The Deep (12 page)

“I have looked into your mirror, Saldowr,” he hisses,
“and one day, I promise you, you will look into mine. All of you will look into mine.”

Fear licks over me. I believe him. He will bide his time, and one day his chance will come.

“Now leave us, Ervys,” says Saldowr quietly. “These children must make ready for their journey.”

T
HE WHALE IS LIKE AN
oceangoing liner, ready to depart. She wants us to tuck in behind her flippers for the dive, so that the rush of the water won’t sweep us away from her. She’ll have Faro and Conor on one side of her and me on the other for balance.

“You must lie close to me, little barelegs,” she tells me. Her huge affection laps round me. “Think that you are a part of me.”

I remember how we rode with the dolphins. You can’t ride on dolphins as if they were bicycles. You have to let go of being separate and relax against them until it feels as if you’re sharing the same skin. Perhaps it’s like that with whales too.

None of us knows how long we’ll need to be in the
Deep. None of us knows what we’re going to do when we find the Kraken. It’s like staring over a precipice. It makes you feel sick and dizzy.

But Saldowr’s wise, and he’s the one who is sending us. He wouldn’t throw our lives away for a one-in-a-million chance.

Conor says sperm whales only dive for about an hour. Males can dive longer than females, so maybe my whale won’t even be able to do an hour. He’s not sure that it’ll be long enough, when you think that we’ve got to find the Kraken and somehow make him sleep again. Somehow!

“We have to trust the whale’s judgment,” Conor says. “Maybe time in the Deep is different from time in the rest of Ingo, just as human time is different from Mer time. Why would she take us if she knew we wouldn’t have time to do anything? There’s no sense in it if we’re bound to fail.”

Conor sounds so logical. I suppose he’s right.
Bound to fail. Bound to fail.
Our chance of success feels so slender. All we’ve got is Saldowr’s mirror and the talisman. Oh, and don’t forget a handful of rowanberries. When you add it all up, it’s not impressive.

Don’t think of that now. Think of one stroke at a time.
I’m not going to say anything to the others about my doubts. It’s bad enough for them to be going to the Deep for the first time. At least I know what to expect.

“Faro, are you sure? Are you really sure?” I murmur just
before we separate to swim to shelter behind the whale’s flippers. Conor has swum ahead a little way to find a length of weed to bind the mirror to his leg.

Faro’s eyes look like black holes in his white face. He tries to smile his old teasing smile, but it’s no more than a shadow. He looks shocked and angry, not afraid. It has something to do with the mirror and what it’s shown him about himself.
The cursed mirror
, he called it. Suddenly I’m afraid that we’re forcing Faro into a danger so terrible, he can’t possibly survive it. He’s not like us. Our mixed blood gives us a chance.

“Please, Faro, don’t do this,” I beg him. “You can’t throw your life away.”

His eyes glint. There’s no warmth or friendliness in his expression. “Didn’t you understand what Saldowr was telling me?”

I stare at him. A flash of understanding passes between us, from his mind to mine, and then I know why Faro is coming to the Deep, why he’s able to come.

A wave of his pain and shock hits me. He can’t believe it; he doesn’t want to believe it. He, Faro, always so proud of being pure Mer. But the mirror is too strong. You can’t escape the knowledge it gives you. It has sunk into Faro and changed him. I reach out to him, but he shrugs me away.

“Not now. Leave me alone, Sapphire.”

Conor has bound the mirror to his leg so securely that
it’s almost hidden by straps of weed. He has the talisman safe around his neck. The little diving figure still frightens me. Why does Conor think that it has his face when it’s so obviously Mer? Nothing seems certain anymore. I used to know what was human and what was Mer. Faro was Mer, everybody in St. Pirans was human, and I was half-and-half. Now the boundaries are shifting, and it frightens me.

Those rowanberries seem to burn through the cloth of my pocket and into my skin. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought them. They belong to Earth. They might harm me in Ingo. Granny Carne wouldn’t have known if I’d left them behind.

What was it Saldowr said to me?
Did no one give you a talisman, Sapphire?
I’m sure he knew about the rowanberries in my pocket. But I wasn’t going to admit I had them.

I hope Saldowr will never be angry with us in the way he was with Ervys. Ervys looked as if he was trapped in a nightmare. He couldn’t wake up until Saldowr let him.

