Time’s ticking by. The tide will be falling steadily, minute by minute. It won’t be long before the causeway is passable. The damage has been repaired enough to make it easy for Aidan Helyer. The whirl of the dance is making me dizzy. I wish they’d stop. I can’t think straight and Digory’s playing so fast that it scares me. He’s never played like this before. It’s as if he’s possessed. The sheen on Conan’s fiddle glows brighter and brighter, as if all the light in the hall is being drawn into it… I don’t like any of this. Digory, please, please, turn round and look at me…
I flinch as Venvyn grasps my hand.
“Come with me,” he says. “It’s time.”
We swim forward, and the crowd parts again to let us pass. Soon we’re at the front of the hall, immediately below the platform where the musicians are playing. The sight of the platform makes me sure that this place was once human. The Mer have no need for a platform to raise them above the dancers: they only have to swim a little way above the level of the crowd. There’s Digory, with his face turned to the high windows and his bow a blur of movement. He wears the same look as all the other musicians and the dancers: they are rapt, lost in their own world, ready to go on all night.
“Digory!” I cry. I didn’t mean to say anything – I was going to wait for Venvyn to speak – but seeing my baby brother like a stranger in another world is too much for me. “Digory! It’s me, Morveren!”
This time my brother hears me. His bow freezes in his hand. His violin falls silent, and the silence spreads from instrument to instrument. First the drumbeat hesitates, then the notes of the flutes scatter and die. The bagpipes groan. The players look from one to another, confused. The dancers whirl on like surfers swept on by a wave, but the wave has broken and as its energy spills away, everything slows down and down until the rainbow cloaks hang limp, clinging to the dancers’ bodies. A murmur of consternation rises. Everyone is looking at me now, except Digory. His eyes are still closed, as if he can’t bear the enchantment to break. He raises his bow again, and settles Conan’s fiddle more firmly. He’s going to start playing again, and then all the other musicians will start and the dancers too – there’ll be no chance—
In a couple of strokes I am at Digory’s side. There’s a gasp from the Mer as I reach out for his bow, but he clutches it so tight that I daren’t risk trying to take it from him.
“Digory,” I say gently, bending over him, “it’s time to go home. Mum and Dad are looking for you.”
Very slowly, his eyes open and fix on me. There’s no sign of recognition in them. This is how he looks when he’s had a bad dream and he sits up in bed and talks to you but he’s still really asleep.
“Digory, it’s me. It’s Morveren. Wake up, it’s time to go home.”
He opens his mouth, but to my horror a stream of Mer language pours from his lips, as liquid as the sea. What have they done to him?
“Digory, please! Give me Conan’s fiddle.”
But he won’t. He stares at me with blank hostility and clings to the fiddle with his left hand while his right grasps the bow. I can’t wrestle them away from him – they’re much too fragile and precious. Now that Digory’s no longer playing, it’s clear that Conan’s fiddle is far too big for him. I feel very afraid now. The instrument looks more powerful than my little brother, dominating him and weighing him down. Was Digory playing it, or was the fiddle using Digory to make its own music? It won’t understand that Digory is only a child. It’s almost as if Conan’s fiddle wanted to get back here, to this hall, to this platform where the musicians float above the dancers. This is where it belongs. Maybe Conan’s fiddle has used my brother to bring it back home.
Digory’s trying to raise the fiddle again. He wants to start playing. The bow and the strings want to touch, to be together. I’ve got to get Digory’s hands free from this instrument that’s so full of Conan’s spirit.
In a split second it comes to me, as the words of the old legend beat in my ears. The blind man put his fiddle into the boy’s arms… Of course! It’s not Conan’s spirit at all. It’s the spirit of the blind fiddler, who gave up his instrument to Conan so that the violin would have a chance to survive, even if he could not. We’re in the hall where the blind fiddler drowned, and his fiddle has come back to him. But he can’t play it. Even his bones must have dissolved long ago. Someone else must play it, or the instrument will be for ever silent, and that person must be as good a player as the blind fiddler was all those generations ago. Someone who can release the instrument’s music…
The murmur of the dancers is growing deeper, like an angry beehive after a stranger has disturbed it. I must act now. I reach out and touch the wood of the fiddle. It thrums with a dangerous current, warning me away. Touch me if you dare. The blind fiddler’s desperate gift. The only instrument in the world, probably, that can play both in Air and in Ingo. No wonder it’s so powerful. It wants to hold on to Digory, just as the Mer want to keep him here.
