The Seventh Tide (20 page)

‘Something for the Old Woman.’ The one she’d called Moira spoke for the first time.

The new girl looked closer.

‘Goodness –
more!
’

‘What do you mean, more?’ asked Eo, thrashing frantically to get the new arrival into view. ‘Has anyone else been found? A girl? Is she all right?’

‘Yes… how did you know? They’re bringing her to the Lady now. She got bashed up a bit in the water and she hit her head on the rocks, but –’ she’d leaned over to talk to him, so Eo could see her, but now she reared back in sudden suspicion – ‘unless it was
you –
did
you
bash her?!’

Eo and Adom stared.

‘What are you
talking
about?’

But the girl had turned her back on them and was speaking to Moira in a low, urgent voice.

‘Cait’s bringing her past here on the way to the cliff path. We thought the Lady would be at the garden, so this was the quickest route – but if these are the ones that hurt her… They cut off all her hair, the pigs…’

‘Best get them out of sight, then. Here, give me a hand.’

Making no attempt to be gentle, Moira started to extract Adom and Eo from the netting.

‘Hey!’

‘Oww!’

‘That
hurt
!’

Suddenly the shingle beach seemed full of women and girls, though there were probably no more than a dozen of them. But there was enough ill-will towards Eo and Adom to be coming from twice that number.

‘Look what Moira’s found –’

‘They’re for the Leap –’

‘– and I’ll push!’

‘Let me get my hands on them!’

Someone dragged Eo’s bag off his shoulder and began loosening the ties. The boys’ handling was getting rougher by the minute. Still half-entangled in the net, they could barely defend themselves.

It wasn’t clear what had sparked the crowd’s fury, or how far they might go in expressing it. But then, before things could get any uglier, a voice the boys knew rose over the babble.

‘Stop that! – Put me down – Stop hurting them – I said STOP!
They’re with me
!’

‘Jay!’ yelled Eo and Adom, in the sudden silence.

And there she was, looking, well,
awful.
Her skin was
scraped and bruised. One side of her face was a mask of blood and her hair was caked with it. She was being carried in the arms of a phenomenally large and powerful-looking woman, as if she were no more than a baby.

‘Please put me down, Cait,’ Jay said to her again.

‘All right, dearie,’ Cait said. ‘But only for a moment. The Lady needs to see that head of yours, and sooner rather than later.’ She seemed unfazed by the furore around her and gently set Jay on to her feet, steadying her with one large hand.

The rest of the gathering was not so calm. A crowd of incredulous faces turned to Jay.

‘You brought them
with
you?!’ someone exclaimed. ‘To the Island of Women?!’

‘Yes – yes, I brought them with me.’
What is going
on
here
? she thought to herself. She tried to lighten the mood. ‘You know how boys are – I could hardly leave them wandering about by themselves, now, could I?!’

Usually appealing to the Girl Mafia helped, but this time it had no effect whatsoever. The women and girls continued to stare at her as if she’d just crawled out from under a rock.

Jay was drawing breath to try again, when the woman who’d taken Eo’s bag screamed loudly and dropped it.

‘It moved!’ she gasped. ‘It’s alive!’

Before anyone could respond, Hurple squeezed himself out of the top of the bag like some peculiarly furry toothpaste out of a tube.

Ah!’ he said brightly. ‘Greetings, my good women –and
what
did you say the name of this place was?’

Jay closed her eyes and groaned quietly to herself.

Now
what… Screaming? Fainting? Getting the stakes out to burn us? Oh, please – not Hurple the god again…

The reaction he actually got was not at all what she’d expected.

A chorus of voices broke out.

‘Oh
no –
not
another
one!’

‘Oddy’s bad enough –’

‘How can you say that?! Oddy’s lovely!’

‘Is someone talking about
me
!?’

Jay opened her eyes and looked round just in time to see a large brown dog with a plumy tail bound on to the scene, bounce up to her and stand on her feet. ‘Hello – you smell new – crikey –’ its voice suddenly dropped down into a growl, as it swerved wildly sideways – ‘those ones are
men
!’

‘And they’ve got a talking animal with them – what do you think of
that
, then!’ It was Moira. It appeared she liked this dog as little as she liked the boys.

The dog snuffled violently, without taking his eyes off Eo and Adom.

