The Tide Knot (20 page)

  “The point is that your father listened.”

  “He should never have listened,” says Conor. “He had no right. He was married to Mum.”

  “I cannot talk to you in this way about the forces that drive men and women,” says Saldowr sternly. “
Should, would,
could, might, ought.
Those are human words, and even in our common language they mean nothing. We must live with what
is
, not what
might
have been or what
should
be. You saw the child. He has been born. He cannot be unborn again to suit your desires.”

  “So you’re saying that our father can never return to us,” says Conor slowly.

  “I am not saying that. I am only showing you what
is
.” Conor draws himself up and says with sudden dignity,

  “Thank you for showing us what you showed us. We have no more questions.”

  I look at him with admiration. I’d been on the point of babbling out hundreds of desperate questions about Dad, about the Mer woman, and about that little baby with the pearly tail who is—

  Our half brother. That’s the right word for him. But I’ve only got one brother, and that’s Conor. And I don’t want another.

  Our half brother, and Faro and Elvira’s cousin. The Mer baby’s mother is their aunt. His father is our father. It’s all so bewildering and strange that it makes me feel dizzy.

  Conor’s right. We need to go away and talk in private. It’s no good looking to Saldowr to solve the problem for us.

  Saldowr is also looking at Conor, measuring what he’s said. Finally he bows his head in agreement. “As you wish,” he says. “But there is another reason for your being here, I think.”

  “No. There’s no other reason.”

  “Go with your sister now. Comfort each other, but then return to me. There is another subject on which I must speak to you.”

  “Don’t you think we’ve had enough?” asks Conor savagely. “What else can there be?”

  “It is a matter of the gravest urgency. Compared with it, what you saw in the mirror will lose its power to wound you.  

  Each of us will die one day, and our loves and sorrows will die with us.” Saldowr shrugs. “Our troubles are not as important as we think.
We
are not as important as we think.”

  “So I see,” says Conor. There is a bite in his voice I’ve never heard before. “Now that I’ve looked into your mirror, I see that I’m much less important to my father than I thought I was.”

  “I shall speak to you again later. This is not the time; you cannot hear me,” says Saldowr. “Rest now. Talk to each other.”

  His cloak swirls around him as he reenters his cave.  

  We sit together in silence, side by side. It’s comforting just to be near Conor. We understand each other’s feelings without having to speak. I have a confused hope that somehow Conor will know what we should do now. But he broods in silence, fists clenched on his knees, head down.

  At last he says, “I suppose you saw the same as I did.”

  “Yes.”

  “What a couple of idiots we were. Plunging into Ingo, believing Dad needed us. Thinking we were on some kind of rescue mission. I bet Dad had a good laugh.” His voice is so bitter that I exclaim in protest, “No, Conor!

  Dad’s not like that. He
did
need us. He came to find me because he was unhappy. He does still want us; I know he does.”  

  “He didn’t want us enough, did he? He wants
her
more.

  And the—the—”

  “The baby.”

  “The
Mer
baby, you mean.”

  “He’s our
brother
, Con.”

  “He’s no brother of mine. He’s one of
them,
Sapphire.

  He’s got a tail, for God’s sake.”

  “He’s our half brother then.”

  Conor shrugs angrily. I don’t want to make things worse, but there’s something I’ve got to say. “He’s Elvira’s cousin too. And Faro’s cousin.”

  Conor’s eyes flash with anger. “And they never said a word to us. Not one word,” he says.

  “Maybe—maybe they wanted to, but they couldn’t. Maybe Saldowr had forbidden it.”

  “Elvira never even tried.”

  “But couldn’t it be why they came to find us in the first place, last summer? Because we’re linked, through our blood. Faro has saved us twice now, Conor. He saved you last summer when the guardian seals attacked Roger. And just now he brought you safely here. He even tried to dive into the Deep to rescue me. Why would he do all that if he wasn’t—wasn’t part of us somehow?”

  Conor puts his head in his hands. “I don’t want to think about Faro and Elvira anymore, Saph. It’s too much.” But I can’t stop thinking about the baby. His soft, feathery hair. His plump little fists curled up by the side of his head as he slept. His tail. Yes, his tail. It wasn’t horrific. It wasn’t shocking. It was part of him. It would have looked strange if he
hadn’t
had a tail. If he’d been
cleft
. My baby brother, and I don’t even know his name.

