by Lari Don
“She’s nailed it!” Helen called to Yann happily. “She’s pacing her song to the sea. She’s using the pulse of the waves as drumbeats and the breath of the wind as a backing singer.”
“Helen, the wind’s getting stronger. Come away from the edge.” Yann wiped a mist of salt spray from his face, and held his hand out to Helen.
As Rona sang the chorus for a second time, Helen and Yann took a dozen steps inland.
Yann frowned. “If this storm washes away the evidence of the creature’s attack, we won’t be able to prove what we were doing on the cliff.”
The wind whipped round them. A few raindrops hit Helen’s scalp, but she didn’t put her hood up in case it muffled Rona’s song.
Rona’s voice picked up in pace and volume and passion, as the waves and wind whirled faster. Helen shook her head in wonder. “Good for her, she’s keeping up with the rhythm of the sea and the tone of the weather even when it changes.”
“I’m not sure it’s happening that way round,” said Yann. “Which came first, the storm or the song?”
Battered by the spray thrashing up from the sea, Helen and Yann backed off further, Helen sheltering behind the bulky body of her friend. Yann bent down and yelled to Helen, “Whose idea was it to include the wind and waves in her song?”
“Mine. I thought it would give depth to the music, like singing with an orchestra rather than a solo.”
Yann laughed wildly and trotted in a circle round Helen, exposing her to blasts of cold spray.
“You’ve done it again, bard of the fabled beasts!
You’ve found the magic which all selkies seek! The Storm Singer competition aims to find the few selkies who can call up a storm. Rona is becoming a true Storm Singer, and you told her how!”
Yann grabbed Helen’s hands and swung her in a dance, whirling her round the clifftop in time to the calling of the wind, the crashing of the waves, the pounding of the rain and the relentless beautiful singing of their friend.
He lifted her off the ground, Helen gasping and laughing, and Yann shouting, “You came north to turn her into a confident performer, instead you’ve turned her into a Storm Singer!”
Rona ended her song with a flourish which soaked the pair on the cliff. Yann and Helen slowed their frantic dance, and listened to the audience along the coast cheering wildly. The raindrops had already stopped and the wind was dying down.
Helen noticed the ragged shapes of seagulls being tossed about, far out to sea. “Now I see why Lavender and Catesby didn’t come this afternoon.”
“Yes,” said Yann, breathing hard. “Neither Lavender’s delicate wings nor Catesby’s soft fledgling feathers can cope with strong winds. They might have been blown out to sea and never made it back to land.”
“Did they know Rona was going to sing up a storm? Did you all know?”
“Of course not. No one has done it for a hundred years! But Lavender was pretty hopeful, and she persuaded Catesby to stay with her just in case.”
“Won’t they have got battered by the storm at the campsite?” Helen looked anxiously to the east.
“No, the storm was just within the sound of Rona’s voice. Come on!” said Yann, still in a hugely good mood. “Let’s go down to the venue.”
“Wait, I want to hear her last song, and the vote.”
“There’s no need for a vote! They might ask her to sing again as an encore, but there won’t be a vote.”
“Why not?” Helen was suddenly worried.
“She has won by right. She is a Storm Singer. No one can deny that. The vote is only to select the best sounding singer when there’s no true Storm Singer. Rona has won! So we’d better go and give her a hug.”
As Rona sang a bouncy improvised song about fish playing tricks to escape seals’ teeth, Helen shoved her lukewarm cold pack in the top of the rucksack, and followed Yann carefully down the cliff.
She stopped halfway, and looked at the water below. In the blur of dying swells, she couldn’t see any pink or purple. Perhaps the creature had gone. Or perhaps it was still listening, from further out to sea.
Chapter 5
By the time Helen and Yann reached the base of the cliff, seven selkie elders were striding along the beach towards them.
“Cheats! Vandals! Saboteurs!” One of the tall men was jabbing a long finger at them, almost spitting in anger. Helen recognised the hooked nose and blotchy skin of Roxburgh’s father, and saw Roxburgh cowering in embarrassment behind him.
