by Joan Lennon
‘Of course I knew it then – but I haven’t exactly been revising ever since. Have you?!’
Interrupted shook his head mournfully.
‘Time’s up!’ blared the Queen. ‘Let him choose a Wager, or let me take him as he stands!’
‘OK. Right. He can choose,’ shrilled Gladrag. ‘But you can’t interfere with him – you can’t use your mesmer on him! He must be free to choose!’
‘And you must not prompt him!’ said the Queen, and she grabbed the (in fact useless) encyclopedia out of Gladrag’s hands and tossed it away.
Gladrag bowed her head and then turned to the silent crowd. ‘All right. Send out the boy…’
Eo had been lying still, keeping his eyes shut. At least one part of his brain was desperately hoping the whole thing was just a bad dream. If it was, the dream wasn’t over yet…
‘Come on, boy’ said Abalone. ‘You heard her.’
Reluctantly, Eo opened his eyes, and squinted up at the faces surrounding him. There was no sign of his mother or father, but he knew he shouldn’t be surprised. The sprats were running in the South Atlantic and no natural power on earth could travel so far so fast. It would take them several days at least to return, even with parents’ terror and gannets’ wings. Totally irrelevant facts about the migratory patterns of schooling fish rose to the surface of his mind, and sank again.
He staggered to his feet, the crowd parted – and Eo had his first glimpse of the Kelpie in her human form. There was no mistaking her – even without the sudden blast of her mesmeric power hitting him between the eyes. If anything, it was worse now. The Queen may have been magnificent as a horse, but as a woman she was more than any fifteen-year-old boy should have to face.
He came close to fainting again.
Everyone was staring at him – he could feel the intensity of all those eyes, making his skin creep. But he couldn’t have turned and looked back at any of them to save his life. Not with the Kelpie Queen there before him, so close she filled his eyes, his brain…
If only she’d hold still!
But the Queen wasn’t moving. What made her seem to be writhing voluptuously was the way her robe swirled round her body, sliding over her curves like waves round a shape on the shore, obscuring, revealing, caressing. Her mane of pale hair stirred about her face and shoulders as if it were alive, and her black eyes bored into him like cold fire.
It wasn’t just the occasional flash of flesh that had Eo spinning. His brain lurched and his thoughts were as helpless and out of control as eddying shrimps. The Queen was speaking, presenting the Wagers he was to choose from, as was required, but low and fast, too fast. She was also pacing again, so that every time she turned her back on him he couldn’t quite hear what she was saying…
‘A way opened between the worlds can be closed at the price of a soul. That price may, however… the Recognized Wagers. These include the Riddles Three as laid down… Single Combat with a Champion of my choice… Race of Twelve Peaks, the Seventh Tide, the Rock Hurl… must decide WITHOUT FURTHER DELAY!!’
The final words ended on a shriek that made every G on the shore jerk in fright. Eo’s eyes showed white all the way around and he was panting again like a stressed cat. The Kelpie’s words whirled by in his mind, again and again, and he tried desperately to grab hold of their meaning. He had to understand – he had to remember what he’d been taught – where had his brain been in those lessons?
He could hear the voice of his Health and Safety tutor, Extraneous Chrome, explaining patiently for the umpteenth time, ‘Now, young Eo, I’m sure neither of us wishes to go through this material too many more times, so let’s pay attention, shall we…?’ He’d scraped through that exam –just – and then promptly forgotten the lot.
The thing with the rocks… Single Combat… the Riddles Three… the Seventh Tide… Get a grip… get it right… Look at the choices, idiot… What am I good at?… I’d be useless at the combat, and racing, and hurling… Mot terrific at riddles… What was the other one about?…
He tried pounding his forehead with his fists in the hope of shaking the knowledge out, but it didn’t work. He couldn’t remember!
‘I’m sorry…’ he babbled. ‘I’m not sure… The Seventh Tide?’ He looked round at the G for help. He saw, instead, horror.
‘The child means “What is the Seventh Tide?”!’ Gladrag started shouting.
‘The child chose!’ screeched the Queen.
‘It was a request for clarification!’
‘It was a choice!’ The triumph in her voice was terrifying.
