“Your what?”
“My name,” he says.
“Oh. Um, yes, that’d be good.”
“My name is Faro,” he says with grandeur, as if I must have heard it. But I still can’t get my mind working.
“How come you’re speaking English?” I blurt out. “I mean, you’re not—”
“Not English?”
“Not – um – human.”
“Human? I should think not,” says Faro, as if there aren’t many worse things to be. “And how do you know we’re speaking English anyway? We might be speaking Mer.”
“I can’t speak anything except English,” I say. This is one thing I am certain about, at least.
“You think you can’t,” says Faro. “But if your mother was here, she wouldn’t be able to understand a word we’re saying.”
“She wouldn’t be listening. She’d be too busy yelling at me for coming down here on my own.”
“That’s true,” says Faro, as if he knows Mum well.
“But I thought – I mean, don’t mermaids have tails like fish? With scales? I’m sure that’s what I’ve seen in pictures.”
Faro raises his eyebrows. “Mermaids. That is such a human way of talking. I suppose you’re friends with lots of maids at school, are you?”
“Well no, we don’t call them maids, not any more. That was in the olden days. The Tudors or the Victorians or something.”
“So what makes you think the Mer are living in the olden days?” asks Faro, laying a faint sarcastic emphasis on the last two words.
Of course you’re living in the olden days, I want to say. You sit on rocks and you have a golden comb in one hand and a mirror in the other and you sing all day and comb your hair and wait for sailors to come past so you can tempt them into the sea. That’s not exactly twenty-first century behaviour, is it?
“So, that’s two things you’ve got wrong,” says Faro, almost purring with satisfaction. “One, I’m male, not female, so how could I be a mermaid anyway? Anatomically impossible. Two, all that scaly-tail and hair-combing mermaid and merboy and merman stuff comes from humans. It’s got nothing to do with the way we live. It’s all up in the Air.”
“So what do you call yourselves?” I ask curiously.
Faro’s eyes darken. His smile disappears. “I can’t tell you that,” he says. “We don’t talk about it to Air people. But you can call us ‘the Mer’ if you want. That’s the word we use when we’re talking in the Air. Mer, Meor, Mor, Mare… any of those will do.” He shrugs his shoulders as if the whole subject bores him.
The sun is coming out more and more strongly now, burning up the mist. Everything is clear again. And Faro is as clear and solid as the shape of the rock. I glance sideways at his tail. I don’t want to stare too much. Now that the mist is burning off, his tail is drying too. It doesn’t shine as much. I wonder if he should dip it in the water. There are patches of sand on his skin.
Faro catches me looking and raises his eyebrows again. I feel myself blush.
“Do you think that we are speaking Mer? Really?” I ask quickly. I listen to the words as they come out of my mouth. They sound the same as always. They don’t seem to make different shapes.
“Not full Mer,” says Faro. “But you’ve got a bit of Mer in you. You must have, or you wouldn’t be here. It means we can speak to each other. But if we were speaking full Mer, you’d be able to understand what he’s saying.” And Faro nods at the gull that’s riding the air above us, screaming out gull abuse.
“What’s he saying?”
“Think of all the swear words you know, and then double them.”
I stare up at the gull. It tilts its wings to balance itself more comfortably on the air, and stares back with its cold yellow eye. It opens its beak wide and lets out another volley.
“They don’t like people looking at them,” says Faro.
“Can you talk to it?”
“Talking’s a waste of time, the mood he’s in. He doesn’t like me talking to you.”
“Why not?”
“Gulls are like that. They think it’s safer to keep separate. Humans are bad news to most of them.”
“Oh.”
Faro watches a tiny spider crab haul itself up a strand of bladder wrack.
“Can you hear what he’s saying?” he asks.
“No.”
“You might be able to – if you weren’t in the Air.”
“But I can’t live out of the air.”
“You only think you can’t,” says Faro. “Listen to that gull. Listen. Really listen.”
I strain my ears but all I can catch is the usual cry as the herring gull swoops low, skimming the water, then soars again.
“You were looking for Conor,” says Faro, after a pause.
“Yes. Yes, I was,” I say slowly, realising that I haven’t thought of him since I saw Faro. I can’t believe that I forgot I was searching for Conor.
“I told you, he’s with my sister. He’s quite safe.”
“But where are they?”
Faro shifts a little. Out of the water, the tail is strong and smooth, but also a little clumsy. He puts his weight on his arms and moves himself forward again, so that he can look over the edge of the rock.
“They’ll be in the water,” he says. “Somewhere down there.”
I look where he points and I see that the flat sand has gone. The tide is bubbling around our rock. Already the water is deep. How has it come in so quickly, without me noticing?
“How has it come in so quickly?” I repeat aloud.
“It’s only the tide,” says Faro easily. “It always comes in like this.”
“But – it was low tide a few minutes ago.”
“Was it?”
“I’ll have to swim back to the rocks. I’ve got to go back now, before it gets too deep.”
I’ll have to be careful. The incoming tide can be dangerous. It can sweep you against the rocks and bruise you or worse. Keep in the middle of the cove and swim straight for the shore.
“Where are you going?” asks Faro, as I stand and peer over the edge of the rock to see if it’s safe to jump. Jumping’s quicker than climbing down – and the water is rising fast—
“I’ve got to get back. I’ll get caught by the tide.”
“But your brother’s still here,” says Faro casually.
My body freezes. Slowly, I turn back to him. How could I have forgotten Conor again? How could I ever think of getting myself home safe, and leaving him behind?
“Where? Where is he?”
“I’ll take you to him,” says Faro. “Take my hand, Sapphire, and I’ll take you to him.”
Faro is poised on the edge of the rock now. His strong seal tail hangs above the water and his arms are braced as if he’s ready to push off from the rock and plunge in. He faces the mouth of the cove, where the fresh water of the new tide is pouring in. I know in every bone of my body that Faro’s not going to take me in, to the