they already know. Faro is deadly serious.

There’s a murmur of agreement. Suddenly a broad-shouldered man leaves the front rank of seats and swims down to the Speaking Stone. As he swims up to face Ervys, challenge flashes between the two Mer men. Then he turns to Faro.

“You are Saldowr’s scolhyk,” he says, “his student and more than that. You are his follower. You are not his son in the flesh but in all other things you are Saldowr’s heir.” His gaze travels over the ranks of the Mer. “Am I speaking the truth?”

The ranks of Mer sway as if a strong current has swept into the chamber. Many clench their hands together, and hold them out towards the speaker as if they’re offering support to his words. But I can see some who look sullen and angry, and sit back with their arms folded. Ervys’s followers, I think.

“You are speaking the truth, Karrek,” says Faro calmly. “I am Saldowr’s holyer and his scolhyk. You all know how Saldowr is now. He cannot leave his cave. His wound refuses to heal.”

“I have not visited Saldowr, but I have been told this,” says Ervys, as Karrek swims back to his place. “But tell us, Faro,” he goes on smoothly, but with an underlying eagerness in his voice, “is there more we should know? Is Saldowr’s condition worsening? I hear rumours that he may be readying himself for the journey to Limina—”

“No!” cries Faro. “Never! Never, Ervys!”

Ervys waits again, as Faro’s cry dies away in the huge space of the chamber. Limina… that’s where the Mer go when they’re ready to die. Faro took me there once and I remember how the old and the sick waited on the white sand, patrolled by guardian seals. Faro told me that they were waiting for death. Limina is very peaceful – even beautiful in a way – but it’s on the other side of life. Once the Mer cross that threshold, they can’t come back.

Saldowr mustn’t go there! Saldowr holds the secrets of the past and the future. What would happen to Ingo without Saldowr? How can Ervys even think of suggesting that Saldowr might be ready to go to Limina?

“Everyone goes to Limina one day,” says Ervys, as if he’s read my thoughts. His voice is calm but the words are like a clash of weapons. What does he mean? Is he trying to suggest that Saldowr is not so special, that he is just one of the Mer like any other? But that’s not true. I know in my bones that it isn’t true. Saldowr has power – he has magic that Ingo needs.

“Saldowr is the Keeper of the Tide Knot,” says Faro boldly, as if that answers all arguments. But even I know that it doesn’t, not now that the Tide Knot has broken.

Sure enough, Ervys continues smoothly, “But the Tide Knot did not hold. Can Saldowr help us now, when we have to face the – consequences?”

Faro’s face is dark with fury. “Who is there to take his place, Ervys?” he demands. The question flashes through the chamber like the blade of a sword. The Mer begin to mutter. Ervys holds up his hand.

“We are not here to debate Saldowr,” he says. There’s nothing wrong with the words, but the meaning behind them is another weapon-thrust. Ervys is hinting that Saldowr can be put aside. He has lost his power, and decisions can be made without him now.

“Then what are we here for?” I ask. Both Ervys and Faro stare at me in surprise, as if they’ve forgotten I’m here. “What are we here for?”

Ervys folds his arms.

“We are here because the Kraken is awake,” he says.

Again the ranks of Mer lift their hands. This time they cross them as Faro did in the face of the Claw Creature. Their crossed hands touch their foreheads, hiding their faces. Their index and second fingers are crossed too.

“Raise your hands, Sapphire,” says Faro urgently. “Ward off the evil.”

I begin to raise my arms, but it doesn’t feel right. Why am I doing this? I look at Ervys and Faro, who have crossed their own hands. I shake my head, although they can’t see me. “The Kraken,” I say, tasting the ugliness of the word. “Who is the Kraken?”

For a long moment, no one answers. Very slowly the hands uncross, and the Mer settle back as they were before.

“The Kraken lives in the Deep,” says Ervys. “He sleeps, and while he sleeps the Deep does not trouble Ingo. As you know, none of us visits the Deep. None of us has ever seen the Kraken. But we know that he has woken before, in the time of our far ancestors.”