“Cheats!” he yelled again, as the group of selkies closed around the calm centaur and the slightly nervous girl.
The shortest selkie there, Rona’s mum, glared at Helen and Yann, then turned to Roxburgh’s dad. “It was not cheating, Sinclair, because it made no difference to the result. Rona won by acclaim. The noise from above made no difference.”
“No difference! Of course it made a difference! But my Roxburgh could have sung up a storm too if he hadn’t been distracted. He could have sung up a much greater storm with his power and volume then your mimsy little Rona managed.”
“You cannot prove that!”
“You cannot disprove it! He was probably just about to sing up a storm when that clumsy clodhopping farm animal kicked those rocks down!”
Helen felt Yann’s leg muscles tense beside her. She hoped he had more sense than to start an argument when they were already in trouble.
“Nonsense, Sinclair.” Rona’s mum kept her voice calm. “Roxburgh was already on verse three of six permitted verses when the shouting started. If he had been going to sing up a storm, waves and wind would have started to build by the second chorus.”
Sinclair stepped right up to her, his bare feet gripping the slippery rocks, and snarled at her.
The huge scar-faced selkie barged between them. “Now Sinclair. You know that a true Storm Singer can cope with distractions, even attacks, during a song …”
“Roxburgh did cope! He sang wonderfully, no matter how noisy these land creatures were!”
“He sang through the disturbance, but he didn’t sing up a storm.”
“Strathy,” Sinclair appealed to the host, “you know my son would have more chance of winning the Sea Herald contest than that little lassie Rona.” He shoved his tall gangly son forward.
Strathy shook his head. “We do not choose our Storm Singer for size, speed or strength, but by the power of their song. That policy has given us many successful Sea Herald contestants.”
Sinclair opened his mouth to make another objection to Rona’s victory, but the host growled, “Stop! Rona won. Roxburgh did not. We are not changing the rules. We are not changing the result. Instead we are asking what these two were doing on the cliff, and deciding what should be done with them.”
The semicircle of seal folk turned and looked at Helen and Yann.
Strathy said, “Horse boy. Human girl. Explain your highly insulting behaviour.”
Helen and Yann hadn’t discussed what they would say, nor who would say it. Yann glanced down at Helen, and she pointed with a tiny gesture back at him. It wasn’t wimping out, she told herself, because her ignorance about selkie etiquette could make things worse. Anyway, words were Yann’s music.
“Esteemed elders of the seal people,” the centaur said, speaking far more formally than he did nowadays with Helen and his other friends, “please do us the honour of accompanying us to the scene of the disturbance. I will explain our undignified behaviour on the way to the clifftop, where I can show you evidence of what we fought there.”
Sinclair objected to following a centaur’s orders, but Rona’s mum was eager, and Strathy and the other elders were curious, so Yann led the selkies in their shimmering grey cloaks up the narrow path. He described what he’d seen on the beach and why they’d gone up the cliff. Helen trailed behind, hoping to avoid telling any of the story herself.
As she reached the top of the path, she heard a voice whisper her name. She whirled round. Rona was just behind her, smiling hugely. “Thank you
, Helen! I would never have won without you.”
“Yes, you would. You’re the best songwriter and best singer I’ve ever heard.”
“I wasn’t a Storm Singer until you came. I only sang up a storm because I used the wind and waves as the rhythm of the song. That was your idea.”
“I was only trying to improve the song, not magically manipulate the weather. Why didn’t you tell me you were hoping to sing up a storm?”
“The clue’s in the name of the contest. Storm Singing! I thought you knew.”
“Rona, stop assuming I know this fabled beast stuff.”
“Even if you didn’t know what I was trying to do, you still helped me win, and I will always thank you for that.” Rona hugged Helen, her strong swimmer’s arms squishing Helen’s hands to her side.
“Ow!”
“Sorry. Let me see.” Rona looked at the pink welts on Helen’s hand. “You need to keep this cool.”
