The Tide Knot

by Helen Dunmore

  “Myrgh…myrgh…”

  The voice is struggling through a nightmare, trying to cry out a warning as loud as it can but only managing a whisper. It’s my father. He’s desperate to tell me something, but he can’t get close enough.

  Suddenly I’m sure I know where he is. He’s out there in the bay, coming as close to shore as he dares before the waves grab him and smash him onto the rocks. He’s broken the laws of Ingo once more: He’s left the Mer baby and the Mer woman to find me again and tell me the secrets that only Ingo should know. But I can’t even hear what he’s trying to tell me.

  I shout back into the mouth of the wind, “Dad! Dad! Where are you? I can’t hear you!” The wind snatches my voice away.

  “Dad!”

  I wait, willing the noise of the storm to part and let me hear Dad’s voice. The wind rips my hood back and my hair flies free, tangling over my face. And then the voice comes again. Or is it a voice? Maybe it’s just my imagination. The voice is so far away now, as thin as a spider’s web. But if it’s as thin as a spider’s web, it’s also as strong. The urgency in it burns me like fire.

  “Sapphy…”

  The voice is real; I know it is. Dad wants me to come to him. I know it as surely as if the words were written on the sand. And I can do it. If I run along the top of the beach, past the café and the beach shop, past the lifeguard station and round onto the headland, I can clamber onto those rocks below. It’s not dangerous, I tell myself. I’ll stay well above the tide line. Down below the rocks the water’s deep. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll be possible for Dad to swim closer in and speak to me.

  I don’t stop to think twice. As if the moon has heard my thoughts, it chooses this moment to break out of the cloud bank again. There’s enough light for me to make my way round to the rocks.

  I daren’t stand up once I’m out on the headland for fear of being blown off into the sea. I get down on hands and knees and crawl forward, clinging to clumps of thrift and grass. The moonlight is strong now, but I don’t want to look at the sea for fear of seeing those coiling snakes again. I look just a short distance ahead, the way I’ve got to go.

  I crawl down a little way onto the rocks. A huge wave hits the other side of the headland, and the rock shivers. I hear an explosion of water far below me, then a dragging, sucking sound as the water is forced into all the cracks of the rock. I don’t dare even crawl now. I’m flat on my stomach, wriggling along, clinging to every handhold I can find, flattening my body against the rock so the wind won’t be able to pry me loose.

  The churning of the sea sounds more violent than ever. It’s no good. Dad will never be able to come close. He’d be smashed against the rocks.

  Very cautiously I turn my head and peer down to the right, where the rocks protect the water. The sea isn’t boiling quite so furiously just here. The rocks create a bulwark that breaks the force of the storm. If I can crawl just a little closer to the edge, I’ll be able to look down. If Dad comes in anywhere, it will be just here. But I mustn’t go too far. I mustn’t risk falling.

  “Sapphy…”

  The voice is faint, half snatched away by the wind. But it comes from down there in the water. I cup my hands to my mouth and shout as loud as I can: “Daa-aaaad! I’m here.”

  As I raise my head, I see him for a second, in the path of the moonlight on the wild water. He’s swimming with all his strength against the power of the tide, which is trying to drag him toward the rocks. He’s coming too close in.

  “Dad!”

  He hears me. He turns toward me. I see the glisten of moonlight on his face and his hair; then a wave swamps him. When he rises again, he is even closer to the rock. He stops swimming to raise his hands to his face. He cups his hands, just as I did.

  “The Tide Knot is unloosed. Run and tell them that the Tide Knot is unloosed. Make for high ground. Can you hear me?”

  I kneel up on the rock. The wind fills my mouth, so I can hardly breathe. As loudly as I can, I scream into it, “Yes, I heard you!”

  The current is dragging him into danger. He’s got to swim clear. “Dad, swim! Swim away from the rocks! Can you hear me?”

  He raises a hand in acknowledgment. But he’s got to escape. He’s got to swim with all his strength now, away from the rocks. Doesn’t he understand that?

  “Dad! Swim out! It’s dangerous! Go now! Go now! Dad!”

