“Who’s coming?” I whisper to Conor. He shakes his head.
“Saldowr,” I ask boldly, “who is it?”
He looks at us as if he’d forgotten we were here. “Go,” he says. “Now.”
“What?”
“Now.”
With a huge effort, Saldowr turns back to face us.
“Faro, Elvira, help your friends. Join hands. Take them home.”
“But Saldowr, what’s happening?” I ask him.
Saldowr pauses, clearly gathering strength to speak again. His fist is still pressed against the wound, but maybe—maybe it’s bleeding less now. “The tides…back to the Tide Knot. The keystone called them…home.” He coughs and bites his lips. “Go. The force of it…will crush you—” The sound of the tides bulges in our ears like a mil ion waterfalls packed together, surging from every corner of the globe. Far away still , but coming closer, closer…
What will the noise be like when the tides arrive?
“Saldowr, won’t the tides hurt you when they come?”
“I am…their Guardian.”
“Don’t let them hurt you, Saldowr!” I plead.
The ghost of a smile crosses his face again. “The tides are not…to blame. Join hands. Faro, Elvira, take them home.”
E
lvira and Faro bring us in at Rake’s Point.
Faro thinks it’s not safe to risk the currents and narrow passages of St. Pirans if the flood is still in the town. From Rake’s Point there’s a footpath that will take us across the fields to the hill above the houses.
I know Rake’s Point, but not when it looks like this. The coast path should run above a shallow cliff. As we swim in, there’s the path beneath us, with the sea bubbling around a signpost that points through the water and reads ST. PIRANS, 1 MILE. I clutch Faro’s arm. “Faro, nothing’s changed. The tides are still here. The flood hasn’t gone down. Do you think Saldowr was wrong?”
Water surges as Faro spins in a tight circle to face me.
“Look at those two,” he says, nodding toward Elvira and Conor.
“I know.” Conor and Elvira notice nothing. They see each other and no one else.
“Saldowr told us that the tides would go back to the Tide Knot,” says Faro, as if that’s the end of any possible argument.
“But Faro, look at that signpost! It should be pointing in the air.”
“We have to trust him.”
“You don’t really care, do you?” I burst out. “You wouldn’t care if St. Pirans lay underwater forever, like that village you took me to.”
But Faro isn’t having this. “Didn’t I help you?” he demands. “Would you have got safely back here without me? And think, Sapphire, of what Saldowr has done for us.” I feel ashamed. We left Saldowr to face the force of the tides as they swept back to their knot. No wonder Faro’s face is heavy with anxiety. “I’m sorry, Faro.”
“Saldowr won’t die,” says Faro quickly. “You heard him.
He’ll find a healer. If Saldowr says he will live, he will live.” Faro’s voice rouses up a strange echo in my head. He reminds me of someone. My thoughts grope for the answer, and then it comes like a sheet of lightning. Faro reminds me of myself. Believing against all the odds that Dad was still alive.
“Yes,” I say gently, “Saldowr is strong. But all the same, Faro, the flood is still everywhere. Look around you.”
“Don’t worry,” says Faro with maddening calm. “You want everything to happen immediately. You think the Tide Knot is like a magic trick. It’s your Air thinking, Sapphire.”
“
My Air thinking!
Faro, this is real water—”
“Anyway,” Faro goes on, as if making a huge concession, “my thinking was also mistaken.”
“How?”
“I thought that if Ingo grew strong in your world, it would bring peace and happiness.”
“So it would be all right if thousands of people lost their homes and maybe their lives,” I snap, “as long as everybody in Ingo is happy.”
Faro continues as if he hasn’t heard me. “But thousands of the Mer were harmed too. Swept away by the tides, trapped in caves, searching for lost children.” Maybe that’s what happened to Dad! Of course he didn’t abandon us. He came to warn us, didn’t he? He would have come to find us in the flood, but he couldn’t. Maybe he was trapped in a cave by a boulder that the tides had rolled over its entrance. Maybe he was hurt—
“Faro, do you know what happened to my father when the tides broke loose?”
Faro executes a perfect back somersault, as if we’re playing together on a summer day. “Yes.”
“You didn’t tell me!”
“He had to save the baby. They were almost swept away.
My aunt was injured.”
