Sea Horses: Gathering Storm

by Louise Cooper

  ‘That’s terrible!’ Alec said. ‘Was he stolen?’

  Tamzin was about to say, ‘No!’ but Joel gave her a warning look.

  ‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘It’s possible, but we can’t be sure.’

  ‘Well, I’m very sorry indeed to hear it.’ Alec glanced at Tamzin. ‘I know he’s a very special pony to you. And I understand why.’

  ‘When you arrived just now,’ said Tamzin, ‘I thought – well, I just wondered if the reason why you were here was because you had some news of him.’

  ‘I only wish I had. Though I have got news of another kind. It’s the reason why I came along in person, rather than phoning.’ Alec put a folder of papers down on the table. ‘I’ve been able to translate some of the writing we found in the cave tunnel.’

  Despite her preoccupation with Moonlight, Tamzin felt a sharp jab of excitement. What had Joel said only a minute ago? That maybe the Blue Horse was trying to reach her… And the phantom Moonlight had gone away from her in the direction of the beach…

  ‘What have you found?’ she asked.

  ‘Is your nan in? I’d like her to see it, too.’

  ‘She’s in her studio. I’ll get her!’

  Nan came hurrying when she heard, and Alec spread the papers out on the table.

  ‘These are the old Cornish words that were carved on the tunnel wall,’ he said, pointing to the first sheet. ‘We couldn’t make out much, if you remember, but with the help of the library people I’ve been able to guess what at least some of them mean. The Cornish words are a kind of rhyme, though of course in English they sound totally different.’

  ‘A rhyme?’ Nan mused. ‘That’s interesting. People don’t usually make rhymes unless it’s something very significant.’

  ‘Exactly what I thought,’ said Alec. ‘Some of the words had the library assistants foxed, but this is what they did manage to piece together.’ He picked up a second sheet of paper with scribbled handwriting on it. ‘It says: “Call me from this place” – then there’s something they couldn’t translate – “and break the power of…” – but the next few words were some of the ones we couldn’t make out in the tunnel, so we don’t know what “power” it means. Then it goes on: “With faith and courage, something” – again, we don’t know what – “will win the day.” ’

  Nan and Tamzin looked at each other, and Tamzin’s stomach gave a little lurch. ‘Break the power, and win the day,’ Tamzin whispered. ‘But which power, Nan? Power for good – or for evil?’

  ‘I think the answer is in the words,’ said Nan. ‘The rhyme speaks of “faith and courage”. The Grey Horse knows nothing about those. No; whoever carved those words was a friend to the Blue Horse. “Call me from this place” – does it mean the beach? Or the cave itself? And how to “call”…?’ She turned quickly to Alec. ‘Were you able to translate any more?’

  ‘Not much, I’m afraid,’ said Alec. ‘There was one word which they thought means “lake”, but they weren’t sure. I think they must be wrong. There aren’t any lakes round here, are there?’

  ‘Maybe it means a rock pool,’ Joel suggested.

  ‘Yes!’ Tamzin chimed in, excited. ‘The one in the cave, that we had to wade through to reach the tunnel!’

  ‘I wouldn’t think so,’ said Alec, shaking his head. ‘Pools like that only exist because the sea scoops the sand out; they change all the time.’ He pored over the papers again. ‘There are some lines here – part of what’s carved in the tunnel – that completely baffled everyone who looked at them. I made a copy – here, look – but it’s impossible to make out what most of the letters are.’

  ‘It doesn’t even look like an ordinary alphabet,’ said Joel, peering. ‘I mean, that could be an ‘A’, and maybe those are ‘T’s… but the rest don’t make any sense at all, that I can see.’

  ‘They don’t, do they?’ Alec agreed. ‘But the letters – if they are letters – were larger than all the others, which suggests that they were particularly important to whoever carved them. If only we knew what it meant, it might tell us a lot more.’

  Tamzin looked at the jumble of marks and lines… and at the back of her mind a peculiar feeling stirred. Call me from this place… a shiver assailed her, like a tiny current of electricity over her skin. She had the weirdest sensation that something was calling to her, urgently. She shut her eyes, trying to reach it, trying to hear what it was saying –

  ‘Tam?’ came Joel’s voice. ‘What’s up?’

