The Puzzle Ring (32 page)

It was not what she had expected. Somehow she had imagined a perfect whirl, like water being sucked down a plughole. Instead, the water churned about in wild confusion, waves crashing up against other waves with a slap of spray and a swirl of spume.

‘The tide's on the ebb,' Fergus shouted from the tiller. ‘The Hag's much calmer now. You should see her when the tide is on the flood! Glory be! That's a sight to chill your soul.'

Hannah looked down into the white-frothed, churning water and felt her stomach sink. She pulled out the hag-stone
and held it to her left eye. ‘Magic stone, show my eye, where the puzzle ring does lie.'

Her gaze was plunged beneath the water, down, down, down, to the black swirling depths. She could just see, through the murk, a tall pinnacle of rock, encrusted with barnacles. Caught on an upreaching finger of stone was something that glinted, faintly, gold.

She swallowed and tucked away the hag-stone with fingers that trembled. ‘Fergus, could you drop anchor here?'

He opened his blue eyes wide. ‘Here? You must be joking!'

Hannah shook her head. ‘I have to dive down to the Hag. If you could drop the anchor down onto the rock, I'd have something to hold onto and guide me back up.'

‘You mad-headed fool!' Angus roared. ‘You can't dive down there!'

‘I have to,' Hannah said. ‘The ring's down there. It'll be all right. I've dived before.'

Though in warm, clear, tropical waters, not into a freezing-cold, murky-dark whirlpool
, she thought to herself.

‘I won't let you!' Angus raged. ‘You'll be killing yourself!'

‘No one's ever dived down to the Hag before,' Fergus said.

Linnet knelt down before her and took her hands. ‘The hag-stone will calm the waters, but not for long,' she said in a strained whisper. ‘And when the waters are released, they will be wilder than ever. You must be quick.'

‘I'll be as quick as I possibly can.' Hannah began to strip off her clothes.

‘Oh, Hannah, I don't want you to die!' Scarlett wailed.

‘I'm telling you, lass, it's too dangerous! I'd never have brought you out here if I thought you were going to try and swim the whirlpool!' Fergus shouted.

‘Don't be a fool,' Angus pleaded.

‘I wonder how far down it is?' Max said, holding his arms across his aching stomach. ‘You know you go crazy if you go too far down? They call it “rapture of the deep”. People pull off their scuba gear and think they see mermaids and stuff.'

‘I won't be wearing any scuba gear,' Hannah said grimly, standing shivering on the deck in her smock.

‘Can we tie a rope or something to you?' Donovan was very pale. ‘So we can pull you back up?'

‘That's a good idea. I'll tug on it three times if I need you to haul me up.' Hannah's voice sounded very far away even to her own ears. Her legs felt rubbery. Donovan and Angus rushed to find a spare coil of rope, while Fergus brought the boat around—a long and difficult process that involved lowering his square sail, lifting it to the other side of the mast, and hoisting it again on new tack. The whole time, the boat dipped and lurched like a bucking bronco, and Max stopped talking about the symptoms of diving too deep and was heartily sick again all over the deck.

‘If you see any crabs scuttling for cover, it's time to come back up,' Fergus said urgently. ‘Oh, glory be! Why am I letting you do this?'

‘It's not up to you to say what we can and can't do,' Angus roared, in a surprising about-face. ‘We're paying you a bag of gold, so shut your mouth and mind your boat!'

Hannah dived overboard. The cold was like a blow to her lungs. For a moment, she could not persuade her arms and legs to move. Water boiled about her, grey and white and speckled with foam. The hag-stone hung about her neck on its cord. Afraid it would be lost in the water's turbulence,
Hannah put it in her mouth, then dived under the surface, following the angle of the anchor rope.

Visibility was very poor. She swam as much by feel as by sight. Soon, the blood was pounding in her ears and still she had seen no sign of the Hag. She surfaced, panting and dizzy, and clung to the anchor rope. Again she dived and, fuelled by desperation, kicked harder than she had ever kicked before, the hag-stone still clenched between her teeth.

