by Lari Don
He stood up. “You did answer the riddle yourself, didn’t you?”
She didn’t speak.
“Rona Grey. You did answer that riddle yourself, didn’t you?”
He stepped closer to her. “Rona? Tell me the truth.”
Her head moved, in what might be a tiny shake.
“Did you cheat?”
She looked away.
He grabbed her shoulders and turned her round. She was trembling, but he just gripped harder. He tried to keep his voice down, so they didn’t wake the dragon, but he couldn’t keep the anger out of his words.
“Did you beat me by cheating? Did you win that contest and humiliate me in front of my tribe by cheating? Tell me the truth!”
She whispered very quietly, “Yes. I cheated. In the last task. Only the last one. I got help from Helen and the others to answer the riddle and defeat the guardian in the cave. I wasn’t even in the cave. Helen got the map, Yann knocked the eel down. I was sitting outside. I’m a coward, really.”
He opened his hands and let her go.
“Yann helped you cheat? Yann cheated?”
Tangaroa turned and scrambled up the side of the burn. If he stayed near this lying cheating treacherous selkie he might hurt her. So he should get as far away from her as he could.
She called after him, “But Tangaroa, you know why we did it! You know what disaster we were trying to prevent!”
“I know exactly why you did it,” he bellowed back. “You did it to win. You did it because I was the strongest contestant and the only way to beat me was to cheat. Anyway, I don’t care why you did it. I just know what happened when you did. After you won and I lost, I thought I was useless. Not as clever or fast or brave as some little seal-girl.
“And you know what’s almost funny? I let your tame centaur comfort me. I went inland to his moor, and became his friend, and let him tell me that I wasn’t useless, that I could win next time. And then what did I do? I cared about him so much that when I did have a chance to win the title which should already be mine, I gave it all up, to help the very people who beat me by cheating last time.
“You humiliated me. You ruined my life. You cheated! And now you can get that damn token yourself!”
Chapter 18
Tangaroa scrambled up the slope by the west side of the burn.
When he got to the top waterfall, he could see all seven falls: seven drops high enough to force the water to leap in a white frenzy, separated by gentler slopes where the water ran clear and slow.
The selkie was crouching by the third fall, sobbing into her hands. Tangaroa shook his head. She wasn’t a Sea Herald. She had never been a Sea Herald. Those tears proved what a nervous, useless, over-emotional, cowardly wimp she really was.
Nimbus was yawning and staring at the weeping selkie. Then the dragon glanced up the slope towards the blue loon, who turned and walked further up. He didn’t want to explain.
Tangaroa wasn’t sure what he should do now.
The selkie and the centaur had lied to him and cheated him, so no rules of honour compelled him to save Yann or comfort Rona.
He should leave the dragon and selkie here, walk to the coast, swim back to the Western Isles, congratulate whoever had won the Sea Herald contest and get on with what was left of his life.
But he had come here for a healing token and he still wanted to collect it. Then shove it under Yann’s nose and say, “See what I did for you, when you did nothing for me.”
Tangaroa was walking up a shallower slope now, towards the sheltered area Rona had described. The banks of the burn were peaty here, rather than rocky. He reached the stunted trees and scowled at a patch of low plants with tiny blossoms. He wouldn’t be picking any more flowers for that selkie.
He sat down by the burn. He’d keep out of Rona’s way, keep her out of the way of his anger, until the sun was up. Then he’d get the token all by himself and fly back to Cauldhame Moor in righteous triumph.
He sighed. One small success with a flower wasn’t going to make him feel better.
He leant over the burn to get a drink. He dipped his hands in the water, and felt something scratch his wrist.
Biting back a yelp of pain, he pulled his hand out. His wrist was bleeding.
He looked down into the water and saw a line of gold. There was a net stretched across the width of the burn. A net woven from golden wire.
It was letting water through, but stopping everything else: leaves, a feather, gravel.
Someone had placed this net to trap any flowers floating down the burn. That’s why the water had been so clear when he was chatting to Rona.
Tangaroa pulled at the net, but it didn’t move. He ran his hands carefully along it and discovered it was anchored by two wooden posts, hidden deep in the peaty sides of the burn.
He tried to slice through the net with his gutting knife, but even his sharp blade couldn’t cut the fine shining wire. So he used his blue tattooed hands to dig at the sides of the burn, sending clods of mud and grit into the water, until he freed the posts and dragged the net out.
He wrapped the wire round the posts, then leapt down the hillside to the third waterfall.
Rona looked up, wiping her eyes.
He threw the posts and wire on the ground by her toes. “Your recce last night was worse than useless, seal-girl! Look what I found, blocking the burn just below the flowers. A net! Trapping anything going downstream.”
“I didn’t miss that!” she protested. “I ran my hand through the water all the way down. I can’t have missed that. It must have been put there overnight.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “That’s impossible. One of us was on guard all night. Unless you dozed off on your watch?”
She started to protest again. He spoke over her. “Don’t bother! I’m not going to believe anything you say anyway.” He turned his back on her. “Nimbus, it’s just you and me now. This selkie is no longer a trusted member of our team.”