“How long ago?”

“About ten life-spans.”

Ten life-spans… how long would that be? Six hundred years, or maybe seven hundred. But suddenly I realise that I don’t even know how long the Mer live. I’ve been assuming that they live as long as humans, but maybe that’s a mistake. They might live a hundred and fifty years – or fifty.

“What does the Kraken do when he wakes?”

“Don’t you know?” asks Ervys, in a voice that says, Can you really be as stupid and ignorant as that?

“Nuclear warhead,” I say. Ervys stares at me in bewilderment. “Chemical weapons,” I go on.

“Sapphire, what are you saying?” asks Faro.

“Don’t you know?”

There’s a silence, and then Ervys gets the point. Again his face stretches unwillingly into a smile. “The Kraken is a creature of the Deep,” he says.

“A monster?”

“We Mer have never seen the Kraken,” says Ervys carefully, as if even to put the Kraken into words is dangerous.

“But then what – what kind of thing is it?”

And why is it so frightening? I want to ask, but I don’t dare. The atmosphere bristles with terror. The Mer sit as still as if they’ve been carved into their seats.

Faro says, “Some say that the Kraken is like us. That he has Mer blood. But he belongs to the Deep, and the Deep has taken his Mer nature and made a monster of him. No one can look on him, Sapphire. The sight of the Kraken would freeze your blood and make your body as cold as the dead.”

“But if none of the Mer have ever seen the Kraken, how do you know that he’s a monster?”

Ervys puts up his hand to silence Faro, and takes control. “The Kraken was seen once, in the time of our ancestors, when he came up to the borders of the Deep to claim what was his. Our Guardian saw him in a mirror, and since then the Kraken has never even been glimpsed. He cannot endure to be seen. He struck our Guardian with a cold curse that took a hundred moons to heal.”

“Guardian… do you mean Saldowr?”

“Saldowr!” says Ervys, and this time he can’t hide his jealousy and contempt. “I am talking of what happened ten life-spans ago. What was Saldowr then?”

A mutter of protest rises in the back of the chamber. Faro clenches his fists. I know Saldowr could have been there. Ten life-spans might be nothing to Saldowr, just as hundreds of years seem to be nothing to Granny Carne. But Ervys doesn’t want to believe that Saldowr has such power.

How much support has Saldowr got here? No one stands up to challenge Ervys openly. I wish they would. I wish I could. I’m hot with anger inside, but I daren’t let Ervys see it. Not yet. I’m not strong enough, and this is Ervys’s territory. Even Faro says nothing, although his head is thrown back and his eyes blaze through the water.

“But if the Kraken stays in the Deep, and the Mer don’t go there…” I say hesitantly. I can sense the fear but I still don’t understand why it’s so strong.

“You speak from ignorance,” says Ervys.

This is too much. I don’t care if he’s on his own territory. I don’t even care that his arms ripple with muscle and one blow from his tail could kill me. I’m not letting him get away with this.

“So would the Mer speak from ignorance, if they came into the human world,” I answer him. “Even you, Ervys. You asked me to come here. I’ve visited the Deep, which none of you have. If you want my help, why not explain things to me instead of telling me how ignorant I am?”

I’m out of breath by the time I’ve finished, and scared of what I’ve said, but still glad that I said it. I wait for Ervys to explode, but he doesn’t. He looks at me measuringly.

“I see how you were bold enough to go into the Deep,” he says at last. “Listen. There are things we prefer never to speak about, but we must put them in open words now. The Kraken has the power to destroy our world. The thunder of his voice can split the sea bed, release the tides, destroy Ingo, and send flood and terror even into your world. When the Kraken broke the Tide Knot he was barely whispering. We cannot wait for him to roar. He must be calmed. He must be put back to sleep. And there is only one way to do it.”

“What – what way?”

There is silence in the chamber. Even Ervys doesn’t seem to want to answer. A tense silence, crawling with dread.

“Only one thing can send the Kraken back to sleep,” says Faro, in a low, toneless voice. “A boy and a girl must be sacrificed to him. This is what happened in the time of our ancestors.”

