“Is he dead?” she panted, seeing that Dr. Brock was craning to look out of the window, wiping the glass with his sleeve to clear it.
“He’s gone for the moment, but I doubt very much that he’s dead,” Dr. Brock said somberly. “But perhaps that’s something you can tell me.”
Connie thought for a moment, putting her scattered wits in order.
“You’re right—he’s gone, but he cannot be destroyed this way,” she said at length. She knew that the shape-shifting spirit was too subtle to be vulnerable to a mortal’s death.
“But you, my dear, you have won a great victory.” Dr. Brock helped her to her feet and surprised her with a hug. “You caught him with that last trick of yours: he was not prepared to block it. Caught in his own trap!” He chuckled, turning back to the control desk. “Come, let’s steer this cockleshell into port and see what Mr. Quick has to say for himself.”
“But we still have to dock this thing,” Connie said doubtfully.
“I’m not so sure about that—listen.” Over the noise of the diminishing storm, Connie heard an engine throbbing and then a searchlight picked out the deck in a crazy dance as a helicopter struggled in the wind. “I think we should expect a visit from the coastguard, my dear,” Dr. Brock said with no attempt to conceal his relief.
Sensing the arrival overhead, the Kraken chose this moment to release its grip. Its arms snaked back over the side, clearing the deck just in time before the helicopter let down its passengers. Five airmen tumbled from the sky on ropes, slammed down on the deck, unclipped their harnesses, and ran toward the bridge. They burst into the control room in a fizz of radios and jingling buckles but stopped short when they saw it was already occupied.
“What the hell are you doing here?” said their leader, a stocky man with a bristling moustache dripping with melting snow.
“Same as you—just trying to help,” replied Dr. Brock calmly. “I think you’ll find we’ve done quite a good job of saving the crew and preventing a shipwreck, but I’m not sure we’re up to docking. To whom am I handing over command?”
Bewildered by the sight of the elderly captain and his young first officer, the man shook his head in disbelief.
“But we’ve no time to ask questions, sir,” interrupted another member of the team.
“True. You’re handing over to my team—the air-sea rescue from Plymouth, Captain...?”
“Brock.”
“Captain Brock.” The officer snapped a smart salute, and Dr. Brock graciously made way for the professionals.
“Captain?” murmured Connie, as she and Dr. Brock watched the team place the tanker back under control. The radio now buzzed and crackled with communications flying between the tanker and the port authorities.
Dr. Brock winked. “My one and only chance,” he said. “I was technically in command even if I wasn’t in control.”
Within half an hour, the air-sea rescue team had steered into the calmer waters of Chartmouth Harbor. The tanker slid up to its berth by the new refinery and barely bumped against the quayside as it was secured. A textbook docking, Dr. Brock pointed out knowledgeably to Connie. A crowd of people on the quayside, lights, and camera crews, indicated that the drama out to sea had not gone unnoticed by those on shore.
“It looks as if the others have got here first,” Dr. Brock said, nodding to the activity around the two small boats from Hescombe. “I wonder what the authorities will make of the sailors’ stories? First sirens and then dragons. I imagine they’ll be given Breathalyzer tests, pretty quick.”
21
Aftermath
“So, Dr. Brock,” called the reporter at the impromptu news conference in the security guards’ hut on the dockside. “You and your young friend here—Connie Lionheart, is that right?” Connie confirmed her name with a nod. “You were out fishing with the rest of your party, saw the tanker in trouble, managed to climb on board, set off some flares to alert the authorities, and steered it safely to port?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Dr. Brock with a twinkle in his eye.
“And how did you get on board?” another reporter asked, looking up from her notepad. “The rescue services had a helicopter—how did you manage it?”
“We got a lift,” Dr. Brock said without elaborating.
“You mean your other young friend, Colin Clamworthy,”—it was Col’s turn to be picked out by the cameras—“took you to the ship’s side and you climbed on board?” she suggested.
“Yes, something like that,” Dr. Brock replied. The hut buzzed with excitement as the cameras took a close-up of the athletic elderly man and his young helpers. “We’ve been warning for months that the Stacks are a danger to shipping. It’s time the government took action and stopped tankers sailing so close to them. Now, if you have any more questions, I suggest they wait until we’ve had time to restore ourselves with dry clothes and a cup of tea. In the meantime, you should ask Axoil just how close the south coast came to ecological disaster tonight. I think Miss Nuruddin here has the details.”
