by Lari Don
“A kelpie and a killer whale.”
There was a laugh from out at sea, and Serena appeared from the black waves. “Me too. A giant squid and ANOTHER killer whale. Not very ORIGINAL.” She joined them on the sand.
“Anyone get bitten?” asked Tangaroa.
Rona said, “Helen did. On the ankle.”
There was a moment of silence.
Helen laughed. “Yes! I did get bitten. By midgies! It was far more dangerous watching the quest than facing all those monsters.” She scratched the graze on her ankle.
Tangaroa laughed too, but Serena sighed. “Ankles … I did hope for properly working ankles at last. But I didn’t win ANYTHING. Not one task. I was a complete failure.”
“No, you weren’t,” said Tangaroa. “You finished every task. We all did. That hardly ever happens. So any of us is qualified to be a Sea Herald. It’s just Rona was the best. Why did you think you’d get working ankles by winning?”
“I planned to ask the sea powers about the witch who cursed us to walk on fire, so I can persuade her to lift the curse.”
“Just like me,” Tangaroa said sympathetically. “I hoped to ask for the way home. What will you do now?”
“I’ll stop looking for shortcuts and do some proper research. There MUST be others who know where that witch is.” Serena flicked her hair back. “Anyway, if I’m stuck with this tail for now, can the human healer overcome her midgie bites, and put more sealant on?”
Helen nodded, and went back to the boat for the spare bicycle repair kit she’d hidden there. As she walked through the dark, she wondered about Tangaroa and Serena’s answers.
When she got back, she asked for brighter lightballs and looked at the sealant on Serena’s tail. It was thinning at the edges, but it had worked. She peeled off the original layer, apologising as Serena moaned theatrically.
“Do you really want me to paint another layer on, Serena? The contest is over. You could let your tail heal out of the water.”
“It’s traditional for the sea tribes to accompany a new Sea Herald for the first mile,” said Serena. “I want to swim with Rona tomorrow. Otherwise I’d look like a bad loser. And I’m NOT a bad loser, really I’m not.”
Helen made a decision. As she applied the glue, she asked, “Would you have cheated to get uncursed legs, or the way home?”
“Helen!” said Lavender, but Helen ignored her.
Serena said, through gritted teeth, “You don’t know much about curses, human. If you lift a curse by cheating, you bring a WORSE curse down on yourself. I wouldn’t have cheated to win, because it wouldn’t have worked.”
“Me neither,” said Tangaroa. “The way home might not be found by rhyme, but it certainly won’t be found by dishonesty. What kind of home-coming would that be?”
Helen persisted, “So if some creature had offered to stop Rona winning and help you win, what would you have said?”
“Don’t be DAFT,” said Serena. “The judges would have noticed any outside help.”
“Not if it was transparent,” said Tangaroa slowly. “You accused me on the first day, Rona, of working with a sea-through. Did it attack you again? Did it try to help me or Serena again?”
“Yes,” said Rona, “it held up two of my canoes in the second task.”
“I wondered why those orange ones kept bobbing back up,” said Serena.
“And on the quest,” Yann said carefully, “once the map guardian was defeated, the sea-through tried to steal the map.”
“So you won DESPITE the sea-through trying to stop you in each task?” asked Serena.
“And you thought we were behind it?” Tangaroa said angrily. “How dare you?”
“How DARE the sea-through interfere!” spat Serena. “Even if I had won, I could NEVER have lifted the curse with a tainted win behind me. The sea-through was ruining it for ALL of us!”
“And ruining my reputation,” muttered Tangaroa, “if anyone thinks I would work with a lump of jelly to win a race or a fight. I would rather be beaten fair and square than win by cheating. Yann,” he looked up, “you understand, don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” Yann said quietly. “I understand.”
“So you’re both angry with the sea-through for interfering with the contest?” Helen asked.
They nodded.
Helen lowered her voice. “We don’t think it’s stopped interfering yet, and we know it’s in league with at least one selkie elder, so if we tell you what it wants, will you keep it quiet for now?”
