Authors: Helen Dunmore
The Kraken dances into position, then whips round. My heart thunders, choking me. He’s going to look.
There’s a long moment of silence. I wait for him to be blinded or struck like lightning by the horror of himself. But the moment lengthens, lengthens, and the Kraken continues to stare. He’s still a shrimp—yes, but not just a shrimp. Phantoms are bulging out of him and darting toward the mirror. The Claw Creature, the sea serpent, the Portuguese man-of-war, the ravenous shark, and the cloud of piranhas. They dart toward the mirror, and the mirror throws them back, more real and solid with each reflection. The mirror is making them stronger. It’s multiplying
all the demons that the Kraken makes of himself. With each shape-shifting the Kraken is gaining power.
My blood feels like ice. What have I done? We’re going to die, and there’s no hope for the Mer.
“Oh, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes,” comes the incongruously tiny shrimp voice out of the mass of monsters. “How great I am! How great I am!”
And then the mirror flashes.
T
HE
K
RAKEN FREEZES
. He’s not a shrimp anymore, or an octopus with writhing tentacles, or a sea slug. He’s everything at once, like a TV screen with its pixels scrambled and frozen. All the shapes he’s shifted in and out of are clamped around him.
I keep holding up the mirror. I don’t know what else to do. The lairlight is growing weaker. I can still see Faro and Conor, but the Deep is coming closer, pushing in on us.
“I can’t hold it up much longer, Conor.”
“Wait.”
Conor supports my elbow from underneath. Faro grasps the mirror handle.
“It’s getting heavier! It’s slipping!”
The mirror weighs like lead. It wants to fall through
the heavy, dark water to the ocean floor and then down and down through sand and rock until it reaches the earth’s fiery core. And then it’ll melt, and remake itself, and wait for another wizard to conjure it up from the Deep…
“Saph! Hold it up!”
I jerk myself awake. I’m so tired. So tired of holding on. Why not let go now and let the mirror do what it wants…?
“He’s moving, Faro!” calls Conor sharply.
I look up, aghast. The pixels of the Kraken are reassembling themselves, making shapes that are even more monstrous than before because they’re not complete. The giant sea slug has a hole in its belly which the Deep pours through. The cute little shrimp has no head. An octopus tentacle, detached from any body, lashes the water. And the mirror’s still forcing my hand down, as if a giant magnet’s pulling on it from the center of the earth.
Conor and Faro brace themselves. Muscles and tendons stand out on their arms. We’re holding on to one another for support, struggling to keep the mirror from falling. But the Kraken’s winning. He’s coming back, reassembling all his monstrous selves and getting ready to strike.
At that moment something scratches my leg, like the end of a twig. There’s something in my pocket.
Earth and Air surge back to me so powerfully that I almost choke. Salt fills my mouth. I must let go of the Air.
But Earth has come with me this time. I almost forgot I had the rowan in my pocket. Granny Carne told me to bring the rowan wherever I went and not to let go of it, because it was full of Earth magic.
But what good is Earth magic in the Deep?
As this thought flashes through me, the rowan scratches my leg again, like a signal. It’s as if the rowan wants to communicate with me, to help me.
But Earth and Ingo are opposites. Surely it’s not possible that Earth wants to help Ingo?
Granny Carne gave me the rowan. Maybe she foresaw something. Maybe Earth has got to join together with Ingo because their common enemy is so powerful….
Thoughts swirl in my mind, so fast that everything seems to be happening inside the beat of a second. Earth joining with Ingo: That’s what’s happening in me too. Mixed bloods, running together.
The mirror drags at my arm. Veins stand out on Conor’s forehead from the effort of holding on to it. It’s like a tombstone, tilting down, ready to fall. We can’t hold it any longer. Its metal handle slithers through our hands. Then the mirror kicks out of our grasp, turns over, and plunges away through the black water. One last gleam of metal, and it’s swallowed up in the Deep.
The Kraken rears up in front of us in all his threadbare horror.
“Oh, yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes,” he snickers. “You
thought you’d beaten the Kraken, didn’t you? But nobody beats the Kraken. Nobody wins except me. Your silly silly silly little mirror’s gone where it can’t hurt anybody ever again. But it did hurt me. Oh, yes yes yes yes yes. It nearly made the Kraken cry. And so I’m going to have to hurt you, to make it fair. Mer boy first, and then you,
myrgh kerenza
.”