  Tamzin snapped back to earth with a jolt and her eyes opened. ‘I…’ She swallowed. ‘I want…’

  ‘What is it, love?’ Nan asked anxiously. They were all crowding round her, puzzled and concerned. And suddenly Tamzin knew what she had to do.

  ‘I’ve got to go to the beach!’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go back to the tunnel – now, right now!’

  Alec looked confused, but Joel looked sharply at Tamzin. He didn’t know exactly what she was thinking, but her expression told him that she had sensed something. Nan, too, was staring at Tamzin’s face, and her eyes had narrowed.

  Joel said quickly, ‘What time’s low tide?’

  Nan checked the kitchen clock. ‘In about two hours.’

  ‘So it’ll be out past the headland by now.’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘Nan, I’ve got to go!’ Tamzin pleaded.

  For a moment Nan hesitated. Then: ‘All right,’ she said tensely. ‘But not alone, Tamzin. Joel and Alec will go with you.’

  ‘Of course,’ Alec agreed. ‘But I don’t understand what’s so –’

  Nan interrupted. ‘I know you don’t, Alec, but I’m just asking you to trust me.’ She glanced at Joel. ‘To trust all of us.’

  Tamzin scrambled to her feet and started towards the porch to get her boots and coat. Then she paused. ‘Will you come, too, Nan?’

  ‘No, love. It… wouldn’t be right. You’re the guardian now; this is something you must do for yourself.’ Her look stopped Alec before he could ask any more questions, and she added to him, ‘Look after her. That’s all I ask.’

  Though Alec did not understand, the atmosphere in the room told him that this was something to be taken very seriously. He nodded, his face grave.

  ‘I will. I promise it.’

  The valley path was still like a morass, so Alec drove them to the beach. As his car swung into the car park, Tamzin was surprised by what she saw. Maybe it was because of her own tension, but she had expected huge breakers to be rolling in and pounding the shore. Instead, though, the sea looked calm and almost gentle. The tide was just beyond the headland, and the sand near the water’s edge shone wetly.

  There were no other vehicles in the car park, and no sign of anyone on the beach.

  ‘A lot of holidaymakers have gone home because of the weather,’ Joel said. ‘Even before the worst rain started, we had loads of cancellations at the stables.’

  Tamzin was already out of the car, and she fidgeted restlessly,, staring towards the sea. ‘Come on!’ she said impatiently. ‘Don’t waste time!’

  ‘OK, OK!’ Joel was helping Alec with his pack of flashlights and ropes. ‘The tide’s still on its way out, and the cave isn’t going anywhere!’

  For a moment he thought she was going to shout back angrily. But abruptly her shoulders slumped and she sighed.

  ‘Sorry. I’ve just got a feeling that we need to hurry. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Well, we’re ready now,’ said Alec, locking the car and pocketing the keys. ‘Come on, team – onwards and upwards!’

  Normally Tamzin would have laughed, or at least smiled, at his cheerfulness. This time, though, she only swung round and headed almost at a run for the rock slope that led to the sand.

  Tamzin had half feared that it would no longer be possible to get into the cave. The sea might have shifted the boulders again, or there might have been another cliff fall. Instead, though, sand washed in by the tides had built up against the piled boulders, and if anything the entrance was easi
er to reach than it had been before.

  Almost too easy, in fact. Tamzin looked back at the clear blue sky stretching to the horizon all the way down the coast. She didn’t trust this. Everything was going so smoothly, even to the calm sea and lovely weather. She wanted to believe it was because the Blue Horse was helping her. But what if she was wrong?

  Pushing the thought away, she followed Joel and Alec, who were scrambling up to the dark gap of the cave mouth. The stream was still running from the cave, still following its unnaturally straight course to the sea, like an arrow pointing towards Lion Rock. Tamzin looked at the rock, feeling as if her stomach was full of tiny wheels, spinning and whirling. She remembered her vision, thought of Moonlight… Alec had reached the gap and eased through, with Joel behind him. For a moment Tamzin hesitated. Then, pushing down a surge of queasy fear, she followed them into the cave.

  This time they all had torches, and the combined light made the cave seem almost bright. Sand had partly filled the pool at the back, so that it was now only a few centimetres deep. The stream, Tamzin saw, emerged from a crack in the rock and flowed through the pool before spreading over the sand.

