The Deep

by Helen Dunmore

  The Kraken’s mouth widens to a black O. Nothing, naught, nil. Zero with zero inside. The mouth circle swells. It’s as big as a beach ball. It spreads outward, lapping up the monster selves of the Kraken. It’s a black cavern, and now only a rim of the Kraken shows, stretched around the blackness. The cavernous mouth gapes like a vast yawn. The Kraken rim stretches and stretches, growing thinner and thinner like elastic pulled to the breaking point. The huge black mouth convulses and swallows the Kraken.

  He’ll come back. Any minute now that shrimp will bounce back, jeering at us.

  Time stretches. Slowly, as we watch, the black mouth melts into the surrounding dark of the Deep. The lairlight fades to nothing. We are in the solid, comforting darkness of the Deep.

  “He’s gone,” says Conor.

  “Yes, he’s gone,” echoes Faro.

  There’s a long pause, and then Faro adds, in a different voice, “I hope there will be.”

  “Will be what?”

  “Bad dreams. Nightmares. I hope there’ll be plenty of them.”

  Conor and I say nothing. We’ve got no energy left. The Kraken has gone, but we can’t feel any triumph—not yet. We are in the Deep, alone, hand in hand. The only light comes from the rowan spray in my hand, but as we watch, even that melts away, as if it knows its work is done, and we are left in complete darkness.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “WE’LL HAVE TO WAIT for the whale,” I whisper at last.

  “Are you sure she’ll come back?”

  I’m trying not to consider this possibility. Of course the whale will come back. How could she not? I’m her friend, her little barelegs….

  My thoughts stutter to a stop. The whale has only met me twice. What if she forgets us once she’s back on the surface? Or she might decide to dive somewhere else, where there are more giant squid for her to eat. We’re not her children. Conor and I are human, and Faro’s Mer. She has no reason to feel loyalty to us.

  No, she has no reason. But the sense of the whale’s strong, protective presence flows back over me. I trust her. I don’t believe that she’ll abandon us. “Of course she’ll come back,” I say firmly.

  We must keep hold of one another. If someone drifts off into the Deep now, he’s gone forever. The thought of it makes me dizzy, as if I were standing on top of a cliff with the ground crumbling beneath my feet.

  Hold on. Faro’s gripping Conor’s wrist, supporting him. We’re close together, like shipwrecked sailors on a tiny island with the tide coming in.

  “Conor?”

  “It’s okay, Saph. I’m here.”

  The dark tide of the Deep rolls around us. There’s nothing to do but wait and hope that the whale keeps faith with us. If anyone can find us in the pitchy darkness of the Deep, she can. The sperm whale has the best sonar system in the world, I tell myself over and over. She’ll pick us up on her whale radar. We’ll be three tiny echoes, a long way off, and she’ll know it’s us and dive toward us.

  What if she dives too close? Her weight would destroy us. Even if we survived, we’d be scattered in the Deep.

  Don’t think like that. I’ve got to hold on to my courage.

  I’ve lost track of time. I don’t know how long we’ve been here. I can’t remember what day it is. Mum and Roger and everything at home are shrouded in fog. I daren’t even start thinking about Sadie.

  “It’s like waiting for the bus to St. Pirans,” says Conor suddenly.

  “Bus?” I echo stupidly. My thoughts are so far from buses that for a moment I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  “Bus?” asks Faro in the casual voice people use when they don’t want to admit they don’t know what someone’s talking about.

  “The bus from Senara to St. Pirans only runs twice a day,” explains Conor, “and you always just miss it. It’s much quicker to walk.”

  Conor’s clear memory of the human world touches mine and ignites a dangerous flare of memories. The fog that surrounds Earth when I’m in Ingo clears for a moment, and a wave of longing pours through me. If only Conor hadn’t mentioned walking. Walking on soft, springy turf in the evening sunlight. Or walking on cold, hard sand after the tide goes out, leaving footprints like the ones Robinson Crusoe found on his island. Or maybe walking on a hot road, uphill, with the smell of tar and dust and fuel…

  I mustn’t do it. I must let the fog roll back over my memory. The Deep is hurting me now, and I’m scared. I’m so scared. I don’t want to be here. The pressure is flattening me and crushing my ribs. It’s your own fault, I tell myself angrily. You started thinking of sand and roads and all those Air things. Conor started and Air got into you. Turn away from it. You’re in Ingo. Ingo.