Conor spreads his arms in front of me. “You’ll have to kill me before you touch her,” he says.
“Oh, yes yes yes yes yes, no need to worry about that, I’ll kill you all right. You’re all going to die. That’s so obvious it doesn’t even need saying. Trickety trick trickety trick. What a trio of trite little tricksters. You tried to bamboozle the Kraken, and the Kraken doesn’t like that. I’ll tell you what he does with tricksters and bamboozlers. He munches them up. You’ll enjoy seeing it, I promise you. First Mer boy, then
myrgh kerenza
, and then, when you’ve had a good look at what’s going to happen to you, it’ll be your turn, singing boy! And you’ll get out of my way when I want you to.”
The rowan.
The Kraken’s voice clack-clacks in my ears like claws.
Got to think of the rowan. The rowan brings protection. No evil can pass its threshold.
It’s the only thing left. Earth and Ingo joined together. You’ve got to try, Sapphire.
I let my hand drift down to my side, very slowly so as not to attract the Kraken’s attention. He’ll strike any
minute, but he wants to gloat over us first. I slip my hand into the wet, tight opening of my jeans pocket. My finger touches something that burns hotly. Salt water hasn’t changed the rowan. It isn’t soaked with seawater; it’s burning hot and dry. I nearly cry out from the shock; but I stop myself, and I don’t think the Kraken notices.
My fingers close around the spray of berries. They feel as if they’re dipped in fire. But there can’t be fire in the Deep. It must be an illusion. My fingers aren’t really scorching. I bite my lips and force down the sickness and pain.
Don’t be such a coward. If you let go of the rowan, there’s nothing left.
I bring out my hand, curled, with the spray of rowan hidden in my palm. “Kraken,” I say, “Kraken!” I feel like a bullfighter waving his red cloth. “Look, I’ve got something for you.”
This time the Kraken doesn’t freeze, but he goes very still. All his eyes glitter feverishly. “Something for me?”
“Yes.”
“Like your mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror—”
“No. Not a mirror.”
I spread out my hand with the rowan spray in my palm and hold it out. The weight of the Deep presses the burning berries against my hand.
The Kraken stares with his sea slug eyes and his crab eyes and all the other eyes in his body.
“That’s not a Deep something,” he chatters. “That’s a
something that’s not allowed in the Deep.”
“Like us,” I say, staring straight at him. “Humans can’t come to the Deep, Kraken. The Mer can’t come to the Deep. But here we are.”
“Saldowr never gave you that. I’ll munch your finger finger finger finger finger if you say he did.”
“It’s not from Saldowr’s treasury. It’s not from Ingo. You plant it by the threshold, Kraken. No evil can pass it.”
A groan of terrible frustration escapes from the Kraken’s many bellies.
“I should have killed you all,” he moans. “I should have killed you all when I had the chance.”
Conor, Faro, and I are side by side, the rowan in front of us. It makes me feel stronger than a siege wall. Its blood-red berries look as if they’re bathed in golden fire that spreads outward, lighting the Deep. The Kraken groans in agony.
“Take it away. Make it not be alive.
No no no no no no no.
Give it to me now, and I’ll break it into a million million pieces. The Kraken wants it, the Kraken wants it,” he mutters.
“No. The Kraken can’t have it.”
The Kraken looks down at himself, at his slug trail leaking through the water into the oily lairlight, his scandalously detached tentacles, and his jumping, headless shrimp tail. He lifts a monstrous claw and passes it over
himself. Even the claw shivers when it finds the holes where the Deep has swum through him.
“The Kraken doesn’t like it,” he moans. “Oh, no, oh no, oh no, oh no. The Kraken doesn’t want the light.”
His voice has changed. It isn’t chittering with malice and hatred now. It’s keening like someone who’s lost the dearest thing in life. “Oh no, oh no, oh no,” the Kraken laments. “Don’t show me the light. The Kraken never wanted to hurt anybody. The Kraken never did those bad things. Don’t show me those things.”
Faro folds his arms and looks at the Kraken coldly. “He’s seeing himself,” he says.
