I glance round desperately. I’ll have to leave him and run for help. He could bleed to death if I don’t. But what if he thinks I’m abandoning him? I’ve got to make him understand. “Listen, I’m going,” I point at myself then over the dunes, “for help. Someone to help you, you understand? A doctor.” Maybe the word for doctor is the same in Polish? He watches me intently, then suddenly puts out his hand, as if to hold me back. Or maybe he wants me to feel his pulse or something…
I reach forward, and take his hand. It is cold, but the grip is surprisingly strong. He seems to want me to come closer. I edge forward, until I’m beside him. If he’ll let me uncover his legs then I can see how badly injured he is. But probably he’s embarrassed, if the sea has torn off all his clothes.
That stain on the sand is definitely blood. The thought of seeing the wound makes me feel sick. He is still looking into my face, and this time his lips move.
“Morveren,” he says.
He’s understood! I feel warm all over with relief. “Yes! I’m Morveren.”
He lets go of my hand, and points to his own chest. “Malin,” he says.
“Your name is Malin?”
“Yes, my name is Malin,” he says, in perfect English but with an accent I don’t recognise. I’m so stunned that I drop his hand and rock back on my heels.
“You speak English!”
“Yes, I speak your language. Morveren, you must help me. You must help me to go back to the sea.”
Now I know for sure that he is very ill. Probably having delusions or whatever people get when they’ve had a blow on the head. “Don’t worry, I’m going to get help for you. You’re hurt and you need to go to hospital. Will you… Will you let me try to move the sand away, so I can see what’s happened to you?”
He frowns sharply. His eyes flash. “No! No human beings must come here! You must help me return to the sea.”
“Malin, I think you’ve got a fever, or maybe you hit your head against a rock when the wave caught you. That’s why everything seems strange to you.”
“Why are you so stupid?” he demands furiously.
“Stupid! I’m trying to help you.”
“And I am telling you how you must help me!”
I take a deep breath. Keep cool, I tell myself. You don’t argue with someone who’s been shipwrecked and nearly drowned as well as injured. He’s probably – what is the word – delirious. “I can’t take you to the sea. You’d die. You need to go to hospital.”
“Look at me,” says Malin through his teeth. “Stop talking and look at me.” His hands scrabble at his sides, trying to clear away the sand. But he’s lying in an awkward position and he can’t manage it.
“Shall I help you?”
He nods furiously, and I lean forward and begin very gently moving away the sand. I’m afraid of hurting him, and just as scared of seeing whatever injury has caused all the blood. I work slowly and methodically, clearing the sand, until suddenly my fingers touch his skin. I snatch them back. “Am I hurting you?”
He shakes his head, with his lips pressed tightly together. “Go on,” he says. Cautiously, I move away more and more sand. His skin is very dark. It’s strangely thick, almost as if he were wearing an incredibly light and flexible wetsuit, made out of some material that hasn’t been invented yet. It reminds me of something but I can’t think what. “Keep going,” says Malin, with a strange smile on his face.
“I’m scared of hurting you.”
“I am strong.”
I take no notice of this. He doesn’t look very strong at the moment. I’m afraid he’ll faint, and so I dig away the sand more gently than ever. The curve of his thigh is almost uncovered—
My hand goes to my mouth in horror as I see the deep, long gash that gapes wide, full of dried blood and still oozing. It must have bled for hours. It is clogged with sand. Malin is struggling to raise himself on his elbows in order to see the wound. But he mustn’t. He’ll start it bleeding again if he moves like that—
“Keep still,” I say sharply. “It’ll be all right. It’s going to need stitching.”
“Stitching!” Malin’s eyes widen in horror, as if I’d said, “You need to be rolled in maggots and then we’ll cut your leg off.”