A low moan ripples around the ranks of the Mer. I don’t want to believe it. Surely it can’t be true. The Kraken hasn’t woken for hundreds of years; Ervys said so. Stories get distorted. Maybe there was an epidemic of a sickness which killed children, and the Mer believed that they were sacrificed to the Kraken. Dad used to say that’s how all legends start. They have a seed of truth in them, Sapphy, and the seed grows as the story gets passed from mouth to mouth.

For a second the thought of Dad is so strong that it’s like hearing his voice. And then I remember the baby. Dad’s new family. My little half-brother, fast asleep in his cradle of rock, so peaceful and trusting. A Mer baby with a Mer father who’s left the human world. Just as in the old legends…

That legend was real, though, wasn’t it, Dad? It grew and grew until it swallowed you up. Maybe the Kraken is real too. I want to believe that it’s a myth that has grown into a monster because of the dread that the Mer have of the Deep. But perhaps it’s true.

A boy and a girl…

“They are taken to the border of the Deep, to the point where the Mer can go no farther,” says Ervys. The pain and horror in his voice makes me feel a stab of reluctant sympathy for him. “They are left there for the Kraken. This is what happened in the time of our ancestors.”

But how could anyone give their children to a monster?

The thought floods my mind and I don’t know if I’ve said it aloud or not.

“No one loves their children more than we do,” says Ervys, “but unless we sacrifice to the Kraken, then the whole people will die. Not just the Mer, but all who live in Ingo. Unless we can find another way.”

All who live in Ingo… Dad’s face floats in my mind. I scan the ranks of the Mer, searching. Some of them must know Dad. Maybe Mellina’s family are here, too. It gives me the strangest feeling. Do they know if Dad is happy or unhappy here? Would they know if he wanted to leave Ingo and return to the human world? Conor thinks the Mer are keeping Dad here against his will. I want to believe it too, but sometimes it’s hard. If only I could be as sure as Conor that Dad is waiting for us to bring him back to the human world…

Suddenly Ervys’s final words take hold in my mind. Another way. What way does he mean?

“We know from the whales who visit the Deep that the Kraken is growing impatient,” Ervys goes on. “The breaking of the Tide Knot was not enough for him. If we are to put the Kraken back to sleep, it must be done quickly. If we can find another way – if we can avert the sacrifice – then we will do anything.”

“But the Mer can’t visit the Deep. How can you put the Kraken back to sleep if you can’t get near it?”

“We cannot,” says Ervys, with the faintest emphasis on the first word. “But we believe there is another way. Farther back in time, more than fifty life-spans ago, the Kraken woke and ravaged Ingo for more than a year. But the sacrifice was never made. Mab Avalon put the Kraken back to sleep.”

“Who – what was Mab Avalon?”

Ervys shakes his head. “That memory is not clear. He did not belong to us. He came to Ingo and then he departed for his own world.”

“What world was that?”

“After fifty life-spans even we Mer find that memory has dissolved much of what happened.”

Fifty life-spans, I think, trying to work it out in my head. If the Mer live about seventy years, as humans do, then that’s about – about three thousand five hundred years ago.

“Mab Avalon,” I repeat. The name is rich in my mouth. I’m sure I’ve never heard it before, but it has a strange familiarity. “Ervys… did Mab Avalon come from my world? The human world?”

“He survived the Deep. He returned peace to Ingo. He was Mab Avalon,” Ervys intones.

It is so frustrating. I want information, and Ervys just keeps on repeating the same things.

At that moment Karrek swims forward again, plunges to touch the Stone, and comes up to us. This time he faces me and speaks directly to me. “We don’t know what world Mab Avalon came from,” he says, “but he was cleft, like you. Memory tells us that much.”

He gazes into my eyes, his face grave, and then nods and swims back to his place.

Ervys looks thunderous at this interruption, but he quickly covers his anger and takes control again.