We watch, chilled to the bone by the horror of it all. And now, in front of our eyes, the Kraken is changing yet again. His many selves are dropping away like old rags. I hold the rowan high. No evil can get past it. No evil…
Dark water swirls around the Kraken, and for a few seconds he’s hidden from us. Something is lashing the water. A tail. A strong seal tail, glistening like Faro’s. A cloud of hair, glistening like seaweed, eddies around a face that looks…
Human. Mer. Mer and human, mixed. His eyes are dark, without the silvery gleam of Mer eyes.
“Who are you?” I ask.
A cloak of oily water wraps itself around the Kraken’s body, half concealing him.
“I want to go to sleep,” he says.
“To sleep?” I echo.
“Cusca, cusca, cusca,”
the Man-Mer-Kraken moans. “I never hurt anyone. I didn’t do anything. I want to go back to sleep.”
“Sleep then,” says Conor. “Sleep for a thousand years, Kraken.”
“But I might dream.”
“The rowan will put you to sleep,” I say. Words rise to my lips like lullabies I’ve forgotten years ago. “There won’t be any bad dreams or nightmares. You’ll be safe in the dark.
Cusca, cusca, cusca,
Kraken. It’s time to sleep.”
I make my voice soft, as if I were putting a child to bed. The rowan burns even more brightly, searing my palm. I stretch my hand out and touch the Kraken with the spray of rowanberries.
The Kraken’s mouth widens to a black O. Nothing, naught, nil. Zero with zero inside. The mouth circle swells. It’s as big as a beach ball. It spreads outward, lapping up the monster selves of the Kraken. It’s a black cavern, and now only a rim of the Kraken shows, stretched around the blackness. The cavernous mouth gapes like a vast yawn. The Kraken rim stretches and stretches, growing thinner and thinner like elastic pulled to the breaking point. The huge black mouth convulses and swallows the Kraken.
He’ll come back. Any minute now that shrimp will bounce back, jeering at us.
Time stretches. Slowly, as we watch, the black mouth
melts into the surrounding dark of the Deep. The lairlight fades to nothing. We are in the solid, comforting darkness of the Deep.
“He’s gone,” says Conor.
“Yes, he’s gone,” echoes Faro.
There’s a long pause, and then Faro adds, in a different voice, “I hope there will be.”
“Will be what?”
“Bad dreams. Nightmares. I hope there’ll be plenty of them.”
Conor and I say nothing. We’ve got no energy left. The Kraken has gone, but we can’t feel any triumph—not yet. We are in the Deep, alone, hand in hand. The only light comes from the rowan spray in my hand, but as we watch, even that melts away, as if it knows its work is done, and we are left in complete darkness.
“W
E’LL HAVE TO WAIT
for the whale,” I whisper at last.
“Are you sure she’ll come back?”
I’m trying not to consider this possibility. Of course the whale will come back. How could she not? I’m her friend, her little barelegs….
My thoughts stutter to a stop. The whale has only met me twice. What if she forgets us once she’s back on the surface? Or she might decide to dive somewhere else, where there are more giant squid for her to eat. We’re not her children. Conor and I are human, and Faro’s Mer. She has no reason to feel loyalty to us.
No, she has no reason. But the sense of the whale’s strong, protective presence flows back over me. I trust her.
I don’t believe that she’ll abandon us. “Of course she’ll come back,” I say firmly.
We must keep hold of one another. If someone drifts off into the Deep now, he’s gone forever. The thought of it makes me dizzy, as if I were standing on top of a cliff with the ground crumbling beneath my feet.
Hold on.
Faro’s gripping Conor’s wrist, supporting him. We’re close together, like shipwrecked sailors on a tiny island with the tide coming in.
“Conor?”
“It’s okay, Saph. I’m here.”
The dark tide of the Deep rolls around us. There’s nothing to do but wait and hope that the whale keeps faith with us. If anyone can find us in the pitchy darkness of the Deep, she can.
The sperm whale has the best sonar system in the world,
I tell myself over and over.
She’ll pick us up on her whale radar. We’ll be three tiny echoes, a long way off, and she’ll know it’s us and dive toward us.
What if she dives too close? Her weight would destroy us. Even if we survived, we’d be scattered in the Deep.
Don’t think like that.
I’ve got to hold on to my courage.
I’ve lost track of time. I don’t know how long we’ve been here. I can’t remember what day it is. Mum and Roger and everything at home are shrouded in fog. I daren’t even start thinking about Sadie.
“It’s like waiting for the bus to St. Pirans,” says Conor suddenly.