The faces in the vortex grinned wildly and mouthed,
‘A choice!’
‘ Chosen!’
‘The Tide! The Tide!’
Without understanding a word of what had happened, Eo could tell he was doomed.
3 The Throw of Hibernation Gladrag
Memory is an unpredictable thing. It is perfectly happy to desert us at some vital moment and then come strolling back, all rested and relaxed, when the emergency is over.
This is exactly what Eo’s memory did to him. The choice was made; the die had been well and truly cast; and now that it was altogether too late the information he’d been looking for came flooding back.
The Seventh Tide… I’ve just agreed to the Seventh Tide! Different from all the other Wagers, the outcome of the Seventh Tide involved more than the individual victim. He had walked straight into a disaster, the best the Queen could have hoped for.
She was watching him now, gloating, enjoying the way his fear for himself was being overlaid with guilt.
‘There is only a little time left,’ she announced in a loud voice, ‘till the turn of the tide, when the Wager will begin. No one is to approach the Challenger, for good or ill, until that moment.’
Reluctant but unable to resist her, all the G drew back, until Eo was left alone, isolated in a little circle of empty sand. He was rigid with terror and despair now, and hardly seemed to notice what was happening around him. The Queen turned and glared meaningfully at the Head and her Companions.
‘If you will excuse us just a second?’ said Gladrag, and the government went into a huddle.
‘What just happened?’ whispered Interrupted Cadence, looking across at the boy.
Gladrag sighed. ‘He raised the stakes,’ she answered hoarsely.
‘I’m not sure I remember the details of…’ said Interrupted tentatively.
‘The Seventh Tide is probably the most complicated of the Wagers – and we have to hope that we can make that work for us…’ said Market. ‘Because – correct me if I’m wrong – please tell me I’m wrong – the forfeit is a permanent way in.’
‘You’re not wrong,’ murmured Gladrag sadly. ‘If we lose, the Kelpies would be free to enter our world at will…’
Everyone knew of worlds that had been lost to the Kelpies. They were the stuff of nightmares, tales told in the cold and sober hours of the night, and there were no happy endings to tales like that. Worlds lost to demons did not often come back to the light.
There was no time to consider the horror of that prospect, for just then the red-haired G, whose face was now practically the same colour as his hair, rushed up with another volume from the encyclopedia, practically throwing it at the Head. The Companions clustered desperately round as Gladrag flipped pages.
‘Kelpies… Kelpies… Kelpie Challenges – here it is – The Seventh Tide! She ran her eyes down the page, speed-reading. ‘OK… OK… right…’
She put her finger in the book and spoke to the Companions. ‘What happens is this. Each side has three throws. We could use the beach, from here where the grass starts, on out to sea, to throw on. You need to imagine that as a stretch of time, from the beginning of history, near us, to the far future furthest away.’
‘I accept.’
As one, the three G jumped. They hadn’t remembered what acute hearing Kelpies have.
I – I beg your pardon?’ stuttered Gladrag.
‘I accept your proposal,’ said the Queen. ‘The beach will make an excellent playing field. Now we need to decide on which world.’
‘Er…’
‘To which world will we send him? I’m sure you wouldn’t want to take any unfair advantage, so this world won’t do. The Kelpie world perhaps?’
The vortex speeded up visibly and its inhabitants’ excitement grew.
The three G shuddered and shook their heads.
‘Someplace neutral, then,’ purred the Queen.
‘The boy is young and can only take human form as yet,’ said Gladrag. ‘Perhaps, then, the human world would be the best choice?’
The Queen’s smile was slow and satisfied. It made Gladrag wonder if somehow she’d been tricked, but she couldn’t think what other world she could have suggested.
She turned back to the others and lowered her voice to a whisper.
‘So, the lad gets thrown to six different times in human history, staying where we throw him from one turn of the tide to the next. During each Tide, according to the Rules, he may receive one thing –’
‘It doesn’t have to be a thing – that’s right, isn’t it?’ interrupted Market. ‘It can be people too – champions – powerful warriors.’
‘That’s right – or wisdom, even – anything to help him when it comes to the Seventh Tide. The Final Challenge. When he enters the Dry Heart.’