“Listen,” I say very softly, speaking not to Digory now but to the spirit that has been waiting here in this hall for generations, longing for his music to be restored to him. “You must let my brother go now. He won’t survive away from his family. We need him and he needs us. Look how little he is. He can barely hold your fiddle. It will play him to death if you let it. Wait until he’s a man and then he’ll play it as no one has ever played since you last held it.”
Slowly, slowly, I reach out my hand again. I stroke the glistening varnish. This time there is no warning thrum, but a waiting, listening silence. “He’ll make music for you again,” I murmur. “This isn’t the end. Only let him go now, and he’ll always come back to you.” I feel the strangest longing. If only I could pick up the fiddle and hear its voice speaking to me… But I know it’s impossible. I am not the one it’s been waiting for. Slowly, slowly, I take hold of the bow, and this time Digory doesn’t resist. The bow bucks in my hand once, like the dowser’s wand when he came to find a new bore-hole for the Island’s fresh water, and then it goes still. It’s just a bow, a thing of horsehair, ivory, pernambuco and silver. It comes away in my hand. The fiddle slips off Digory’s shoulder, and seems to float across the space between us.
“Thank you,” I whisper. The Mer girl who helped me swims forward and takes both fiddle and bow, handling them reverently as if they were more precious than gold. “Keep them safe,” I say to her. A shiver passes over Digory’s face. I know that look. It’s the same as when Mum sends me up to wake him for school in the mornings. The next instant, he opens his eyes and sees me.
“Mor!” he says, and his face breaks into a smile. “What are you doing here?”
I hold out my arms and he swims into them like a little fish. “I could ask you the same question,” I say, and I hug him tight, squeezing him so hard that he wriggles away, protesting. “Come on, Digory, I’ve come to take you home. Mum and Dad and Jenna are all out looking for you.”
For a second I hope it’s going to be easy, but when I turn and see the massed ranks of the Mer and the stormy darkness of their expressions, I know it’s not. They’ve left no clear water between us and the door, and they are shoulder to shoulder, some floating high, some low, so that Digory and I would never be able to make a way between them. They don’t like what’s happening. They want the music to go on and Digory to play for them.
Venvyn swims forward a little way, shielding us with his body. He has got to convince the Mer to let us go. He must make them believe that there’s another way of keeping Ingo strong, and that they can risk the danger of betraying the Mer’s existence to humans. They need to put their trust in a desperate attempt to save Malin, even if such a rescue has never succeeded before.
I don’t understand the stream of Venvyn’s words but I do understand the passion with which he speaks. His hair flows over his shoulders, his cloak swirls with the intensity of his argument. The Mer listen, arms folded, faces dark with doubt. More than any human crowd I’ve ever seen, they are like one body, with
all the individuals folded into a common cause. I get a glimpse of how unstoppable they must be, once they’ve decided on any course of action.
At last, when I’m burning with anxiety and impatience, Venvyn stops speaking. A long silence flows over the assembled Mer, who hang dead still in the water, not moving a muscle. Gradually I realise that this is not like human silence. No one is speaking, but communication is passing between all the people in the hall. They must be like me and Jenna – or like how we used to be – so close that one mind can open itself to the other. I can’t follow the Mer’s thoughts but I can sense them. The current flows from one person to the next, growing stronger as it connects and passes on. Slowly, the Mer begin to sway lightly, turning to one another and then back to Venvyn. It’s completely different from the fast, furious rhythms they danced before, but it’s just as intense and full of meaning.