  Cloud sweeps over the moon again, and the water goes dark as ink. I think I saw Dad dive, a split second before it went dark. I think he plunged deep beneath the waves, to swim with all his power away from the rocks. But I can’t be sure.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Conor! Oh, Con, I’m so glad you’re back.”

  I push the house door shut behind me and pull off my boots and slicker. Conor is kneeling by the fire, warming himself.

  “I should have guessed you wouldn’t do what you said, Saph,” he says coldly, without turning round.

  “What?”

  “You were going to stay here, remember? So Mum wouldn’t be worried?”

  “Oh! Oh…I’d forgotten all about that—”

  “Very convenient.”

  “Don’t be like that, Con. Listen, it’s important. Something’s happened. I’ve seen Dad.”

  He does turn round then. His eyes are wide with shock. “Dad? What do you mean, you saw Dad? He’s not here. We know where he is.”

  “No, Conor, listen—”

  “Keep your voice down, Saph. They’ll wake up if we’re not careful. Mum’s restless. She was muttering stuff when I went upstairs just now.”

  “What sort of stuff?”

  “I couldn’t really hear what she was saying,” says Conor, after a pause that tells me that he could. He looks stressed and unhappy, and I feel a pang of guilt that again it’s me who has seen Dad, not him. But I’ve got to tell him what Dad said.

  Conor listens very carefully, without interrupting. He doesn’t show fear, or surprise, or any other emotion. His face is pale under its usual brown. When I’ve finished, he says nothing.

  “Conor, don’t you believe me?”

  “Give me a minute, Saph. I’ve got to think.”

  I wait tensely. I’m so afraid that Conor’s not going to believe me. That he’ll think I only imagined that I saw Dad because I wanted him to be there.

  “Conor—”

  “The problem is, Saph, that if we go out now and start knocking on doors telling people to get out of their houses and run up the hill because we’ve had a message from our father, who hasn’t really drowned but has turned into a Mer man, and he tells us that St. Pirans is going to be drowned because it’s on the border of Ingo, they’re really not going to believe us.”

  “But you believe me.”

  “Yes, but that could be because I’m just as crazy as you are,” says Conor.

  “We can’t not do anything!”

  “No. We can’t not do anything. Listen, Saph. I’m going to wake up Roger.”

  “Roger!”

  “Yes. Wait, don’t start exploding. He might believe us, and if he does, everybody else will believe him. People respect Roger.”

  “But it’s all taking too long! How long’s it going to take to convince Roger? Quick, Conor, we’ve got to do something straightaway. Dad said the Tide Knot was loose already.”

  “Dad’s not here. Roger’s what we’ve got.”

  I follow Conor up the stairs, still frantically trying to convince him not to wake Roger. But I can only whisper because of Mum. It makes everything seem even more unreal, like trying to scream in a nightmare. You never can, can you?

  Roger wakes up immediately, and to my amazement he understands not only that Conor’s got something urgent to tell him but also that we’re trying not to wake Mum. “Is she worse?” he whispers.

  “No, it’s not Mum.”

  Roger stumbles a bit as he heaves himself out of the basket chair, and the rest of the newspaper falls to the floor. But he’s impressively there—present, in control, an
d ready to take charge. I suppose he must be trained to deal with emergencies, being a dive leader.

  As soon as we’re downstairs, Conor says quickly, “We’ve got something very important to tell you. It’s going to sound completely weird, and you’re probably not going to believe it, but please, please, listen till I’ve finished.”

  He doesn’t say a word about Dad. He only says that we know for certain that there is going to be a tidal surge, right here in St. Pirans, and it’s coming soon. The storm is only part of it. He can’t tell Roger how we know, but he is sure. We are both sure. We have got to wake people now and warn them, so they can get up onto high ground.

  The words sound so feeble. So pathetic. We know there’s going to be a tidal surge. Who would believe two kids who said a thing like that and told everybody to get out of their houses and head for high ground? They’d just laugh. Oh, yeah, I’ll stay in bed if you don’t mind.