  The whale told me that even the Deep was part of Ingo, the first time I met her. How could it not be Ingo where I am? she said. She was laughing at me, but kindly. I think she thinks I’m much younger than I am. Probably because sperm whale babies weigh about a ton, even when they’re just born. I must look like a tadpole to her.

  The pressure of the Deep has eased off again. I’ve got Conor here, and Faro, and the whale’s coming. That’s what I’ve got to remember and hold on to.

  “I’m so tired,” says Conor, and suddenly his voice is heavy. “I’m going to have a sleep while we wait.”

  “No!” says Faro sharply. “Stay awake, Conor!”

  “Only a little sleep…”

  I’d like to go to sleep too. Now that Conor’s said it, I realize how tired I am too. My arms and legs have got weights of lead on them. Just a little sleep, until the whale comes. My eyelids hurt from the effort of keeping my eyes open. The Deep is pressing them shut…. Why not sleep, why not let go of everything and sleep…just for a little while…?

  “No, Sapphire, no!”

  “Jus a li’l slee’ Far—Faro, stop it!”

  His nails dig into my arm, gouging the skin. “Wake up, Sapphire!”

  “Ge off—’m awake!”

  “Lea—leave sis’ ’lone.”

  “Leave her alone to die, you mean! Is that what you want? We’ve got to hold on. You’ve got to stay awake, Conor!”

  Faro’s voice swells and echoes in my ears, reaches my brain, and tears it awake. I see a nightmare vision of Conor floating away, arms outstretched, struggling to reach me and Faro. Floating farther and farther until he’s beyond touch and hearing. Floating forever through the trenches and caverns of the Deep until even his bones disappear.

  I fight free of the clinging net of sleep that has wrapped itself around me. I grab Conor’s shoulder and shake him as hard as I can. “Wake up, wake up, Conor!”

  “Not you ’s well…Stop it, Saph. I’m awake, I’m awake, I’m awake. Can’t you get that whale to come a bit quicker?”

  Of course I can’t. The whale’s so huge, and I’m so small. I haven’t got any power over her.

  How I wish she was here. How I wish I could touch her wrinkled skin, and swim up her vast sides, and hear her voice. Even the worst joke in the world would be welcome. Why did the whale cross the ocean? To get to the other tide. Why was the whale so sad? Because he was a blue whale. What kinds of whales fly? Pilot whales. Is that bad enough for you, dear whale?

  The Deep stirs. Heavy water surges against our bodies as if an underwater earthquake has set off a giant wave. We cling together desperately as the water buffets us.

  “Greetings, little barelegs.”

  “Whale!”

  “Quick, little one, tuck yourself behind my flipper. And your companions must go to my other side.”

  “But we can’t separate. It’s too dark here. I’ll lose the others.”

  “I must be balanced to carry you through the mountains.”

  “We’ve got to be together.”

  The whale’s voice rumbles impatiently. “There’s no time for argument. I must rise. Listen. Will you travel inside my mouth?”

  “Inside your—”

  “Quick. A giant squid attacked me as I came. He’ll be waiting. They grow bold in th
e trenches.”

  But how can we go inside her mouth? We’ll be swallowed. We’ll be like Jonah inside the whale—and I can’t remember the end of the story. Jonah must have got out somehow, or there wouldn’t have been any story, but how?

  “Do as she says,” cuts in Faro. “She will not swallow us.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “How can I be sure? I’m as sure as I am that we’ll die in the Deep if we stay here, and as sure as I am that Conor and I can’t find our way to her other side in this dark.”

  A giant squid. I’d rather be inside the whale’s mouth than meet one of those. I’d even rather take the risk of being swallowed.

  We feel the vast movement of the whale as she gets into position. She knows exactly where we are. Water swirls heavily, and then her voice booms so close that it’s like being inside her already. “My jaw is open. Swim straight ahead.”

