Storm Singing and other Tangled Tasks (11 page)

Helen realised she didn’t want to apologise to him. She had beaten him fair and square, and didn’t see why she should be ashamed of that.

“Tangaroa won,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “And all the Scouts are safe.”

“All the Scouts are safe. What a surprise. To you, but not to anyone else.” His voice was hard and chilly.

“I’m not going to say sorry,” Helen said firmly. “Not for getting you wet.”

He didn’t answer.

“I did say sorry to Rona, for thinking she wanted to drown people. So I should probably say sorry for thinking you would help her, for thinking you would stop me saving lives. So I am sorry. But not for beating you in a fight.”

“You’re not sorry?” Yann said, slowly.

Helen shook her head. “Not sorry at all.”

She sneaked a sideways glance at him, but he was still staring out to sea.

“Then I’m not going to apologise either. Not for trying to stop you making a fool of yourself, nor for trying to stop you disrupting Rona’s task.”

There was silence.

“I can’t believe you fought back,” he said quietly. “That was so reckless.”

She didn’t answer. He was right. It had been really daft.

“It was an excellent fight though.” Yann’s voice was a little warmer. “You had some good moves. For someone so small and weak and untrained.”

“I was angry. And scared.”

“Scared? Of me?”

“I’m not sure. Scared of everything. Of the Scouts drowning. Of this whole magical world. Of your hooves. Particularly your hooves.”

“I kicked you, didn’t I? Are you hurt?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a big bruise on my leg.”

She looked at him again. He was staring at her now, frowning.

She rubbed her leg and winced. “But I think I got off lightly, for someone who fought a centaur. I should have trusted you. I am sorry for that. I won’t doubt my friends again, I promise. Do you forgive me?”

“Forgive you for what? For doubting Rona? For making her lose the task? For fighting me? For beating me? For
embarrassing me
?” he roared at the top of his voice, and Helen had to make an effort not to step away from him.

“Em. Yes. For all of that. Do you forgive me?”

“Of course. You were doing what you believed was right, even though it was wrong. And you were much better at fighting than I expected, which is yet another reason for me to be proud you’re my friend. Of course I forgive you. Do you forgive me for kicking you?”

“Yes. And for being an arrogant idiot, who would rather fight than finish a sentence. If you had
told
me …”

“If you had
listened
…”

They stared at each other, and Yann laughed. He held out his hand. Helen smiled, and shook it. “Good,” he said, “we don’t even need a tug-of-war to make peace.”

“Just as well,” said Helen, “because you would definitely beat me at that!”

He laughed again. “Let’s head back to Taltomie. Do you want a lift?”

“I’ll have to row. I can’t leave the boat here. And I need to apologise to Catesby and Lavender too when we get back, because I completely ignored them when they flew after me.”

“Catesby and Lavender didn’t go back to the campsite, not while I was on the way here,” Yann said. “Aren’t they with Rona?”

“No. The last time I saw them was at the cliffs, just before the storm started … Yann! I haven’t seen them since Rona sang up a storm!”

Yann was pale. “Neither have I!”

“Do you think they’ve been blown away?”

Yann looked out to sea again. “I hope not. I’ll search along the shore, you search along the water’s edge, and we’ll both head for the campsite as fast as we can. If they aren’t there, we’ll have to ask the selkies to search for them at sea …”

He trotted off, looking anxiously at tussocks of grass, and Helen rowed away, checking the shallow water and the shoreline.

Then she found a single copper feather. The adult feather Catesby had been so proud of it. Floating on the surface of the sea. She picked it up, and rowed back to the campsite.

“It’s my fault! I sang up the weather,” sobbed Rona.

“No, it’s my fault! I wouldn’t listen to them, so they kept following me,” Helen sniffed.

Helen and Rona were sitting beside each other, looking at the feather on Helen’s lap, tears running down their cheeks.

“It’s not
anyone’s
fault!” yelled Yann. “Or even if it is, sitting here
crying
about it won’t help. We have to get out there and find them.” Yann hustled the girls out of the tent into the evening sunshine.

Aunt Sheila, who hadn’t looked Helen in the eye since they got back, had used her influence as a selkie elder to organise search parties of mermaids and blue loons out at sea, and selkies in human form along the shoreline.

Yann watched the sea tribes searching for his missing friends. “They know the shore better than Helen and I do. We should leave them to it.”

