by Lari Don
“The mermaids sang me to sleep,” Helen said stubbornly, “so they could come back and drown me.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Rona.
“Why would anyone do it?” said Helen. “And why did the sea-through attack Roxburgh? There are more questions than answers today. Are you finished, Lavender?”
“Nearly. The last dozen are all really knotted. We’ll have to use the dagger.”
“No! You are not cutting my hair with a dagger! Rona, there are scissors in the outside pocket of my rucksack. They’ll be too big for Lavender, so could you cut my hair free?”
“You have cutting tools in your bag?” Lavender squeaked. “Why didn’t you tell me when I was standing there, watching you drown?”
Helen sighed. “I didn’t think. I must have been panicking a little bit after all.”
Helen spent an uncomfortable five minutes listening to snipping sounds behind her. She didn’t care that much about her hair, not like Lavender did, certainly not like the mermaids did. But having chunks of hair cut out, just before a feast with Rona’s family and picture-perfect mermaids, made her feel like a toddler with chewing gum stuck in her hair.
“Ouch! Careful!”
“Sorry!” Rona said. “That’s the last of it.”
Helen sat up straight. “Am I bald?”
“No!” they all said, too fast to be reassuring.
“Your mane is a bit bushy,” added Yann, “and an interesting shape, but it’s fine.”
“Bushy! And interesting!” Helen wailed. She turned round to look at the chain. Little knots of wet dark hair were tied to four huge rusty links. Rona had cut as close to the chain as possible, and the knots of hair looked like a line of spiders perched on the metal.
Helen lifted her hands to her head. Her hair was damp and crinkly, and her scalp was very tender, but she still had lots of hair.
“Do you want a mirror?” asked Rona.
“No,” said Helen firmly. She put her hand in her jeans pocket, pulled out a wet hair bobble, tied her hair into a messy ponytail, and stood up. “It’s only hair. I wasn’t competing with the mermaids anyway. Thank you all for saving me. Let’s get to your feast.”
Helen led the way up the winding tunnel, and soon she could hear voices chattering, cups clinking and the occasional burst of laughter.
Were the mermaids laughing right now, imagining Helen cold under the water?
Chapter 11
When the dishevelled group entered the warm brightness of the feast, Rona returned to the top table. Lavender led the rest to a table nearer the water, where the blue loons were spread out along the benches.
Yann said cheerfully, “Move over, friends, this is our table too.”
The blue loons grinned, and shifted to make space. Helen smiled. Clearly the tug-of-war had been the perfect way to make peace.
She sat down in the middle of a bench beside Tangaroa, while Yann settled himself at the end of the table. Even though he was kneeling on the ground, his head was still higher than the seated blue loons and Helen.
He handed the axe back to Tangaroa. “Thanks for lending me this.”
“No problem, land warrior. Why did you need it in such a hurry?”
“To cut our human friend free from an underwater grave, but I’m glad we didn’t need it.”
Tangaroa turned to Helen, but before he could say anything, she asked, “Why did you bring an axe to a feast?”
“We always have a few blades with us. Some boats are sturdier than others, and harder to sink. Putting a hole under the waterline usually works.”
He hefted the axe through the air before laying it at his feet, then asked, “Was your hoofed friend serious? Were you trapped underwater?”
“Yes. Those murderous mermaids over there tied me to a heavy weight and left me to drown.” Helen spoke quite loudly. All the blue loons heard her, and a few selkies turned to look at her.
Then the guests swivelled round to stare at a carved wooden tabletop floating in the water in the lower half of the cave. A table surrounded by mermaids, swishing their lacy tails, flicking their hair over their shoulders, and feeding each other small seaweed snacks.
The mermaids completely ignored their audience, so the guests stared at Helen again. She turned bright red, as she realised she had no real evidence the mermaids had tried to hurt her. Lavender said she’d been fine when the mermaids left, and surely someone would have noticed if the mermaids had sneaked away from that floating table. Why would the mermaids try to drown her? Why would anyone try to drown her?