  Faro’s tail carries us forward. My legs barely stir the dark water. I’m so tired and so afraid. We’re going to travel inside a whale, like Jonah. I try to remember what the inside of her mouth looks like. She has only one row of teeth, I do remember that, set in her lower jaw. Those teeth can tear a giant squid apart.

  “I won’t hurt you, little one.”

  I sense the exact moment when we swim over the threshold of the whale’s jaw. Everything changes. We’re no longer in the climate of the Deep but in the climate of the whale’s body.

  Her vast mouth cavern smells faintly of rotting fish. I try not to notice. It seems wrong to notice the smell of someone when she’s invited you inside her. Especially when the whale’s trying so hard to rescue us.

  We speak in whispers, but our voices echo as if we’re in a cathedral.

  “Are you all right, Conor? Faro?”

  There’s a short pause; then “Never better,” says Conor. “Saph, is this the way you came up from the Deep last time? Inside her mouth?”

  “No, I wasn’t as far down that time.”

  “So you’ve never been in her mouth before.”

  “No, why?”

  “I was just hoping there was a precedent.”

  “Giant squid and sperm whales have been known to fight great battles,” says Faro somberly. “I’ve seen the body of a whale on the surface, after it was attacked by many squid. I’ve seen the marks of their tentacles and their beaks.”

  The whale’s voice vibrates along the roof of her mouth. “I am ready, little one.”

  We brace ourselves, but at first the movement is almost imperceptible. The whale seems to be gliding, swimming fast but smoothly. Sonar echoes roll around us. We must be in among the undersea mountains now. The noise doesn’t hurt as it did on the dive down. I expect that’s because we’re cushioned by her mountains of flesh.

  She’s going more slowly now. She must be feeling her way cautiously forward between the steep underwater cliffs. The passage will be very narrow now. Even with the whale’s blubber to shield us, the noise begins to thunder in my head.

  It eases. She must be through the pass. Only a little way farther, and she’ll be safe to rise.

  Suddenly her pace quickens. We’re thrown backward, then forward. I lose hold of Conor’s hand. The whale rolls, and my stomach swoops. Her body judders as if she’s fighting her way through giant waves. She rolls again and takes another blow. I slip and slide. I’m tossed from the ribbed roof of her mouth to her tongue, then against the columns of her teeth. She judders again. My bones shake, and my teeth rattle.

  “She’s being attacked! It must be a squid!” I hear Faro’s voice, but I can’t reach him. We’ve been thrown way apart. It feels as if she’s fighting for her life. But how can she fight without using her teeth? She’ll have to open her jaws to defend herself. We’ll be sucked out into the Deep.

  Another lurch. It’s like being in the belly of a plane in a war film, rolling and diving through the sky to get away from an enemy. But the squid keeps coming at her. How long can she hold on without using her teeth?

  “Hold on, hold on, little one,” comes the distorted boom of the whale’s voice.

  “Fight them, dear whale! You can’t let them kill you!”

  “No, little barelegs. Hold tight. I’m ready to rise.”

  Giant squid only live in the trenches of the Deep. They don’t rise. They won’t be able to follow her. But what if they’ve already got their tentacles suckered around the whale?

  We’re in the heart of the battle, but we don’t know what’s happening. We can only guess what’s going on out there in the Deep. The squid flailing its tentacles, trying to get a grip. The whale lashing her tail, striking her enemy. The Deep churning with their battle, and the whale fighting to get free for just long enough to gather all her strength and plunge upward, out of the giant squid’s reach.

  Suddenly the whale goes dead still. We hang in her mouth, suspended. It’s killed her. The giant squid has killed her. She’s dead, and it’s all because of us. She only came back because of us—

  And then with a rush like an airplane takeoff, the whale breaks loose and surges upward.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BLOOD STREAMS FROM the wounds in the whale’s side, where the giant squid’s beak gashed her. There are tentacle sucker marks all over her, and some have pulled her skin off. She looks like a ship limping home to harbor after a terrible battle at sea.

  And she sheltered us all the way through. She never opened her mouth.