Down she dived, peering through the murk, feeling the cold bite into her very bones. Suddenly something slid past her legs, sleek and fast. Hannah involuntarily gasped with terror.
Shark!
she thought, and recoiled. A moment later she saw more racing past, their bellies flashing white. She curled herself into a ball, gripping the anchor rope with dread-stiffened fingers. They were small whales, she saw, or perhaps large, black-skinned dolphins. As they zoomed past, she relaxed. Only then did she realise that she was breathing, in fast, harsh gasps that burst out of her mouth in a twirl of tiny bubbles. In her surprise, she drew her breath in sharply, past the hag-stone, and tasted pure oxygen. Realisation, joy and excitement fizzed together in her blood. In a flash, she uncurled her body and plunged downwards, swimming strongly, into the greenish gloom.

She had never dived so deep. It must have been twenty times her own length. The water was vast and dark and eerie. Currents buffeted her, dragging her away from the anchor rope, but she kept one hand upon it to guide her, and kept on swimming down.

Black and tall and twisted, her feet lost in the abyss, the Hag reached up towards Hannah. Her hair was drifting green seaweed, and she had a thousand tiny blind eyes. Hannah
came down lightly by the anchor and felt about with one hand, searching for the loop of the puzzle ring. It was like trying to see through twilight, although above the surface it was midmorning. Everything was soft and vague and hidden, except for the currents tugging at her, pulling Hannah's hair sideways.

She had to let go of the anchor. At once Hannah felt herself dragged towards the abyss. Frantically her hands groped over the rock. She felt a protrusion of stone and, caught firmly upon it, a slender circlet of something smooth. She yanked till it broke free. Clutching it in her hand, Hannah twisted about and tried to swim back towards the anchor, her breath rasping in her throat in her panic. The current was too strong. She was being dragged away. Hannah kicked and kicked, but her legs felt limp and weak.

Suddenly another black and white whale came barrelling out of the abyss, slamming into her and knocking her sideways. She was flung against the stone pillar, tearing her skin on the barnacles. The hag-stone was knocked out of her mouth and would have fallen into the abyss had it not been secured about her neck by the cord. The whale spun about and came racing towards her, its jaws gaping open. Hannah choked back a scream, frantically shoving the hag-stone back in her mouth so she could breathe. She then slipped the golden loop onto her ring finger, clenched her fist about it, and swung round to the other side of the Hag. The whale went past in a stream of bubbles, moving astonishingly fast.

Hannah seized the rope about her waist and yanked it three times. At once she was jerked upwards. The rope about her middle hurt her cruelly as she was dragged, in rough fits
and bursts, towards the surface. Hannah could have wept with relief. She tried to help, but her arms and legs were so tired she could barely find the energy to move them. She looked around anxiously for the whale, and saw it swooping towards her. At once she spat out the hag-stone and thrust it towards the whale, shouting silently in her mind, seven times, ‘I defy thee!'

To her relief, the whale spun away, as if it had slammed into a wall of glass, and disappeared into the black abyss. Hannah was dragged, coughing and choking, out of the water and onto the deck.

‘I thought you would've have had enough of almost drowning.' Donovan's mouth was twisted in a wry half-smile.

Hannah managed to smile back, opening her hand to show him the slim hoop of oddly twisted gold upon her finger.

‘Ahoy port side!' Fergus shouted, late the following afternoon as the small boat sailed up the Firth of Lorne.

‘What is it?' Angus shouted back.

‘I don't know. It looked like a man, but it can't be.'

Hannah stared out across the choppy water. ‘Gosh, look, there's hundreds of them.'

Men with wild hair and beards were bobbing up and down all around the boat. Their skin was not the blue of a summer sky, but rather the clammy, skimmed-milk colour of men who had been submerged in cold water a long time.

‘Where's your boat hook?' Angus shouted. ‘Let's drag the poor souls aboard!'

‘No!' Linnet cried. Everyone stared at her in astonishment. ‘They're Blue Men! Have you not heard of them? They'll wreck the boat for sure!'