Tangaroa and Serena agreed, so Helen explained what they’d discovered about the bloom’s plans, finishing by saying, “We think the bloom will send the sea-through to attack Rona again tomorrow, because it wants to change the message and provoke real war, so the coast will be destroyed and the sea will get back all that it once owned.”
“But all the humans, all the boats … That would be AWFUL!” gasped Serena.
“It would be a disaster for the sea tribes too,” said Tangaroa, “because most sea people live on the edge between land and sea. What can we do to stop the bloom succeeding?”
“You both completed the tasks, you’re both qualified to be Sea Heralds,” said Helen. “Could you accompany Rona not just for the first mile, but the whole way? Guard her and the message, so the sea-through can’t prevent her getting through?”
Tangaroa grinned. “I’d love to.”
Serena looked down at her tail. “I’d be happy to. Do you think I’ll need an extra layer of sealant?”
But Yann kicked the sand and whispered, “Helen, Rona, Lavender, Catesby, could I have a word?” He led them further up the beach. “Helen, this is foolish. How do we know they’re not working with the sea-through? How do we know they’re telling the truth?”
Lavender said, “Serena’s right, some curses can detect trickery. I’m less sure about Tangaroa, because blue men are happy to drown people to get rhymes, and cheating to find the way home isn’t as bad as murder.”
Yann shrugged. “It depends on your code of honour. He might be telling the truth. But only might be.”
Helen smiled. “You don’t want to believe them, because if they’re telling the truth, then we didn’t need to cheat. Let’s worry about our own honesty later, and think about Rona’s safety right now. What do you think, Sea Herald?”
“We have to trust them,” said Rona. “The three coastal tribes should work together tomorrow to save the coast.” She turned back towards the blue loon and the mermaid.
As they walked to the water’s edge, Helen asked Rona, “Do you have to collect the message from Thalas before you swim to Merras at dawn tomorrow? You must get up really early.”
“Normally the herald does visit the challenger first, but someone reminded Strathy that traditionally one of the elders collects the message on the night of the contest because the new Sea Herald is tired after all the tasks. I’ll be given it, in the herald’s holder, tomorrow morning.”
Rona yawned, which set off a chorus of yawns from everyone: girl, fairy, mermaid, blue loon, phoenix and centaur. They all laughed, then arranged to meet in the morning at Skerness.
Tangaroa held out his hand to Rona. “I will use all my strength and speed to make sure you and the message get through.”
Serena held out her hand too. “It will be a PRIVILEGE to swim with you both.”
Yann said in an undertone, “I hope we’ve chosen our allies well.”
Lavender whispered, “We won’t know, until they all come back.”
Chapter 28
Next morning, it was impossible for Helen to speak to Rona at the wide beach by Skerness Point. The new Sea Herald was surrounded by well-wishers, with speeches, songs, and help fitting the bottle into the chain round her neck.
As Tangaroa and Serena were taking their responsibilities seriously and staying close to Rona, Helen couldn’t speak to them either.
So she settled on a rock with her fiddle, and played along with the celebratory music.
When the sun rose, Rona�
��s four land-bound friends watched her dive into the water, then a cheering group of selkies, mermaids and blue men followed her out of the bay.
Helen packed her violin away, and looked round. Past Yann’s broad back, the beach was empty.
Except for one sad shape, hunched on the sand to their right.
She recognised the pattern of blotches on the seal’s back. “Is that Roxburgh? Why hasn’t he gone with everyone else?”
“Probably sulking,” said Yann. “Just leave him alone.”
“Let’s try to cheer him up. It’s not his fault he’s a good singer or his dad’s a traitor. He didn’t ask to be the sea-through’s puppet.”
She walked across the sand to the depressed-looking seal, who took one look at her with his huge sad eyes, and slid into the water.
Catesby laughed, and Yann said, “Well done, Helen. That really cheered him up.”
Helen watched as Roxburgh surfaced out at sea, his dark head bobbing up and down, staring at them. She shouted, “Rona will be fine, the other Sea Herald contestants will look after her.”