  “Dear whale, we owe you so much. Without your courage, the squid would have torn us to pieces.”

  I’m swimming by the whale’s head, close to her right eye. Conor and Faro are swimming on her other side. We’re out of the Deep now. As soon as it was safe to do so, the whale opened her jaws and we swam out, stunned, into open water.

  We are in Ingo. The Deep lies far below us, like a giant shadow. Even to look at it makes me shudder. We’re still a long way below the surface, but we’re beyond the grasp of the Deep and high above the trenches where giant squid lurk.

  The whale swims on very slowly.

  “Are you badly hurt, dear whale?”

  “Not too badly, little one.”

  “You should have fought the squid with your teeth.”

  The whale’s voice is fainter than usual but cheerful. “He came off worse than I did. I gave him a blow from my tail that he’ll never forget. How could I have used my teeth, little barelegs, when you were behind them?”

  “Thank you, dear whale. You saved all our lives. You saved mine for the second time.”

  “It wasn’t hard,” says the whale placidly, as if she’s quite prepared to save it a dozen times more.

  “But, whale—if you don’t mind my asking—why is it that you’re so, well, so nice to me?”

  And so completely uninterested in Conor and Faro, I might have added. I don’t think the whale has spoken to them once. But although I’m curious about this too, I’m not going to pry too far.

  “You please me, little barelegs,” says the whale simply. “You remind me of the past. Happy days, when my children were young, when my daughter played hide-and-seek below my jaw and above my back.”

  So perhaps it’s because I’m a girl and the others are boys that she makes a favorite of me.

  “Whale—if you don’t mind my asking all these questions—where is your daughter now?”

  The whale’s eye looks beyond me, into the distance. “Far away, little barelegs, at the bottom of the world. She’s safer there. My pod was torn apart by sickness many seasons ago. Those who were sick could not find their way. They could not dive to find food. They swam into rivers where we whales had never been, and so they died there. My son had left me long before to swim with the other young bulls. But that was as it should be. My daughter stayed with me because that is the way for us whales. She would have stayed with me until I saw her children’s children, but for this sickness. No one knew where it came from.

  “My daughter grew ill too, but I would not let her die. I supported her
day and night. You know that a whale can drown, little one, when she’s too sick and weak to reach the surface?”

  “No. No, I didn’t know that.” I picture the whale struggling to stop her daughter sinking down, down, down into the fathomless Deep….

  “I called on my sisters to dive for food for her,” the whale continues. “At last she recovered. I did not dare let her stay here, with the risk that the sickness might attack her again. I sent her away with her cousins, far from the sickness, to the bottom of the world. Our pod was already scattered by death.”

  “But couldn’t you have gone too, with your daughter and the other whales?” I ask her.

  “I am too old. I must stay here. I am happy that she is safe and well. I get news of her sometimes from whales who have made the long journey from the bottom of the world. So it is not a sad story, little barelegs.

  “You pleased me when I first met you in the Deep because you reminded me of my daughter. But now I love you for yourself.”

  No one has ever said such a thing to me before. I put out my hand and touch her wrinkled skin. “Dear whale, I wonder if Elvira could heal these wounds.”

  “They will heal anyway, with time. We whales are strong. It takes more than a squid to conquer us. Scars don’t matter, little one. They are the marks of the battles we have won.”

  Her words sink deep into my mind. I wish I could be as calm and strong as she is.

  We swim on slowly but steadily into shallower water. It’s light up there on the surface. Maybe it’s still the same day. I feel as if I’ve been in the Deep for days and days on end, but maybe it was no more than an hour.

  “One day, little barelegs, you may go to the bottom of the world too and meet my daughter,” speculates the whale, “when you are old enough to make the Crossing of Ingo.”

  “But how could I do that?”

  “Never mind now, little one,” says the whale maternally. “When the time comes, it will be soon enough.”

  This is extremely frustrating, but I don’t argue. I don’t want to stop bathing in the dreamy comfort of the whale’s presence. We’ve been through a hurricane together, and now we’re in the calm. We’ve survived. We’re out of the Deep and alive.