Strathy made a loud, provocative remark at the top table, so the guests swung away from Helen to look at him. All except the mermaids, who now glanced at Helen, their pretty faces sharp with surprise.
As the food was served, Helen realised she couldn’t reach the mermaids to ask them questions, and they couldn’t reach her to drown her or do her hair. So she might as well eat her tea.
She looked at the platters in front of her, filled with fried and dried fish, smoked and steamed fish. Then she looked at the hands either side of her, serving sand-eel stew, stirring fish-egg soup, breaking open baked crabs.
Blue hands.
But sitting so near, looking so closely, Helen noticed the hands weren’t blue at all. They were brown. The deep blue came from lines of tightly packed tattoos.
Helen turned to the girl on her right and stared at her upper arm and shoulder. She was decorated with blue swirls and spirals, on top of warm brown skin. The girl wasn’t completely covered in tattoos; Helen could see clear patches of skin on the inside of her arm.
The girl saw Helen looking, smiled shyly and said, “Do you want some smoked ray wings?”
Helen spluttered, “No thanks,” and turned away, embarrassed at being caught staring. Now she was facing Tangaroa, who was grinning at her embarrassment.
He leant closer and held his arm out for her to examine. But Helen kept looking at his face. The blue on his lips, which made his teeth so white, was the only solid blue on his face. The rest of his face was covered in thin confident lines, arching over his eyebrows, slashing across his cheeks.
Intricate mazes of ink were tattooed onto his arms and shoulders too. Unlike the girl, he had almost no spaces, apart from the palms of his wide hands.
“I’m not completely covered yet,” he said, “but I’ve collected all I need to become our Sea Herald contestant, so I might not bother getting any more.”
“What have you collected?” Helen leant forward, examining the back of his hand, and realised the tattoos were made of tiny letters. Tiny words. Long lines of rhyming verse. “Did you write these?”
“We don’t write them, we gather them. We demand rhymes from those who put themselves in our hands by coming into our waters.”
“You’ve threatened to sink this many people?” She gestured at the tens of thousands of words cut into his skin.
“I’m good at persuading lines from lone sailors who’re too frightened or confused to tell anyone afterwards. Even though their rhymes don’t usually make much sense.”
“Maybe they don’t make sense because they’re frightened!”
He shrugged. “I’m also good at listening to people who don’t know I’m there, listening to their conversation and their music, gathering anything which sounds convincing.”
“But why do you need rhymes?”
Tangaroa frowned. “Our elders believe these rhymes will help us find our way home, to the island where our ancestors were born. Our ancestors navigated using rhyming word trails, and our tribe hope that if we listen hard enough, we will find the true words to lead us home.”
“How can words be used for navigation? Don’t you need compasses and maps?”
“No. Long before the electronic instruments your sailors use, before even instruments for north-seeking and star-reading, sea people used descriptions of shorelines, currents and swells to remember and pass on journeys.
“Words can be easier to pass on than
maps. If I wanted to guide you to that smaller cave, I’d say: stand up, walk ten paces to your right, follow the cave wall to your left until you come to an arch, then walk down the tunnel. That would get you there much faster than a map, because with a map you have to work out where you are, how to orientate it and what the scale is.”
Helen nodded. “But why in rhyme?”
“Because directions from one side of the world to the other are long, and rhymes are easier to remember.”
“Surely maps are more accurate for long distances?”
“Not if we don’t know the modern map name of our island. We come from the largest ocean in the world, with many thousands of islands.”
“Why don’t you just reverse the instructions which got you here?”
He looked embarrassed himself now, pink tingeing the edges of the blue patterns on his cheeks. “We got here by accident. Our ancestors were blown far off course, and found themselves in the wrong ocean, with no verses to help them find their way home. We can’t reverse the direction, because we don’t know how we got here. That’s why we gather verses, hoping to find the ones which will get us home.”