“We know that Mab Avalon was able to enter the Deep,” he goes on smoothly, as if Karrek hasn’t spoken. “We know that after a great battle, he subdued the Kraken. At least once in our history the Kraken has been calmed without the loss of our children.”

“You can’t ask her to do that,” breaks out Faro’s voice. And then I understand.

“We are asking,” says Ervys.

They are asking… Yes. All those faces turn to me. They’re still heavy with dread, but now there’s some hope in them too. They’re hoping that Ervys is right and that there’s a chance I can do what they can’t.

Mum always says that people will do anything for their children. They’ll walk over fire for them. But what if walking over fire doesn’t make any difference? What if it’s someone else who can do the only thing that might protect your child?

“But – but I’m a child. I mean, why wouldn’t the Kraken…”

Think I’m the sacrifice, is what I mean, but I can’t get the words out of my mouth. The idea is too horrible to bring into the open. And I’m most certainly not Mab Avalon, I want to add. It sounds like a warrior’s name from an old story. Someone in old-fashioned armour, carrying a sword. Nothing to do with me, Sapphire Trewhella of Trewhella Cottage, Senara Churchtown, West Penwith, Cornwall… Why not add The World, The Universe while you’re at it, I think, and nearly giggle in spite of everything.

The Mer have got completely the wrong idea if they think I’m going home to fetch my trusty sword and whack the Kraken over the head with it.

“You are too old to be a sacrifice,” says Ervys.

A wave of relief washes through me, and then I notice the strained, desperate looks on the faces of the Mer women. Some of them cover their faces with their hands. Maybe they’re the mothers of young children…

Suddenly I’m afraid. Terribly afraid. There are hundreds of the Mer, and I’m alone. And they all want one thing. People will do anything for their children. If I don’t give the Mer what they want – or if I can’t do it – then what will they do?

I have never felt so isolated.

And then I feel an arm around my shoulder. Faro is at my side. He turns and looks into my face as if Ervys and the whole chamber of the Mer don’t matter at all. He speaks as if we’re alone.

“I’ll go with you, Sapphire,” he says.

“Go where?”

Faro looks intently into my face, my eyes. “Into the Deep. We have to stop the Kraken before it grows so strong that nothing can stop it. We’ve got to stop the sacrifice.”

“But you can’t enter the Deep, Faro. You’re Mer.”

Faro tosses back his hair. “I can try.”

He is so brave. He’s already been hurt before, trying to go to the Deep to find me. The Deep nearly crushed him, and yet he’s ready to brave it again. But it won’t work, I know that it won’t work. No one has more courage than Faro, but courage isn’t enough on its own.

All the Mer are looking at me hungrily. Wanting. Needing. I’m being hit by wave after wave of pressure. But they can’t make me do this!

I’ve got to think clearly. Of course. Why didn’t I realise it before? I need Saldowr. And Conor. I’ve got to talk to Conor.

“I must see Saldowr,” I say firmly.

“Saldowr!” Anger leaps into Ervys’s face. Quickly he smoothes out his expression. “But what help can he give? Saldowr is sick and weak.”

Faro makes a quick, outraged gesture at this disrespect towards his teacher. Quite a lot of the Mer don’t look happy about it, either. There are frowns and mutters. I lay my hand on Faro’s arm warningly. Strength is rising in me again, now that I’ve got the beginning of a plan. I don’t trust Ervys. He wants me to help the Mer, but it’s for himself as well. If he can defeat the Kraken by sending him back to sleep without sacrifice, than he’ll be famous in Ingo, and more powerful even than Saldowr, maybe—

“I must see Saldowr,” I repeat, looking Ervys in the eyes. “Faro and I will go. We need to hear his wisdom.”

It’s scary to outface an adult and a leader among the Mer. My voice wants to shake, but I’m not going to let it. I’m not going to let Ervys use me to increase his own power. You want me to help you, I think, you want me to risk my life in the Deep. You think that because I’m a human and a child you can make me part of your plan. But I knew Saldowr long before I met you. If I go to the Deep, it won’t be for you.