“So what can we do?” asked Helen, trying not to use her hankie when Yann was looking.

“We can think about what they would have done if the storm did catch them.”

“Catesby was protecting Lavender from the seabirds and the wind,” said Helen. “He would have kept her safe, unless the winds separated them.”

“The winds which I sang up!” Rona started wailing again until she saw Yann’s face. “Sorry. I’ll concentrate.”

“So would Lavender cling to Catesby’s feathers, or would he use his beak to grab her clothes?” Yann asked. “How would that affect their aerodynamics and flight pattern?”

“I have no idea,” said Helen. “They were sticking close to the cliffs, so if the winds were blowing away from Rona, they might have been carried inland rather than out to sea.”

Rona sighed. “The air was swirling all over the place, especially when I was trying to sink those orange canoes. It’s just as likely that they were blown out to sea … oh dear … Lavender
hates
getting wet!”

“Lavender just whinges about her clothes,” said Yann. “She’s really very tough. She’ll be fine.”

Yann was interrupted by a clanging from Sheila’s house.

“Does that mean the searchers have found them?” asked Helen.

“No. It’s a warning bell. The Scouts must be coming back,” gasped Rona. “The searchers have to get out of sight. We’ll never find them now!”

Yann ducked back into his tall tent, as the selkies in the distance slipped into their sealskins, and the mermaids and blue loons swam further out to sea. Helen and Rona watched three minibuses drive up.

“Will they recognise us?” Helen whispered.

“Of course. They saw us yesterday when we said we’d a burst pipe.”

“No, I mean will they recognise us as the people who rescued them?”

“I doubt it,” said Rona. “They were confused and their eyes were full of water.”

They stood to one side, as the sodden Scouts clambered out of the minibuses. Helen saw several of them give Rona funny looks, and Emily started to walk towards them. Helen smiled calmly, as if nothing strange had been happening, so the Scout shook her head and went into her tent instead.

After a few minutes of milling around, the campsite was quiet again. All the Scouts were in their tents getting dry clothes, or in the toilet block having hot showers.

Then Helen heard a tiny sneeze, from the direction of the parked minibuses. She sprinted over. Where had that sneeze come from? She looked in the nearest door. The seats were all empty.

There was another sneeze from above her. She banged her head on the doorframe as she leapt back and looked up.

There, clinging to the roofrack, soaking wet and miserable, were Lavender and Catesby.

Lavender was so wet her dress was indigo. Catesby was a bony muddy brown.

Helen reached up and her friends fell into her arms.

She ran towards Yann’s tent and stumbled in, followed by Rona.

“They’re here, they’re alive! And they’re freezing! Hand me a towel, or that horse blanket if it’s all you’ve got.”

For a few moments no one spoke, as they carefully dried Lavender and Catesby. Then they started asking questions:

“Why were you on the minibus roof?”

“We were too tired to fly, so we hitched a lift from the beach, but that’s not the important thing …”

“Were you blown out to sea?”

“Yes, but that’s not what we have to tell you …”

“How did you get back to shore?”

“We used every bit of energy we had, so don’t make us shout. Shut up and listen!”

Helen, Rona and Yann stopped asking questions, and Lavender, who hadn’t complained once about her ruined dress, started to talk.

“We know why the sea-through has been attacking selkies. It wants to manipulate the Sea Herald contest to make its own favourite win! When we were blown over the water, we saw a massive colony of sea-throughs just under the surface, all joined together. That’s a bloom, isn’t it, Rona?”

“Yes,” the selkie said faintly, her head in her hands.

“But it wasn’t lots of individual sea-throughs in a shoal or a flock. They were linked together like one animal: all their tentacles on the outside, all their stomachs making one big pink intestine in the middle.”

Catesby made a retching noise, and Lavender nodded. “It was pretty yucky, even though pink and purple usually go well together. When we were hovering above the bloom, trying to get our bearings, the big sea-through which attacked you swam back. We heard what it said, just before it sank itself into the bloom.

“It said, ‘I hindered one to help another. Soon we will control the Sea Herald, then we will glory in a true equinox battle, and the sea will take back what belongs to the sea.’ It chanted that last part, and the others in the
bloom joined in. Then it squidged into the bloom, and the whole thing sank below the surface.

