Stormswept (10 page)

“Let’s just climb down the rock,” suggests Jenna.

“No! You can’t do that! It’ll look so weird, us being up here. He’ll ask what we’re doing.”

“It’ll look even more weird if he sees us trying to hide from him.”

I’m watching Shadow. He knows we’re here. For a dog like Shadow, not being able to chase a scent must be like having a delicious dinner waved in front of your face, and then snatched away. His whole body trembles with the torture of it, but Jon whistles again, long and loud and impatient this time. Slowly, reluctantly, Shadow gives up and trails back in Jon’s direction. Once he turns and gazes at our rock with such obvious longing that I’m amazed Jon doesn’t notice. But then he’s used to Shadow, who hunts not only every rabbit but also every dead gull, rotting crab and washed-up jellyfish on the Island.

They are going. Shadow is at Jon’s side now, and in a few minutes they have disappeared behind the rocks at the other end of the bay.

“I didn’t know he brought Shadow down here,” says Jenna.

“Well, who knows anything about Jon Kemp? He’s such a loner.”

We turn back to the pool. Malin is at the bottom of the pool, curled up, his hair hiding his face.

“We should leave him to rest,” says Jenna.

Yes, because you don’t want to be here
, I think.
You want to go home and do other stuff, and maybe he’ll have mysteriously disappeared by the time we next come to see him
.

I have a gnawing feeling that we’re not doing enough for Malin. What if he doesn’t get better? We’re talking, but we’re not communicating. He probably doesn’t trust us, and why should he? He is trapped here. I’m still haunted by my dream. What if it happens like that in real life?

“We’ve got to get back,” says Jenna.

“You go. I’ll stay a bit.”

“No, Mor, you come back too.”

“Tell Mum I’ve gone round to Mrs Bassett’s.”

Mrs Bassett used to be our neighbour, but now she lives at her daughter’s, because she can’t do cooking and stuff any more. Her daughter’s really nice and Mrs Bassett has the biggest room on the ground floor, but she hates not having her independence. She likes me; she always has. She likes me more than Jenna, which is pretty surprising. We have cups of tea in her room.

“But that’s a lie,” says Jenna.

“I’ll call in at Mrs Bassett’s later if it makes you happy. I was going to see her today anyway.”

Jenna sighs. “Oh, all right. But why do you want to stay here anyway? He’s asleep.”

“I won’t be long.”

I lean over the edge of the rock, watching Jenna’s shape grow small as she jogs down the beach. When she reaches the path which goes over the dunes, she stops, turns, and looks back at me.

She’s worried. She still doesn’t want to leave me. She’s afraid something might happen, but she doesn’t know what. I wave at her encouragingly and after a moment she turns away. She’s gone.

I make my way round the pool to our ledge. The surface of the water is flat as milk. Under there, somewhere, Malin is sleeping. But I can’t see him from here. I lean forward, peering down—

And almost fall in the water as it erupts in a thrash of foam. I jump backwards, lose my balance, and bang my elbow against the rock so hard that tears spring to my eyes. Malin rears out of the water, shoulders and chest streaming water, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a snarl.

“Malin!”

His face changes. He sinks down until only his head is above the surface.

“Morveren.”

“Who did you think it was?”

“A stranger. I thought you had gone.”

But the effort has been too much for him. His face is grey. He starts to choke as if the air is drowning him. He falls back, and the water covers him as he goes down and down, into the depth of the pool.

I think he’s dying. The shock and the effort of bursting out of the water like that has killed him. It’s my fault. What am I doing? I should have got help for him, not messed around like this. But it’s too late for that now.

I pull off my jeans and top, take a deep breath and jump into the pool.

y eyes search the shadows. This is my nightmare, but now it’s happening in real life. There’s Malin, lying with his face to the rock, limp. I plunge down to him. Slowly he rolls in the water, the way a tangle of seaweed rolls on the swell.

“Malin! Malin!” I hear my own voice, loud and desperate. But I’m underwater – I must be hearing my own thoughts. “Malin, please say something!” The wound on his tail gapes. There’s blood in the water, like smoke. Maybe it started bleeding again when he hurled himself up through the surface to face me when he thought I was an enemy.

“Morveren.”

I’m hearing things. That can’t have been Malin’s voice against my ear. People can’t talk underwater. “I’m here, Malin. I want to help you. Tell me what to do.”

“Get me live water, from the sea. This is salt but it is dead. I need live water to heal this wound.”

Questions flood my mind but there’s no time for them. “I’ll do it,” I tell him. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Wait for me…”

Please, please don’t die before I get back
, I think. It’s horrible to leave him alone, but I can’t hold my breath any longer. I push off the bottom of the pool and shoot upwards, break the skin of the water, and take a deep, sweet lungful of air. The cold hits me as I haul myself on to the ledge. I shake the water off me, scramble over the sharp edge of the pool and climb down the rocks. The beach is empty. No one to see a freezing-cold crazy girl in a wet T-shirt, running up and down the tide-line.

Usually I hate the jumble of rubbish that gets washed up after a storm, but today I rush to every piece of plastic that shows through the tangle of wrack and driftwood. A deflated football, chunks of polystyrene, a child’s trainer with its sole torn off – even an orange plastic milk-crate – but nothing that will hold water. I pick up heaps of seaweed and turn them over. Nothing. I stare down the beach, shading my eyes, and catch a flash of blue. There’s something wedged down by the rocks at the sea’s edge. I take off, running, praying that it’s not some useless piece of tat.

