by Lari Don
She’d known the phoenix for months: first in his elegant, metallic, almost adult plumage; then after he burnt up and re-hatched, growing into these fluffy juvenile feathers. But his squeaky baby bird voice wasn’t why she couldn’t understand him. She just couldn’t understand phoenix language.
All her fabled beast friends understood him, though they had to answer in their own languages. “All you have to do is listen,” Lavender would say in exasperation. Helen tried, but she couldn’t hear any words in Catesby’s squeaks and squawks.
Catesby clicked and whistled, then shrieked with frustration.
Helen groaned. “I know you’re annoyed I can’t understand you! I’m getting that message. But I’m still not getting the original message. Sorry. Please do the wing thing again.”
Catesby used his left wing to gesture to the door, then towards the other tent.
“You want me to go to your tent?”
He nodded.
“Are the others there?”
He nodded again.
Helen tutted. “Why didn’t you say so?”
He squawked in irritation. She grinned, stroking his fluffy feathers, then carried him on her wrist into the bigger tent.
“I have to get changed first, obviously.” Lavender was perched on Yann’s shoulder, tugging a tiny comb through his dark red hair. “Once we’re all respectable, we can head off.”
Helen looked at her jeans and t-shirt. “I was going like this. We’re going in a boat, to a cave. Anything fancier would be overdressing, wouldn’t it?”
“Please make an effort,” Lavender said. “It’s Rona’s celebration.”
“I’ll brush my hair, and I might put on jewellery, but I can’t do anything about these marks on my hand.”
Lavender bounced over to look at the fading scars. “Those still look nasty. What was that sea creature trying to do? Will it disrupt the next contest too?”
Helen shrugged. “If it’s some enemy of Sinclair’s, only interested in stopping Roxburgh winning, then it won’t care about the Sea Herald contest.”
There was a gentle tap on the outside layer of the tent and Sheila’s voice whispered, “I can get the boat ready in ten minutes, if that’s ok?”
“Ten minutes!” shrieked Lavender. “But I’m not changed!”
While everyone else got ready, Helen brushed her hair and put on an old coral necklace she’d found in a charity shop. Then they jumped, clambered or fluttered over the wall, and went around the outside of the campsite to join Sheila at the lantern-lit jetty.
Helen looked at the campsite’s rowing boat, then at the centaur beside her. “Are you sure about this, Yann?”
“I’ve flown on a dragon. I can stand in a boat.”
“But can the boat take your weight?”
Sheila laughed. “I’m sure it can. It’s carried fat fishermen and all their kit, so it will cope with a few kids.”
“Kids with hooves?” Helen muttered.
Sheila crouched down, and picked up the rope tying the boat to the jetty. “If you row from the bow, Helen, and Yann stands carefully over the middle and stern benches, then the boat will be quite low in the water, but well enough balanced. It’s a new boat, light, fast and easy to row, so I’m sure you can cope. And I’m not coming with you, so that’s one less person to fit in the boat.”
“Why aren’t you coming?” asked Lavender. “Don’t you want to cheer for Rona? Or don’t you have the right clothes for a feast?” She glanced at Sheila’s jeans.
“I’ll cheer from this side. I don’t cross the water any more.”
“Why not?” Helen asked.
“Most selkies are never satisfied with where and who they are,” Sheila said quietly. “We long for the sea when we’re on the land, and long for the land when we’re at sea. So I’ve made my choice. I stay on land. I’m happier that way.”
Yann took a deep breath, and stepped into the boat, which rocked wildly from side to side. He leapt back onto the jetty.
Catesby squawked. Yann glared at him. “Humans can do it. I can do it.”
So he watched the boat, judged its gentle movement on the slight swell, and timed his step carefully. This time he got two hooves in the boat before it lurched and he reversed again fast.
Helen said, trying to sound serious, “In the olden days, horses and cattle were tied to the back of boats, and they swam along behind. We could try that.”
“I am not cattle!” Yann said angrily, as he tried again.
Lavender and Catesby didn’t manage to hide their sniggers, as it took three more attempts before the centaur finally stood awkwardly in the rocking boat.
Helen stepped lightly into the front of the boat to pick up the oars, checking they were secure in their rowlocks, and once Sheila had untied the rope, Helen started to row. She gasped as she pulled on the oars. She’d rowed her mum and little sister round St Mary’s Loch in the Borders last summer, but rowing a boat with a centaur in it would be harder work.
Sheila called from the jetty, as Helen got into a slow steady rhythm, “Will you be alright, Helen?”
“I’m fine. But Yann’s not getting any pudding if he wants me to row him back!”
Because she was rowing, Helen was facing the stern, the back of the boat. So she was looking at where they had been rather than where they were going, though she could hardly see the lights of the campsite past Yann’s huge bulk. “You’re just too heavy!”
“Nonsense. The water is supporting my weight, all you’re doing is moving us along. If you can pull me up a cliff, human girl, you can row me over the water.”
When Helen took a break, she twisted round to see the dark island ahead of them, outlined against the black sky. Eilan nan MacCodrum was like a tipped-over slice of cake on the water: high cliffs at one end, sloping down to a beach at the other.