“So there’s not just one sea-through, there’s a huge slimy lump of them, and they’re trying to control the contest, the herald and the ritual battle. Which is all very important, and helps explain what Helen and I heard on the beach last night, and we do need to talk about it, but could I put a dry dress on first?”

Lavender made herself a little changing room of darkness in the corner, as Helen quickly updated the two newcomers on how the sea-through had interfered with the second task, and how Tangaroa had won this round.

Rona wasn’t really listening. She just shook her head. “A bloom. There hasn’t been a bloom here for centuries. Blooms are obsessed with returning sea-grown or
sea-drowned
objects to the sea. If this bloom can turn the ritual fight into a true battle, that would certainly get some of the sea’s possessions back.”

“How?” asked Helen.

“A real battle between Merras and Thalas would produce waves and surges so high that water would flood at least a mile inland, dragging everything back out to sea, whether it used to belong to the sea or not. The battle storm would also drown animals and people, flood caves, and, if our legends are true, crack cliffs, smash boulders into mountains, eat away at beaches and change the shape of the coast. That’s why the Sea Heralds were created, to stop the real battles, to prevent destruction of the coast.”

They all sat quietly, listening to the gentle murmur of the sea outside. Then Helen asked, “Should we tell your family?”

“Of course we should. The tribes can search for the bloom at sea, and the judges can watch out for the
sea-through
at the task tomorrow.”

“Let’s not tell them yet,” said Lavender, emerging from her little shadow in a tidy blue dress. “We might need the judges off guard rather than on guard tomorrow. Let’s think about this. Let’s fit it together with what we overheard last night, which we haven’t had a minute to discuss with Rona.”

So Helen and Lavender explained how they’d followed the sea-through and what they’d heard on the beach.

“Who do you think the selkie was, Rona?” Lavender asked eagerly. “What do you think their failed plan was, and what do you think they’re planning to do next?”

Rona looked overwhelmed by Lavender’s questions. “Is one of my tribe a traitor? Working with the sea-through to destroy the coast? I can’t believe that …”

“Whoever the selkie was,” said Helen, “he wanted a crown. Rona, does that sound familiar?”

“That must be the lost crown of the selkies!” whispered Rona. “We’ve not had a king for generations. Each colony governs itself now, and the crown has been hidden, so no one is tempted to rule all the selkies at once. But there’s one family on Eilan nan MacCodrum which traces its line back to the ancient kings, one selkie family who love to boast about their royal blood. I wonder … Surely not …” She drifted off into silence.

Helen said suddenly, “Roxburgh sang about his royal ancestors at the Storm Singing competition yesterday. Is that who you mean, Rona?”

She nodded sadly. “On his father’s side, Roxy’s family claim direct descent from the selkie kings.”

Catesby squawked a question.

Lavender answered, “No, it wasn’t Roxburgh meeting the sea-through last night. It was a fully grown selkie.”

Helen remembered the moment when she thought she’d recognised the voice. The selkie on the beach blustering:
But, but, but
…

“Sinclair!” she blurted out. “It was Sinclair! He sounded just like that on the clifftop, when Strathy insisted Rona was still the winner.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Rona. “The sea-through attacked Roxburgh and tried to stop him winning, so why would Sinclair work
with
the
sea-through
?”

Yann shook his head. “Perhaps the sea-through wasn’t attacking Roxburgh to stop him winning. You even said, Helen, that Roxburgh impressed the audience by singing brilliantly despite the distraction, so if Rona hadn’t actually sung up a storm, Roxburgh would have won. Perhaps the sea-through wasn’t sabotaging him. Perhaps the sea-through was
helping him
. Perhaps it was making him look like a true Storm Singer, by singing through an attack, just like Strathy said.”

Lavender whirled round with excitement. “Yes! Maybe that’s the plan which failed yesterday! Maybe the sea-through wanted Roxburgh to become Storm Singer, so he would be the selkie participant in the Sea Herald contest, then win that too. That’s why the sea-through doesn’t think Sinclair can help any more, because Roxburgh can’t become Sea Herald.”

Yann nodded. “We should talk to Roxburgh. Find out
if he did expect that attack, if that’s why he was able to sing through it. And ask what the sea-through wanted him to do if he won.”

“What if he won’t answer?” Helen asked.

Yann lifted his hoof, and stamped it down. “I’m looking for a fight I can win today. I’ll make sure he answers.”