Eva Ibbotson - Island of the Aunts

Fabio was silent but Minette said shyly, “Is it a sea monster? A very big one?”

Etta nodded. “Yes. It is a sea monster, and it is bigger than anything you can imagine. But it has nothing to do with all the silly stories you hear. Nothing to do with rubbish about Giant Blobs or outsize cuttlefish or octopuses that pull people down to the ocean bed. No, the kraken is…or was…the Soul of the Sea. It is the greatest force for good the ocean has ever known.”

Fabio and Minette looked at her surprised. This wasn’t at all the way that Aunt Etta usually spoke.

So then she began to tell them the kraken’s story. It took a long time to tell and the fire had burnt down and been rekindled many times before it was finished, but the children scarcely stirred.

“There was a time when everyone in the world knew about the kraken,” Aunt Etta began. “They knew about his huge size and that when he rested, and his back was humped out of the water, he was taken for an island. They knew that when he reared up suddenly, the sea churned and boiled and no ship that was near him had the slightest hope of avoiding shipwreck.

“But they knew too that for all his size, the kraken was a gentle creature. His eyes were full of soul and when he opened his mouth one could see that instead of teeth he had rows and rows of tendrils which were the greeny-gold colour of a mermaid’s hair. Through this forest of tendrils, the sea poured in, and it was the sea which nourished him: the tiny invisible creatures which make up plankton were all that the kraken needed for food.

“They knew that the kraken came from the Far North and that the language he spoke best was Polar, though he understood other languages also. But mostly the kraken did not speak. The kraken sang. Or perhaps singing is not quite the right word. What the kraken did was to hum. It was a deep, slow sound and it was like no other sound in the world, for what the kraken hummed was the Song of the Sea. It was a healing song. If you like, it was the Breath of the Universe. Whales can hum too and Buddhist monks who spend their lives on high mountains trying to understand God…and small children when they are happy — but the sound they make is nothing compared to the sound made by the kraken.

“For many years the kraken swam quietly round the oceans of the world humming his hum and singing his song and stopping sometimes to rest. And when he stopped, people who did not know much said: goodness, surely there wasn’t an island out in that bay before, but people who were wise and in touch with the things that mattered, smiled and felt honoured and proud. Because when the kraken came, they remembered what a splendid thing the sea was: so clean and beautiful when it was calm, so mighty and exciting and awe-inspiring when it was rough. It was as though the great creature was guarding the sea for them, or even as though somehow he was showing them what a treasure house it was.

“ Look! the kraken seemed to be saying. Behold…the sea!

“In those days the kraken made it his business to circle the oceans of the world each year and whenever he appeared, people started to behave themselves. Fishermen stopped catching more fish than they needed and threw the little ones back into the sea, and people who were dumping their rubbish into the water thought better of it, seeing the kraken’s large and wondrous eyes fixed on them. And when he went on again it was to leave the sea — and indeed the world — a better place.

“It was like a blessing, to have seen the kraken,” said Aunt Etta now. “It brought you luck for the rest of your life.”

“Did you ever see him?” asked Minette.

Aunt Etta shook her head. She looked very sad. “No one living now has seen him. He hasn’t been seen for a hundred years or more. He was dreadfully hurt once and he went into hiding.”

The hurt that was done to the kraken was not to his body. The skin of a kraken is a metre deep and no other animal can threaten him. No animal would want to — he travelled with a whole company of sharks and stingrays and killer whales who would have died rather than harm him.

But human beings are different. They always have been: interfering and bossy and mad for power. No one knew what kind of whaling boat had shot a harpoon into the kraken’s throat. Was it a Japanese ship or one belonging to the British or the Danes? Did the whalers mistake the kraken for a humpback whale, or were they just terrified, seeing a dark shape bigger than anything they had ever seen rear up in front of them?

Whatever the reason, they let off the biggest of their harpoons and hit the kraken with terrible force in the softest part of his throat.

The kraken probably didn’t believe it at first. No one had ever tried to harm him. Then he felt the pain and saw the dark dollops of his blood staining the sea.

When he understood what had happened, he began to thrash about, trying to rid himself of the harpoon — and the rope snapped. But the pain was still there and the kraken reared up, trying to dislodge the hooked horror in his neck. As he did so, the tidal wave made by his body tossed the whaling boat up, and drew it under the sea, and every one of the men was drowned, which was as well because the sea creatures who had travelled with the kraken would have torn them limb from limb.

And the kraken swam away to the north, the harpoon still in his throat. The pain died away and presently an old sea nymph came with her brood of children and cut the hook out of the kraken’s flesh with razor shells and soon there was only a small scar left to show where it had been.

But the scar in the kraken’s soul remained. He had travelled the world to sing the Song of the Sea and to heal the people who lived by it — and they had stabbed him in the throat. The kraken was two thousand years old, which is not old for a kraken, but now he felt tired. Let human beings look after themselves! He swam still further north, and further still to where the wildness of the sea and the large number of humped islands made him invisible, and he turned his back on the world, and slept.

And while he slept, people forgot that there had been such a creature, and the stories about him got wilder and wilder until this healing monster was jumbled up in people’s minds with Giant Blobs and vicious triffids and nonsense like that.

And the sea got muckier and muckier and more and more neglected.

But of course everyone did not forget. The sea creatures remembered — the seals and the selkies, the mermaids and the nixies, and the people who lived and worked on the islands and by the shore.

And the aunts remembered.

“Oh yes, we always remembered,” said Etta now. “Our father told us about him and our grandfather told our father. We have always known, but we never dreamt—”

She fell silent, overcome by her feelings and the children gazed into the embers of the fire and thought about what they had heard.

Why am I not frightened, Minette wondered. Once she would have been terrified at the thought of a great sea monster swimming towards them, but now she felt only wonder. And something else: a longing to help and serve this creature she had never seen. She felt she would do anything for the kraken when he came. Which was silly, because how could an ordinary girl do anything for the mightiest monster in the world? But she didn’t feel silly. She felt awed and uplifted as though some amazing task awaited her.

Fabio didn’t feel quite like that. Fabio felt that the story he had heard needed a celebration. So he did something rather noble. He turned to Coral, sitting in her cloak beside him, and said:

“Aunt Coral, the moon is full — or very nearly. Would you like to dance the tango?”