Rupa nodded, waving a press release over her head. “I’ll give you the full story on the condition you credit my paper,” she told the representatives of the national press, who were still arriving in droves. “We’ve got some great pictures.”
As first-on-the-scene, Rupa had inadvertently been in a prime position to cover the story of a lifetime. Faulty machinery forgotten, she now had the disgraceful incompetence of the Axoil crew to report on. So leaving Rupa, with Anneena and Jane beside her, to brief the journalists about the sorry state of Axoil’s labor force, both on shore and on board its tanker, Connie, Col, and Dr. Brock joined Evelyn, Signor Antonelli, Jessica, Horace Little, and Mrs. Clamworthy in an all-night café for a much-welcomed catch-up.
“What have you all been up to?” Evelyn asked, not yet having recovered from the shock of seeing Connie piloting a tanker into port. “And how are we going to explain this to your parents?”
“To be honest, I don’t know.” Connie laughed. “It’s going to test our powers of invention, that’s for sure.”
An hour later, Jane and Anneena came running into the café, hot from the press conference.
“We’ve done it! The story’s broken in a more spectacular way than Rupa could’ve dreamed!” cried Anneena. “The press are all calling for an inquiry. The inspectors will be down here tomorrow to look into what happened to the missing men. The unions are hopping mad. Mr. Quick won’t be able to sweep this one under the carpet after that near-disaster.” She paused and gave Connie, Jessica, and Col a funny look. “And just how did you get involved in the rescue?”
“It’s a long story,” said Connie, not wishing to lie to her best friends but also restricted in what she could say. How could she explain sirens and dragons, not to mention Kullervo?
Fortunately, the other Society members came to her rescue. Col began talking loudly about the perilous boat trip, Jessica said something about cold water inducing hallucinations in the sailors, and her aunt gave some sketchy details as to how they had pulled the sailors out of the water—
“You mean they were all in the water?” asked Jane. “How on earth did that happen?”
Connie could see that her friends would find no rational explanation for what had occurred. She regretted for the hundredth time that evening that she could not tell them everything. Protecting the mythical creatures by lying to Anneena and Jane seemed a high price to pay just now.
The television burbling to itself in a corner began to broadcast the chimes of Big Ben.
“Happy New Year!” Col said with a grin.
“A very Happy New Year for us—but not for Axoil, I think,” said Anneena, hugging her friends in turn.
The snow was falling gently, covering the refinery in a softening white shroud. The Hescombe party decided to take their boats back home now that the storm had blown itself out, and they wanted to avoid any further questions from the press for the moment. The story seemed to be doing very well on its own. Le
aving the confused sailors, jubilant news team from the Hescombe Herald, and irate managers from Axoil to fight it out in front of the cameras, they slipped away from the port before their departure could be noted. As the door of the café banged closed behind them, the first news bulletin of the New Year began:
“Tonight, ecological disaster has been averted on the south coast. In an extraordinary series of events, an elderly man and two children managed to save a stricken oil tanker from running aground....”
“Will we be in any danger near the Stacks?” Col asked Connie softly as he restarted the engine. “I don’t want Anneena and Jane to see anything. I think they’ve been forced to swallow enough already.”
Connie nodded and dipped deep in her mind to listen for the sirens’ song. She sensed sorrow rather than rage in their singing; the sirens were absorbed in tending their fallen: they would not be flying again tonight.
“I think the madness has lifted now that Kullervo’s gone,” she replied. “We’ll be safe enough to pass them by. In a few days, I’ll go and talk to Gull-wing and the others and try to reconcile them to our ways. I must see if we can find a way for them to live in peace. At least now they are not likely to be drowned in oil. Maybe I can persuade them to stay hidden if they want to carry on living on the Stacks. I doubt any tanker will go too near them after tonight’s near miss.”
Col nodded and signalled to Banshee that all was clear. The two boats chugged back to Hescombe, passing over the head of the Kraken who had returned to its slumber.
