Storm Singing and other Tangled Tasks (3 page)

By the time Helen and Yann reached the base of the cliff, seven selkie elders were striding along the beach towards them.

“Cheats! Vandals! Saboteurs!” One of the tall men was jabbing a long finger at them, almost spitting in anger. Helen recognised the hooked nose and blotchy skin of Roxburgh’s father, and saw Roxburgh cowering in embarrassment behind him.

“Cheats!” he yelled again, as the group of selkies closed around the calm centaur and the slightly nervous girl.

The shortest selkie there, Rona’s mum, glared at Helen and Yann, then turned to Roxburgh’s dad. “It was not cheating, Sinclair, because it made no difference to the result. Rona won by acclaim. The noise from above made no difference.”

“No difference! Of course it made a difference! But my Roxburgh could have sung up a storm too if he hadn’t been distracted. He could have sung up a much greater storm with his power and volume then your mimsy little Rona managed.”

“You cannot prove that!”

“
You
cannot disprove it! He was probably just about to sing up a storm when that clumsy clodhopping farm
animal kicked those rocks down!”

Helen felt Yann’s leg muscles tense beside her. She hoped he had more sense than to start an argument when they were already in trouble.

“Nonsense, Sinclair.” Rona’s mum kept her voice calm. “Roxburgh was already on verse three of six permitted verses when the shouting started. If he had been going to sing up a storm, waves and wind would have started to build by the second chorus.”

Sinclair stepped right up to her, his bare feet gripping the slippery rocks, and snarled at her.

The huge scar-faced selkie barged between them. “Now Sinclair. You know that a true Storm Singer can cope with distractions, even attacks, during a song …”

“Roxburgh did cope! He sang wonderfully, no matter how noisy these land creatures were!”

“He sang through the disturbance, but he didn’t sing up a storm.”

“Strathy,” Sinclair appealed to the host, “you know my son would have more chance of winning the Sea Herald contest than that little lassie Rona.” He shoved his tall gangly son forward.

Strathy shook his head. “We do not choose our Storm Singer for size, speed or strength, but by the power of their song. That policy has given us many successful Sea Herald contestants.”

Sinclair opened his mouth to make another objection to Rona’s victory, but the host growled, “Stop! Rona won. Roxburgh did not. We are not changing the rules. We are not changing the result. Instead we are asking what these two were doing on the cliff, and deciding what should be done with them.”

The semicircle of seal folk turned and looked at Helen and Yann.

Strathy said, “Horse boy. Human girl. Explain your highly insulting behaviour.”

Helen and Yann hadn’t discussed what they would say, nor who would say it. Yann glanced down at Helen, and she pointed with a tiny gesture back at him. It wasn’t wimping out, she told herself, because her ignorance about selkie etiquette could make things worse. Anyway, words were Yann’s music.

“Esteemed elders of the seal people,” the centaur said, speaking far more formally than he did nowadays with Helen and his other friends, “please do us the honour of accompanying us to the scene of the disturbance. I will explain our undignified behaviour on the way to the clifftop, where I can show you evidence of what we fought there.”

Sinclair objected to following a centaur’s orders, but Rona’s mum was eager, and Strathy and the other elders were curious, so Yann led the selkies in their shimmering grey cloaks up the narrow path. He described what he’d seen on the beach and why they’d gone up the cliff. Helen trailed behind, hoping to avoid telling any of the story herself.

As she reached the top of the path, she heard a voice whisper her name. She whirled round. Rona was just behind her, smiling hugely. “Thank you, Helen! I would never have won without you.”

“Yes, you would. You’re the best songwriter and best singer I’ve ever heard.”

“I wasn’t a Storm Singer until you came. I only sang up a storm because I used the wind and waves as the rhythm of the song. That was your idea.”

“I was only trying to improve the song, not magically manipulate the weather. Why didn’t you tell me you were hoping to sing up a storm?”

“The clue’s in the name of the contest. Storm Singing! I thought you knew.”

“Rona, stop assuming I know this fabled beast stuff.”

“Even if you didn’t know what I was trying to do, you still helped me win, and I will always thank you for that.” Rona hugged Helen, her strong swimmer’s arms squishing Helen’s hands to her side.

“Ow!”

“Sorry. Let me see.” Rona looked at the pink welts on Helen’s hand. “You need to keep this cool.”

“I’ve already done that. You should have seen them before.” Helen frowned at the faded marks. The storm might have washed away the evidence on the cliff, and her first aid was soothing away the evidence on their skins.

“So tell me what did this to you,” Rona said, “and why Yann nearly fell off the cliff.”