Ervys’s brows knit with anger. His tail lashes the water, lightly, like the tail of a lion when it spots an oryx on the plains. He’d like to pounce on me. He’d like to punish me for daring to take Saldowr’s side against his, but he can’t. However much he wants to brush Saldowr aside, Ervys can’t deny me if I say I need to talk to him. The Mer assembled here are afraid and desperate, and they believe that I’m their only chance. If the Kraken really has woken, they’ll do anything to make it sleep again. And besides, they aren’t all on Ervys’s side.

Faro’s eyes glitter. Ervys dared to speak insultingly of Faro’s teacher in front of all the Mer. He’s made an enemy of him now. I know Faro well enough to understand that he’ll do anything to stop Ervys getting what he wants.

“Will you waste our time by consulting a sick healer?” Ervys demands, making his voice ring until the chamber fills with water echoes. “Will you give the Kraken more time to gather its strength?”

His face blazes with conviction. He throws back his shoulders proudly. Some of the Mer are nodding, some even raise their fists in what looks like a salute. But I notice that others look doubtful. Some are even turning away. And there’s Elvira, right at the back of the chamber, her anxious, imploring gaze fixed on us. She’s afraid too. She doesn’t trust Ervys; I know it.

It’s not enough just to stand up to Ervys. I’ll make an enemy of half the Mer gathered here. They’ll believe what he tells them, that I don’t care about saving Ingo from the Kraken. I’ve got to make them understand. Ervys won’t listen, but maybe some of these others will.

I jack-knife into a dive, down to the floor of the chamber, to the Speaking Stone. I touch it. The cool solidity of the stone clears my mind. By the time I’ve swum up to Ervys and Faro again, I know what to say.

“It’s true that I went to the Deep,” I say slowly, talking not to Ervys now but to all the Mer. “And I came back alive. But it wasn’t my own power that did it – at least I don’t think so. The Deep let me – it was the Deep that chose not to destroy me. And then there was a whale…”

My heart lightens at the memory of the whale. She was so huge, like a rough-skinned mountain. So motherly. And she had such a terrible sense of humour. The whale didn’t have to help me, but she did. She brought me back safe from the Deep.

The Mer think it’s just about being able to enter the Deep, but it’s much more than that. You have to be able to find your way, once you’re there.

“So you see I have to talk to Saldowr. I can’t just decide that I’m going to the Deep; I’m sure I can’t. But Saldowr will know what to do; I know he will. And my brother…”

Conor was the only one who could read the writing that healed the Tide Knot. I can’t do all this alone, or even with Faro. I’ve got to have my brother with me.

“My brother will come to Saldowr with me,” I say as firmly as I can. “I must talk to my brother first, and then we’ll go to Saldowr.”

Murmuring fills the chamber. The ranks of Mer sway as if strong currents are pulling them this way and then that. Ervys watches them, his arms folded, his face stormy.

It seems a long time that the argument ebbs and flows without words, and then a Mer woman with long white hair leaves her place and swims forward slowly, dives to the stone and rises to speak. Her face is lined with age. Ervys bows his head a little, in unwilling respect.

“The child is human,” she says. Clearly age doesn’t diminish the Mer habit of stating the obvious. But she has a face I trust. “She is human, but we know by her presence here, by the fact that she can live in Ingo like us and not drown like her human brothers and sisters, that she is also Mer. Her blood is mixed, her fate is mixed, her knowledge is mixed.”

Every time she says the word “mixed” she sounds as if she’s striking stone against stone.

“We see things that are hidden from this child, but she sees what we cannot see. If she says she must go to Saldowr before she can help us, then we must accept her words or risk losing our only hope against the Kraken.”

As soon as she’s finished speaking, the old Mer woman swims slowly back to her place. There’s a ripple of approval. More and more Mer nod their agreement. Suddenly I understand how the Assembly works. They don’t vote, they are like a tide moving. And now the tide is running my way. They’re deciding to believe me.

Ervys knows it too. The tide is too strong for him to swim against it.

“Let her go to Saldowr then,” he says harshly, as if the decision is his. But we all know that it isn’t. The power of the assembled Mer has been stronger than Ervys’s will.