“That’s why we need to get you to hospital,” I tell him. I keep on clearing away the sand, in case there are other injuries. Suddenly, Malin heaves himself up, pushes my hands away and starts to brush off sand himself. As I feared, more blood oozes from the gash, but Malin won’t stop. His hands are quick and they clear the sand much faster than mine. I don’t want to look in case the storm really has torn off all his clothes and this is going to be embarrassing…
My hands won’t move. I stare, transfixed. My brain won’t make sense out of what my eyes are telling it. The shape in front of me wavers. My ears hiss as if they have got sand in them. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I’m going crazy. I’m the one who’s going to faint. It’s all right, I tell myself, it’s because you hardly got any sleep last night and you haven’t had anything to eat for hours. Just breathe.
After a long moment I open my eyes again. What I see is the same. Dark, strong, leathery skin. No, not leathery. Leather belongs to earth and this skin belongs to the sea. Sealskin. At last I find my voice, and it comes out in a squeak.
“Your— Your legs… What’s happened to them?”
“My legs,” repeats Malin with contempt. “My legs? Where are my legs, Morveren?”
Where are they? All I can see is a strong, curved shape. No thigh or knee or foot. Just a— just a—
A tail.
My brain whirs, still trying to make sense of what I see. It whirs but does not connect. He is a boy. He has no legs. Instead he has a—
A tail.
“Are you wearing a costume?” my voice bleats. Even as I hear the words, my brain knows how stupid they are. And so does Malin.
“Touch my skin,” he orders.
“I don’t want to hurt you.“
“Touch it.”
It is skin. I snatch my hand away as if it’s been burnt.
“Now you understand why you must help me to go back to the sea.”
“You mean… You live in the sea? You’re a mer… mer… person?”
“I am Mer,” says Malin, as if it’s the proudest claim that could be made by anyone.
“You are Mer,” I echo, as if I’ve been set to “repeat” mode. But Malin seems pleased with the answer.
“Now you understand and you will help me,” he says confidently. But the wound gapes wide. He’ll collapse if he goes back into the sea, even if he is… I try the word over in my mind. Mer. He’ll still die. One wave would roll him over on to the shore again, and strand him. Dolphins that are stranded can’t live long, because unless the sea is buoying them up, their own weight crushes their internal organs. Maybe it is the same for the Mer.
As if my thoughts have reached him, Malin sinks back against the dune and shuts his eyes. Without their glitter his face is drawn and lifeless. He must have lost a lot of blood in the night. I won’t think about him being Mer. I can think about all that later. First, I’ve got to make sure he doesn’t die.
“You really do need help, Malin,” I say softly, leaning over him. “Let me go and fetch my dad and Dr Kemp. They won’t hurt you, I promise.”
His eyes fly open. “They will take me away. They will imprison me and take away my freedom.”
“Malin, I swear they won’t. I’ve never heard of anything like that happening. Dad wouldn’t—”
“If humans catch the Mer, that is what will happen. Everyone knows it. We learn it before we can speak.”
“They won’t—“ I begin, but then I stop. How can I be so sure? Terrible things have happened to anyone – or anything – that is different. What if they put him in a tank and do experiments on him? People do experiments on animals, to find out about them. Scientists might say that Malin is an animal. A rare sea-mammal that needs to be studied in detail. They migh
t say it’s research of national importance. Once they’d got hold of Malin, I wouldn’t be able to do anything. They’d brush me away like a fly.
“But… but you’re human! You speak English. They couldn’t do that to you,” I say, trying to convince myself as much as Malin.
“I am not human, Morveren. They will not give me the protection they give to their own kind. You kill among yourselves. Why should you not kill me?”
“I wouldn’t, Malin – we wouldn’t—” But I can’t meet his eyes. Chimpanzees look nearly human. They share most of their DNA with us. But we do research on them. We experiment on them and because they’re not quite human, that’s all right.
Maybe Malin knows that.
“I must have water,” he says, in quite a different voice, almost a groan.
“I’ll get you water! Wait here.”
“No.” He puts out his hand to stop me. “You drink water from the earth and I cannot swallow it. I must have salt. I must be in salt water if I am to live. I am strong but my skin is already cracking. Soon I will die.”