As they walked to the spy’s boulder, Helen described the monster and the fight, echoing the more flowery retelling she could hear Yann giving ahead.

When she’d finished, Rona said, “A sea-through!”

“Yes,” agreed Helen. “It was nearly transparent, almost see-through.”

“No, that’s its name. It’s called a sea-through. The proper name is cnidaree, but most selkies call them seathroughs.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Their stings are nasty, and they like to eat selkie pups, but they don’t risk it often because it’s difficult
to hide the evidence with those transparent tummies. They’re usually in a bad mood when they’re in their landform because they don’t like being out of the sea. They’re more relaxed in their underwater jellyfish form. In the sea, they’re only really dangerous when they band together into blooms, then they get each other all worked up about the sea’s rights and belongings.

“Our storytellers say that long ago, sea-through blooms wrapped thousands of tentacles around ships carrying fish, whale oil or sealskins, and pulled them under, and that they sent gangs of sea-throughs ashore to dig up bodies of drowned sailors from graveyards. But no one has seen a bloom for a long time. I’m sure you just met a lone sea-through.”

“Why did it try to disrupt Roxburgh’s song?”

“Perhaps Sinclair has annoyed the sea-through, and it wanted to stop his son winning? He certainly annoys enough selkies!”

Helen and Rona caught up with the elders just in time to hear Sinclair crowing triumphantly, “There is nothing here. It is all a conspiracy to have the centaur’s favourite win!”

Helen looked at the clifftop. It had been scoured clean by the wind and water called up by Rona’s song.

Strathy was striding up and down, cloak swirling. “So, centaur colt and human child! Where is the evidence?”

Yann answered confidently, “Do you not recall the evidence of your own ears and eyes? Did you not hear the creature shriek about the power of the sea? Did you not see it trying to throw spines and stings down on you?”

The host shook his head. “We heard no words, just your disruptive yells. We saw no monster, just a clumsy
girl fooling about on a cliff and an inconsiderate centaur kicking stones at us.

“You have shown us no evidence of this spy and this fight, so I must conclude that you are lying, that you had another motive for the disturbance.” He glanced at Rona. “It does not reflect well on our Sea Herald contestant.”

Rona moved closer to her mum, who was biting her lip with small sharp teeth. Roxburgh’s dad was bouncing up and down with joy, but Roxburgh was edging away from him.

Strathy looked back at Yann and Helen. “I have no choice but to banish both of you from our precious coastline. You will go inland
now
and you will never come within a mile of the sea again, unless you want the anger of every sea creature raised against you.”

“No!” said Rona. “No, Strathy! It
was
a sea-through. Look at their scars!” But Helen’s cooling packs had been too effective. The welts on her hands were now pale pink.

Strathy shrugged. “Those marks prove nothing. These land beings could have scraped themselves on rocks.”

Yann said smoothly, “Selkie elders are known for their wisdom and justice, so please allow us the chance to put our story fully …”

Strathy shook his head. “We do not have time for stories. You have disturbed us enough. Consider yourselves lucky we are merely banishing you. Rona Grey, consider yourself lucky that your natural talent makes it impossible for us to disqualify you.”

“But …” blustered Sinclair, “… but …”

Rona spoke up again. “We should be thanking my friends, not banishing them. Look …”

Reaching into the rubble at the base of the rock, Rona dragged out a smaller version of the bag Helen had ripped.

“A fishskin pouch?” said Strathy.

Rona grinned at Helen, and tipped the small bag upside down. Everyone stepped forward to see what fell out …

Broken shells smashed by birds; a battered but unopened tin of tuna; a cracked mother-of-pearl pendant; a dusty egg-timer filled with sand.

Strathy stirred the pile with his toe. “This is a habit of the cnidaree. Almost their religion. They collect the sea’s earth-trapped treasures and return them. I wonder …”

Suddenly the sceptical elders were looking around the clifftop with new enthusiasm. Within moments Rona’s mum found the orange jellyfish which Yann had punched, stuck in a crack in the rock; Strathy found sea urchin spines entangled in heather twenty paces inland; and the oldest elder found a fragment of fishskin clinging to the cliff edge.

The elders went into a quick huddle, excluding Rona’s mum and Roxburgh’s dad, who was muttering angrily at his son, then Strathy stepped out of the huddle and straight to the cliff edge. Helen and Yann stood close together. Surely they weren’t going to be banished from the coast forever?

Strathy raised his immense bull seal’s voice. “The selkie elders extend grateful thanks to our dry-shod friends for foiling an intruder’s attack on our competition. We shall fête them as honoured guests at our Storm Singer feast tonight, and invite them to be spectators at the start of the Sea Herald contest tomorrow.”