If Faro weren’t in the middle of the Assembly chamber, I know exactly what he’d do. He’d flip into a series of triumphant somersaults, whirling so fast that all I’d see was the gleam of his tail and the cloud of his hair. As it is, he gives me a quick, sparkling glance which says, “We won.”

The decision is made. The waters of the Chamber swirl as the Mer rise from their ranks of seats, and start to swim upwards, towards the roof of the Chamber where light filters down. So that’s the way out. Maybe it leads to the south entrance, the one Faro talked about. He said it was easier than the tunnel route we took. I hope so. The thought of going back through that cramped tunnel makes me shiver. I want to get home. I want to talk to Conor.

The Mer stream past me. Their tails flicker and their hair fans out as they go by. They don’t talk to each other. No one lingers. There’s fear on many faces. They want to get home too, to make sure everyone’s safe: the children, and those who are too sick or weak to make the journey to the Assembly.

It’s the Kraken who puts so much fear on their faces. He’s far away, but he’s everywhere in people’s minds.

I reach out for Faro’s hand. The rush of the Mer swimming past me makes my eyes blur and my head dizzy. So many of them. Young men, old women, groups of Mer who look so alike that they must be brothers or sisters, or cousins. They stream past us. All the faces are tense.

What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t help them? And I’ve got to go to the Deep, where the pressure of the ocean makes you feel as if you’re being crushed as thin as a piece of paper. And there’s no life… only the creatures of the Deep, and I don’t know any of them.

And the Kraken. The Deep is his home. It’s so dark down there that I won’t be able to see him or touch him until I’m—

Don’t think of it. The whale, that’s who I’ve got to think about. The whale who looked like a monster with her sides as tall as a cliff. I was afraid of her, but she helped me.

“Sapphire,” says a voice close to me. A figure pulls away from the flowing current of the Mer and swims to me. Her hair swirls back from her face.

“Elvira, is Mellina here?” My voice comes out harshly. I can’t help it. Why shouldn’t I be angry with the woman who stole my father? I push away the memory of Mellina’s gentle, welcoming smile, when I saw her face in Saldowr’s mirror. Long ago, before the Tide Knot broke and the flood came, and the Kraken stirred in the Deep.

Saldowr, Mellina, my father, the Deep. They’re all connected but I still can’t see how. It’s all happening too quickly. I shake my head to clear my thoughts.

“Mellina,” I repeat. “Is she with you?”

“No.” Elvira hesitates. “Sapphire, I have something to give to you.” She opens her hand. “I carved this. Will you give it to Conor for me?”

It’s coral. It’s a tiny figure, a young Mer man. The body is perfectly carved, but the face has no features. It could be anyone. There is a tiny hole through the tail.

“Take it,” says Elvira. “It’s for Conor.”

I’m not sure I want to touch it.

“It’s a talisman,” Faro murmurs in my ear. “It brings good fortune. Take it, Sapphire.”

I stare at the little coral carving in Elvira’s palm. She smiles at me. “Will you give it to him, Sapphire?”

The carving is so fine. It must have taken hours to make this little figures out of hard coral.

“Please give it to Conor,” says Elvira.

Suddenly the thought crosses my mind that the carving might be a charm, with magic in it to pull Conor to her, the way Mellina drew my father from Air to Ingo. Is it safe to take it? I hesitate again.

“Please, Sapphire. It’s for Conor’s good,” urges Elvira. Can I believe her? But if it’s a talisman, as Faro said, I can’t refuse it. Conor might need it. Good fortune. Something tells me that we’re going to need all the good fortune we can get against the Kraken.

I’ve never even heard of the Kraken before today, but something deep inside me recognised his name with a chill of fear. As if long ago, in another life, someone told me about the Kraken, in the way that human mothers tell stories of giants and ogres and witches…

The difference is that the Kraken is not a creature of myth. The fear in the Chamber is real and solid. The Kraken is awake…

My hand goes out, and takes the talisman.