“Bus?” I echo stupidly. My thoughts are so far from buses that for a moment I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“Bus?” asks Faro in the casual voice people use when they don’t want to admit they don’t know what someone’s talking about.
“The bus from Senara to St. Pirans only runs twice a day,” explains Conor, “and you always just miss it. It’s much quicker to walk.”
Conor’s clear memory of the human world touches mine and ignites a dangerous flare of memories. The fog that surrounds Earth when I’m in Ingo clears for a moment, and a wave of longing pours through me. If only Conor hadn’t mentioned walking. Walking on soft, springy turf in the evening sunlight. Or walking on cold, hard sand after the tide goes out, leaving footprints like the ones Robinson Crusoe found on his island. Or maybe walking on a hot road, uphill, with the smell of tar and dust and fuel…
I mustn’t do it. I must let the fog roll back over my memory. The Deep is hurting me now, and I’m scared. I’m so scared. I don’t want to be here. The pressure is flattening me and crushing my ribs.
It’s your own fault,
I tell myself angrily.
You started thinking of sand and roads and all those Air things. Conor started and Air got into you. Turn away from it. You’re in Ingo.
Ingo.
The whale told me that even the Deep was part of Ingo, the first time I met her.
How could it not be Ingo where
I am?
she said. She was laughing at me, but kindly. I think she thinks I’m much younger than I am. Probably because sperm whale babies weigh about a ton, even when they’re just born. I must look like a tadpole to her.
The pressure of the Deep has eased off again. I’ve got Conor here, and Faro, and the whale’s coming. That’s what I’ve got to remember and hold on to.
“I’m so tired,” says Conor, and suddenly his voice is heavy. “I’m going to have a sleep while we wait.”
“No!” says Faro sharply. “Stay awake, Conor!”
“Only a little sleep…”
I’d like to go to sleep too. Now that Conor’s said it, I realize how tired I am too. My arms and legs have got weights of lead on them. Just a little sleep, until the whale comes. My eyelids hurt from the effort of keeping my eyes open. The Deep is pressing them shut…. Why not sleep, why not let go of everything and sleep…just for a little while…?
“No, Sapphire, no!”
“Jus a li’l slee’ Far—Faro, stop it!”
His nails dig into my arm, gouging the skin.
“Wake up, Sapphire!”
“Ge off—’m awake!”
“Lea—leave sis’ ’lone.”
“Leave her alone to
die
, you mean! Is that what you want? We’ve got to hold on. You’ve got to stay awake, Conor!”
Faro’s voice swells and echoes in my ears, reaches my brain, and tears it awake. I see a nightmare vision of Conor floating away, arms outstretched, struggling to reach me and Faro. Floating farther and farther until he’s beyond touch and hearing. Floating forever through the trenches and caverns of the Deep until even his bones disappear.
I fight free of the clinging net of sleep that has wrapped itself around me. I grab Conor’s shoulder and shake him as hard as I can. “Wake up, wake up, Conor!”
“Not you ’s well…Stop it, Saph. I’m awake, I’m awake, I’m awake. Can’t you get that whale to come a bit quicker?”
Of course I can’t. The whale’s so huge, and I’m so small. I haven’t got any power over her.
How I wish she was here. How I wish I could touch her wrinkled skin, and swim up her vast sides, and hear her voice. Even the worst joke in the world would be welcome.
Why did the whale cross the ocean? To get to the other tide. Why was the whale so sad? Because he was a blue whale. What kinds of whales fly? Pilot whales. Is that bad enough for you, dear whale?
The Deep stirs. Heavy water surges against our bodies as if an underwater earthquake has set off a giant wave. We cling together desperately as the water buffets us.
“Greetings, little barelegs.”
“Whale!”
“Quick, little one, tuck yourself behind my flipper. And your companions must go to my other side.”
“But we can’t separate. It’s too dark here. I’ll lose the others.”
“I must be balanced to carry you through the mountains.”
“We’ve got to be together.”
The whale’s voice rumbles impatiently. “There’s no time for argument. I must rise. Listen. Will you travel inside my mouth?”
“Inside your—”
“Quick. A giant squid attacked me as I came. He’ll be waiting. They grow bold in the trenches.”
But how can we go inside her mouth? We’ll be swallowed. We’ll be like Jonah inside the whale—and I can’t remember the end of the story. Jonah must have got out somehow, or there wouldn’t have been any story, but how?