The huge cheer from below drowned out Sinclair’s peevish complaints and Rona’s delighted squeals as she hugged Yann and Helen.

But after the elders headed back to the sea, and Rona’s mum left her daughter with strict instructions to be home an hour before the feast, Rona sank onto the ground, put her head in her hands, and started to sniff.

“Oh no,” said Yann. “You’re not getting all emotional here. You can get weepy on the way back to Taltomie Bay, if you have to.”

Yann bent his front legs to let Helen and Rona clamber on his back. He made his usual complaints about being treated like a taxi, but the girls knew he would complain even louder about how long it took them to walk to the campsite on two legs each.

Yann headed inland, cutting off a bulging curve of coast and galloping straight over the moors to Taltomie Bay.

“What’s wrong, Rona?” Helen spoke loudly enough for Yann to hear. “You should be delighted about winning the Storm Singer competition. Are you worried about this Sea Herald contest?”

Rona yelled back, “Yes! Very worried!”

“You did brilliantly this afternoon. I’m sure you can win another contest.”

“It’s not winning or losing I’m worried about,” Rona said. “It’s living or dying.”

“What?” Helen yelled over the hoofbeats and the wind. Surely she’d misheard Rona’s answer.

“It’s not losing or winning the contest I’m worried about,” Rona repeated. “It’s surviving it!”

“What do you mean?”

“The tasks aren’t about writing and performing. They’re about showing you can survive all the dangers of the sea and the coast.”

Yann slowed down, and called, “I can help you prepare for the tasks.”

“How can you help, Yann? The tasks happen out at sea.”

Yann laughed confidently. “I mean help with psyching yourself up, using your fear to give yourself strength, using your opponents’ fear to defeat them. I’ve won lots of races and fights, so I’m sure I can help you win.”

“Stop being so macho, Yann. I don’t care about
winning
this! All I want is to be alive at the autumn equinox, applauding the winning Sea Herald, then getting peace to write more songs. I’m delighted to be a Storm Singer, but I’ve never wanted to be Sea Herald. It’s my bad luck that the year I compete for Storm Singer, they need a new Sea Herald too. So I don’t want your coaching on the competitive spirit, thanks, Yann.
Let’s hope I don’t need Helen’s first aid skills either!”

“But there’s no point taking part if you aren’t trying to win,” yelled Yann. “You could at least
try
!”

“Who are the other contestants?” Helen asked, hoping to stop this becoming an argument.

Rona answered, “Competition winners from two other clans: the mermaids and the blue men.”

“Do they have Storm Singer competitions too?” Helen wondered if all the interesting weather round the Scottish coast was sung by fabled beasts.

“No, storm singing is a selkie skill. The mermaids hold a different singing competition, to lure sailors towards them. It doesn’t require much talent,” Rona sniffed, “just a carrying voice and a pretty face. The blue men pick the blue loon who gathers the most verses.”

“
Writes
the most verses?” Helen asked.

“No. Gathers verses. Finds, steals or demands them.”

“Why do they …?”

Yann interrupted, “We’re nearly there. You’d better scout ahead to check the campsite is safe.”

Rona laughed as the two girls dismounted. “Of course it’s safe. It’s run by my aunt. It’s been safe all week. You take security too seriously.”

“It’s because my people take security seriously, seal girl, that no one tells stories about Scotland’s herds of centaurs, but every folklore collection has a dozen selkie stories. We stay hidden because we’re careful.”

Helen and Rona giggled as they walked round the hill towards the campsite, with Yann a careful ten paces behind them.

At home in the Borders, Helen could only meet her friends at night, when they were hidden from human
eyes. But the northwest corner of Scotland is the least populated part of Europe, and with a bit of care round the narrow roads and scattered villages, the fabled beasts felt safe there. So she’d really been enjoying this holiday with her friends, roaming the coast of Sutherland in the daytime and actually getting some sleep at night.

Helen’s mum wouldn’t have let her come north for a long weekend to help Rona prepare for the singing competition if she had known who her daughter’s friends really were. Traditional selkies don’t have email or phones, but luckily Rona had an aunt who ran a campsite between Bettyhill and Durness. A quick phone conversation with Sheila Mackay to arrange a pickup at Thurso train station had been enough to reassure Helen’s mum that this was just a normal long weekend with a normal family.

Just before the girls reached the dip between two of the hills behind the campsite, an airborne blur of orange and purple swerved round the slope.