CHAPTER FIVE

It’s a grey evening, close to darkness, by the time I am out of Ingo. I shiver and stumble as I scramble up the rocks. Faro’s gone, and the rough grey surface of the sea hides everything.

Why didn’t I leave some dry clothes up on the rocks, above the tide line? Because you didn’t know you were going to Ingo, of course, you idiot. And now I’m freezing, shaking and shivering as I climb over the grassy lip of the cliff and start to scramble up the path. Bony fingers of last year’s brambles snatch at my hands. Up the path, up the track. What’s going to happen when I get home? I’ve been gone for hours. I was sitting in the sun when Morlader came to fetch us, and now it’s evening.

I reach our gate, dodge in past the rowan tree and through the door. We never bother to lock the cottage unless we’re going away.

I hope no one saw me running up the track with water dripping off my clothes.

“Conor? Mum? Roger?” I call. But I know they aren’t there. You can always tell if home is empty, because it has a completely different feeling. My voice echoes as if the cottage is a shell. I hurry up to the bathroom, strip off my clothes, find a towel and rub myself all over until my skin tingles. I’ll have to put on some of the hand-me-down clothes I hate wearing. And rinse my wet clothes quickly, to get the salt out of them before they shrink.

Mum mustn’t know. I put on an old pair of jeans that’s slightly too big for me, and a green top that’s about the best of the hand-me-downs. I clatter downstairs with my wet clothes in a bundle, quickly shove them into the washing machine and turn it on to Rinse and Spin.

Conor must still be down at Rainbow and Patrick’s, with Sadie. Mum and Roger have been over at Porthnance for hours. They must be buying up the town. Or maybe they’re just “getting a bit of space”. That’s what Roger says sometimes: Your mum and I need a bit of space. It’s extremely irritating, considering that Conor and I are out of the house most of the day. How much space do they need?

I make a mug of tea and a banana sandwich and carry them to the table. My body is limp with fatigue. It’s not swimming that’s worn me out – I can swim for miles in Ingo and not notice it. It’s the tunnel, and being so afraid, and then the tension of the Assembly and the battle of words and wits with Ervys. At least Faro and I didn’t have to come back through the tunnel. We came back the way the Mer usually go. It takes longer, but it’s much gentler. I couldn’t have faced the tunnel again. It’s easier when you do things innocently, for the first time, before you realise how tough they are.

Oh no, Conor’s carving is still in the zip pocket of my trousers! I punch the washing machine programme button and drag out the clothes. Water flops on to the floor but I don’t care. I unzip the pocket, and there’s the talisman. I lay it carefully on the table while I mop the floor, put the clothes back in the drum and restart the machine.

I sit down again. Under the electric light the carving is more beautiful than ever. I study it dreamily, admiring the strong curves of the Mer tail, the flowing hair, the line of the diving body. I know just how he feels as he plunges through Ingo, swooping through the water like a razor blade through silk. No, not really like a razor blade. Ingo welcomes you, and silk would never welcome the blade that cut it. Sometimes I have a very strange feeling that Ingo longs for me just as much as I long for Ingo. As if we need to be put back together in order to be whole. I must talk to Faro about it…

And then my eyes light on the headline of the newspaper that someone’s spread out on the table.

“New flood defence scheme for St Pirans!” it shouts. As if anything that humans can do would hold back the tides. I pull the paper towards me to read more, and that’s when I realise. It’s the Cornishman. But the Cornishman comes out on Thursdays, and it’s Wednesday today. This must be last week’s paper.

I stare at the date. It’s impossible. I blink, but the figures stay the same. I am looking at a newspaper which comes out tomorrow.

How long have I been gone? I’ve got to speak to Conor. But the flood took his mobile and he hasn’t got enough money yet for a new one. I’ve got to talk to Conor before I speak to Mum, then I’ll know what’s happening. If I’ve really been gone for a day and a half, then Mum will have contacted the police and the coastguard and everyone. But there’s no sign of that. The cottage is undisturbed. I remember what it was like after Dad disappeared, with neighbours and men in uniforms everywhere, and phones ringing.