‘He has to go to the Island?!’
I told you it was a final challenge…’
Among all the isles of the G, only one was called ‘The Island’. It was the one place that, when they were birds, they avoided flying over; as creatures of the sea, they never swam the waters round it, or hauled out on the black rocks of its shore. It wasn’t an evil place – not evil the way the Kelpies were, for instance – but it wasn’t a good place either.
It was just very, very… other.
‘OK, OK. What happens there? Inside the Dry Heart, I mean.’
‘No one can say,’ said Hibernation.
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Are you trying to say… no one comes back?’ quavered Interrupted.
‘Oh yes. A few have come back. They just can’t say, afterwards, what happened to them. It has that effect, I guess.’
‘Great. So no help there,’ said Market. ‘But there must be some clue as to what the lad’s supposed to be doing?’
‘Oh yes, that’s crystal clear –’ and Gladrag read from the text: ‘You must thread the mazes with no path, pass the rivers with no water, find the Centre and mend the Dry Heart…’
‘What?!’ spluttered Interrupted, but Market butted in.
‘So it’s not just killing Kelpies?’ he asked.
‘No.’ Hibernation shook her head. ‘The Kelpies are in there too, somehow, and they try to kill you, so killing them first is a good idea. But the Challenge is to mend the Heart.’
All three G looked across to where the pathetic figure of Eo was standing in his little circle of empty sand.
‘We have to get him some help,’ murmured Interrupted.
‘No argument,’ said Market. ‘When it’s our turns to throw, we need to be aiming for times when we know he can find heroic warriors or clever tricksters or amazing weapons to help him do whatever it is he’s supposed to be doing in the maze and river place, while not being killed by Kelpies.’
‘And while we’re aiming for all that, she’s presumably aiming for times without heroes or handy-dandy piles of anti-Kelpie weaponry lying about,’ said Interrupted drily.
Gladrag gave him a rueful smile.
‘Stop looking for a way out – there is no way out!’ the Queen sneered. She had been pacing up and down on her long white feet, growing more and more impatient with all the whispering and delay.
‘We were explaining the Rules of the Challenge, for the benefit of our colleague here,’ said Gladrag, ignoring Interrupted’s bleat of ‘My benefit? You had to look it up in a book!’ ‘He is not entirely familiar with –’
‘My people know all the Rules. There is no such thing as an ignorant Kelpie. I would trample on him – I would gouge out his eyes with my hooves – I would drip acid into his ears and pull out his intestines with my teeth!’ She thrust her face towards the Companions, showing off her teeth – all of them.
‘Well, I’m sure he’d resolve to do better after that!’ said Interrupted Cadence with only a hint of a quaver in his voice.
Gladrag smiled thinly to herself for an instant and then spoke.
‘So that we’re all clear, this is the summary of the Challenge,’ and she raised her voice so everyone (including Eo) could hear, and read: ‘The Challenger will be sent to six times, and spend in each time the length of a tide. With each Tide he will be given a gift – a weapon or wisdom or the services of a champion – and these gifts must be given freely and without duress. And these gifts he may take with him for the Seventh Tide, to the Dry Heart, to aid him in the Final Challenge – to thread the mazes with no path; to cross the rivers with no water; to find the Centre and mend the Dry Heart…’
Gladrag looked up. Every eye was fixed on her, so no one else noticed Professor Hurple making an extremely brief appearance. He stuck his head out of Eo’s bag, gasped the equivalent of ‘Crikey!’ in Ferret and disappeared back inside again.
Which is why Hibernation Gladrag was moved to say to Eo, ‘And don’t forget to take your bag, child.’
‘What? Why? What for?’ The Kelpie was instantly suspicious, and Market and Interrupted both stared at their Head in surprise.
‘To carry whatever objects he may be given,’ Gladrag answered mildly. ‘It’s only sensible.’
