I have a gnawing feeling that we’re not doing enough for Malin. What if he doesn’t get better? We’re talking, but we’re not communicating. He probably doesn’t trust us, and why should he? He is trapped here. I’m still haunted by my dream. What if it happens like that in real life?
“We’ve got to get back,” says Jenna.
“You go. I’ll stay a bit.”
“No, Mor, you come back too.”
“Tell Mum I’ve gone round to Mrs Bassett’s.”
Mrs Bassett used to be our neighbour, but now she lives at her daughter’s, because she can’t do cooking and stuff any more. Her daughter’s really nice and Mrs Bassett has the biggest room on the ground floor, but she hates not having her independence. She likes me; she always has. She likes me more than Jenna, which is pretty surprising. We have cups of tea in her room.
“But that’s a lie,” says Jenna.
“I’ll call in at Mrs Bassett’s later if it makes you happy. I was going to see her today anyway.”
Jenna sighs. “Oh, all right. But why do you want to stay here anyway? He’s asleep.”
“I won’t be long.”
I lean over the edge of the rock, watching Jenna’s shape grow small as she jogs down the beach. When she reaches the path which goes over the dunes, she stops, turns, and looks back at me.
She’s worried. She still doesn’t want to leave me. She’s afraid something might happen, but she doesn’t know what. I wave at her encouragingly and after a moment she turns away. She’s gone.
I make my way round the pool to our ledge. The surface of the water is flat as milk. Under there, somewhere, Malin is sleeping. But I can’t see him from here. I lean forward, peering down—
And almost fall in the water as it erupts in a thrash of foam. I jump backwards, lose my balance, and bang my elbow against the rock so hard that tears spring to my eyes. Malin rears out of the water, shoulders and chest streaming water, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a snarl.
“Malin!”
His face changes. He sinks down until only his head is above the surface.
“Morveren.”
“Who did you think it was?”
“A stranger. I thought you had gone.”
But the effort has been too much for him. His face is grey. He starts to choke as if the air is drowning him. He falls back, and the water covers him as he goes down and down, into the depth of the pool.
I think he’s dying. The shock and the effort of bursting out of the water like that has killed him. It’s my fault. What am I doing? I should have got help for him, not messed around like this. But it’s too late for that now.
I pull off my jeans and top, take a deep breath and jump into the pool.
y eyes search the shadows. This is my nightmare, but now it’s happening in real life. There’s Malin, lying with his face to the rock, limp. I plunge down to him. Slowly he rolls in the water, the way a tangle of seaweed rolls on the swell.
“Malin! Malin!” I hear my own voice, loud and desperate. But I’m underwater – I must be hearing my own thoughts. “Malin, please say something!” The wound on his tail gapes. There’s blood in the water, like smoke. Maybe it started bleeding again when he hurled himself up through the surface to face me when he thought I was an enemy.
“Morveren.”
I’m hearing things. That can’t have been Malin’s voice against my ear. People can’t talk underwater. “I’m here, Malin. I want to help you. Tell me what to do.”
“Get me live water, from the sea. This is salt but it is dead. I need live water to heal this wound.”
Questions flood my mind but there’s no time for them. “I’ll do it,” I tell him. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Wait for me…”
Please, please don’t die before I get back, I think. It’s horrible to leave him alone, but I can’t hold my breath any longer. I push off the bottom of the pool and shoot upwards, break the skin of the water, and take a deep, sweet lungful of air. The cold hits me as I haul myself on to the ledge. I shake the water off me, scramble over the sharp edge of the pool and climb down the rocks. The beach is empty. No one to see a freezing-cold crazy girl in a wet T-shirt, running up and down the tide-line.
Usually I hate the jumble of rubbish that gets washed up after a storm, but today I rush to every piece of plastic that shows through the tangle of wrack and driftwood. A deflated football, chunks of polystyrene, a child’s trainer with its sole torn off – even an orange plastic milk-crate – but nothing that will hold water. I pick up heaps of seaweed and turn them over. Nothing. I stare down the beach, shading my eyes, and catch a flash of blue. There’s something wedged down by the rocks at the sea’s edge. I take off, running, praying that it’s not some useless piece of tat.