There’s not even a note for me on the table. Mum would have left a note, surely. She wouldn’t have just thought, Oh well, Sapphy’s been gone for thirty-six hours but no worries, I’ll go and have a bit of space with Roger.

I know for sure that Conor went to Rainbow and Patrick’s. They might know something. There’s a landline number for them somewhere, if their landline is back on yet after the flood…

It is. I find the number in our phone’s memory, and to my relief there’s a normal dialling tone. After six rings, someone picks up.

“Hello?”

It’s Rainbow.

“Rainbow? It’s Sapphy. Is Conor still with you?”

“Oh, hi, Sapphy.” Her voice is relaxed, friendly, unconcerned. “How are you? Are you coming over?”

“Um, no, not just now – listen, Rainbow, can I have a word with Conor if he’s there?”

“Sure, wait a minute, he was here a second ago—”

And I hear Conor’s voice in the background, “Rainbow, can I take the phone in the kitchen?”

The phone is passed over. I hear footsteps and the door shutting. He’s gone into Rainbow and Patrick’s little back kitchen. I hold the phone, listening. Conor doesn’t say anything at all, but I know he’s there because I can hear him breathing.

“It’s me,” I say at last. “Are you all right?”

“Am I all right?” says Conor quietly and furiously. “What do you think, Saph? You’ve been gone since yesterday.”

“I was fine though, Conor, I was in—”

“I know where you were.”

“Conor – Mum, does she know?”

“She’ll be at work now. She thinks you’re here with me. I called her yesterday and said you’d decided to come down to Rainbow and Patrick’s and help out with the cleaning. And then it got late and so we all stayed over. But that’s it, Saph. It’s the last time I lie for you. Next time you can tell your own lies.”

“Conor, I—”

“I don’t want to hear it. Rainbow and Patrick don’t know anything. If they meet Mum, and Mum says something about you being here, they’re going to think we’re both liars. Why don’t you ever think? Why do you just plunge in and do whatever you want?”

I can’t find an answer to this. I look down at the talisman lying on the kitchen table.

“Elvira gave me something for you,” I say quietly. I hear a sharp intake of breath.

“What? What is it?”

“I can’t really describe it. I’ve got to see you, Con.”

Suddenly there’s a flurry of barking in the background. I hear a door burst open, and Rainbow’s voice apologising, “Sorry, Conor, Sadie was desperate to get to you. I couldn’t hold her back.”

The barking grows louder and louder.

“Steady, girl, it’s all right, I haven’t gone away – get down, you crazy dog – Sadie!”

“Let me talk to her, Conor.”

“She knows I’m talking to you, that’s why she’s going nuts. Here, Sadie.”

A volley of barks hits the phone. I hold it away from my ear, then when Sadie calms down I say, “It’s all right, Sadie girl, I’m here. I’m back. I’m coming to fetch you.”

She understands, I know she does. She whines, deep in her throat, with a mixture of pleading and relief in her voice.

“Conor? Conor, listen, I’m coming down now. I’ll ride your old bike. I’ve got to talk to you.”

“It’d better be good, Saph,” says Conor grimly, “and for God’s sake don’t forget the bike lights.”

I nearly make the mistake of leaving a note for Mum to tell her where I’ve gone. But just in time, I remember that I’m supposed to have been there all the time. But my clothes are in the washing machine! Mum is bound to notice that. She’ll know I was here in the cottage, and not in St Pirans all the time…

I’ve got to think. Mum’s at work, Roger’s off somewhere – I’ve got to make it look as if I never came back to the cottage at all. I check the bathroom, then drink the cold mug of tea, finish the banana sandwich, wash up the evidence carefully and put away the mug and plate. By this time, the washing machine’s programme is almost finished. I wait impatiently while it chunters through an endless slow spin. At last the red light switches off and I can open the door. I stuff the clothes into a plastic bag and hide them in the garden, under a gooseberry bush, in case Mum checks my room. I’ll put them out on the line tomorrow.

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