He says it calmly, as if he’s talking about someone else. For a second I think he can’t mean it, but then I look at his skin. It’s parched and seamed all over with tiny cracks. It reminds me of photos I’ve seen when there’s a drought in Australia.
But I don’t know what to do. Malin can’t move on his own. I can’t move him on my own: he’s much too heavy for me. Even if I did manage to drag him down to the sea, the waves would throw him back on land. He hasn’t the strength to swim against a rough sea.
A rough sea… It’s as if the words light a fuse in me. When the sea’s too wild for swimming, you can always swim safely in King Ragworm Pool. That’s what Jenna and I used to do. The solution comes to me, clear and perfect. Malin will be safe in King Ragworm Pool. He can rest there and recover until he’s strong enough to go back in the sea. Salt water is good for wounds. King Ragworm Pool is salt water, because it’s fed by a stone channel from the tidal pools closer to shore. Jenna will help me. We’ll bring the groundsheet and we’ll pour salt water over it so Malin’s skin doesn’t get damaged. Surely we can manage to carry him as far as the pool. We’ll have to climb the rocks but we can take it slowly.
Malin’s looking away from me again, to where the sea sounds beyond the dunes. His face is a blank. He can’t really think he’s going to die. He’d be frightened – anyone would be terrified…
“Malin, I think I know what we can do.” He turns his head languidly, as if he’s only listening out of politeness. “There’s a pool near here where you can go. It’s salt water and it’s hidden, but I’ll need help to get you there. I can’t do it on my own.”
Malin sweeps my idea aside with a flick of his hand. It’s so arrogant that I’d be really annoyed with him if he weren’t half-buried and badly hurt. “I prefer to die than have other humans here,” he says.
“I’ll get my sister. She’ll help you and she won’t say anything. I swear she won’t.”
“You swear? On what?”
I think hard and quickly. I want to swear on the most precious thing I can think of.
If that fiddle is ever lost or broken, it will be the end for our island.
“I swear on Conan’s fiddle,” I tell Malin.
“What is that?”
“It’s really old. It came to my ancestors when our city was drowned. It’s like our – I don’t know – our luck. Something we have which keeps us safe.”
Malin’s gaze sharpens. “What city was that?”
“It was on land, but there was a tidal wave or something and it disappeared. But it’s only a legend,” I add quickly, because his stare is making me uneasy.
“I would like to see that instrument,” says Malin softly, half to himself, and then he turns his head away and shuts his eyes. He seems so drowsy now, as if he’s sinking away from me, fathoms and fathoms down into the depths of an ocean where I can’t follow him.
“Mum, what’s it like to die?” I asked Mum that after our granddad died, and she said, “It’s like falling asleep, Morveren. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
I’ve got to get Jenna quickly. Malin mustn’t fall into that sleep.
“Go then,” says Malin, in a voice so quiet that it might be the sigh of the wind.
t’s not until I burst through our cottage door that I remember about the drowned Polish sailor. Jenna’s sitting by the fire, hugging her knees and staring into the flames. Digory’s lying on the floor playing with his toy cars. Jenna looks up.
“Didn’t you hear the church bell? I thought you’d come straight back.”
“Yes – but Jenna—”
“He still had his life-jacket on. The helicopter spotted him. They might have found him in time, if it’d been daylight.”
Jenna turns to me, her face pale and upset. I know she’s thinking the same as I am. How long did the sailor survive, hoping for rescue?
“He was called Adam,” says Jenna. “One of the other men told Mum. It’s better knowing his name, don’t you think?”
“Yes. But Jenna—”
“Don’t you want to talk about it?” says Jenna, with a rare flash of anger.
I look at her over Digory’s head. He’s humming to himself, telling himself a story about his cars, but that doesn’t guarantee that he’s not listening.
“I need your help with my maths,” I say.
Instantly, Jenna’s face sharpens. It’s a signal we use whenever we need to talk to each other urgently but don’t want anyone else to know.