“I’ve already done that. You should have seen them before.” Helen frowned at the faded marks. The storm might have washed away the evidence on the cliff, and her first aid was soothing away the evidence on their skins.
“So tell me what did this to you,” Rona said, “and why Yann nearly fell off the cliff.”
As they walked to the spy’s boulder, Helen described the monster and the fight, echoing the more flowery retelling she could hear Yann giving ahead.
When she’d finished, Rona said, “A sea-through!”
“Yes,” agreed Helen. “It was nearly transparent, almost see-through.”
“No, that’s its name. It’s called a sea-through. The proper name is cnidaree, but most selkies call them seathroughs.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“Their stings are nasty, and they like to eat selkie pups, but they don’t risk it often because it’s difficult to hide the evidence with those transparent tummies. They’re usually in a bad mood when they’re in their landform because they don’t like being out of the sea. They’re more relaxed in their underwater jellyfish form. In the sea, they’re only really dangerous when they band together into blooms, then they get each other all worked up about the sea’s rights and belongings.
“Our storytellers say that long ago, sea-through blooms wrapped thousands of tentacles around ships carrying fish, whale oil or sealskins, and pulled them under, and that they sent gangs of sea-throughs ashore to dig up bodies of drowned sailors from graveyards. But no one has seen a bloom for a long time. I’m sure you just met a lone sea-through.”
“Why did it try to disrupt Roxburgh’s song?”
“Perhaps Sinclair has annoyed the sea-through, and it wanted to stop his son winning? He certainly annoys enough selkies!”
Helen and Rona caught up with the elders just in time to hear Sinclair crowing triumphantly, “There is nothing here. It is all a conspiracy to have the centaur’s favourite win!”
Helen looked at the clifftop. It had been scoured clean by the wind and water called up by Rona’s song.
Strathy was striding up and down, cloak swirling. “So, centaur colt and human child! Where is the evidence?”
Yann answered confidently, “Do you not recall the evidence of your own ears and eyes? Did you not hear the creature shriek about the power of the sea? Did you not see it trying to throw spines and stings down on you?”
The host shook his head. “We heard no words, just your disruptive yells. We saw no monster, just a clumsy girl fooling about on a cliff and an inconsiderate centaur kicking stones at us.
“You have shown us no evidence of this spy and this fight, so I must conclude that you are lying, that you had another motive for the disturbance.” He glanced at Rona. “It does not reflect well on our Sea Herald contestant.”
Rona moved closer to her mum, who was biting her lip with small sharp teeth. Roxburgh’s dad was bouncing up and down with joy, but Roxburgh was edging away from him.
Strathy looked back at Yann and Helen. “I have no choice but to banish both of you from our precious coastline. You will go inland now and you will never come within a mile of the sea again, unless you want the anger of every sea creature raised against you.”
“No!” said Rona. “No, Strathy! It was a sea-through. Look at their scars!” But Helen’s cooling packs had been too effective. The welts on her hands were now pale pink.
Strathy shrugged. “Those marks prove nothing. These land beings could have scraped themselves on rocks.”
Yann said smoothly, “Selkie elders are known for their wisdom and justice, so please allow us the chance to put our story fully …”
Strathy shook his head. “We do not have time for stories. You have disturbed us enough. Consider yourselves lucky we are merely banishing you. Rona Grey, consider yourself lucky that your natural talent makes it impossible for us to disqualify you.”
“But …” blustered Sinclair, “… but …”
Rona spoke up again. “We should be thanking my friends, not banishing them. Look …”
Reaching into the rubble at the base of the rock, Rona dragged out a smaller version of the bag Helen had ripped.
“A fishskin pouch?” said Strathy.
Rona grinned at Helen, and tipped the small bag upside down. Everyone stepped forward to see what fell out …
Broken shells smashed by birds; a battered but unopened tin of tuna; a cracked mother-of-pearl pendant; a dusty egg-timer filled with sand.