I draw Digory close to my side and hold him firmly. I’m so afraid that the Mer magic will take hold of him again. I have never seen a decision reached like this, by a crowd but without words. There is another instant of absolute stillness, with all the thoughts gathered together in it like bubbles clouding the water, and then a single word rolls out from every throat.
“Malin!” they roar, in a chorus that’s like the thunder of the sea, and I know that they’ve chosen. They will give up their dance, and they’ll release Digory and his music. Instead of dancing together to mourn Malin and celebrate their own Mer strength and the separate powers of Ingo, they will turn their strength to his rescue. They’ll take the risk of revealing their existence to the human world.
swim to shore with the Mer, holding Digory tight by the hand. It’s amazing how strongly he swims, like a little fish, far better than I’ve ever seen him swim in the human world. Venvyn is just ahead, and the Mer boy and girl swim close as if they’re guarding us. The surging pressure of the sea makes me uneasy. It feels as if all Ingo is disturbed by the mass of the Mer sweeping inshore. Venvyn gestures to his left, where a current makes a whitewater twisting rope. I think he’s warning me away from it and I try to change direction, but the Mer boy and girl won’t let me. They nudge me leftwards, steering us all into the current. Now it’s only a few metres away, and I can feel its power. Its roar drums in my ears. It’s like a waterfall thundering over rock and it seems to pull us towards it. If I put out my hand now the current would drag me in and sweep me away—
The current brushes my skin, and then it pounces. We’re engulfed, seized, rolled over and over, and then trapped right in its heart. I cling to Digory and he winds his arms and legs round me like a little monkey. He’s laughing! Crazy child, he thinks he’s in a water-park, rushing down a flume.
Everyone seems sure that the current is taking us where we want to be. The Mer boy and girl stay close, so sleek and streamlined that they have to keep braking themselves with their hands so they won’t shoot too far ahead. Their hair is plastered to their skin by the force of the current. Ahead of me, blue light glistens on the strong seal tails of the Mer ahead of us, until the churning current hides them again. We’re all rushing westward in the race of the water, not far below the surface now and with the moonlight stronger than ever. Suddenly the Mer girl swims away from my side as another figure swoops down from above us and comes alongside me. It’s Eselda. We must be very close to shore now. She wraps her arms around Digory as if he’s her own child. I let go of him with relief, because my arms are aching with the effort of holding him close. I let the current roll me over while my mouth and nose fill with tingling bubbles. I know Eselda won’t let Digory come to harm. She flips over, and turns to face me.
“Morveren!” she says, and then there’s a flood of Mer that I don’t understand, but I don’t need to. Eselda’s exhausted face is alight with joy. She knows that her people have changed their minds and that everyone is heading inshore to try and save her son. We plunge on, faster and faster, and then suddenly, terrifyingly, the Mer ahead hurl themselves sideways, out of the current. But I can’t stop. I don’t know how to. The current won’t let me go and I hurtle onwards. Digory has vanished in a slipstream of bubbles.
It only lasts for a few heart-stopping seconds and then Eselda is there at my side, still holding Digory and powering herself with her tail. She grabs my arm. In an instant the Mer boy and girl are with us and we are thrusting sideways, through the wild rim of the current, and into calm water. I grab hold of Digory.
“Are you all right?”
“Course I am. That was brilliant. Can we do it again, Mor?”
I look at his excited face and wish I were seven again, and didn’t have the heavy weight of Malin’s rescue on my heart. “Eselda, thank you so much,” I say to her, hoping that she’ll know from my voice how grateful I am, even though she doesn’t understand human language. Eselda smiles, places her hands together and bows over them as if to say, “It was my pleasure.” Now I am so close, I can see the pools of shadow under her eyes, and the lines of anguish in her face. She points into the distance, and the next moment both she and the Mer boy and girl have vanished. Digory stares after them longingly.
“Don’t go swimming off,” I say, gripping his arm.
“Mor!” His face suddenly darkens with panic.
“It’s OK, we’re nearly back home. Hold on tight now and we’ll swim in.”