Faro and Conor must have reached the other side of the whale by now. I’ve just got to wait. I hope they’re all right. It’s dark tucked in behind the whale’s flipper, but it feels secure.

We’re moving now, slowly gliding our way out of the Groves of Aleph. There’s no one to say good-bye to us. Saldowr couldn’t leave the cave, and Elvira’s staying with him. Ervys, Talek, and Mortarow must be miles away by
now. They couldn’t leave fast enough.

I still wish we hadn’t been there to witness Ervys’s nightmare. He’ll punish us for it. He’s the kind who’ll wait and wait and get his revenge when you’ve stopped expecting it.

I wonder if I can hear the whale’s huge heart beating. If I put my ear against her skin…No, there’s nothing. Her heart’s such a long way away. It’s strange to be almost part of someone this big. How careful the whale has to be as she maneuvers herself out of the Groves into free water. Her flippers move gently, steering her, grazing the underwater trees as she goes. I peer out into the water, and weed rushes past. The water feels shallow compared with her hugeness.

“Are you all right, little barelegs? Do my flippers move gently enough for you?”

“Yes, dear whale, I’m fine.”

She doesn’t seem too concerned about Faro and Conor, even though she was willing to take them to the Deep as well. Maybe she feels closer to me because of the way we first met, in the Deep. She was a warm-blooded fellow mammal in all that cold-blooded darkness. I think she must have felt the same.

I wonder what it would be like to be a whale’s daughter. Of course I’d miss Mum, I think hurriedly, feeling guilty. Mum has gone shadowy in my mind, the way she does when I’m in Ingo. Even darling Sadie has become distant.
I can’t remember the exact tone of her bark. I know I love her, but I can’t find the feeling.

We’re traveling faster now, close to the surface. I tuck myself in as tight as I can. I daren’t peer out now in case the racing water grabs me.

And then the whale’s huge body loses speed as it breaches the surface. She rocks from side to side, wallowing. Her speed dies to nothing, and she blows. I feel it all through her body. I picture the column of water shooting into the air from her blowhole.
Where are we?
I wonder.
Miles out to sea, I’m sure.
Maybe a fishing boat is in range, and the men will see the whale blow. Dad used to say it was a sight that took your breath away.

It’s the power of the creatures, Sapphy. We’re nothing next to them. When you’re out on the bare ocean and you see a whale breach and blow, you’ve seen glory. I’ll take you down south beyond Scilly one day, and we’ll watch for whales.

The fishermen would expect to see other whales, because sperm whales live in groups. But my whale is alone, always alone.

Dad and I never made that journey. There wasn’t time.

The whale’s got to gather her breath for the dive. She’s not talking anymore. How could she think of conversation when she’s preparing to plunge down hundreds of meters—maybe thousands? I lay my face against her rough, pruny skin. Dear whale, dive well. Dive deep.

It must be like this for astronauts when they’re waiting for the countdown, strapped into their seats. It’s too late to go back. All the exits are sealed, and everybody’s watching and waiting and hoping.

Ingo’s watching and waiting and hoping. My stomach slithers.
Too late to go back now.
I wonder if some of the Mer have followed us and are watching, from a safe distance, their hair flowing around their shoulders and their faces eager to catch sight of the dive.

Elvira won’t be there. She’ll stay at Saldowr’s side, trying to heal him. She hugged us all before we left, one by one. Even me. Elvira has one of those faces that get even more beautiful close up. She put her arms around me as if she really cared what happened to me. I forgot to be jealous of her for at least a minute, until she hugged Conor with her beautiful long Mer arms, and they kept on murmuring to each other until Saldowr had to say that it was time to go.

Astronauts must be so scared. I suppose they hide their fear because of the TV cameras. No, more likely it’s because the other astronauts would see it. Conor and Faro and I didn’t show one another that we were scared. I wish I were going to be with them all the way down, but it’s impossible. The whale has to dive straight. Three on one side and none on the other would send her crooked. Conor has to be with Faro. It’s Conor’s best chance.

I open my mind and try to hear Faro’s thoughts, but
with the bulk of the whale’s body between us I can’t pick up anything. I hope he and Conor are all right. They don’t know the whale as I do. I hope they can feel her kindness.

A ripple of energy surges through the whale’s body. Something’s about to happen. I don’t want it! I want to get off. I want to go home.

You must be brave, Sapphire. Be brave.