It’s a child’s bucket, a big one. The handle’s gone, but that doesn’t matter. I shake out the sand, and the dead crab that has got into the bottom of it, then paddle into the sea where I dip the bucket and scour it with sand until all the crab smell has gone.
Live water… I dip the bucket deep, where the small waves are breaking, and fill it to the brim, then walk carefully back to the rocks that hide King Ragworm Pool. It’s hard to climb back up without spilling the water. It slops over and I lose a few centimetres from the top, but surely there’s enough left. It smells clean and salty. I hope that Malin will think this water is live enough for him.
There he is, floating not far below the surface, his face hidden by a swirl of hair. My fear lifts. There’s something in the way he floats rather than hangs in the water that tells me instantly that he’s alive. I place the water on the rock, test it to be sure it’s secure, and then wave my arms widely. Malin will see the movement.
He does. There’s a flicker of life all down his body, and then, very slowly, he sculls his way across the pool to me.
“I found this bucket! It’s got live water in it,” I say, as soon as his mouth breaks the surface. He watches me, his dark eyes hiding any expression from me. I lift the bucket to show him, but still he doesn’t respond. I’m disappointed and then angry with myself for being disappointed. You idiot, Morveren, what did you expect? A great big thank you? Wow, it’s really great to see you! You’re amazing! By the way I’m on the point of death…
“Shall I pour the water over you?” But already, he’s sinking. I realise he hasn’t got the strength to stay above the surface. It’s probably as big an effort for him as it would be for me to go diving if I were really badly injured.
“It’s OK, I’ll come to you.”
I leave the bucket of water safely balanced on the ledge immediately above the pool, and slip into the icy embrace of the pool. It takes my breath away. Even my teeth are aching with cold now. Don’t be so pathetic. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not hurt. You should have brought your wetsuit.
I push my hair out of my eyes and tread water while I try to work out how to do this. If Malin comes close – if he can just raise himself up for a second – and then I reach up for the bucket… Yes, that should work.
I scull myself downwards. Malin’s face is turned away from me, so I swim round him. His eyes are half-shut, as if he’s dropped off to sleep. He mustn’t do that. It’s like when people get lost in a snowstorm and lie down, and think the snow is as warm as their bed.
“Malin.”
He makes a small, protesting sound.
“You have to come up to the surface. I’ve got the live water.”
“Let me sleep.”
“No!” My nails are digging into his arm. “You’re not going to sleep! You won’t wake up if you do. Malin! Malin!”
“What – do – you – know?” he says slowly, his voice blurred.
What do I know? I know that I’m so freezing cold that my brain hurts. I know that I’ve got the live water and he won’t even look at it. I know that he is the most annoying, frustrating Mer person I have ever met. “You won’t even try!” I shout furiously. “All right, die then if you want to! Rot in this pool!
Do you know what – you’re pathetic! You’re too scared to even put your head above the water.”
His eyes snap open. Even through the water I can see a flush of rage mount into his face.
“You think that?”
“Yes, I do think that! I’m trying to help you, I’m doing everything I can, and all you do is lie there like a – like a crocodile!”
“Crocodile!” he repeats, as if it’s a deadly insult. He sweeps the water aside with one powerful stroke of his arms, and swims upwards until his head breaks the surface. I follow him, and take in a long breath of air. But how weird – I wasn’t desperate to breathe this time. My lungs didn’t even feel tight. Of course we can’t really have been talking down there in the depths of the pool. I can’t have been shouting at Malin through a mouthful of salt water. It was just a very fast kind of thinking, like I do with Jenna sometimes—
No time to think about that. I tread water as hard as I can, and lunge upwards to reach the pail. I grab it between my two hands. It’s so heavy that it almost pulls me under.