“Do as she says,” cuts in Faro. “She will not swallow us.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“How can I be sure? I’m as sure as I am that we’ll die in the Deep if we stay here, and as sure as I am that Conor and I can’t find our way to her other side in this dark.”
A giant squid. I’d rather be inside the whale’s mouth than meet one of those. I’d even rather take the risk of being swallowed.
We feel the vast movement of the whale as she gets into position. She knows exactly where we are. Water swirls
heavily, and then her voice booms so close that it’s like being inside her already. “My jaw is open. Swim straight ahead.”
Faro’s tail carries us forward. My legs barely stir the dark water. I’m so tired and so afraid. We’re going to travel inside a whale, like Jonah. I try to remember what the inside of her mouth looks like. She has only one row of teeth, I do remember that, set in her lower jaw. Those teeth can tear a giant squid apart.
“I won’t hurt you, little one.”
I sense the exact moment when we swim over the threshold of the whale’s jaw. Everything changes. We’re no longer in the climate of the Deep but in the climate of the whale’s body.
Her vast mouth cavern smells faintly of rotting fish. I try not to notice. It seems wrong to notice the smell of someone when she’s invited you inside her. Especially when the whale’s trying so hard to rescue us.
We speak in whispers, but our voices echo as if we’re in a cathedral.
“Are you all right, Conor? Faro?”
There’s a short pause; then “Never better,” says Conor. “Saph, is this the way you came up from the Deep last time? Inside her mouth?”
“No, I wasn’t as far down that time.”
“So you’ve never been in her mouth before.”
“No, why?”
“I was just hoping there was a precedent.”
“Giant squid and sperm whales have been known to fight great battles,” says Faro somberly. “I’ve seen the body of a whale on the surface, after it was attacked by many squid. I’ve seen the marks of their tentacles and their beaks.”
The whale’s voice vibrates along the roof of her mouth. “I am ready, little one.”
We brace ourselves, but at first the movement is almost imperceptible. The whale seems to be gliding, swimming fast but smoothly. Sonar echoes roll around us. We must be in among the undersea mountains now. The noise doesn’t hurt as it did on the dive down. I expect that’s because we’re cushioned by her mountains of flesh.
She’s going more slowly now. She must be feeling her way cautiously forward between the steep underwater cliffs. The passage will be very narrow now. Even with the whale’s blubber to shield us, the noise begins to thunder in my head.
It eases. She must be through the pass. Only a little way farther, and she’ll be safe to rise.
Suddenly her pace quickens. We’re thrown backward, then forward. I lose hold of Conor’s hand. The whale rolls, and my stomach swoops. Her body judders as if she’s fighting her way through giant waves. She rolls again and takes another blow. I slip and slide. I’m tossed from the ribbed roof of her mouth to her tongue, then against the columns
of her teeth. She judders again. My bones shake, and my teeth rattle.
“She’s being attacked! It must be a squid!” I hear Faro’s voice, but I can’t reach him. We’ve been thrown way apart. It feels as if she’s fighting for her life. But how can she fight without using her teeth? She’ll have to open her jaws to defend herself. We’ll be sucked out into the Deep.
Another lurch. It’s like being in the belly of a plane in a war film, rolling and diving through the sky to get away from an enemy. But the squid keeps coming at her. How long can she hold on without using her teeth?
“Hold on, hold on, little one,” comes the distorted boom of the whale’s voice.
“Fight them, dear whale! You can’t let them kill you!”
“No, little barelegs. Hold tight. I’m ready to rise.”
Giant squid only live in the trenches of the Deep. They don’t rise. They won’t be able to follow her. But what if they’ve already got their tentacles suckered around the whale?
We’re in the heart of the battle, but we don’t know what’s happening. We can only guess what’s going on out there in the Deep. The squid flailing its tentacles, trying to get a grip. The whale lashing her tail, striking her enemy. The Deep churning with their battle, and the whale fighting to get free for just long enough to gather all her strength and plunge upward, out of the giant squid’s reach.
Suddenly the whale goes dead still. We hang in her
mouth, suspended. It’s killed her. The giant squid has killed her. She’s dead, and it’s all because of us. She only came back because of us—
And then with a rush like an airplane takeoff, the whale breaks loose and surges upward.