Helen started rowing again, wishing that her friend Sapphire was here to fly them all from shore to island. But the dragon couldn’t leave her Borders home until she had shed her old skin, so Helen would have to get used to being a taxi service this weekend.
“Stop splashing me, Helen!” said Lavender, perched on the side of the boat. “You’re getting my dress wet!”
“I’m rowing as smoothly as I can.”
“Stop it!” Lavender squealed again. “Who’s doing that?”
Then a voice called:
“We will stop the splash in time,
When you top our verse in rhyme.”
Helen stopped rowing. All the fabled beasts looked frantically around, Yann’s movements making the boat wobble.
The voice had come from the sea.
Chapter 8
Lavender lit the air above the boat with shaky lightballs from the end of her wand.
The boat was surrounded by a ring of people, bobbing in the sea. Their wet heads and upper bodies were dark and shiny in the magical light.
“Finish our rhymes, or we soak you!” said the nearest boy in a cheerful voice.
They all swam forward and grasped the edge of the boat, one at the bow, one at the stern, and four on each side, rocking it slightly. Then they chanted:
“A human, a horse, a firebird, a fairy,
A strange group to be crossing the seas.”
There was a pause.
“Finish the verse, or we’ll soak you,” repeated the smiling boy, hanging on beside the port-side rowlock to Helen’s right.
“Finish the verse, or we’ll sink you!” said the boy at the bow, behind Helen. They all chanted again:
“A human, a horse, a firebird, a fairy,
A strange group to be crossing the seas.”
Yann’s deep voice continued:
“This mixed magic boatload might make you wary,
But we’re friends, so let us past, please.”
“Perfect!” said the boy to Helen’s right. “Now we need three more verses for the other three in the boat.”
Helen whispered to Yann, “Who are they? What should we do?”
Yann replied, clearly and openly, “Helen, meet the blue loons, the sons of the blue men of the Minch. This tribe have a nasty habit of drowning people who can’t create poetry up to their low standards of doggerel, but don’t worry. I can make up rhymes for most words except orange and silver.”
“But a poetic pony isn’t enough,” called a boy near the stern. “You all have to answer or we won’t let you past. Can the lilac blossom rhyme?
“The bright green sea doesn’t need flowers,
No petals of pink, purple or red.”
Lavender answered in her high voice:
“I’ll be gone in a couple of hours,
Fast asleep in my dry flower bed.”
The smiling boy said, “Rhyming and punning! Well done!” But they didn’t stop their uncomfortable rocking of the boat.
“Your turn now, ugly ducking,” said another blue loon, on the starboard side.
Helen gasped. How could Catesby complete a rhyme, when he didn’t speak English?
“It won’t be easy, but to save your friends,
You must rhyme, even though you can’t talk.”
After a tense pause, Catesby fluttered above their heads, and chittered a chant with the same rhythm as the blue loons’ couplet, which ended in a loud squawk.
The blue loons laughed. Helen hadn’t understood Catesby’s verse, but that squawk at the end had definitely rhymed with “talk”.
Helen had no time to feel relieved, because Catesby’s success meant she was next. The boy to her right called out:
“So human child, you can’t get past,
Till you tell us the end of this verse.”
Helen looked up at Yann. He shrugged. He was powerless here, away from the land where he was so fast and strong.
The blue loon repeated the lines:
“So human child, you can’t get past,
Till you tell us the end of this verse.”
Helen had no ideas at all. The rhythm was simple enough, but she had never liked writing words for tunes. Violinists weren’t expected to sing.
The voice behind Helen called angrily, “Rhyme now, human child, or we’ll sink the boat. Once you’re in the water, we’ll sink you too, unless you give us the rhymes in your head.”
“I don’t have any rhymes in my head,” she said quietly.
And the blue loons attacked the boat. In one sudden shocking movement, the ones to port dragged the boat’s edge down, the ones to starboard shoved upwards, and the boat lurched to the side.
Helen screamed as she slid out towards the water. She let go of the oars and grabbed the side of the boat. She wedged her feet under the bench in front. She flung herself sideways to starboard as if her weight could count against the force of ten teenagers determined to drown her.
Yann roared and Helen felt the boat jerk as the centaur leapt into the air then crashed down again to stay in the boat.
Then the boat swung back, and righted itself. The blue loons had only tipped it once. It wasn’t an attempt to drown them. Just a warning of what would happen if she didn’t answer.
Yann was shifting his hooves to get his balance, Catesby was fluttering in the air above her head, and Helen groped about for the oars, vaguely aware she’d lost something even more vital.
“LAVENDER! Where’s Lavender?”
A tiny cough came from her right.
Lavender was clinging to the port side of the boat. She was completely soaked. “I’m going to a party!” she yelled furiously. “And I look ridiculous!”
“You won’t get to the party unless the human girl rhymes,” said one of the blue loons.
“We won’t get to the party unless I find both oars,” muttered Helen. The left oar was in its rowlock, but the right oar had slipped free.
She peered past the blue loons at the water. The oar should float, but it might already be out of reach. “More light, Lavender,” she whispered, “I’ve lost an oar.”