Rona barged back into his eyeline. “Are you still trying to get the token? I thought you’d stormed off home.”
“Your geography is no better than your riddling or your reconnaissance! If I was going home to the Minch, I’d go downstream to the sea, not upstream to the summits. Foolish seal! And yes, I am going to collect the token, because I need that cheating centaur to wake up again so I can tell him exactly what I think of him and exactly what he can do with his friendship.”
He stepped round her to talk to the dragon, but she pushed in front of him again. “Hold on, blue loon. Your tactics aren’t any better today than they were last year. Stop and think. Whenever that net was set, it means someone is trying to prevent us collecting the token. That someone might still be here. Don’t you think we should prepare to defend the token?”
She was right, but he was hardly going to say so.
“You are not doing anything, girl. You just sit there blowing your nose and wiping your eyes. But of course Nimbus and I will check for threats.”
He looked at the sky. The stars in the east had faded in the pale glow of the sun under the horizon. They didn’t have long. “Nimbus, can you please see if there are any surprises lurking in the rocks or the trees? I’ll meet you at the top waterfall in two minutes.”
As the dragon took off, Tangaroa noticed Rona fiddling with the posts and the wire.
“Leave that alone, selkie. It might be useful.”
She ignored him, and pulled a wire at the top. The net started to unravel. “The net-maker used a knot I know, so I can undo the wire, wind it round a pebble to give it some bulk, twist a point at the end for a blade and use one post as a handle. Then we’ll have another spear, which I can use while you use your trident. One of us should watch any flower going down and…”
Tangaroa interrupted. “Stop trying to boss me about. I’m not listening to you.”
“Don’t be daft. You said yourself I have more experience of quests than you do, even if I didn’t always follow the rules. Do you want me
to turn this lovely sharp wire and this nice straight stick into a weapon, or don’t you?”
“Do that. But only that.” The blue loon was completely wrong-footed. He had thought Rona was a champion, then discovered she was a cheat. Then he was sure she was a wimp, but now she was taking charge. He couldn’t keep up.
He climbed to the west side of the top waterfall, and scanned the hillside. He couldn’t see anything hiding in the heather and the only thing in the sky was the dragon hovering above the rocks, then swooping over to the forest.
Rona yelled up, “Tangaroa? Did you look for tracks where the net was laid?”
He hadn’t, but he wasn’t going to admit that. He didn’t answer.
She yelled again, “You didn’t, did you? Is there time to look now?”
He glanced at the horizon. “No. I need to be watching for a flower now.”
Nimbus landed heavily behind him and said, “I didn’t see anything unexpected at the rocks. The forest edge looked clear and the fence is still standing.”
Rona appeared on the east bank of the burn, with a short golden spear in her left hand and blood running down her right wrist.
Tangaroa shook his head. “Couldn’t you wait for our enemies to appear and injure you themselves? That’s a new way of cheating: cheating them of their fight.”
She held up her hands. There were cuts all over her fingers and palms. “The wire was sharp,” she said simply and turned to face east.
He remembered the sudden pain of his single wire cut and almost apologised. But he couldn’t get the words out.
Then the sun came up, one dazzling edge over the horizon. They all looked at the burn.
The water was clear. No more swirling earth from Tangaroa’s digging. No flowers either.
“We wait,” said Tangaroa. “We wait and see if the mountain gives us a flower.”
The water ran clear and clean.
“I could go up to the trees and stamp around a bit. That might dislodge something,” Nimbus said impatiently, after the first minute.
“No! That would be cheating!” Tangaroa and Rona spoke at the same time, in the same tone of voice. But they didn’t look at each other.
Another minute passed silently, with the blue loon and the selkie staring at the water, and the dragon standing sentry, watching the brightening world around them.
The air was still and the water was clear. There were no knotted heather stalks flowing past, no white stars or blue trumpets.
The only flower Tangaroa could see was the purple foxglove pinned to the neck of Rona’s dress.
The sun was almost halfway over the horizon. Tangaroa sighed and looked up at the dragon. “Anything we should know, sentry?”
“Nothing. All quiet. All still.”
“That’s the problem,” said Rona. “Everything is still. That’s why nothing is coming down the water. This mountain isn’t going to give us anything.”
“It gave us that foxglove,” said Tangaroa.
“You probably stole it.”
“No, it offered itself to me. It was blowing in a breeze that didn’t exist outside the trees. It almost leapt out at me. It felt right to take it. It even felt right to give it to you, you cheat and liar.”
“Do you want it back?” She pulled it off her dress and held it out to him, over the burn. “Do you want it? Or should I drop it in?”
They both stared at the clear water. At the purple flower. And at the sun, hot and bright over the eastern hills. Almost free of the horizon.
Tangaroa shook his head. “If we put it in ourselves, it’s probably cheating. It might not have any healing magic.”
“But there isn’t another flower coming past. A nonexistent token can’t save Yann. A token we’ve given a helping hand might save him.”
“No. I think it’s wrong. I think we should wait and see what the mountain gives us.”