  “It’s Mum I’m thinking about,” Conor continues, looking up again. “What’s it going to be like for her when she knows?” I am shocked at myself. I haven’t thought of Mum at all . I can’t believe I could be so selfish. But when I’m in Ingo, Mum is never quite real. She is like a frozen image of herself that can’t speak or move until I come home again.

  “Oh, yes, Mum,” I say feebly, trying to pretend that I’ve been thinking about her too.

  “It will be terrible for her,” says Conor with absolute conviction. It’s clear that Mum isn’t a frozen image to him but just as real as if she were standing next to us.

  “But does Mum have to know?”

  “
Saph.
You can’t be serious. Of course Mum’s got to know what’s happened. Dad’s not only left her but completely betrayed her. She deserves the truth.”

  “Mum’s got Roger.”

  “Mum would never even have looked at Roger if Dad hadn’t disappeared.”  

  I say nothing. I know that Conor’s right in a way. Dad’s entirely to blame, and we ought to hate him and support Mum. But I can’t do it. I can’t make it as simple as that.

  Good and bad. Black and white. Air and Mer. I belong to both sides, and it’s like standing on an ice floe that has cracked apart. One foot on one bank of ice, one on the other. I’ve got to choose and leap for safety, or else fall into freezing water. But I can’t choose. I don’t know how to.

  Maybe
I’m
a betrayer too. Like Dad.

  “Cheer up, Saph,” says Conor suddenly, surprisingly. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “What?”

  “This is
not
going to wreck our lives. I’m not going to let it.

  Listen, I’ll tell  you what I’m going to do. I’m going back home.

  I’m going to take care of Mum whatever happens and make sure Roger treats her right. I think he will anyway; he’s a good bloke. And I’ll tell  you something, Saph: I’m never coming here again.
Ingo.
” He spits the word out with disgust. “All they do is lie to you. I thought Elvira was my friend, and all the time she knew…”

  I nod as if I’m agreeing with Conor, but inside myself I am not so sure. The little Mer baby is my brother. All right, my half brother, but still my brother. My brother in Ingo. And there’s Faro and Saldowr and the whale and the dolphins and everyone else I’ve met in Ingo. Even Elvira. But this isn’t the right time to explain how I feel to Conor.

  “Elvira does like you,” I say instead.

  “She has a strange way of showing it.”  

  “All the same, she does.”  

  We don’t talk anymore after that. We know Saldowr’s going to come back soon, and in a way we’re glad to escape from what the mirror has shown us and concentrate on what Saldowr said.
A matter of the gravest urgency.
Saldowr is not the kind of person you doubt. There is a force in him that is invisible but real, like electricity. As he comes toward us, we both look at him eagerly.

  “A true answer cuts to the heart,” says Saldowr again as he reaches us, “but I see that your hearts are strong and capable of healing.”

  “If we want them to,” retorts Conor.

  “Just as you say. No one would wish to heal you against your will . But we must leave all that aside for now and return to the matter I spoke of earlier. Have you not yet noticed the change in the tides?”

  “Tides?” The change of subject is so complete that we just stare at him.

  “Yes. There have been changes. You are creatures of Air and Earth; you must chart the progress of the tides on your shores. We know that you measure them. You make tide tables?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” I say, bewildered. “I mean, I don’t make them myself—”

  “Are you talking about the way the tide came in when the dolphin was stranded?” asks Conor. “No one had ever seen it rise so fast.”

  Saldowr nods. “That is part of it. You did service to Ingo that night, and it won’t be forgotten. But the change in the tides lies deeper than that. Too deep. We fear that the tides wish to reach beyond themselves. They struggle to release themselves from the knot that binds them. We mark it; we study it; we know it; we fear it.

  “We fear the meaning of it. That is, those of us who are wise. There are enough hotheads in Ingo who welcome such changes. They rejoice when they hear rumors that the Tide Knot is loosening. Ingo will gain, they say. Ingo’s strength will flow with the tides, and its power will surge to a height that has not been known since the days of our ancestors. They would like to see your world drowned where its borders fight with ours. But wisdom observes that if the balance is disturbed in one quarter, it will also be disturbed in another.