‘The Blue Men of the Minch?' Angus demanded. ‘What
are they doing so far south? I thought they swam only in the Hebrides?'

‘They must serve the black witch,' she cried.

One of the Blue Men spun a long stone staff, and the wind hurtled against the boat, rocking it dangerously. The sails cracked like whips, and one tore free, flapping wildly. Rain lashed their faces, yet sunshine gleamed on the waters of the bay behind them, and glowed on the distant hills of the Isle of Mull.

‘If this keeps up, we'll go down for sure,' Fergus cried, clinging to the rudder. ‘What do they want with us?'

‘To drown us, of course,' Linnet snapped.

‘To drown the puzzle ring,' said Hannah, fingering the hard bulges in the hem of her chemise, where she had sewed the two golden loops.

‘But why? Why does the black witch care about the puzzle ring?' Max demanded, looking greener than ever as the boat rocked wildly from side to side.

‘She thrives on chaos and unhappiness, so the last thing she wants is for me to break the curse,' Hannah said. ‘Besides, there is the prophecy. “The thorn tree shall not bud, the green throne shall not sing, until the child of true blood is crowned the rightful king.” She's afraid the true heir will be found once the curse is broken.'

The wind howled like a banshee, and a great wave washed over the prow of the boat, knocking them all down and almost sweeping them overboard. The Blue Men shouted in triumph, as the sea surged in great grey-green waves around them.

‘What can we do?' Scarlett cried. ‘I don't want to die!'

‘The only way to defeat them is to beat them in a rhyming contest,' Linnet gasped, wrapping both arms about the mast.

‘Hannah's good at rhymes!' Scarlett cried.

‘Not that good,' Hannah protested. ‘Doggerel only.'

‘I don't even know what doggerel means!' Scarlett exclaimed. ‘Come on, Hannah! If we drown now, you'll never break the curse.'

Again the leader whirled his spear above his head, and at once the little boat was spun in a maelstrom of wind and water. The sail came crashing down in a tangle of rope, and Fergus would have been swept overboard if Angus had not lunged forward and caught him by his belt.

‘How dare you sail our sacred seas?' the Blue Man roared.

Hannah tried to think. ‘Bees, keys, wheeze . . .' she muttered. ‘Ease . . .'

Again the Blue Man whirled about his white spear. As the boat spun, Hannah shouted: ‘Why should we not float at our ease, instead of fighting the angry waves?'

The Blue Man uttered a short, harsh laugh. ‘Why should
we
not show
you
our caves, deep beneath the white foam?'

‘Thank you, but I prefer the sky's blue dome,' she answered, quick as a flash, ‘where I can breathe the pure, fresh air.'

‘Where every day is weighted with care? Let us release you to the fathomless deep.'

‘I would rather laugh and run and leap,' Hannah returned, trying to think of a word that had no rhyme he could match. ‘Knowing I'll walk again in sunshine.'

Without even a blink he answered, ‘Yet you could be swimming with me in the brine, diving through the great blue sea.'

‘Please, we would so much rather sail free, we mean you no harm, I promise.'

He floated upright in the water, frowning, then with a flick of their tails the Blue Men dived beneath the waves and were gone.

‘I promise,' Hannah breathed. ‘Of course. That's a hard one to rhyme with.'

Scarlett and Max and Donovan leapt up and down, shouting with joy and relief. ‘I knew you could do it!' Scarlett shrieked.

‘Well done, my lamb,' Linnet said, hugging her warmly.

‘It was just luck,' Hannah said. ‘I didn't have time to think. I just said the first thing that came into my head. I could've said “I swear” and then he could have said pear, or bare, or mare, or square . . .'

‘That was amazing,' Donovan said. ‘You were so quick.'

‘I didn't feel quick,' Hannah said. ‘I felt as thick as a brick.'

‘Oh, God, she can't stop,' Donovan said. Max and Scarlett laughed too, and somehow once they started they couldn't stop. Angus could only shake his head in bewilderment.