‘I expect the Lady would like a new pet, don’t you think?’ Moira continued. ‘She’s probably tired of you after all this time.’

The girl who had spoken up for him before threw herself down on the shingle and hugged him.

‘Don’t listen to them, Oddy – we all know it’s
you
the Lady loves best.’

The dog turned his head just enough to give her face a swipe with his tongue, his eyes swivelling wildly to keep the boys in view.

‘Don’t fear, females,’ he said. ‘Odysseus will protect you. If you could all just back away quietly, I will be able to rip their throats out more conveniently.’

He had a peculiarly clipped voice, as if each word was being bitten off from the next. This – and the fact that the dog was talking at
all –
distracted Eo and the others for a moment from what he’d just said. Then it sunk in.

‘Wha-?!’

‘Hey!’

‘Now, just a
minute
!

Then Hurple lolloped up to him and, despite being smaller than anyone in the place, effortlessly become the centre of everyone’s attention.

‘Odysseus
,’ he practically purred. ‘Now
there’s
a name to conjure with! And I’d really like to say, you know, that that was a fabulously convincing display of ferocity just now. Produced a definite frisson among the troops, I can tell you! I’m Pinkerton Hurple, by the way. Perhaps we might step aside for a moment and give the bipeds a bit more time to get acquainted – and we can have a
proper
chat…’

Looking as utterly gobsmacked as only a dog can, Odysseus disentangled himself from the kneeling girl and trotted after Hurple. As the ferret passed Jay, he looked up at her, eyes twinkling, and said in a loud stage whisper, ‘What a
handsome
animal!’ The dog’s trot took on a new bounce and the plumes of his tail waved complacently.

Jay and the kneeling girl exchanged glances.

‘He’s very vain,’ the girl said apologetically.

‘It’s a boy thing,’ replied Jay with a shrug.

Without warning, the world started to go fuzzy, and immediately Cait was there to steady her.

‘Time to go,’ the big woman said, but Jay grabbed
her sleeve and pleaded. ‘No – I’m fine – I’m just…
confused!
I don’t understand why you’re all so mad at Adom and Eo. I don’t understand where we are, or when –’

And who is the Lady?’ put in Eo.

‘Is she the Old Woman you spoke of?’ said Adom innocently.

Mouths dropped open.

‘Is it
possible
they don’t know?’ someone murmured.

‘Don’t be stupid –
everyone
knows about the Island of Women.’

‘Maybe they’re all, you know,
simple
?

‘Look,
I
don’t know and I don’t care,’ interrupted Moira. ‘If I had my way, they’d be straight for the Leap, but it’s not
my
island. I say we let the Lady deal with them – What are
you
sighing about, Jeannie?’

‘Nothing… it just seems a shame, that’s all. That one’s so
pretty…
such
beautiful
hair – don’t you just wish –’

‘Don’t you let the Lady hear you talking like that!’

‘It just seems a waste, that’s all,’ Jeannie insisted.

‘Oh, do shut up!’ was the general chorus.

Then Moira took charge.

‘Right… Cait, you take the girl to the garden. Janet and Una, you keep an eye on
those two –
’ it was amazing how much venom she got into her voice – ‘and the rest of you, GET BACK TO WORK!’

‘But… what are
we
supposed to do with them?’ whined Janet. ‘We’ve got an entire flock back at the cave to check over and dip today – we can’t just sit around here,
watching
!

I
could,’ murmured Jeannie, but everyone ignored her.

‘Take them along and put them in the holding pen in the cave, then –just get
on
with it.’

‘But why can’t they come with me?’ asked Jay.

There was another of those appalled pauses.

‘Take
men
to the
sacred garden?!’

Suddenly she felt too tired to argue any more.

‘Jay you look awful. Go and get that head seen to,’ said Adom. He sounded concerned. ‘Don’t worry about all this – we’ll be fine.’

‘Yeah, and if you can find out anything useful, maybe get some help for you-know-what, that’d be good too. And meantime, I promise we won’t do any, um, leaping, before you get back, so you won’t miss a thing,’ said Eo, striking a silly, one-legged pose for her, until Janet gave him a shove towards the cave path.

‘Oddy you’re with me,’ Cait called as she scooped Jay up again.

‘Hurple?’ Jay quavered.

The ferret waved a reassuring paw. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after them!’ he called, lolloping after the boys.