It’s probably my own voice, but it calms me. The hot thudding in my head eases. I relax into the shelter of the whale’s flipper. I make my body melt against her rough skin, just as I made it melt against the dolphin’s back. She’s getting ready. She’s going—

A rush of power pours through the whale. She holds still for a second, and then I’m head down and sealed between flipper and body as the world turns and everything I’ve ever thought or known rushes away from me.

The whale dives.

The Deep. We are in the Deep. There’s no light, and it’s cold and full of echoes. I’m as thin as paper. I can barely move my hands because they are so heavy. I know this place. Fear pours over me as it did the last time I was here, and I fight it down. You can’t panic here. If you let yourself panic, you’re lost.

The Deep. The Deep. Darkness so thick that you can’t even believe in light. The weight of the whole world pressing down on us. But I’m with the whale, and I’m safe. I
hear her echo system as she feels her way forward. She knows where she’s going. The Deep is an open book to her. For the whale this is familiar hunting ground, not a desert of lonely blackness.

“Keep still, little one. That squid may hurt you. I would eat him, but it would slow our journey.”

There’s a frenzy of echoes as the giant squid glides past us. I shiver and nestle deeper into the whale’s shelter. I’ve no desire to meet a giant squid.

“A fine mouthful,” says the whale regretfully. “Do you like squid, little one?”

“Um, no, I’ve never eaten it,” I lie, in case the giant squid is listening. But the echoes fade, and he rolls away into the darkness.

There’s no dark like this in the human world. “Conor? Faro?”

Nobody answers. My voice seems to go nowhere.

“Where are they?”

“They don’t speak to me as you do, but I feel that they are there.”

“Are they all right?”

“They are warm things in a cold world, little one. Their blood hurts them. But they are living. I feel that they are living.”

We move through a forest of echoes. Sound is like light here; it’s the only guide there is. I wish I could make sense of all the echoes as the whale does. It hurts my ears when
she searches the water with her sonar.

“Another squid,” she says.

“Do stop and catch it if you want to.”

The whale rumbles, “My promise to Saldowr is worth more than that, child. I must take you to the Kraken.”

“Won’t he—won’t he hurt you?”

“He has no quarrel with me,” replies the whale calmly. “Now be silent, little one, I must listen with all my power. We are coming closer, and I must find my way between two mountains.”

We move on slowly, cautiously, sounding for echoes. They bounce furiously. I knew that the Deep had mountains, but not what it would be like to find a way through them, steering through jagged invisible rocks, listening for the echoes to thin out and show clear water ahead. What if the whale gets caught? What if the whale hurts herself?

My ears ring. The echoes vibrate, and sound hammers through my skin, my flesh, and down to my bones. I can’t think, I can’t see, and I can’t hear. All I feel is sound. The pain of it batters me until I can’t bear it for another second, and then it gets worse, and I’m still hanging on, praying for it to end. Now the sonar echoes wham my head like slaps from a giant hand. I curl up, trying to find shelter. I’m going to die of sound. It’s going to blow me into atoms. The noise is so loud that I’m dissolving into it. I tunnel deep inside myself, because it’s the only place I can find to hide.

I don’t know how long it lasts. I come back slowly, throbbing from the noise attack. I shake my head, not daring to believe it. Someone has turned the volume down. The echoes aren’t battering me anymore. The noise is still loud, but it’s finally fading away behind us.

“We have come through the pass, little one,” booms the whale.

Through the pass…
We’re mountaineering, thousands of meters below the surface. A pass is a narrow way through high crags. No wonder the echoes were so terrible as they thrashed back and forth off the harsh surfaces of the rock. Maybe the sides of the mountain were so close that I could have reached out and touched them. But the spaces are growing wider now. The echoes keep on fading. I picture the whale sailing out into clear water.

We’re slowing down. Soon we are barely moving. We hang, wrapped in darkness. What’s going to happen now?

“This is as close as I can come, little one,” says the whale. Her voice barely disturbs the water. Maybe she doesn’t want anyone to hear her.

“Where are we?”

“We are close to the Kraken’s lair. There’s little time. I can help you on your way, and then I must rise to breathe.”

Horror crawls over me. She’s going to abandon us in the Deep. I thought she was going to stay with us. How can we survive down here without the whale? When I was
in the Deep without her before, I didn’t even know which way I was moving. And I’m sure we didn’t go so far down then. There was still a tinge of light, just enough for me to see the whale.