  Joel had never seen the tunnel before, and as they approached the entrance he whistled softly.

  ‘That’s amazing! Was it really the earth tremor that opened this up?’

  ‘Can’t have been anything else,’ said Alec. ‘And look at the shape of the hole; it’s almost square. That proves it’s man-made.’

  They advanced into the tunnel, and Alec led the way to where the first of the carved words showed faintly on the wall. ‘Here’s the beginning of Tamzin’s rhyme, you see,’ He pointed. ‘“Gweetho An Men Ma.” And these other words are the bit about calling something, and faith and courage.’ He moved on a few metres. ‘But these are the mystery marks.’

  Joel shone his torch on them and stared hard, then shook his head. ‘They don’t mean a thing to me. Tam?’

  Tamzin did not answer. She too was staring at the markings. And in her mind, too far away yet for her to grasp, a thought was forming…

  ‘Where does the tunnel lead to?’ Joel asked Alec.

  ‘It could join up with an old mineshaft, or it might go right to the top of the cliff and come out there,’ Alec replied. ‘But I don’t know yet. I was so excited when I found these carvings, I didn’t go much further.’

  ‘But what if there are more carvings, deeper in?’ said Joel. ‘There might even be something that’ll explain these.’

  Alec looked at him in surprise, then slapped a hand against his own forehead. ‘What an idiot I am! I didn’t even think of that – Joel, you could just have given us the answer we’ve been looking for!’ In the torchlight his eyes gleamed eagerly. ‘I’m going to go and look. Will you two be all right on your own for a bit?’

  ‘Sure.’ Joel glanced at Tamzin but she didn’t seem to be listening.

  ‘I won’t go out of earshot,’ Alec added. ‘And I’ll only be a few minutes.’

  He strode on deeper into the tunnel. His bobbing torch beam vanished, then his footsteps faded into silence. The sea was so quiet today that Joel couldn’t even hear the sound of it echoing in the cave below them. Tamzin couldn’t hear it, either. She hadn’t heard what Joel and Alec had said to each other, and she wasn’t aware that Alec had gone. She was standing motionless in front of the wall, and with one hand she was tracing the outlines of the marks that no one had been able to decipher. Then suddenly, in a small, quavering voice, she said, ‘Joel… I think something’s trying to tell me what it says.’

  ‘What?’ Joel’s eyes widened.

  ‘It’s as if there’s a voice in my head, saying the words aloud,’ Tamzin whispered. ‘Only I can’t hear properly – it’s all muffled; you know, like when you’re trying to remember something, and you can’t…’ She swallowed. ‘There’s a – a sort of pattern to it, though…’

  ‘Another rhyme?’

  ‘It could be. But…’ Tamzin shut her eyes, biting her lip so hard that it hurt. ‘I can’t hear it!’ she said in distress. ‘It won’t come! Oh, if only –’

  Though she didn’t know why, she had been about to say, If only Moonlight was here, and at the same moment she saw a picture of her lost white pony in her mind’s eye. Moonlight, standing in the garden in the dark of the night, then vanishing just as she reached out to him. Tears started to stream down Tamzin’s cheeks; she opened her eyes, struggling to blink them away…

  And through blurred vision she saw that the marks on the tunnel wall were no longer the same.

  ‘Joel!’ She grabbed at his arm. ‘Look – the writing!’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s changed! Can’t you see?’ Then she realized that he couldn’t. This was happening for her, and her alone. Words – she didn’t understand them but –

  ‘Margh Glas – Margh a Hav –’ She heard her own voice speaking, saw the astonishment on Joel’s face. ‘My a wra delwel – dhiworth mor, tewes, ha men –’ Her mind lurched; the tunnel walls seemed to rush at her and then pull back. And in her mind, in her memory, she heard a horse’s shrill whinny.

  A tingle went through her arm, and blue light flared from the bracelet at her wrist. When it faded, the words carved on the wall had changed again. And now, she understood what they were.

  ‘Joel, it’s a spell! A summoning spell, to call the Blue Horse!’ Shaking like a leaf, Tamzin started to recite:

  ‘Blue Horse, Horse of Summer – I call you from sea and sand and stone –’

  She got no further, for from outside came a bellowing roar like thunder. It drowned her voice and filled the tunnel with a deafening reverberation. Joel clapped his hands over his ears as the noise rumbled on, then as it finally faded there was the sound of running feet, and Alec appeared.