  If a balance tips too far one way, it must right itself. And it may right itself with violence. I have great fears. You might say,” Saldowr goes on, smiling wryly, “that my fear has grown to match my wisdom. For I study the Tide Knot, and each day my fears increase.”

  “What is the Tide Knot?”

  “Come with me.”

  Saldowr leads us through the thickness of the Groves toward the mouth of the cave Conor told me we could not enter. We halt outside again. Saldowr dives to the seabed, and sand swirls around him, clouding the water. He appears to be struggling with something heavy that resists him. His cloak is thrown back; the muscles on his arms and shoulders bulge with the strain. The sand clears, and we see that he’s lifting a heavy stone from the seabed, a smooth black stone that looks as if it’s been polished by thousands of years of water washing over it.

  “It’s a keystone,” whispers Conor.

  He is right. As Saldowr raises the keystone, the smooth and solid rock begins to move. A tiny crack appears, a zigzag of bluish light. Saldowr places the keystone in a basin of rock and swims back toward us. He puts a hand on each of our shoulders. “Watch,” he says.

  The rock continues to separate. Through the gently swirling sand we see a circle opening in the rock. At first, the circle is small , about the size of a plum. It continues to widen. It’s the size of an apple, then a watermelon; suddenly the circle is so big that I could not put my arms around it.

  “Not too close,” warns Saldowr, his grip on my shoulder tightening. I’ve taken a step forward without realizing it. “It is still opening.”

  We can see into the opening now. It’s lit from within by a deep blue, restless, roiling light. A pang of terror shoots through me. All the stories I’ve ever heard about monsters of the Deep flood into my mind. This hole in the rock might hide an octopus with tentacles long enough to reach out and snatch us into its depth.

  The rock stops moving.

  “The Tide Mouth is open,” says Saldowr. “Come a little way forward. Look within.”

  There are no monsters, no sea snake or octopus or giant crab. What we see is more like a jewel. The Tide Mouth holds a knot of water made up of hundreds and hundreds of strands tightly coiled together. The knot itself is twisted so intricately, it looks as if the coils could never escape. Instead they twist over and over one another. They pour themselves into patterns that only settle for a second before they spring apart. And then another pattern forms, and another. I wonder how many patterns there are.

  “As many as the grains of sand on the seabed,” says Saldowr. “But you must not watch them too long. Even I have been caught by the beauty of their coils and have only just managed to tear myself away in time.”

  I blink and look away. The coils of the knot twist in my mind, sinuous and powerful as snakes.

  “This is the Tide Knot,” says Saldowr. “It holds the tides and shows them the pattern they must follow.”

  “I thought that the tides followed the moon,” says Conor.

  “Yes,” I say, remembering. “The tides are the moon talking to Ingo. Faro said that.”

  Saldowr nods. “You are right that the tides follow the same music as the moon,” he says. “But they are not the moon’s equals, and they cannot follow her any farther than the Tide Knot allows. This is the knot that binds the tides. It looses them, and it draws them back. They must follow its pattern—as long as the knot holds. We have always believed that the knot will hold until the end of time.” His voice is troubled. Saldowr stares at the Tide Knot like a doctor trying to treat a patient who has a disease he’s never seen before. “But now we have reason to suspect that the Tide Knot is slipping,” he says in a low voice. Another pang of terror goes through me. The Tide Knot continues to coil over and over. To me, the knot looks tight. The tides flex and turn, flashing like jewels. They are so powerful and so beautiful. I could watch them forever, and they would never repeat their pattern—

  “Don’t look too long!” repeats Saldowr sharply.

  “Are they really loosening?” asks Conor quietly. “They look as if they are held tight.”

  “The changes I observe are very small . Your eyes may not see it yet, but I have observed the Tide Knot from childhood and can detect that there is change.” I shudder. “The tides could do anything.” Saldowr looks at me. “You feel it too. You feel their power.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are right. The tides wish to free themselves. As I said before, there are some in Ingo—some among the Mer, even—who want the power of the tides to be unleashed.