“Oh.” He saved the baby. Of course I understand that he had to do it. I would never want any harm to come to a baby.
He was so small and helpless. But
we
were Dad’s children first….
Faro takes my hands and clasps them in his own. “We will put our lives together again, little sister,” he says seriously. “We belong to each other, you know that.
Whatever the tides do, it can’t change what we are.” The firm clasp of his hands and his intent gaze are strangely comforting. I’m not leaving Ingo, not altogether.
Part of me will always be here.
ST. PIRANS, 1 MILE , says the signpost. The words waver through the floodwater. I’m still in Ingo, but the human world is growing clear and sharp.
Suddenly I want to see Mum, more than anything. I trust Roger, I know he’ll have made sure Mum’s safe, but I need to see her with my own eyes. I need to put my arms around her and hug her and know that she’s still here, and I’m still here. And Sadie will leap into my arms and lick my face with her rough, warm tongue. So much has been swept away, but not everything.
“Conor, come on.”
Conor doesn’t reply. He and Elvira are still talking intently, their voices too low for us to hear. Faro and I raise our eyebrows at each other.
“Conor!”
I’m shivering with cold and tiredness by the time Conor and I stumble up the last slope of the hill . Below us the town is silent. A rescue worker in a bright yellow jacket met us on the footpath and pointed us up to the relief center in St.
Mark’s church hall , the highest point above the town. He wanted to ask us questions, but we said we had to find our family. I suppose we must have looked strange, appearing out of nowhere after a night of devastation. There are lots of rescue workers down in the town, steering inflatables along the flooded streets. From the distance we can see the yellow of their fluorescent jackets and the orange of the boats.
“I bet one of those rescue workers is Roger,” says Conor, shading his eyes. A helicopter clatters overhead, then flies away. “Are you okay, Saph? Can you make it?”
“My leg hurts a bit, that’s all .”
“I wish Elvira was here.”
I bet you do,
I think. It’s only a few minutes since we said good-bye to Faro and Elvira, but already they seem to belong to another life. But I hold on to Faro’s words.
We will
put our lives together again, little sister.
From the look on Conor’s face, he’s remembering Elvira’s words too.
Conor’s arm is around me, supporting me, as we reach the path to the church hall . There are people standing around, wrapped in blankets, drinking out of plastic cups.
“Look, TV,” whispers Conor. A reporter is standing with a mike and a camera on him.
“This is Alex McGovern reporting from the stricken town of St. Pirans, as the gray light of morning reveals the extent of the devastation.” He is wearing warm waterproof clothing, and he looks excited. The rest of us look like refugees beside him. Suddenly the camera swings onto me and Conor. “This morning more homeless people are making their way to the emergency center. Among them are the injured and those who have become separated from their families.” And now the mike is right in Conor’s face, and the reporter is blocking our way into the hall . “Are you brother and sister? Can you tell us what happened to you?” Conor is silent for a moment, and then he says with great dignity, “No, I can’t tell you what happened. Please let us pass; my sister is injured.”
As we go into the church hall , we hear the reporter’s voice behind us, saying, “So far, miraculously, there are no reports of any fatalities. But once rescue workers are able to enter the flooded houses, this situation may change. All along this part of the Cornish coast, similar scenes of flood havoc are being reported.”
The church hall is lined with rows and rows of people.
Some lie down wrapped in blankets; some lean against the walls. Babies are crying, but everyone else is silent, as if they’ve all been stunned. One by one, I recognize some faces. There’s Mr. Trevail and his wife. They are wrapped in foil blankets, sipping drinks. Mr. Trevail sees me and waves.
He doesn’t look too bad. But where’s Mum?
“There she is!” exclaims Conor.
Mum hasn’t seen us. She’s got a plastic cup in her hand, and she’s talking to a policeman, who is writing stuff down in a notebook.
“Mum!” I shout, much louder than I meant to. People turn to look, but I don’t care. I rush forward, tripping over blankets and feet, desperate to get to her. “Mum, Mum, are you all right?”
Mum drops the cup she’s holding. She moves so fast that she looks as if she’s flying across the hall . Her arms grab us both like a vise, and she hugs and hugs as if she’ll never let go. “Sapphy! Con! I thought I’d lost you.”
“Mum, you’re hurting me!”