“Shh!” said Yann. “Don’t tell the whole ocean our cunning plan!”
“He looks worried, I’m just trying to …”
The seal’s head vanished.
“Great,” said Yann. “If he’s off to tell the bloom she’s got a guard, it might send more than its usual single sea-through!”
Then Roxburgh’s human form stepped onto the beach, and walked towards them.
“It’s all over,” he said in his most tragic, sobbing, musical voice. “The coast will be destroyed, the sea will own everything and my father will be king of a wet wasteland. I hadn’t realised! I don’t want to be prince of death and destruction.”
“It’s fine,” said Helen. “The other tribes are protecting her, the message will get though.”
“The message will get through!” Roxburgh laughed. “So it will. But that will make things worse!” He walked off, hunched and miserable, as the friends shrugged at each other.
Then Helen saw his shoulders straighten. He turned and ran back to them. “You can sort it out! You have land magic and power, and the sea-through has never quite beaten you. I can’t do anything, but you can sort it out.”
“Sort what out?” asked Lavender.
“The message. My father switched the message. He reminded Strathy last night of the tradition that a firsttime Sea Herald is given a night off, that an elder fetches the message from the challenging power. And Strathy let my father get it from Thalas. So father made a new deal with the sea-through. The sea-through wrote a different message, put it in one of the losers’ holders, and gave it to my father. That’s the message efficient little Rona and her friends are delivering. Not a ritual challenge. An insult.
“It goes something like this:
“To Merras the withered. I am tired of pretending to fight on equal terms with you, when I see your muscles grow weak, your fish grow grey, your currents sink low and your power ebb away. It is my duty to use my superior strength to crush your pathetic body under my sandy feet, to rule the waters all year round, and to seize back what belongs to the sea. Prepare for defeat. From Thalas the conqueror.”
“That will definitely provoke war!” gasped Yann.
“Can you stop it?” Roxburgh looked at them hopefully.
Helen said, “What exactly do you think we can do, Roxburgh? We can’t swim after Rona. We can’t go to the powers and explain. We’re land people.”
“Where is the original message?” asked Lavender. “Could we still get it to Merras? Your dad must have collected it from Thalas, or Thalas would be suspicious. Is it with your family’s possessions on the island?”
“No,” moaned Roxburgh. “He swapped bottles with the sea-through. The true message is in the middle of the bloom.”
“Could we write our own message?” suggested Yann. “Write a politer message from Thalas to Merras, or even an explanation?”
“That wouldn’t work. It has to be in a proper herald’s holder.” Roxburgh shook his head. “No, not even you can help. It’s impossible!”
“Don’t give up yet,” said Helen. “Let’s climb the headland, and see if the bloom is still where Lavender and Catesby saw it.”
Yann led the way off the beach and up the slope to the headland, where Helen stood on the very edge of the cliff and looked out to sea. When she wrinkled her eyes, there was a faint pink sheen on the surface of the sea. “Is that it?”
Lavender nodded. “Yes, that’s close to where we heard it chant.”
“I could row out there,” said Helen doubtfully, “but I don’t know what I’d do when I got there.”
They heard a massive roar. They saw a ripple start on the horizon. A high wave rushed towards the shore, crashing into the feet of the two stacks at the point of the headland.
Then there was silence.
“Merras has read the insult,” wailed Roxburgh. “It’s too late … she’s going to attack Thalas.”
“It’s never too late,” said Yann firmly. “If we deliver the true message to her in the herald’s holder, she might stop.”
“But the message and holder are out at sea,” Helen pointed out. “And the sea is about to turn into a battleground! We can’t go and get the message.”
Another roar rolled from the sea, like wet echoing thunder, and Helen almost turned and ran towards Ben Loyal and its reassuring height, or the moors far inland …
But then she looked at the bloom again, rocking gently on the water after the first waves of anger had passed.
“We can’t go to the bloom,” she said suddenly, “but it can come to us.”