A week later, the newspaper cuttings were piled high on the kitchen table. Connie and Col leafed through them: “Tanker terror”; “Oil catastrophe averted”; “Scandal hits Axoil—shares plummet”—and their favorite because they knew it had annoyed Dr. Brock and made everyone else laugh—“Plucky old man and children save ship!”
“You know, I feel a bit of a fraud myself,” said Connie. “We’re getting all the credit, but it was the mythical creatures that really did it.”
“Oh, I dunno,” said Col, still buoyed up by a congratulatory phone call he had received from his father in which Mack did not once claim to have diverted an oil disaster himself.
Evelyn came in bearing the morning mail.
“Are you going to show those to your parents, Connie?” she asked.
“Of course, I’ll show the clippings to Mom and Dad—when Dad has recovered from the shock,” Connie said, putting them back into their folder.
“You mustn’t worry too much about that,” her aunt said, seeing Connie’s glum expression. “I know your parents weren’t too pleased to find out about your ‘midnight gallivantings’—as your father called them—but I think, with time, they’ll come around. With the world singing your praises, they can hardly do otherwise. Still, perhaps it’s for the best that they’ve gone to take Simon to school. I’ve been afraid for days that some over-enthusiastic Society member will burst in and spill the beans before the entire Lionheart clan!”
“So have I. I think Signor Antonelli would’ve the other day, if Col here hadn’t been on hand to stop him.”
Connie turned her attention to the mail. Most of it was for her: letters of congratulation from Society members; invitations to appear on daytime television; fan mail from environmental campaigners the world over. Two letters stood out from today’s crop. She pushed them over to Col, who read them with a frown.
“Bit cool, aren’t they?” he commented, throwing the note from Mr. Coddrington and the card from Shirley to one side.
“Well, you know what I think about him,” Connie said tersely. “As for Shirley, I expect she’s just sore her giant’s been expelled from the Society.”
She slit open the last of her letters. Out fell a certificate from Mr. Johnson. The note read:
“Yeah, I got one of those, too,” commented Col when he saw the familiar writing.
Evelyn pounced on the certificate. “Ah—academic recognition! Now that may help persuade your parents to let Simon visit here at midterm if nothing else does.”
“Or it may not—I think some of the details in the press may scare them off completely,” said Connie.
“True. He always hated my involvement with what he regards as a bunch of dangerous lunatics, and now he blames me for his own daughter going the same way.”
Connie grinned and gathered up the papers.
“Well, in any case, that’s one battle won for the Society,” Evelyn said with satisfaction as she opened the dresser drawer devoted to Connie’s collection of letters and clippings. “The sirens’ existence has been kept secret. They are safe for the moment, now that a no-entry zone has been made around the Stacks. That would never’ve happened if it hadn’t been for Kullervo—I hope it makes him choke, wherever he is. Anyway, I think it calls for a celebration. How about a visit to my banshees? They throw one hell of a party.”
Connie grimaced at Col as she slipped her bundle inside and shut the drawer with a bang.
“Maybe not. I was only joking,” added her aunt quickly when she saw their expressions. “In fact, we’re invited to Anneena’s restaurant for lunch with Jane and her family. The Nuruddins want to celebrate Mr. Benedict’s new job in Plymouth.”
“And what about a ride later, Connie?” asked Col. “Skylark and me want to take you for a spin this evening. How does that sound?”
“That sounds great,” Connie replied, “but there’s one thing I have to do before we go. I should’ve done it already. Wait for me; I won’t be long.”
Putting on her coat, Connie stepped out of the house and slid her way down the path to the beach. It was deserted: even the most hardy beachcombers had stayed in today, deterred by the arctic breeze, so no one saw her as she held out her arm, palm downward, toward the sea, seeking the silent world of the deep.
“Thank you, Kraken,” she murmured to the strange currents that circulated far below the human world. “Thank you.”
Crunching back up the beach, she paused for a moment by Scark’s grave. “Your flock is safe now. I hope you can rest in peace,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “Good-bye, Scark.”
“Ready now?” Col asked when she returned to the house, still in a thoughtful mood. Connie nodded. “Let’s go then.”
Col, Connie, and Evelyn set off together down Shaker Row, turning their backs on the sea and the midnight blue shadow that was gathering again where wave meets shore.
Julia Golding, Secret of the Sirens
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