Rona squealed and ducked. Helen stood still, waiting for the blur to slow down into a peach-coloured bird, and a tiny fairy in a purple dress.

Helen shook her head, still momentarily shocked to see Catesby, this wise sarcastic phoenix, trapped in fluffy fledgling feathers.

Yann trotted up behind them, and said, “Hello, fluffster,” then batted away an annoyed attack by his feathered best friend. Meanwhile, Lavender was hovering at Rona’s nose. “So did you …? Were those clouds …? Have you …?”

Catesby squeaked at her in his baby bird voice, and the blonde fairy quietened down long enough for
Yann and Helen to chorus, “She won!”

Everyone told their stories at once: the spy, the fight, the storm, the Sea Herald contest.

Then, as Helen was about to step round the hill, Catesby squawked and Lavender called out, “Stop! We came to warn you.”

“Warn us about what?” Yann demanded. “Not humans? At the campsite?”

Catesby nodded.

Rona said, “Auntie Sheila said we’d have the place to ourselves, because there were no bookings for the whole week!”

Catesby gestured with his left wing for Rona to take a look. Yann hung back, as Helen and Rona crept round the hill towards Taltomie Bay campsite.

They peered over the stone wall, past the two-man tent where Helen and Lavender were sleeping, and the family-sized tent, tall enough for Yann to stand up in and Catesby to fly round. They saw three minibuses with canoes on top and bikes on racks; ten tents of varying sizes and shapes; a whole field of teenagers, and a handful of adults, all in Explorer Scout uniform.

Rona sighed. “All that dry air has driven Auntie Sheila dotty. How can we share a campsite with so many humans?”

They ducked down below the wall, slid back round the hill, and stood up to face an angry Yann.

“Is it as bad as they say?”

“Yes,” said Helen. “There are dozens of them and they’ve got boats and bikes, so they’re planning to explore the coast. It might not be safe for you at the campsite, and it’s probably not safe for your contest either, Rona.”

“Nonsense,” said a warm voice behind her.

Helen turned to see a short round woman, with jeans, wellies and long grey hair, walking round the hill. “Nonsense, dear. It’ll be fine.”

“Why did you let them stay, Auntie Sheila?” asked Rona. “Couldn’t you say the campsite was full?”

“Hardly, dear, as there were only two tents pitched when they arrived, and with the contest coming up I knew some humans would be useful … oh …” she glanced at Helen, “… em … isn’t it lucky I suggested pitching your tents at the back corner of the field, with the doors facing inland to avoid the wind, because now you can get in and out over the wall without trotting through the camp. You’ll be quite safe.”

“But how can you say the contest is safe?” Helen persisted.

“Because this unit has stayed here before. They always visit the same islands and climb the same hills. They won’t go anywhere near the Sea Herald contest. Not until …”

Rona jabbed her elbow at her aunt, and Sheila stopped speaking, smiled at them all, then hurried back to the campsite.

“Is that it?” said Yann. “We just hope they don’t notice us in the corner? We just hope they don’t go anywhere near the contest? This is ridiculous. All you tinies and human-shaped beasts can stay here if you want, but I’m leaving. If Rona can’t be bothered trying to win the contest, there’s no point staying anyway.” He lifted a hoof and turned to gallop away.

Helen grabbed his wrist. “Don’t go off in a
horse-sized
huff. We
can
stay at the campsite, if we’re careful.
And even if Rona doesn’t want your help to win, she might need your help to stay alive. Don’t go, Yann.”

He snatched his arm away. “I thought we could have a normal holiday here, but it’s not possible. Not for fabled beasts. There are too many humans, and no real wilderness left.” But he put his hoof down slowly.

Helen said calmly, “We need to get back to our tents to check we haven’t left anything mysterious or magical outside.”

Catesby flew upwards to look over the brow of the hill and flew back down, squawking. Yann nodded, as the phoenix flew up again to keep watch.

“They’re getting back in the minibuses already, probably going off on a trip,” Yann explained. “Once they’re away, you lot, at least, can go back to the tents. But first, Rona, if we’re going to get you safely through this contest, you have to tell us more about it.”

Rona sighed. “The Sea Herald contest is the oldest contest in the world. Older than the Olympic Games or the giants’ annual boulder bowling. It’s much older than the Storm Singer competition or the other sea tribes’ competitions, which were introduced to limit the numbers competing to be Sea Herald.”

“Are you competing to be a real herald? To deliver or announce something?” Yann asked.

“Yes, to take a message from one deep sea power to the other, to start a battle.”

“A battle!” Yann’s voice rose in excitement. “Fantastic!”