“Here – live… water…” I pant, and just before the bucket sinks me I reach over and tip it over Malin’s face and his thick, tangled hair. It flows down like a waterfall, and keeps on pouring in a broad, clear, brilliantly vivid stream, as if the child’s bucket were as big as a barrel. Now I understand what Malin means by live water. As it goes down into the pool it shines like mercury in the dark. The live water wraps itself around Malin’s body, and clings to his tail, where the wound is. Malin looks as if he’s bathed in silver, and as I watch, the bleeding stops. The wound is changing. Very slowly, from the depths of the gash, the tissue begins to come together.
It’s not magic. It can’t be. It’s just the very start of healing, sped up somehow so that I can see it. He’s still badly injured but for the first time, I believe that Malin will survive.
I hold the bucket high. It’s lighter now but still not empty. Water keeps flooding over Malin’s face and down over his chest and tail. Malin has his head thrown back, and his eyes closed, the way someone will close their eyes with pleasure under a hot shower. How can all this water be coming from a child’s bucket, I wonder dreamily, but I don’t try to work it out. As long as the live water flows, then Malin will be safe. It’s not just silver, there are all kinds of colours in it. I fumble for the right word in my mind and then it comes to me: iridescent. I can’t tell if it’s really colour, or light. After a long while Malin opens his eyes, and looks straight into mine. For the first time, he smiles.
“Morveren,” he says. “Let me pour the live water over you now.”
Questions jump to my lips, but I don’t ask them. Instead, I watch as he takes the bucket from my hands, and raises it high above my head. I close my eyes as the water floods down.
It prickles like electricity. It rushes over me and fills my eyes with sparks of light and my ears with bright, tingling sounds. I want to taste it too. I open my mouth wide and the water gushes in.
It’s salt water, but there’s a sweetness in it which is more powerful than anything I’ve ever tasted before. It fizzes with life on my tongue. I swallow, and the water floods my throat. The power of it surges through me until every vein in my body is carrying it. It reminds me of something. Some feeling I’ve had long ago but nearly forgotten… Yes, I remember! It was when we went away upcountry to visit our cousins who live in Birmingham. Every morning I woke up and something was missing. I opened the curtains and saw brick. Roofs, chimneys, cars running in a steady stream up the street. The sky was so low it pressed down on my head. When I got home I grabbed my swimming stuff and went straight down to the shore. It was April so the sea was freezing, but I didn’t want my wetsuit. I wanted to feel the sea. I waded straight in, deeper and deeper, and then dived under a breaking wave. It was like when you’re little and you fall over and start crying, and your mum comes to see what’s wrong, and you run and run until you’re in her arms. The sea was like that. Opening its arms to me and welcoming me back. I swam out way past the Dragon Rock. Any other day I’d have known that was a stupid thing to do, but that day the sea was looking after me.
That’s what this live water is like. I gasp as memories stream through me. Malin laughs as he tips the bucket higher and another gush of water pours on to me. He looks like a different person. There’s colour in his face and his eyes are shining. I’m just about to swallow again, when the stream of water stops. Malin shakes the last few drops out of the bucket and lets go of it. It floats to the side of the pool and bumps gently against the rock.
“Oh Malin, you’re better!” Then I glance down at his tail again and see how bad the wound is, even now. The live water has begun its work but it’s going to take time for him to heal. He’ll get better, though. I know he will.
“It will take many days,” says Malin.
“You’ll have to hide here until you’re strong enough to go back into the sea.” A thought leaps into my mind. If one bucket of seawater can do so much to help Malin, then maybe the sea itself is the answer. “Unless… Would going back into the sea make you better straight away – a bit like the live water?”
He shakes his head. “Ing— It is too strong for me now. It would kill me.”
“What did you say?”
“I said it would kill me.”
“No, you said something else first. Ing or something.”
“It was nothing, Morveren.”
His face closes. He looks tired now.