“Sorry, Sapphy.” Mum wipes her face with the back of her hand and then clutches hold of us again. She’s got mud on her cheek, and her hair is wet and straggly. She looks beautiful.
“I can’t let go of you,” she says at last. “I can’t believe I’ve really got you back. I’ve been watching that door for hours, praying you’d walk in. I asked everyone if they’d seen you—”
“It’s all right, Mum,” says Conor. “We’re here now. We got trapped by the flood for a while, that was all . We were never in danger.”
“It’s all jumbled up in my head,” says Mum, pulling us down to sit on the floor beside her. “I thought you were in the loft with me, Sapphy, but when I woke up, you were gone. I can’t tell you how scared I was. Rainbow said you must have been picked up by boat and gone to get help for us, and then Roger came.”
“You had a fever, Mum. That’s why it’s all jumbled up.
Conor came and fetched me, and he said Roger was on his way to rescue you and Rainbow and Sadie. We’re all safe.”
“Yes,” says Mum, “you’re safe. Nothing else matters.” And she pulls us close again and hugs us as if she’s never And she pulls us close again and hugs us as if she’s never going to let go of us. I shut my eyes and lean against her. I’m so tired. I just want to go to sleep now—
Suddenly a terrible realization flashes into my mind, and I sit bolt upright. “Sadie! Mum, where is she?”
“It’s all right, Sapphy, calm down. Rainbow’s taken her for a walk. Sadie was so restless, she was driving everybody crazy.”
“Which way did they go?”
“Sapphy, you’re not going out again. You’ve got to rest.
We need a doctor to look at that leg.”
A shadow fall s over us. I look up, and there is a figure as tall and strong as a sheltering tree. She’s dressed in earth-colored clothes, with a red scarf tied around her neck. She carries a brown earthenware jug. “Granny Carne! What are
you
doing here?”
“Sapphy!”
says Mum.
“Let me see your leg, Sapphire,” says Granny Carne.
She bends and examines the cuts and the bruising careful y.
At last she says, “This has been well tended.”
“Did you find a first-aid post then, Sapphy? You didn’t tell me,” says Mum.
Granny Carne looks me in the eye.
“Is our cottage all right?” I ask her. The sight of her reminds me of home. Our cottage door, wide open all day long, the path down to our cove and the garden Dad planted…
“Yes, the sea couldn’t rise that far. The Fortunes are quite safe too.” The Fortunes? Who are they? And then I remember Gloria and her husband. I’d forgotten all about them. Gloria wouldn’t have found it easy to escape the flood on her crutches. What if the water had kept on rising…?
Did she know it was Ingo on the move? I wonder if I was right about the look of Ingo on Gloria’s face. I must find a way of asking her one day, a way of finding out if she’s one of us.
Mum shivers and clutches me close. “I always knew you could never trust the sea or anything in it,” she says. I open my mouth to argue, thinking of Saldowr and Faro and Elvira, and the whale who helped me in the Deep, and the dolphins, and even the sharks who risked their lives for their duty. But I meet Granny Carne’s piercing gaze and close my mouth again and say nothing.
“Come outside,” says Granny Carne. “I hear that the water’s falling at last. Come and see.”
“Granny Carne’s been here all night, helping,” whispers Mum. “People said she walked all the way over from Senara as soon as the flood broke.”
“More likely they said she flew,” whispers Conor.
“Conor! That’s enough!” says Mum, sounding like herself again.
We follow Granny Carne out of the hall . A brisk wind has got up, blowing the clouds aside. Pale glints of sun touch the cold wet ground. We walk across the crushed grass to the edge of the hill . “Look there,” says Granny Carne.
At first I think there’s been no change. There is water all around the roofs of St. Pirans. From up here on the hill we can see how far the flood has spread, swallowing houses, boats, barns, walls, roads.
“Watch,” says Granny Carne. “Look at the edge of the water there on that field. Look at the sycamore.” The sycamore stands in the flood. But the water is moving, surely? Or is it a trick of the light? I blink and look again.
Yes, the water is moving. Very slowly, silently, it is shrinking back toward the sycamore tree like a puddle in the sun.
Shrinking backward down the hill .
“The flood is falling,” I say under my breath, barely able to believe it.