  ‘What on earth was that?’ In the torchlight they saw that his face was pale.

  Wide-eyed, Tamzin looked from him to Joel. ‘The Grey Horse… We’ve got to go! Oh, quickly!’

  The others did not need telling twice. They started to run, heading for the safety of the outside world. They reached the tunnel mouth, slithered down the rock slope and splashed through the pool – then Tamzin stopped.

  ‘Listen!’ she said, aghast.

  They could all hear it. Another roaring sound; not like thunder this time but steadier. It was all too familiar.

  ‘The sea…’ Joel said. ‘But it was calm when we came in! How can –’

  Tamzin interrupted him. ‘Come on! Hurry!’

  She was ahead when they reached the gap in the fallen boulders, but Alec called her back and went through first. Tamzin and Joel scrambled after him, and almost knocked him over as they emerged. Alec was standing on the rocks, rigid with shock.

  ‘Good heavens,’ he said in an awed voice, ‘Where did that come from?’

  In the space of a few minutes the calm sea had turned into a chaos of pounding, heaving surf. Enormous breakers crashed and clashed together, hurling spray high into the air. And where before there had been clear blue sky, a vast cloud the colour of a dark and angry bruise was spreading towards the coast from far out to sea, driven on a wild wind.

  Tamzin’s hair streamed out behind her as she stared at the scene, and the terrifying truth came to her. She knew, now, that the words on the tunnel wall would summon the Blue Horse, and she had started to say them aloud. But the Grey Horse had heard – and in its fury it would do anything to stop the spell from being spoken!

  Suddenly the rock under her feet seemed to move, almost throwing her off balance. Joel reached out to steady her, and they all jumped down on to the sand. But the sand was moving, too; vibrating, shaking –

  ‘Oh no,’ said Alec, ‘it’s another tremor! Get off the beach – run!’

  He grabbed one each of their hands, and they pelted away from the cave. As if the sea was adding its own warning, a fresh roar dinned in their ears as a colossal wave broke behind them. The ground juddered again; Joel tripped and would have fallen, but Alec he
aved him back on to his feet and they raced on. Round the headland – Tamzin’s legs felt as if they were on fire, and her boots were dragging weights on her feet. But she ploughed on, stumbling and jumping over the quaking sand.

  Then, just as they reached the slope to the car park, the tremor stopped. It was so sudden that Tamzin lost her footing and went sprawling. She started to pick herself up – and froze as she saw the sky.

  The cloud was spreading fast, almost covering the blue completely now. As it spread, it was changing. A shape was rising from its towering top, curling over, taking on clear form. And with stark horror Tamzin recognized the huge, menacing head of a grey horse.

  What have I done? The thought slammed through her head and she stared numbly at the cloud, trying desperately not to believe it. Then Joel’s voice broke the thrall.

  ‘The spell, Tam! Say it! Say it!’

  He shook her, almost screaming in his effort to bring her back to earth. Tamzin’s mind reeled as she struggled to remember the words on the cave wall. She had seen them, she knew them – but she could no longer recall them.

  ‘It’s gone!’ she wailed. ‘Oh, Joel, I can’t remember it!’

  ‘Think!’ Joel yelled. ‘You started to say it in the tunnel – something about summer – and sand and sea and stone –’

  Sand, sea, stone – the trigger worked, and words flooded into Tamzin’s mind. She scrabbled to her feet, turning to face the gusting wind, and her voice rang out above the tide’s roar.

  ‘Blue Horse, Horse of Summer! I call you from sea and sand and stone! Blue Horse, come to us! Blue Horse, help us in our danger!’ She flung out one arm, the arm that wore the bracelet. ‘Margh Glas, difun! Blue Horse, awake!’

  A jolt like an electric shock went up her arm as light flared from the glass talisman. She heard Alec cry out in surprise – then with no warning, the ground began to shake again, far more violently than before. Suddenly it humped and lifted, as though a buried giant had hunched his shoulders. They were all thrown off their feet and fell heavily to the sand. Gasping, Tamzin tried to sit up, but the ground still quivered. Stones were rolling down the slope, and from the cliffs came an ominous rumble. Then suddenly Joel shouted, ‘Look, Tam! Oh, look!’