“I could keep on bringing seawater in the bucket for you—”
“The live water only works once. I will get better now. But are you sure that we can trust your sister?”
I’m so shocked I just stare at him. Not trust Jenna? How can he even think such a thing? But then, somewhere deep, deep in my mind, a thought stirs. Jenna hates all this. She wants none of it to have happened. She’d prefer it if Malin’s existence were a fantasy, one of those things twins imagine together. Maybe she’d rather get rid of the reality—
No. It’s Jenna we’re talking about. My sister, my twin. My other self, but better than me.
“Jenna would never hurt anyone,” I tell him firmly.
Malin frowns. “But am I anyone? Your sister knows that I am not human.”
A shiver of fear runs through me. Malin may not be human, but he’s a person. I can’t believe that Jenna wouldn’t recognise that.
“You will help me, Morveren. You will return me to my own people.”
“Of course I will.”
“Swear to me that if you hear that humans are coming to capture me, and I cannot escape, you will help me to die. We Mer make knives from sharpened shell and stones, but we do not make them to harm one another. I know that humans use metal. I know that you kill with metal.” A fleeting look of disgust crosses his face. “You will bring me one of your metal knives, Morveren, if I have need of it.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You must.”
“But Malin, that would be like helping you to commit suicide. It’s wrong. It’s against the law.”
His eyes glitter. “What law? Human law? I am not human. Your people would treat me like an animal.”
I wish I could deny it, but images of caged creatures rise in my mind. Dolphins in amusement parks, made to live in shallow water where they can never feel the pull of the sea, or ride a boat’s bow wave, or find their brothers and sisters. Polar bears sweltering in concrete enclosures in the middle of cities. Even if the law here decided to protect Malin, there are plenty of countries where people would pay big money to see him, and the authorities would let it happen.
“Promise me,” says Malin, his eyes fixed on mine. But I’m as stubborn as he is, and I’m not going to agree. “First I will fight whoever comes to capture me, and then I will take my own life rather than give it to humans.”
He really would do it. He’s not some teenage boy bragging about how tough he is. I can imagine the fight, with Malin cornered, holding his knife. I think quickly.
He’s injured and desperate. I’m afraid of what he may do if he really believes I’ll let him be captured. What if he makes himself die some other way? “Malin, listen. I swear I will not let you be captured. I’ll protect you until you’re strong enough to go back into the sea. Whatever it takes, I’ll do it. No one knows about you except me and Jenna, and nobody’s going to know. Please trust me.”
His eyes search my face. His whole body is tense. At last, slowly, he nods. “I accept your promise, Morveren,” he says formally. “I trust you. But your sister is not like you. You look the same, but you are not the same. Her thoughts are different from yours.”
I nearly smile. “If you only knew how much nicer than me Jenna is. Everybody thinks so.”
“Nicer? What is that?”
“Oh, you know. Kind and thoughtful and the sort of person who always does the right things. People really like her.”
“Humans, do you mean?”
“Well of course, humans. Who else is she going to meet?”
“I think I like people who are not nice,” says Malin thoughtfully, and I laugh.
“Not many people would describe me as ‘that nice girl, Morveren’.”
“What would they say?”
I shrug. “Who cares, really? You can’t spend your life worrying about what people say.”
Suddenly the atmosphere darkens again. “If your sister betrays me, I will curse her before I die,” says Malin fiercely.
Betray… curse… I’ve never heard anyone use those words in real life, but they’re obviously as real to Malin as the rocks and water.
“Jenna won’t betray you.”
Suddenly, a wave of shock runs through me. I’ve been in the pool, treading water, talking to Malin, with only our faces above the surface. I don’t even know how long I’ve been in the pool, but I’m not cold any more. I feel as comfortable as if I were wearing my wetsuit on a summer day. I stopped feeling cold when—
When Malin poured the live water over me. I open my mouth to question him, but he says, “I must go down now. I must rest.” He looks so bad I think he might faint, if Mer people do faint.