“I’m just going up to our bedroom with Morveren, to look at our homework,” she tells Digory, who nods without stopping his game.
Upstairs, Jenna shuts the door before asking, “What’s wrong?”
“Jen, you’re not going to believe this, but please, please listen before you say anything. Promise?”
She nods, and folds her arms. I know she thinks I’ve done something awful and she’ll have to cover up for me.
Jenna is good at listening. Even now, when I’m telling her something that no one in their right mind could possibly believe, she listens attentively, frowning a little. I tell her about the noise I heard, and about finding Malin, and how he’s hurt and needs help. When I tell her about how I uncovered the sand and saw his tail, I see the pupils of her eyes widen, but she still says nothing.
“He needs us to help him, Jen. We’ve got to get him into the water.”
Jenna remains silent.
“Don’t you believe me?”
Very slowly, she nods. “I believe that you believe it,” she says.
“But it’s true!”
“Morveren, when you were climbing on the rocks, do you think you could have slipped? Is there anything you can’t remember?”
She thinks I fell and banged my head, and I’ve imagined everything because I’m concussed or something. It’s what anyone would think, but Jenna’s my twin sister. She must be able to see that I’m deadly serious. I want to shake her to make her believe me. But would I have believed in Malin, if I hadn’t seen him and touched his skin? Mer people don’t exist except in stories, everybody knows that.
“Jen, listen. I didn’t bang my head, I swear. Even if you don’t believe me, just come. If there’s nothing – I mean, if he’s not real – then it won’t do any harm, will it? But he’ll die if we don’t help him.”
Jenna shivers, and rubs her arms. “It’s been such a horrible day,” she says very quietly, as if she’s talking to herself. “I wish it was over. I can’t leave Digory on his own, Mor.”
“He’ll be fine! He likes being on his own.”
It’s true. Digory’s one of these people who’s happy just being himself. I can see that Jenna’s wavering. She still doesn’t believe me, but she can sense how desperate I am.
“I’m going to get the groundsheet so we can carry him to the pool.”
“It’s under the stairs,” says Jenna automatically. She always knows where things are.
I
go to fetch the groundsheet, and Jenna comes after me.
“You don’t have to follow me,” I snap. “I’m not going to collapse, even though you don’t believe I didn’t bang my head.”
“All right then, I’ll come with you,” she says suddenly. Her face is creased with worry. “I’m not letting you go on your own.”
She hooks the fireguard to the wall and tells Digory to be sure and not touch it. Mum is working a few hours at the post office, and if he needs her he can run down there. Dad’s at the harbour. “Just play, Digory. Don’t go in the kitchen and don’t touch the fire. Do you understand? If you’re really good, I’ll give you a surprise when we get back.”
“What surprise?” asks Digory. Jenna glances at me and says, “Morveren’s Mars bar that she’s hidden in the freezer.”
“Jen!”
“Surely it’s worth a Mars bar?” asks Jenna coolly, and I have to shrug and agree.
“I’ll be really good, Jenna,” says Digory earnestly.
Once we’re clear of the village I start to run. I’m so scared that Malin will die before we get him into the water. It’s like a stone in my stomach. People do die. That man last night… Adam. He was waiting for help and it didn’t come.
“He’s right down the end,” I pant.
The beach looks completely empty, and for a moment even I doubt everything. Jenna stares ahead, her face carefully inexpressive, but I know what she’s thinking.
“We need to go down to the rocks, then I can get my bearings. We have to find the right dune.”
I run down the beach, with Jenna following. I look around, trying to fit the landscape into the right pattern. Not here. I go on. I think this is where I was when I first heard Malin groan, but I’m too far down the beach. I turn and start to walk backwards in the direction we’ve come, looking left, then right, then ahead. I glance behind me. Was it here? No, it’s still not quite right. Why didn’t I check Malin’s exact position before rushing off for help? All the dunes look the same. Was it that one – or that one? Jenna watches me, saying nothing.