  But the way that Conor says it doesn’t make me want to laugh. He’s impressive, my brother. Serious, determined, his eyes blazing with conviction. Roger stares from one of us to the other. His face tightens in a frown that makes him look angry, but I don’t think he is angry. Suddenly he points at me as if he’s remembering something. “You’re the girl who always knows when the tide is turning, am I right?”

  Yes, Roger would remember that. I blurted it out one day, back at our old home. I let it slip that I could feel when the tide was turning, and Roger questioned me. He was interested because the tides are vital to him too as a diver.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And what do you say to this idea of Conor’s? Can you feel that a tidal surge is on its way?”

  “Yes,” I say. I don’t dare go much beyond what Conor has told him or mention Dad’s name. But almost before I know that they are in my mouth, the words are out. “It’s the Tide Knot. It won’t hold any longer.”

  “The Tide Knot? Sapphire, what is this? Are you telling me some kind of children’s story? These are people’s lives you’re playing with.”

  In desperation, I take an even bigger risk. “Roger,” I say, keeping my eyes fixed on his face and praying that he’ll see the seriousness and the truth in me, “you know how things happen maybe once or twice in your life that you can’t ever find an explanation for? Nothing fits together because there’s a part that’s—well, it’s hidden from you. Like the time when you had your diving accident and we were there when you woke up, and you could never really work out how we swam out all that way. Because we shouldn’t have been able to do it, should we? This is the same, Roger. And remember that time you were out in your boat and you looked down into the water and you saw a girl who looked just like me, looking back at you. And you could never work it out.”

  Roger starts violently. “How did you know—”

  “I can’t explain how I know. You wouldn’t believe me if I did. But it’s real. It’s real in exactly the same way as what we’re telling you now is real.”

  I can see in Roger’s face that he’s remembering everything. That time he saw me looking up at him from the sunwater, when I was in Ingo and he was in his boat, looking down into the sea. I remember his astonished upside-down face. Roger would never forget that moment or the day last summer when he nearly died. He must have thought of it many times since. The way he woke up bruised and battered and never knowing what had attacked him. Somewhere, deep inside him, maybe Roger did know that he had strayed into Ingo and almost been killed by the guardian seals. Even nightmares stay with you somewhere.

  Roger stares at me, remembering, thinking, not knowing what to trust. “Can I believe you?” he asks slowly.

  “You have to. Please. Even if you can’t find a reason for it. You have to believe me.”

  The moment holds and holds, like a long close-up in a film. It feels as if time has stopped. There is no human time or Ingo time anymore, only this moment when Roger has to choose whether he’s going to trust something that seems impossible or turn his back on it. His frown deepens. His eyes are sharp, hard, searching. He’s weighing it all in the balance; I can see him doing it. On one side there’s normality and reality and practicality and reason and all the other things Roger lives by. On the other there are all the things that are irrational, don’t add up, and don’t make sense.

  At that moment the heaviest blow of wind yet thuds against the front door. The roar of the sea is suddenly magnified, as if the volume has been turned up by someone who loves its wild music. Upstairs Sadie breaks into another volley of furious, terrified barking. As if in answer, we hear other dogs too, a whole chorus of them, some in the next house, some in the next street, but all of them barking and barking against the noise of the wind, as if every dog in St. Pirans has been roused by danger.

  “Dogs always know,” says Roger slowly, like a man in a trance. “I remember Rufie—”

  He breaks off. The tension builds and builds as the barking of dogs grows to a crescendo. I can’t move or speak. Inside me the pounding of my heart is even louder than the words pounding in my head: Make him believe us. Make him believe us. Make him believe us. And then Roger swings into action so fast that it takes my breath away.

  “Okay, let’s go. Sapphire, upstairs! Wake your Mum, help her get dressed, wrap her in a duvet. I’ll be back with the car as soon as I can. Conor, we’re going to hit the streets. There’s an official warning of an immediate tidal surge in the area, that’s all you say. Don’t stop, don’t answer questions, straight on to the next house. Bang on the doors; yell it out. As soon as they’re up, get them to warn the neighbors too. Tell everybody to get onto high ground, up the hill. Anyone sick, anyone housebound, get them to get up to the top floor and wait for help. Don’t stop to argue the toss. If one gets moving, they’ll all get moving. I’ll contact the coast guard and the lifeboat service. And God help us all if you’ve got this wrong.”