“Don’t be daft,” said Yann. “Why would it come inshore? It can ride out the battle storm in the deep water, but it would be smashed to pieces on the shore.”
Helen grinned. “In the olden days, wreckers attracted ships onto the rocky parts of this coast with lights, watched as they broke on the rocks, then collected all the valuable cargo. We could smash the bloom on the rocks at the base of the cliff, then clamber down and find the message.”
“How will we get it to come shorewards? Wave a lantern?”
Helen gestured to the rising mountains of water already building up over the battling sea powers. “We’ll sing up a storm and pull the bloom inland.”
“But we don’t have a Storm Singer!”
“Yes, we do. Roxburgh is almost as good a singer as Rona. He could have won all on his own, if she hadn’t had the technique I suggested. Roxburgh can sing up a storm.”
“No, I can’t!” Roxburgh backed away. “I can’t even make up my own songs without father coaching me.”
“I’m sure you can. Anyway, you don’t have to sing a storm up from scratch. There’s enough moving water out there for any number of storms. All you have to do is direct it, use it as a weapon to drag the bloom between the stacks and onto the rocks.”
“I can’t!”
“Yes, you can,” said Yann, standing tall behind him. “Unless you want to be prince of nothing but a watery graveyard.”
Roxburgh looked up at the frowning centaur above him, then out at the turmoil on the horizon. “What do I have to do?”
“Sing the song you and Rona sang at the competition,” explained Helen, “but don’t stick to the simple rhythm you learnt as a pup. Listen to the water. Hear the pauses, the moments when the water is hanging and waiting, and sing into those, persuade the water to join you. Speed up with the water as it rushes to shore, and breathe the wind movements as you breathe in and out. Listen to it, use it as backing, then draw it into your song.”
“Is that what Rona did?”
“Sort of, though she had to pull a storm from calm weather. You already have a storm. You can do it.”
So Roxburgh started to sing.
At his first attempt, his voice cracked. He had to sing the first line three times before he made it to the second line. Helen nodded encouragingly.
But once he got going, he sang
the song exactly like he’d sung it at the competition.
Helen grunted in frustration. “No! Listen to the wind and waves. Hear them and sing into them.”
He started again. This time he kept stopping to listen, then losing the thread of the melody.
Helen shook her head, and swung her fiddle off her back. “Like this.” She played the melody, like she had on the beach rehearsing with Rona just three days ago.
As she played she joined the beat of the storm, and tapped her feet and chanted the words, to emphasize and encourage the crashing waves and howling wind, so the storm sounded closer and the music sounded like part of the storm.
She stopped. Roxburgh was staring at her. “You’re doing it, human girl! You just keep doing it.”
“No, I’m not a selkie, I don’t have magic. I can’t call the storm. But I can keep the music going, if you sing.”
Helen started to play again, and Roxburgh, more confident now he had someone to follow, added his powerful voice to Helen’s rhythm.
Helen felt the storm move closer. Her hair whipped about, her eyes stung with spray, and she barely noticed when Lavender hid in her fleece, while Yann held Catesby to his chest. The centaur stood to the seaward side of the fiddler and singer, to shield them from the rising weather.
The storm moved closer. The waves moved closer.
“Maybe it’s not us,” gasped Helen, “maybe they’re just starting to fight closer.”
“No,” yelled Yann. “It is you, you’re pulling it right towards us.”
Helen peered over his back and saw the bloom writhing in the water, a pink mass struggling to get free of the white waves throwing it towards the coast. She could see the vast baggy stomach and the wriggling edge of thousands of tangled tentacles, caught in the surge of water towards the shore.
Helen called to Roxburgh, “Change song! We need something louder, harsher, to get it on the rocks, not the beach.” Roxburgh nodded and started to sing about a storm bubbling up from the sea.
Helen needed a moment to get the notes right, so he stopped singing, unsure what to do without her accompaniment.
“Keep going!” yelled Yann. “The bloom is sliding out of the storm’s fingers!”