“No, it’s not fantastic! If the herald doesn’t get off the battleground fast enough, the herald gets caught up in the fighting between Merras and Thalas, and can get killed.”

“Who are Merras and Thalas?” asked Helen.

“The two great ones whose weights balance the sea. For as long as the sea has been here, the deep sea powers have fought for control of its water, weather and temperature. For many years, they battled every autumn and Thalas prevailed, and for six months it was cold and stormy. Then in the spring, Merras attacked and because she was rested and his strength had waned, she won, so there were six months of warm and calm. And in the autumn Thalas attacked and won, then in spring Merras regained control …

“So it went on, the rested one winning and the tired one losing every six months, driving the seasons round. But at last, the powers noticed a pattern. No matter how hard they fought, Merras always won at the spring equinox and Thalas always won at the autumn equinox. They were both wounded twice a year, in order for the same thing to happen each time. Eventually, they realised if the winner was inevitable, there was no need to fight. So the equinox battles became rituals, tournaments not wars, where Thalas and Merras flexed their muscles and flourished their weapons, but didn’t risk injury or death.

“And tournaments need heralds. If the two sea powers tried to arrange a ritual fight themselves, they would end up fighting about it. So every six months, the Sea Herald takes a formal challenge from the rested power to the ruling power. This week, at the autumn equinox, Thalas will send a message to Merras.”

“You have to do it every six months?” Helen asked.

Rona nodded.

“So they pick a new Sea Herald twice a year?”

“No. Once you have the job, you have it until you’re too slow or too dead to do it any more. The elders pick a
herald young, and hope the herald will do it twice a year for many years. Every single time the herald risks being crushed or drowned as the tournament begins, not because the deep sea powers wish to hurt the herald, but because they wouldn’t notice if they did. Even ritual battles between powers larger than islands can destroy smaller creatures.

“The last Sea Herald was a blue man. He retired last spring after sixty years because his ankles were too stiff to sprint any more. Before that my great-grandmother did it for forty-nine years, until she was eaten by a killer whale. But the one before my great-granny was a Cornish mermaid, who never returned from her first Sea Herald trip. So most Sea Heralds last about fifty years, or no time at all.”

“What would happen if the herald didn’t turn up, or if the message was wrongly delivered?” asked Yann.

“Without the herald to remind them of their agreement to hand over control peacefully after a show of strength, the deep sea powers might fight for real. Then the seas would rise in storms fiercer than any storm since the powers have been at peace, and waves would batter the coast so hard it would change the map forever.”

Helen said, “So whoever wins this year’s contest takes a message from one huge being to another, to start a ritual battle which could crush the messenger, and if the herald doesn’t deliver the message properly, a real battle could destroy the coast?”

“Em … yes.”

“I see why you don’t want to win. Why do the sea tribes get involved in this dangerous ritual at all?”

“Because the real battles submerged islands, flooded caves, flattened the seabed, and killed many seafolk and
humans. The Sea Herald endangers him or herself, to keep those who live under and by the sea safe. It’s a vital job and a great honour. I suppose it’s my duty to try to win it.”

Rona looked so miserable that Helen gave her a hug. “I’m sure the other competitors are desperate for the honour and would do the job brilliantly. It’s not up to you.”

Rona took a deep breath. “So, because the herald has to get away from the battleground fast, the first task is a speed trial.”

“A race!” said Yann. “Didn’t I say I thought there’d be a race, Helen?”

“Actually, you said you
knew
there was a race!”

He grinned. “There’s always a race. You’ll win a race, won’t you?” he said cheerfully to Rona. “Seals are hunters in the water, so you’re pretty fast.”

Rona shrugged. “Mermaids and blue men hunt underwater too. But yes, a fast seal has a good chance of winning the race.”

“Are you a fast seal?” Helen had never seen her friend underwater.

“I’m not sure I’d beat Roxburgh or the other boys who train all the time, but I think I could beat a mermaid and a blue man if I really tried.”

“You don’t want to win,” Lavender objected, “so you won’t really try.”

Rona sighed again. “If it looks like I’m trying not to win, selkies might be disqualified from future contests. And I don’t want to embarrass my family by doing really badly. It might be safe to do well in the race, because there’s no danger I’ll win the other tasks.”
“Why not? What are the other tasks?” asked Helen.

“The third task is a quest to find the herald’s holder, the container for the message.”

“Excellent!” Yann thumped his fists together. “A quest! We’re
great
at quests. We can definitely help with that. You could win that too!”

“I don’t want to win it, Yann! I certainly don’t want to win
two
tasks because then I’d actually be Sea Herald!”