The Kelpie’s eyes darted from face to face suspiciously. Then she lunged suddenly, grabbed the bag and shook it violently upside down. A half-eaten apple, a bundle of scruffy papers, Eo’s essay notebook, some odd bits of string, some junk and one ferret fell out. But Hurple didn’t just fall out – he crashed, hard, on to the sand. An enormous sneeze from Gladrag at just the same moment covered the sound of the Professor’s breath being knocked out of his lungs. He lay there limply, playing possum. At least that’s what Eo hoped was happening. But what if Hurple was hurt? Unconscious? What if he was –
As I said, a bag in which to carry the gifts of the Tides,’ said Gladrag to the Queen. Then, turning to Eo, she continued, ‘Collect your things. Take your bag. And put your collar on, child.’ Her voice managed to cut through the panic in his mind. ‘You heard me sneezing just then. It’s getting chilly.’ She returned her attention to the Kelpie. ‘We’re a delicate people. Why, just last season…’
Eo had just enough presence of mind to do as he was told. He hurriedly stuffed everything back into his bag and scooped up Hurple, while Gladrag was distracting the Kelpie with some truly revolting details of her last cold. He draped the Professor carefully round his neck, reassured by the warmth, worried by the lifeless way he hung there.
‘But you don’t want to hear about that,’ Gladrag interrupted herself abruptly.
The Queen jerked round wildly, unsure of what had happened. But there was nothing in the feeble little figure of Eo that suggested treachery. The Kelpie felt she was being tricked, but couldn’t quite see how. Just exactly what kind of threat was a child wearing a fur collar likely to pose?
She glared at the crowd but found no clues there. Nothing but sea of blank G expressions faced her –some deliberate, some the result of not having a clue and some stemming from being in a state of near-catatonic shock. The Queen’s eyes narrowed to slits, but she still couldn’t see through to whatever their deception was.
Finally she gave up.
‘I am tired of your squirming,’ she said in a voice thick with menace. ‘Let the Challenge begin.’
‘No,’ said Hibernation Gladrag. ‘Not quite yet.’ The Head of the G turned her back on the Kelpie. She walked calmly to the nearest cluster of her people and spoke to them quietly – so quietly no one else could hear. From there, the word went out through the cro
wd, a wave of whispers, until everyone knew what they had to do. Throughout the crowd, hair of every colour and texture coiled itself serviceably out of the way and, grim-faced, the G began to leave.
The danger was old and unremitting. The souls of the G were so full of life that demons of every variety never gave up hope of breaking through to such a luscious world. So the G were prepared. If the first line of defence was breached, there was a second plan, a contingency plan – a worst-case plan.
Change! Scatter! Hide!
Spreading out across the isles, the G would find forms that were camouflaged, changing into the unnoticeable shapes of life that are easy to miss. One more sprat in a shoal, or limpet on a rock. A midge among millions, or a mouse snug among the heather roots. But what about the children of the G, who hadn’t yet grown into their shape-shifting abilities? On the backs of dolphins and whales, they would be taken and laid away in secret caves, in a self-induced cold sleep. They would lower their heart rates and slow their breathing until they were as near to rock as a living thing can become. In this state they would wait, and hope for a miracle.
The G practised these plans regularly and with some care, to be ready for the worst-case scenario no one ever believed they would see. With a word, Gladrag had set the plan in motion. This is not a drill. This is not a drill.
In a shorter time than seemed possible, the crowd of G had gone. The beach and the cropped grass of the dunes were empty. Only when Eo and the three were the last remaining, did Gladrag turn her attention back to the Queen of the Kelpies.
‘Let the Challenge begin now,’ she said sweetly.
The Queen looked as if she were about to explode but there was nothing she could do. There was nothing laid down in the ancient Rules to control the movement of bystanders. Her own people were contained, but the slippery G… The Head’s expression was bland and blank. For a long moment they stared at each other, but it was the Kelpie who broke the contact first.
With a snort, the Queen turned on her heel and stalked back across the sand. When she was right underneath the looming slanted side of the vortex she paused and then, without warning, thrust her hand into the maelstrom. It must have been the G’s imagination that made them think the gigantic phenomenon flinched away from her touch. And the scream they heard could perhaps be explained by some law of physics that governs the interruption of water moving at impossible speed and under unbearable pressure. But it seemed much more as if the vortex screamed like a creature whose flesh had been torn. The figures within shrieked violently as well.