Helen glanced over at the pool, which was filling up with rising seawater. The tethered rowing boat was higher, and the mermaids’ table was floating closer. She looked back at Tangaroa. This was the daftest belief she’d heard since she’d met her fabled friends. How could she be polite about it?
“But, Tangaroa,” she said gently, “why do you believe that random rhymes from scared sailors will get you home? How could they possibly know which Pacific island you’re from?”
Tangaroa laughed. “Well done, land girl! You’ve taken five minutes to work out what took me years, and what my tribe still hasn’t recognised. I agree. Why should people who’ve never sailed our home waters have tribal memories of our way home? These rhymes,” he slapped his blue arm, “are a distraction. I’m looking for another way home. The deep sea powers must know where we come from. If I win the contest, then serve them well as herald, perhaps they will tell me.”
“So you collected all those rhymes to become the blue men’s contestant, even though you don’t believe in them?”
He nodded. “That’s why I’m determined to win. I’m not going to let a seal girl or a fishtail stop me getting home!”
Helen frowned at him. “You’re from an island. You have legs not fins. And your elders think human memories can tell you the way home. Are the blue men of the Minch human?”
“Of course. We’re as human as you.”
“But you live in the sea!”
“We live by the sea, not in the sea. There are lots of caves on the Scottish coast. Our elders believe we won’t find the true way if we move too far from currents and tides. We don’t sleep at sea, or tattoo there. We spend less time in the water than the selkies, and much less than the mermaids, but we do consider ourselves a sea people.”
“Why don’t you freeze in this water, and why doesn’t your skin wrinkle and peel?”
Tangaroa lowered his voice. “Seal oil! It makes us waterproof. But don’t tell your friend Rona!”
He’d been so open with his answers that Helen asked the question which everyone else had avoided. “Tangaroa, what’s the second task?”
He didn’t look shifty or change the subject. He just grinned his big fierce grin. “You don’t want to know, or you won’t think your selkie friend is so cuddly and cute!” He laughed. “But don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough.”
Chapter 12
Helen still didn’t have an answer about the second task, but as the selkies served dessert, she noticed the water had risen even further. Now that the mermaids’ table could float closer, she might get answers about her almost fatal hairstyle.
Anyway, she didn’t like selkie puddings. They were too salty. She got up from the bench and sat right at the edge of the water. Yann stood behind her. Helen was glad he was there. It was daft to be more nervous about speaking to mermaids than about sitting beside blue loons. There was no real evidence the mermaids meant her any harm, whereas the blue loons had definitely tried to tip her out of a boat.
Maybe that’s why she was nervous. The blue loons were dangerous, but they were completely open about sinking boats. Whereas if the mermaids had tried to drown her, they were now simpering like it had never happened.
Rona sat beside Helen. “I’ve spent all three fish courses listening to everyone’s top tips for winning the Sea Herald contest, so I asked them all if they saw the mermaids leave during the speeches. No one saw any guest leave the feast.”
“But if no one left this cave,” Helen said, “how could someone have attacked me? Is that tunnel the only way into the small cave?”
“Seawater gets in and out of the side cave through a wide crack in the rock. So any sea being who could squeeze through a hole this size …” Rona’s hands drew a circle a little wider than her shoulders, “… could get in from the open sea.”
Helen looked at the mermaids. “When the water was lower, their table was further from the crowd, nearer the sea arch. So perhaps a few mermaids could have gone out to sea and into the other cave without anyone noticing.”
Helen raised her voice. “Serena? Can we chat?”
The mermaids swished their tails, and the table floated over. When it settled against the floor of the cave, Serena was nearest to the fabled beasts, her delicate chin resting in her hands.
“What a SHAME! What HAPPENED to you, my dear human girl?”
Helen asked cautiously, “What do you think happened?”
“Your hair is so UNTIDY again! Did you take it out yourself? Did you not LIKE what we did?”
“I was happy with the plaits,” said Helen, “but I didn’t like the hair accessory.”