It’s a child’s bucket, a big one. The handle’s gone, but that doesn’t matter. I shake out the sand, and the dead crab that has got into the bottom of it, then paddle into the sea where I dip the bucket and scour it with sand until all the crab smell has gone.

Live water
… I dip the bucket deep, where the small waves are breaking, and fill it to the brim, then walk carefully back to the rocks that hide King Ragworm Pool. It’s hard to climb back up without spilling the water. It slops over and I lose a few centimetres from the top, but surely there’s enough left. It smells clean and salty. I hope that Malin will think this water is live enough for him.

There he is, floating not far below the surface, his face hidden by a swirl of hair. My fear lifts. There’s something in the way he floats rather than hangs in the water that tells me instantly that he’s alive. I place the water on the rock, test it to be sure it’s secure, and then wave my arms widely. Malin will see the movement.

He does. There’s a flicker of life all down his body, and then, very slowly, he sculls his way across the pool to me.

“I found this bucket! It’s got live water in it,” I say, as soon as his mouth breaks the surface. He watches me, his dark eyes hiding any expression from me. I lift the bucket to show him, but still he doesn’t respond. I’m disappointed and then angry with myself for being disappointed. You idiot, Morveren, what did you expect? A great big thank you?
Wow, it’s really great to see you! You’re amazing! By the way I’m on the point of death
…

“Shall I pour the water over you?” But already, he’s sinking. I realise he hasn’t got the strength to stay above the surface. It’s probably as big an effort for him as it would be for me to go diving if I were really badly injured.

“It’s OK, I’ll come to you.”

I leave the bucket of water safely balanced on the ledge immediately above the pool, and slip into the icy embrace of the pool. It takes my breath away. Even my teeth are aching with cold now.
Don’t be so pathetic. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not hurt. You should have brought your wetsuit.

I push my hair out of my eyes and tread water while I try to work out how to do this. If Malin comes close – if he can just raise himself up for a second – and then I reach up for the bucket… Yes, that should work.

I scull myself downwards. Malin’s face is turned away from me, so I swim round him. His eyes are half-shut, as if he’s dropped off to sleep. He mustn’t do that. It’s like when people get lost in a snowstorm and lie down, and think the snow is as warm as their bed.

“Malin.”

He makes a small, protesting sound.

“You have to come up to the surface. I’ve got the live water.”

“Let me sleep.”

“No!” My nails are digging into his arm. “You’re not going to sleep! You won’t wake up if you do. Malin!
Malin!”

“What – do – you – know?” he says slowly, his voice blurred.

What do I know? I know that I’m so freezing cold that my brain hurts. I know that I’ve got the live water and he won’t even look at it. I know that he is the most annoying, frustrating Mer person I have ever met. “You won’t even try!” I shout furiously. “All right, die then if you want to! Rot in this pool! Do you know what – you’re pathetic! You’re too scared to even put your head above the water.”

His eyes snap open. Even through the water I can see a flush of rage mount into his face.

“You think that?”

“Yes, I do think that! I’m trying to help you, I’m doing everything I can, and all you do is lie there like a – like a crocodile!”

“Crocodile!” he repeats, as if it’s a deadly insult. He sweeps the water aside with one powerful stroke of his arms, and swims upwards until his head breaks the surface. I follow him, and take in a long breath of air. But how weird – I wasn’t desperate to breathe this time. My lungs didn’t even feel tight. Of course we can’t really have been talking down there in the depths of the pool. I can’t have been shouting at Malin through a mouthful of salt water. It was just a very fast kind of thinking, like I do with Jenna sometimes—

No time to think about that. I tread water as hard as I can, and lunge upwards to reach the pail. I grab it between my two hands. It’s so heavy that it almost pulls me under.

“Here – live… water…” I pant, and just before the bucket sinks me I reach over and tip it over Malin’s face and his thick, tangled hair. It flows down like a waterfall, and keeps on pouring in a broad, clear, brilliantly vivid stream, as if the child’s bucket were as big as a barrel. Now I understand what Malin means by live water. As it goes down into the pool it shines like mercury in the dark. The live water wraps itself around Malin’s body, and clings to his tail, where the wound is. Malin looks as if he’s bathed in silver, and as I watch, the bleeding stops. The wound is changing. Very slowly, from the depths of the gash, the tissue begins to come together.

It’s not magic. It can’t be. It’s just the very start of healing, sped up somehow so that I can see it. He’s still badly injured but for the first time, I believe that Malin will survive.

I hold the bucket high. It’s lighter now but still not empty. Water keeps flooding over Malin’s face and down over his chest and tail. Malin has his head thrown back, and his eyes closed, the way someone will close their eyes with pleasure under a hot shower. How can all this water be coming from a child’s bucket, I wonder dreamily, but I don’t try to work it out. As long as the live water flows, then Malin will be safe. It’s not just silver, there are all kinds of colours in it. I fumble for the right word in my mind and then it comes to me:
iridescent.
I can’t tell if it’s really colour, or light. After a long while Malin opens his eyes, and looks straight into mine. For the first time, he smiles.

“Morveren,” he says. “Let me pour the live water over you now.”

Questions jump to my lips, but I don’t ask them. Instead, I watch as he takes the bucket from my hands, and raises it high above my head. I close my eyes as the water floods down.

It prickles like electricity. It rushes over me and fills my eyes with sparks of light and my ears with bright, tingling sounds. I want to taste it too. I open my mouth wide and the water gushes in.