Before Lavender could shake the water off her wand, Helen saw the oar. The blue loon nearest her was grinning as he pushed it back through the rowlock.
As she bent closer to grasp the oar, he murmured, “Don’t overthink the rhyme, just listen to the rhythm, then answer it. It’s easy, you have it in your head already.”
Then he called out, “Last chance, human child, rhyme the third time of asking, or we overturn the boat.
“So human child, you can’t get past,
Till you tell us the end of this verse.”
Helen closed her eyes, mouthed the words along with him, and rather than planning an answer, she let her thumb keep the beat on the oar, and her mouth keep the words going …
“Thanks for leaving my poem till last,
Because my rhymes are even worse.”
“No,” the boy at the bow said. “That’s not true. They aren’t any worse than rhyming seas and please, or talk and squawk. So your verse is a lie and you have to rhyme again.”
“You challenged us to top your rhymes, not speak the truth,” Yann objected. “We’re late for the feast, so let us past.”
“A human is most likely to know the answers we need,” said a higher voice. “So she rhymes again.”
“That’s not how we do it,” said the blue loon by Helen’s right oar. “They’ve all rhymed, they’re free to go.”
“Just because you gather at least one verse a day, Tangaroa, doesn’t mean you can deny the rest of us our chance,” muttered the boy at the bow. “This girl might know our way home.”
“Not when we keep changing the rules. They have rhymed. They have the right to pass.” He spoke with clear authority, and the others let go of the boat when he did.
He nodded to Helen. “Row on, human child. We’ll see you at the feast.”
The blue loons swam off, through the black water, towards the dark island.
Chapter 9
“What was that about?” Helen’s hands were shaking so much she could hardly hold the oars.
“Blue loons gathering their precious verses. I’m so sorry I couldn’t defend you, my friends.” Yann’s voice was strained. “I can’t move on this damn boat! But when I find them on land …”
“How would you find them on land?” Helen began to row slowly. “Aren’t they sea people? With fins or something?”
“No,” said Yann, “they have legs just like you and me. Just like you anyway. So when I find them where I can move faster than them, they’ll be making up limericks about broken legs and nosebleeds.”
“Calm down, Yann,” said Lavender. “That was scary, and my dress is ruined, but if you attack them on an island, how will we row home safely?”
Catesby squawked his agreement.
“There was not no harm done!” snapped Yann. “I was humiliated, Helen was bullied, Lavender was nearly drowned, and they called you an ugly duckling. I can’t ignore that. I have my reputation to uphold!”
Helen tried to distract Yann from his plans for revenge. “Why did they want us to make up poetry for them?”
“Too thick-headed to do it themselves,” muttered Yann.
“We can ask them at the feast. Politely,” said Lavender.
“I’m not asking them for anything except an apology.”
“Be sensible, Yann. If you make a battle out of it, they might make it dangerous for us to travel along the coast to support Rona. If you treat it like a game, just boys fooling around, there will be, as Catesby says, no harm done.”
Helen remembered the voices threatening to drown them. She didn’t think it had been a game.
She followed Yann’s bad-tempered directions round the cliffs until they were on the seaward side of the island, invisible from the mainland.
“Where do we moor the boat?” she panted, her arms and back now really tired.
“We don’t,” grunted Yann. “We row in.”
“Row? Into a cave?”
“Yes, and if the tide is already too high after those blue buffoons delayed us, I’ll have to duck as you row in.”
“Why are we rowing in? Isn’t it dry inside? Don’t seals need dry land to have their pups …?”
Yann interrupted her. “Sheila said to take a sharp right at this rock, then we should see the cave.”
Helen waggled the oars about, trying to make a tight turn, looking behind her at every stroke. She’d only ever steered a boat in open water, and wasn’t sure she could navigate through small spaces.
Lavender squealed, “You’re splashing me again! You’re as bad as those uncouth loons!”
Helen didn’t pay any attention to Lavender’s complaints, because once she was round the rock, she could see a warm glowing arch in the cliff, suggesting hot food and somewhere to rest her tired arms. She pulled the oars with more enthusiasm.
“Slow down!” called Yann. “We have to go carefully. Sheila says it’s not easy with the tide rising, but humans have steered boats into this cave before. It’s been the seals’ nursery and feasting hall for centuries, except for a few years when smugglers hid their cargo there.”
Helen rowed cautiously, with Yann calling, “Left, left more, right now.”
Suddenly they were under the low stone arch, and Yann rocked the boat as he ducked down. Helen twisted round to see the width of the arch, and realised the boat would fit through but the oars wouldn’t. So she gave one strong pull to propel the boat as far as possible, then hauled the oars in, letting the boat float slowly through.
The boat drifted to a halt in a large cave, with a pool of water at the entrance and dry land at the back, rising up and flattening out to a stone floor, where tables were set for a feast.
Half a dozen selkies dived in to push the boat to a rusty mooring ring, and help the friends out. As Helen lifted Lavender, whose wings were still too wet to fly, onto her shoulder, she saw three other arched entrances round the cave and a large fireplace at the back. She also caught a glimpse of Rona, in a silver dress, sitting at the top table surrounded by selkie elders, adult mermaids and blue men.