“What accessory? We used twisted kelp fibre to tie the plaits. Quite unobtrusive in your EARTHY brown hair.”
“I mean the heavy chain which I was tied to and left to drown …”
“Oh my GOODNESS! How AWFUL! What a SHOCK for you. Who would DO that to your LOVELY hair? And to you of course …”
Helen stared straight into Serena’s sea-blue eyes, and kept staring, without answering, until the mermaid glanced away.
Then Helen said, “I have no idea who did it, Serena. Do you?”
“No! No idea AT ALL!”
“Was anyone in the cave when you left?” asked Yann in a friendlier voice.
“GOODNESS no,” answered Serena with a huge smile. “We left your sleeping beauty QUITE safe on her own when Strathy summoned us.”
She turned to the other mermaids. “Orla, Inigo, Zenna, does ANYone remember ANYthing? A LOOMING presence perhaps, a MURDEROUS shadow, a MYSTERIOUS line of bubbles under the water, a GLOWING trail of slime on the wall?”
Yann snapped, “Please take this seriously. Helen nearly died!”
“My DEAR, we ARE being serious. If we think of ANY clues, we will OF COURSE let you know.”
Yann muttered something about pretty faces being no substitute for useful answers, while Catesby chattered a question.
“A motive? Surely that’s OBVIOUS, dear bird.” Serena glanced at Helen, and said, in a voice that was suddenly hard and gravelly, “Someone resents your dry-shod friend’s polluting human influence on the selkie contestant and is trying to remove her.” She shook out her hair and smiled a shiny smile. “After all, not EVERYONE loves humans as much as WE do.”
The mermaids drifted away, navigating their floating feast past young selkies playing in the water.
Helen wrapped her arms round her knees. “Rona, does someone resent you having a human friend? Does someone think you’re more likely to win without me here? Or is someone trying to stop you winning?”
“That makes no sense,” said Lavender, whirring beside their ears. “Someone tried to stop Roxburgh winning earlier. Surely someone isn’t trying to stop Rona as well?”
Helen rubbed her eyes, her salty fingers making them sting. “I’m too tired to think. If we
don’t go home soon, I’ll be too tired to row.”
The mermaids giggled at Yann’s wobbling attempts to board the boat, until it was steadied from the water by four selkie children. Then Helen rowed out of the cave, with Yann crouched even lower because the high tide made the archway smaller, and Rona guiding her friends back to the mainland.
“So Rona,” Helen panted, “tell us about the race. How far do you have to swim?”
“Whatever distance it is,” Yann interrupted, “you have to choose one of two strategies, Rona. Either get in the lead immediately and stay there, or hang back, let the others do the work at the front, and save your energy for a sharp sprint at the end. You have to choose. Don’t fudge it. Don’t start at the front then slip back, because whoever overtakes you already feels like the victor and you already feel defeated.”
Rona sighed. “It’s a race, not a battle, Yann.”
“Where do you start?” Helen asked. “Will we be able to watch?”
“If you stand on the ridge of the island an hour after dawn, you’ll get a good view of the start. You won’t see much else until we get back, and I’ve no idea how long that will take, because the race isn’t just about speed, it’s about dealing with hazards. We have to swim through a wreck, cross a rock run, then reach the furthest point of the course, and cross the tidal race on the way back.”
“What’s the furthest point?”
“The closest fishing boat. We have to swim right along its length, on the surface, close enough to touch the hull.”
“That’s really stupid!” Lavender said. “What if you’re seen? Well, not you, you look like a seal. But what if the mermaid or blue loon are seen?”
Helen frowned. “Even being seen as a seal is dangerous, because fishermen don’t like seals near their nets. Rona! What if you’re seen and shot?”
“I know.” Rona’s voice was unsteady. “It is risky, but that’s the point. Sea Heralds have to be able to cope with all the hazards of the sea when they’re delivering their message, which includes boats and humans, so the race tests that. I’ve been brought up to avoid fishing boats; now I’m being told to swim right up to one.”
