Helen Dunmore - The Deep

“Faro, look! Look at her!”

“ No , Sapphire!”

“But she’s so beautiful!”

So beautiful. She’s sitting on the knife-sharp edge of the rock, but it doesn’t seem to hurt her. Her shining hair drifts around her shoulders like a cloak of glass. Her smile glows with welcome and her arms are open wide as if to embrace us.

“But, Faro, she’s Mer. She’s one of your people. Why won’t you look at her?”

Her eyes fix mine. They are huge and hungry. She wants me. She wants me to come to her.

“ She’s not Mer! ” says Faro, his voice full of revulsion.

“Just look for a minute. She’s so lovely,” I plead with him.

“All right then, Sapphire, you look at her if you want to! Look! ”

Her beautiful face, her sloping shoulders and swirling hair – her—

“ Look , Sapphire!”

She twists her body free of the rock. She pushes off with her hands. She’s coming towards us…

Where a tail should be if she were Mer, where legs would be if she were human, there is a claw. A single claw, steel blue and gleaming. An open claw that snaps as the creature swirls towards us—

Faro raises both hands, fingers crossed, and touches them to his forehead. The creature stalls in the water.

“Get behind me,” he mutters, “and whatever you do, don’t look at it again.” Very slowly he begins to swim backwards, still holding his hands in place and shielding me with his body. I scull myself backwards with trembling hands, keeping my eyes fixed on Faro’s back. I won’t look at – at it – again. It’s not going to make me look at it. A faint sound drifts through the water. Clack. Clack . The claw, I think. It’s opening and shutting the claw, getting ready to snap—

“Don’t be scared,” murmurs Faro. “Feel behind you.” My back is against the wall now. A sheer, gleaming wall of rock that blocks our way.

Clack, clack .

Surely the sound is fainter now?

“Faro – Faro – has it gone?”

“Wait.”

We hang still in the water, backs to the wall, and wait.

“ Don’t look , Sapphire. It’s not safe yet.”

Clack, clack .

It’s almost gone. At last Faro’s shoulders slacken with relief. His hands drop to his sides.

“It’s gone back to its hole,” he says. “But we’ve got to be quick. There’ll be more of the Claw Creatures around here and I can’t hold off more than one at a time.”

“Can’t we swim straight up the rock, Faro?”

“No. We’ve got to go through. There’s a passage here somewhere. I used to know where it was, but since the Tide Knot broke, everything’s changed. Even the routes we’ve used for a thousand years. Come round this way, Sapphire. Squeeze through. That’s it. Good, the Claw Creatures can’t get in here.”

We’re in a small cave. The back of it is blind, and there’s no passage through the rock.

“We’ll rest here for a while,” says Faro, and closes his eyes. It’s very gloomy in the cave, but there’s enough light to see how drained he looks.

“At least now you know never to look at one of the Claw Creatures,” he says lightly.

“If you hadn’t been there—”

“Shall I tell you what would have happened, little sister?”

“No, don’t. I can guess.”

We are quiet for a while, resting. I wonder how much farther we’ve got to go. Faro says that everything’s changed in Ingo since the Tide Knot broke.

“But the tides went back,” I say aloud.

“Ingo is slow to heal.”

Like the human world , I think. St Pirans is shadowy in my mind now, but I can’t forget the destruction of the flood.

“ Ingo er kommolek ,” I say suddenly, without realising that I’m going to speak. Just as suddenly I remember where those words came from. The dolphins spoke them, that day last autumn when they came into the bay, and we were out in the boat with Mal’s dad. But the words were different then… Ingo er lowenek … was that it?

My brain doesn’t know what the words mean, but something deeper in me understands. There’s a shadow over Ingo now. Grief and destruction have spread through Ingo like currents of rushing water.

“ Ingo er kommolek… kommolek… trist Ingo… trist, trist Ingo …”

Faro is staring at me.

“How do you know those words, Sapphire?”

Power rises in me again, as it did when I was standing on the rock, back in our cove.

“I learned them from the dolphins.”

“You’re coming on, little sister,” says Faro in his mocking way. “You are becoming a daughter of Ingo.”

His words thrill through me.

“Sometimes I think that won’t ever happen. Just when I feel I’m part of Ingo, I’m pushed away again.”

“I don’t push you away.”

But there’s a lot you never talk about . How little I know about Faro’s history – and I still feel I can’t ask him quite ordinary things like where he was born, who his parents are…

“Sapphire?”

“What?”

“Wake up. It’s time to move on.”

We come out of the cave, and stare up the sheer face of the mountain. It’s just as forbidding, but now there’s a challenge in it, too.

“Morlader must have found the passage.”

“Yes,” Faro agrees.

“But then why didn’t he wait for us?”

Faro shrugs. His eyes are dark and grim. “You think all the Mer are one family, Sapphire. But it’s not as simple as that. Sometimes we… we test one another.”

“You mean Morlader’s testing us to see if we can find the way?”

“Not Morlader alone,” says Faro. “He’s been sent, and told what to do. And I think I know who sent him. Come, little sister, we have to take this path.”

He points around the shoulder of the rock face. We edge along it, keeping close to the rock without ever touching it. Faro takes my hand and steers us both onwards with barely a flicker of his powerful tail. The rock is no longer barren. Weed clings to it, and in crevices there are limpets crusting its smoothness. Long trails of weed catch at my feet. It’s a dark, smooth green, like bottle-glass. It hangs from the rock in swaying curtains, so thick that we can’t see through them.

“The entrance is here somewhere,” says Faro. He lets go of my hand, pushes aside the curtain of weed, and vanishes.

“Faro!”

“Come on, Sapphire, it’s this way.”

His voice sounds muffled and hollow. Where is he? Gingerly, I touch the weed. I’ll have to push my way through it, and I don’t want to. It’s like going into a trap.

The weed sways like an animal being stroked. Suddenly the fog that hides the human world when I’m in Ingo clears for a moment, and I see Sadie standing in a patch of sunlight. Sadie! Thoughts of her flood my mind. Her warm smooth coat, her brown eyes, the way she scans my face to work out what I’m saying. Dear Sadie. My hand falls to my side. What am I doing here? Her eyes plead with me to come home. Why am I pushing my way through a slimy curtain of weed?

“Sapphire!”

Faro sounds farther away now, and impatient. He’s going on. He’s not waiting for me. I can’t get left behind here on my own – but I can’t go in. Rocks and icy shadows and cold unfriendly water press in on me. Get out of here , a voice says in my brain. Get out now, while you still can .

Suddenly I hear another sound. It’s very faint, but as soon as I hear it a prickle of terror races over my skin.

Clack. Clack. Clack .

I’m imagining it; of course I am. But Faro’s not here to help me now. Don’t look back, Sapphire. Don’t risk being trapped by that beautiful face and that lethal claw .