I have never felt so isolated.
And then I feel an arm around my shoulder. Faro is at my side. He turns and looks into my face as if Ervys and the whole chamber of the Mer don’t matter at all. He speaks as if we’re alone.
“I’ll go with you, Sapphire,” he says.
“Go where?”
Faro looks intently into my face, my eyes. “Into the Deep. We have to stop the Kraken before it grows so strong that nothing can stop it. We’ve got to stop the sacrifice.”
“But you can’t enter the Deep, Faro. You’re Mer.”
Faro tosses back his hair. “I can try.”
He is so brave. He’s already been hurt before, trying to go to the Deep to find me. The Deep nearly crushed him, and yet he’s ready to brave it again. But it won’t work, I know that it won’t work. No one has more courage than Faro, but courage isn’t enough on its own.
All the Mer are looking at me hungrily. Wanting. Needing. I’m being hit by wave after wave of pressure. But they can’t make me do this!
I’ve got to think clearly. Of course. Why didn’t I realise it before? I need Saldowr. And Conor. I’ve got to talk to Conor.
“I must see Saldowr,” I say firmly.
“Saldowr!” Anger leaps into Ervys’s face. Quickly he smoothes out his expression. “But what help can he give? Saldowr is sick and weak.”
Faro makes a quick, outraged gesture at this disrespect towards his teacher. Quite a lot of the Mer don’t look happy about it, either. There are frowns and mutters. I lay my hand on Faro’s arm warningly. Strength is rising in me again, now that I’ve got the beginning of a plan. I don’t trust Ervys. He wants me to help the Mer, but it’s for himself as well. If he can defeat the Kraken by sending him back to sleep without sacrifice, than he’ll be famous in Ingo, and more powerful even than Saldowr, maybe—
“I must see Saldowr,” I repeat, looking Ervys in the eyes. “Faro and I will go. We need to hear his wisdom.”
It’s scary to outface an adult and a leader among the Mer. My voice wants to shake, but I’m not going to let it. I’m not going to let Ervys use me to increase his own power. You want me to help you, I think, you want me to risk my life in the Deep. You think that because I’m a human and a child you can make me part of your plan. But I knew Saldowr long before I met you. If I go to the Deep, it won’t be for you.
Ervys’s brows knit with anger. His tail lashes the water, lightly, like the tail of a lion when it spots an oryx on the plains. He’d like to pounce on me. He’d like to punish me for daring to take Saldowr’s side against his, but he can’t. However much he wants to brush Saldowr aside, Ervys can’t deny me if I say I need to talk to him. The Mer assembled here are afraid and desperate, and they believe that I’m their only chance. If the Kraken really has woken, they’ll do anything to make it sleep again. And besides, they aren’t all on Ervys’s side.
Faro’s eyes glitter. Ervys dared to speak insultingly of Faro’s teacher in front of all the Mer. He’s made an enemy of him now. I know Faro well enough to understand that he’ll do anything to stop Ervys getting what he wants.
“Will you waste our time by consulting a sick healer?” Ervys demands, making his voice ring until the chamber fills with water echoes. “Will you give the Kraken more time to gather its strength?”
His face blazes with conviction. He throws back his shoulders proudly. Some of the Mer are nodding, some even raise their fists in what looks like a salute. But I notice that others look doubtful. Some are even turning away. And there’s Elvira, right at the back of the chamber, her anxious, imploring gaze fixed on us. She’s afraid too. She doesn’t trust Ervys; I know it.
It’s not enough just to stand up to Ervys. I’ll make an enemy of half the Mer gathered here. They’ll believe what he tells them, that I don’t care about saving Ingo from the Kraken. I’ve got to make them understand. Ervys won’t listen, but maybe some of these others will.
I jack-knife into a dive, down to the floor of the chamber, to the Speaking Stone. I touch it. The cool solidity of the stone clears my mind. By the time I’ve swum up to Ervys and Faro again, I know what to say.
“It’s true that I went to the Deep,” I say slowly, talking not to Ervys now but to all the Mer. “And I came back alive. But it wasn’t my own power that did it – at least I don’t think so. The Deep let me – it was the Deep that chose not to destroy me. And then there was a whale…”
My heart lightens at the memory of the whale. She was so huge, like a rough-skinned mountain. So motherly. And she had such a terrible sense of humour. The whale didn’t have to help me, but she did. She brought me back safe from the Deep.
The Mer think it’s just about being able to enter the Deep, but it’s much more than that. You have to be able to find your way, once you’re there.
“So you see I have to talk to Saldowr. I can’t just decide that I’m going to the Deep; I’m sure I can’t. But Saldowr will know what to do; I know he will. And my brother…”
Conor was the only one who could read the writing that healed the Tide Knot. I can’t do all this alone, or even with Faro. I’ve got to have my brother with me.
“My brother will come to Saldowr with me,” I say as firmly as I can. “I must talk to my brother first, and then we’ll go to Saldowr.”
Murmuring fills the chamber. The ranks of Mer sway as if strong currents are pulling them this way and then that. Ervys watches them, his arms folded, his face stormy.
It seems a long time that the argument ebbs and flows without words, and then a Mer woman with long white hair leaves her place and swims forward slowly, dives to the stone and rises to speak. Her face is lined with age. Ervys bows his head a little, in unwilling respect.
“The child is human,” she says. Clearly age doesn’t diminish the Mer habit of stating the obvious. But she has a face I trust. “She is human, but we know by her presence here, by the fact that she can live in Ingo like us and not drown like her human brothers and sisters, that she is also Mer. Her blood is mixed, her fate is mixed, her knowledge is mixed.”
Every time she says the word “mixed” she sounds as if she’s striking stone against stone.
“We see things that are hidden from this child, but she sees what we cannot see. If she says she must go to Saldowr before she can help us, then we must accept her words or risk losing our only hope against the Kraken.”
As soon as she’s finished speaking, the old Mer woman swims slowly back to her place. There’s a ripple of approval. More and more Mer nod their agreement. Suddenly I understand how the Assembly works. They don’t vote, they are like a tide moving. And now the tide is running my way. They’re deciding to believe me.
Ervys knows it too. The tide is too strong for him to swim against it.
“Let her go to Saldowr then,” he says harshly, as if the decision is his. But we all know that it isn’t. The power of the assembled Mer has been stronger than Ervys’s will.
If Faro weren’t in the middle of the Assembly chamber, I know exactly what he’d do. He’d flip into a series of triumphant somersaults, whirling so fast that all I’d see was the gleam of his tail and the cloud of his hair. As it is, he gives me a quick, sparkling glance which says, “We won.”
The decision is made. The waters of the Chamber swirl as the Mer rise from their ranks of seats, and start to swim upwards, towards the roof of the Chamber where light filters down. So that’s the way out. Maybe it leads to the south entrance, the one Faro talked about. He said it was easier than the tunnel route we took. I hope so. The thought of going back through that cramped tunnel makes me shiver. I want to get home. I want to talk to Conor.