His eyes fly open. “They will take me away. They will imprison me and take away my freedom.”
“Malin, I swear they won’t. I’ve never heard of anything like that happening. Dad wouldn’t—”
“If humans catch the Mer, that is what will happen. Everyone knows it. We learn it before we can speak.”
“They won’t—“ I begin, but then I stop. How can I be so sure? Terrible things have happened to anyone – or anything – that is different. What if they put him in a tank and do experiments on him? People do experiments on animals, to find out about them. Scientists might say that Malin is an animal. A rare sea-mammal that needs to be studied in detail. They might say it’s research of national importance. Once they’d got hold of Malin, I wouldn’t be able to do anything. They’d brush me away like a fly.
“But… but you’re human! You speak English. They couldn’t do that to you,” I say, trying to convince myself as much as Malin.
“I am not human, Morveren. They will not give me the protection they give to their own kind. You kill among yourselves. Why should you not kill me?”
“I wouldn’t, Malin – we wouldn’t—” But I can’t meet his eyes. Chimpanzees look nearly human. They share most of their DNA with us. But we do research on them. We experiment on them and because they’re not quite human, that’s all right.
Maybe Malin knows that.
“I must have water,” he says, in quite a different voice, almost a groan.
“I’ll get you water! Wait here.”
“No.” He puts out his hand to stop me. “You drink water from the earth and I cannot swallow it. I must have salt. I must be in salt water if I am to live. I am strong but my skin is already cracking. Soon I will die.”
He says it calmly, as if he’s talking about someone else. For a second I think he can’t mean it, but then I look at his skin. It’s parched and seamed all over with tiny cracks. It reminds me of photos I’ve seen when there’s a drought in Australia.
But I don’t know what to do. Malin can’t move on his own. I can’t move him on my own: he’s much too heavy for me. Even if I did manage to drag him down to the sea, the waves would throw him back on land. He hasn’t the strength to swim against a rough sea.
A rough sea… It’s as if the words light a fuse in me. When the sea’s too wild for swimming, you can always swim safely in King Ragworm Pool. That’s what Jenna and I used to do. The solution comes to me, clear and perfect. Malin will be safe in King Ragworm Pool. He can rest there and recover until he’s strong enough to go back in the sea. Salt water is good for wounds. King Ragworm Pool is salt water, because it’s fed by a stone channel from the tidal pools closer to shore. Jenna will help me. We’ll bring the groundsheet and we’ll pour salt water over it so Malin’s skin doesn’t get damaged. Surely we can manage to carry him as far as the pool. We’ll have to climb the rocks but we can take it slowly.
Malin’s looking away from me again, to where the sea sounds beyond the dunes. His face is a blank. He can’t really think he’s going to die. He’d be frightened – anyone would be terrified…
“Malin, I think I know what we can do.” He turns his head languidly, as if he’s only listening out of politeness. “There’s a pool near here where you can go. It’s salt water and it’s hidden, but I’ll need help to get you there. I can’t do it on my own.”
Malin sweeps my idea aside with a flick of his hand. It’s so arrogant that I’d be really annoyed with him if he weren’t half-buried and badly hurt. “I prefer to die than have other humans here,” he says.
“I’ll get my sister. She’ll help you and she won’t say anything. I swear she won’t.”
“You swear? On what?”
I think hard and quickly. I want to swear on the most precious thing I can think of.
If that fiddle is ever lost or broken, it will be the end for our island.
“I swear on Conan’s fiddle,” I tell Malin.
“What is that?”
“It’s really old. It came to my ancestors when our city was drowned. It’s like our – I don’t know – our luck. Something we have which keeps us safe.”
Malin’s gaze sharpens. “What city was that?”
“It was on land, but there was a tidal wave or something and it disappeared. But it’s only a legend,” I add quickly, because his stare is making me uneasy.
“I would like to see that instrument,” says Malin softly, half to himself, and then he turns his head away and shuts his eyes. He seems so drowsy now, as if he’s sinking away from me, fathoms and fathoms down into the depths of an ocean where I can’t follow him.
“Mum, what’s it like to die?” I asked Mum that after our granddad died, and she said, “It’s like falling asleep, Morveren. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”
I’ve got to get Jenna quickly. Malin mustn’t fall into that sleep.
“Go then,” says Malin, in a voice so quiet that it might be the sigh of the wind.
“Didn’t you hear the church bell? I thought you’d come straight back.”
“Yes – but Jenna—”
“He still had his life-jacket on. The helicopter spotted him. They might have found him in time, if it’d been daylight.”
Jenna turns to me, her face pale and upset. I know she’s thinking the same as I am. How long did the sailor survive, hoping for rescue?
“He was called Adam,” says Jenna. “One of the other men told Mum. It’s better knowing his name, don’t you think?”
“Yes. But Jenna—”
“Don’t you want to talk about it?” says Jenna, with a rare flash of anger.
I look at her over Digory’s head. He’s humming to himself, telling himself a story about his cars, but that doesn’t guarantee that he’s not listening.
“I need your help with my maths,” I say.
Instantly, Jenna’s face sharpens. It’s a signal we use whenever we need to talk to each other urgently but don’t want anyone else to know.
“I’m just going up to our bedroom with Morveren, to look at our homework,” she tells Digory, who nods without stopping his game.
Upstairs, Jenna shuts the door before asking, “What’s wrong?”
“Jen, you’re not going to believe this, but please, please listen before you say anything. Promise?”
She nods, and folds her arms. I know she thinks I’ve done something awful and she’ll have to cover up for me.
Jenna is good at listening. Even now, when I’m telling her something that no one in their right mind could possibly believe, she listens attentively, frowning a little. I tell her about the noise I heard, and about finding Malin, and how he’s hurt and needs help. When I tell her about how I uncovered the sand and saw his tail, I see the pupils of her eyes widen, but she still says nothing.
“He