Strathy stirred the pile with his toe. “This is a habit of the cnidaree. Almost their religion. They collect the sea’s earth-trapped treasures and return them. I wonder …”
Suddenly the sceptical elders were looking around the clifftop with new enthusiasm. Within moments Rona’s mum found the orange jellyfish which Yann had punched, stuck in a crack in the rock; Strathy found sea urchin spines entangled in heather twenty paces inland; and the oldest elder found a fragment of fishskin clinging to the cliff edge.
The elders went into a quick huddle, excluding Rona’s mum and Roxburgh’s dad, who was muttering angrily at his son, then Strathy stepped out of the huddle and straight to the cliff edge. Helen and Yann stood close together. Surely they weren’t going to be banished from the coast forever?
Strathy raised his immense bull seal’s voice. “The selkie elders extend grateful thanks to our dry-shod friends for foiling an intruder’s attack on our competition. We shall fête them as honoured guests at our Storm Singer feast tonight, and invite them to be spectators at the start of the Sea Herald contest tomorrow.”
The huge cheer from below drowned out Sinclair’s peevish complaints and Rona’s delighted squeals as she hugged Yann and Helen.
But after the elders headed back to the sea, and Rona’s mum left her daughter with strict instructions to be home an hour before the feast, Rona sank onto the ground, put her head in her hands, and started to sniff.
“Oh no,” said Yann. “You’re not getting all emotional here. You can get weepy on the way back to Taltomie Bay, if you have to.”
Yann bent his front legs to let Helen and Rona clamber on his back. He made his usual complaints about being treated like a taxi, but the girls knew he would complain even louder about how long it took them to walk to the campsite on two legs each.
Yann headed inland, cutting off a bulging curve of coast and galloping straight over the moors to Taltomie Bay.
“What’s wrong, Rona?” Helen spoke loudly enough for Yann to hear. “You should be delighted about winning the Storm Singer competition. Are you worried about this Sea Herald contest?”
Rona yelled back, “Yes! Very worried!”
“You did brilliantly this afternoon. I’m sure you can win another contest.”
“It’s not winning or losing I’m worried about,” Rona said. “It’s living or dying.”
Chapter 6
“What?” Helen yelled over the hoofbeats and the wind. Surely she’d misheard Rona’s answer.
“It’s not losing or winning the contest I’m worried about,” Rona repeat
ed. “It’s surviving it!”
“What do you mean?”
“The tasks aren’t about writing and performing. They’re about showing you can survive all the dangers of the sea and the coast.”
Yann slowed down, and called, “I can help you prepare for the tasks.”
“How can you help, Yann? The tasks happen out at sea.”
Yann laughed confidently. “I mean help with psyching yourself up, using your fear to give yourself strength, using your opponents’ fear to defeat them. I’ve won lots of races and fights, so I’m sure I can help you win.”
“Stop being so macho, Yann. I don’t care about winning this! All I want is to be alive at the autumn equinox, applauding the winning Sea Herald, then getting peace to write more songs. I’m delighted to be a Storm Singer, but I’ve never wanted to be Sea Herald. It’s my bad luck that the year I compete for Storm Singer, they need a new Sea Herald too. So I don’t want your coaching on the competitive spirit, thanks, Yann. Let’s hope I don’t need Helen’s first aid skills either!”
“But there’s no point taking part if you aren’t trying to win,” yelled Yann. “You could at least try!”
“Who are the other contestants?” Helen asked, hoping to stop this becoming an argument.
Rona answered, “Competition winners from two other clans: the mermaids and the blue men.”
“Do they have Storm Singer competitions too?” Helen wondered if all the interesting weather round the Scottish coast was sung by fabled beasts.
“No, storm singing is a selkie skill. The mermaids hold a different singing competition, to lure sailors towards them. It doesn’t require much talent,” Rona sniffed, “just a carrying voice and a pretty face. The blue men pick the blue loon who gathers the most verses.”
“Writes the most verses?” Helen asked.
“No. Gathers verses. Finds, steals or demands them.”
“Why do they …?”
Yann interrupted, “We’re nearly there. You’d better scout ahead to check the campsite is safe.”