He looked to the east, but he wasn’t seeing the sun, he was seeing Yann, pale and silent. Tangaroa was angry with the centaur, but he was also scared that he might never see Yann again, might never wrestle or argue or train or laugh with him again.
He looked back at Rona, at the flower rolling between her slim fingers. “Do you want to drop it in? Do you think it will work?”
She shrugged.
“Come on, selkie. You’re the world expert on cheating. Do you think you could get away with it?”
“Getting away with it is not the point of cheating, Tangaroa.”
“You didn’t like getting caught out this morning though, did you?”
She turned away.
He looked east, then at the water upstream. “We have less than a minute and I don’t see any flowers coming down the burn.” He turned to Rona. “So, cheat expert, do you want to cheat again?”
She snapped at him, “Oh no. I’m not going to decide this. I’m not a trusted member of the team.”
“You are more experienced at this sort of thing.”
“Then it’s time you got experience with difficult choices, Tangaroa. You decide.”
“What?”
Rona spoke clearly. “You cut the flower, you gave the flower to me. So you decide. You decide if we should break the rules, if we should cheat, to save someone we both care about. If you want this flower in that water, Tangaroa, then you tell me to drop it in. You tell me to cheat.”
He looked at the sun rising over the hills, at the water falling down the mountain.
Seven waterfalls. Would that be enough to wash this flower clean of a false start? Did it matter? It was the only chance Yann had.
“I get the point,” he muttered. “Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing to do the right thing. I get it.”
“Tell me.”
“Drop it in, Rona.”
She let the purple flower fall and it tumbled through the still air into the moving water.
Chapter 19
The flower vanished over the first fall.
“Your flower,” said Tangaroa.
“Your decision,” said Rona.
They jumped down the sides of the burn, Tangaroa on the west, Rona on the east, following the flower.
It was already at the bottom of the first fall, bouncing up and down under the white water, battered by the weight landing on it.
“Can a flower survive seven of these?” Rona whispered.
A shift in the water flow let the purple foxglove break free. It floated to the second fall, a longer wilder fall, and leapt over that.
Rona and Tangaroa scrambled down the sides, struggling to keep their balance, to hold their weapons, to keep the purple petals in view as the flower fell through the churning water.
This time the flower’s momentum brought it safely out from under the fall. But the flower drifted into a pool to the west, which it circled twice, then the current pressed it against a rock.
Tangaroa and Rona stared at the flower, willing it to move. The blue loon glanced along the glen. The sun was free in the sky now. This flower was their only chance. But the water was pinning it to the rock.
He looked up at Rona. She raised her eyebrows.
The flower was stuck at his side of the burn. It was his decision. Again.
“The sun is up now. It has to be this flower.” He bent down and eased the foxglove free with his finger. It leapt back into the current, circled the pool once, then escaped into the forward flowing burn.
They watched it bob gently along a calmer stretch to the third fall. Then they heard the dragon call, “Blue loon, selkie. Look to the west!”
As the flower tumbled over the third drop, Tangaroa and Rona saw the fence around the trees glitter in the morning light, then collapse slowly to the ground. And they saw a line of goats run forward.
Goat-legged men and goats on their hind legs. More than thirty goats, all with shields, many with swords, hammers or maces, all running towards them.
“The Master’s minions,” gasped Rona. “They must have set the net! They want to stop us collecting the token, t
o make sure Yann dies. We have to keep the flower safe!”
Tangaroa nodded. “You watch the flower, I’ll watch the goats. Maybe they won’t reach the burn until the flower has reached the last fall.”
Tangaroa stood steady, with the burn, the flower and the selkie behind him, and the fauns and uruisks running towards him. Nimbus flapped downstream, and settled in the heather between the blue loon and the goats.
“Thanks, friend,” said Tangaroa. “But I think there are too many even for you.”
Rona called, “The flower is past the fourth fall. I’m following it.”
Tangaroa leapt down to stand opposite her and turned to watch the goats. They were shouting as they ran, but he couldn’t hear what they were threatening.
He glanced back at the flower, moving through shallow water. Stopping, circling, starting again lazily. It wasn’t moving nearly as fast down the burn as the goats were moving across the mountain.
Then he looked at Rona, watching the flower, her hand relaxed around her spear.
“Rona, we’re being attacked! Why aren’t you as scared and nervous and basically useless as you were earlier?”
She shrugged. “I was really worried about you finding out I’d cheated. It was the worst thing I could imagine, but now that you know, nothing else quite as terrible can happen.”
“You were more scared of me than of those creatures running at us?”
“You’re my friend. I care what you think. I don’t care what they think.”
“You care what I think?”
She nodded. “But, right now, I think you should watch the goats rather than me.”
He checked on the goats again. The fauns and uruisks were getting closer, so their words were clearer:
“Don’t trust…”
“We’re here…”
“Guard…”
Rona said, “The flower is over the fifth fall,” and leapt down again.
Tangaroa followed her. The flower was already floating free of the chaos at the bottom of the fall. “I think this flower is going to make it.”