But Digory shakes his head impatiently. Getting home isn’t what he’s thinking about.
“Mor, that’s the girl who took my fiddle. Where is it? Where did she put it?”
“It’s fine, Digory, she’ll have put it somewhere safe where it won’t get hurt. You’ll get it back.”
“Is it in Ingo?”
“You know it is. She’s hidden it in the hall I expect.”
“But I can’t go back to the human world if my fiddle is still in Ingo.”
His words chill me. Since when did a seven-year-old talk about his home as “the human world”?
“Yes you can,” I tell him. “Of course you can. It’ll be fine, Digory, I swear it will.”
“I can’t,” says Digory stubbornly.
I’d like to shake him but then I have a flash of inspiration. “Your fiddle – I mean Conan’s fiddle – wants to be in Ingo,” I tell him. “Didn’t you hear how happy it was when it was playing in the hall?”
He thinks about it. Slowly, reluctantly, he nods.
“You’ll play it again soon, I promise. But there’s no time now, we’ve got to go.”
We are only a couple of metres below the surface now. Everybody is still, silent, listening. Shockwaves come through the water: they carry the thump of waves on rock, and behind it the roaring of the surf. The sea’s growing wilder. Venvyn swims up to me.
“I will swim in with you as close to the shore as I can,” he says.
“It’s fine. I can do it. I’ll swim in with Digory, and find Jenna.”
He frowns. “Listen. The wild water is fighting with rocks and sand. It will fight you and you will be weighed down by the child. You need my help to reach safe water.”
“But it’ll be dangerous for you. The sea will be too shallow.” Horrific images of Venvyn beached and trapped float before my eyes. If that happens, what can I do? It’s going to be tough enough to rescue Malin. A full-grown, heavy Mer man like Venvyn would be impossible.
“It is necessary,” says Venvyn, as if he reads my mind. “If you drown before you reach the shore, then there is no hope for Malin.”
And I’ll be drowned, let’s not forget that. I nearly smile even though there’s nothing to smile about.
“Take hold of the child,” orders Venvyn.
“I’m not a child, I’m Digory,” mutters my brother rebelliously.
“Never mind that,” I soothe him. “You climb on my back, hold on tight round my neck and wrap your legs round me. Not like that, you’re strangling me. Now you’re OK.” I can feel the bumping of Digory’s heart. He must be scared even though he’s pretending not to be. “Hold on really tight and we’ll soon have you
home,” I say reassuringly, trying to remember how Dad talked to me when we were out in a rowing boat and a squall blew up.
Venvyn seizes my wrist and I feel the power of his strong Mer tail as we dive deeper, out of reach of the pounding surf. Rips tear at me, trying to drag me this way and that. Digory clings tight, his nails digging into me as the water tries to peel him away. Suddenly a choking mouthful of sea makes me splutter. I cough and try to breathe and choke again, because the salt water has turned into my enemy. With a thrill of terror I know I’m not in Ingo any more. I’ve got to rise, I’ve got to get to the surface, I’ve got to breathe. Digory’s weight pushes me down and Venvyn’s hand is pulling me horizontally through the water now. I pull away desperately but he’s too strong for me. My lungs are bursting, burning. I daren’t take another breath from Ingo and there is no air…
“Venvyn! Let go of me, I’m drowning!”
I can’t cry out the words but somehow they reach him, or maybe he feels the panic thrumming in my wrist. His grip changes. The next moment, the force hurls me upward as Venvyn gathers all his strength and with a lash of his tail shoots us all above the surface. I have a split-second vision of Venvyn’s face, in the air, dark, mysterious, streaming with moonlight and sea, and then he vanishes.
I breathe and choke, breathe and choke. Digory clings desperately. I tread water, reaching down as far as I can, and for an instant my toes brush the sand. I turn to see the shore and for a moment think that one of the Mer has followed me. A girl is there, chest-deep in water, her long hair sleek and glistening, her arm raised as she peers out to sea. And then I know her.