Jay sighed. She’d been hoping he would come and look after
her…

There were five or six women in the group heading for the sheep cave, ranging in age from not much more than a child to one who looked like somebody’s grandmother. Eo tried to get the old one to smile at him, without success.

‘What did the dog tell you?’ Adom spoke quietly to Hurple, who was once more on Eo’s shoulder.

‘Well,’ the Professor began, ‘I found out we’re on the Island of Women, which is called that because only
humans of the female persuasion are allowed to live here. Not only are men not popular here, they tend to be sacrificed upon arrival –’

‘Tell your pet to shut up!’ snarled Una threateningly.

‘Look!’ Eo was definitely starting to lose patience. ‘I keep telling you – we’re
strangersl
We don’t
know
about an Island of Women! And what’s “the Leap” you keep going on about?’

‘If you don’t know already you’ll find out soon enough,’ said Janet, but the old woman decided to fill them in. She dropped back alongside the boys and grinned up at them disconcertingly. Eo had never seen anyone who wasn’t a baby with so few teeth before.

‘You want to know about the Leap?’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you. It’s a finger of rock which reaches out from the cliff-side way, way up there.’ She pointed back in the direction they had come. ‘Near the Lady’s shrine. Handy, like. And don’t worry – there’s no hard work involved for you. Oh no. Two, maybe three strides is all you’ll have to take, and then, nothing but thin air until you hit the water.’ She chomped her gums together enthusiastically. ‘Sometimes the bodies wash back on to the shore. But mostly, the Old Woman is hungry…’

‘The Old Woman?’

‘Corrievrechan. The whirlpool. When she’s hungry, you can hear her voice for leagues.’

‘Some people call her the Sea Hag,’ another woman joined in.

‘Some people call her the Swallow of the Sea,’ said another.

But the oldest woman had the last word. ‘We call her… retribution,’ she said.

‘You make them do
what
! Jay couldn’t believe what Cait was telling her.

The big woman shrugged. ‘It’s a clean death,’ she said.

‘Please, Cait. I really need you to explain
all
of this to me. Slowly. From the beginning.’

At first Jay had been all tensed up, trying to weigh as little as possible. It soon became clear, though, that carrying her was not taxing the big woman at all. The dog had peeled off almost at once, following his nose roughly in the same direction as they were going but covering at least twice as much ground. They were free to talk in private.

‘Tell me how all this began,’Jay said.

‘Well,’ said Cait, resettling Jay in her arms, ‘not so very long ago there was nothing here. Nobody lived on the island then. When a girl was in trouble in those days, there was no place for her to go for help. There was only the Old Woman.’

‘The Old Woman?’

Jay could feel a shudder run through Cait.

‘The whirlpool. Out there in the strait. Most of the time there’s nothing to see, but sometimes, when she’s hungry, the surface of the water begins to eddy and judder and surge, like a pot coming to the boil. Then, from deep, deep below, the whirlpool begins to form and it’s like a great throat that wants to suck you down, and it roars and groans and… And that’s where we’re sent.’

‘Why?’ breathed Jay. ‘Why are you sent?’

Cait’s voice was cold and flat. ‘You can marry the man your father chooses, or you can go to the Old Woman. You can take another beating, or go to the Old Woman. You can be born a boy and be well valued, or be born a girl –
another
girl – and be sent to the Old Woman in a basket. Or if you get pregnant when you shouldn’t… The Old Woman tidies us all away. Some of the men think she’s less likely to take their boats if she’s fed regularly with the cast-offs, so it’s good news for them when another unwanted girl comes available.’

‘But, Cait, that doesn’t make sense… how could they possibly not want
you
?! You’re lovely, and you’re also stronger than any man I ever met!’

‘And you expect them to
like
that?’ There was a look on her face that Jay couldn’t read. It made her feel inexperienced and too young. Much too young.

‘Anyway then the Lady came. No one knows how or why. But somehow, the word got out that if only you made it this far, to the island, there was someone here who was on our side. You couldn’t believe it could
possibly
be true, but then you’d get here, and the Lady would look at you, and you knew you were
safe.
She’s so wonderful, Jay, you’ll see! She heals us, and finds out what we’re good at, and sets us doing it. We’ve practically a village on the east side, and some boats for fishing from, and some fields and some flocks. I’ll show you it all – you’ll like it here!’