  In a few minutes Conor and Roger are out of the house. I stand on the doorstep, holding the door against the wind, and peer down the street. Shadows jump and dance. Rain is streaming down again. There’s Roger, thundering on the Trevails’ front door. After a few seconds lights come on upstairs. The Trevails are old; they are always in bed by nine o’clock. They’ll be shocked, frightened. The upstairs window opens, and then there’s Roger’s voice shouting, “It’s an emergency! Tidal surge! Everyone’s got to be evacuated.”

  And then old Mr. Trevail’s creaking voice: “What’s that you’re saying, boy?”

  I slam the door shut. I should be helping Mum. But as I rush up the stairs, Sadie lets out such a pitiful, terrorized howl that I have to go to her. I open my bedroom door, and there she is behind it, shivering all over, her coat bristling just the way Mum said it was earlier on.

  We are right to rouse the town. If I had any doubts left, they melt when I see Sadie. She whines urgently, fixing her eyes on me. She is so desperate to warn me that she seizes a corner of my sleeve in her teeth and begins to pull me toward the door.

  “Sadie, I know. I understand. It’s coming, isn’t it? But first of all we’ve got to help Mum.”

  Sadie presses against me like a shadow as we go into Mum’s room. Mum is still deeply asleep, hearing nothing and sensing nothing. I switch on the bedside light, but this time the click of the switch doesn’t disturb her. A burst of rain slashes across the window. The tumult of the storm isn’t quite so bad here because Mum’s room faces away from the sea. Mum always chooses a room that faces away from the sea. Just then I hear a siren, coming closer. A police car or an ambulance. Maybe the emergency services are already responding to Roger’s call.

  Very cautiously I reach out and touch Mum’s hand. I don’t want to shock her. “Mum?”

  But she only mutters and turns her head away.

  “Mum!” I say more loudly.

  At last she opens her eyes. They are very bright, but she looks confused. She doesn’t seem to realize who I am.

  “Mum, we’ve got to get up. Roger’s coming to get us soon. There’s an emerg
ency.” I daren’t tell Mum what it is until she’s woken up properly. She has such a terrible fear of the sea.

  “Sapphy!” Mum struggles to raise her head from the pillow. Her voice is dry and croaky. I reach over to her bedside table, where there’s a glass of water, and hold it to her lips. She takes a tiny sip, then falls back on the pillow as if she’s exhausted. “Such a pain in my chest, Sapphy,” she whispers.

  Mum is really ill. I can see that even though I have no idea about illness at all. She is very hot, and she’s breathing so fast, almost panting.

  “Mum, listen! You’re going to have to get up and get dressed. Roger thinks there’s going to be a tidal surge.”

  Mum’s face goes still. I know she’s heard and understood. Her hand seizes mine in a surprisingly strong grip.

  “He’s waking people up, getting them to leave their houses and go to high ground. So is Conor. Roger said for you to get dressed and wait, and he’ll be back as soon as he can.”

  With a huge effort, Mum pushes back the covers, swings her legs over the side of the bed, and tries to stand. I grab hold of her as she wobbles on her feet and then collapses back on the bed. “Sorry, Sapphy. Feel so dizzy.”

  I give her some more water. Sadie begins to tug at Mum’s nightdress, as if she thinks she can rescue her single-handedly, like a dog in a story.

  “Stop it, Sadie! That’s not very helpful.”

  Everything is going wrong. I should be out there with Conor and Dad, warning people. What about Rainbow and Patrick? Rainbow’s like Mum; she’ll be terrified of a flood. What if Roger and Conor haven’t remembered to go to their cottage? They are right by the water, and when the tide surges, they will be the first in its path.

  Mum opens her eyes again. “You go, Sapphy. Go now. I’ll be fine here.”

  She’s just like Dad, I think in exasperation. Both of them telling me to go, as if it doesn’t matter what happens to them. “I’ve lost one parent,” I say grimly. “I’m not going to lose two. Either you come as well, or we’re all staying here.”