'I said it was an accident!' panted Torak. 'My paddle broke!'
'That's impossible! They're made of the strongest driftwood -'
'Then what's this?' Torak brandished what remained of his paddle. 'If they're so strong, why did mine snap like a piece of kindling?' He fell silent, peering at the broken stem of the paddle. Someone had cut it. They'd only cut halfway through, leaving just enough to make it workable, but liable to snap at any time.
'What is it?' said Bale.
Torak's thoughts flew to the Follower. But it could have been anyone: Bale or Asrif or Detlan or anyone else among the Seals.
Without a word he held out the broken paddle, and Bale took it. He was observant. Swiftly he spotted the cut edge of the stem. 'You think I did this,' he said.
'Well did you?'
'No!'
'But you want me to fail. You said so.'
'Because you'll slow us down, or get into trouble, and need rescuing.'
'No I won't,' said Torak with more conviction than he felt. 'Bale, we want the same thing. We want the cure.'
'And I'm supposed to believe that my clan is threatened,' Bale said sarcastically, 'just because you managed to talk your way off the Rock?'
Torak stared at him. 'What do you mean?'
'I don't know what story you told Tenris on the Crag,' said Bale, 'but I do know that you're a lying little coward who'd do anything to save your skin.' He tossed Torak the broken paddle. 'Maybe that's why you were so ready to believe I could play a trick like this. Because it's the sort of thing you'd do in the Forest.'
Bale's insults were ringing in Torak's ears as he made his way wearily back to shore. The older boy had gone on ahead, and carried his boat up to the racks. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing left to say.
You can't do this on your own, Tenris had said. You need to win their trust. Concentrate on Bale . . . the others will follow.
He was right, and Torak knew it. He had to prove to Bale that he hadn't tricked anyone.
He had an idea. If he could prove that the Follower was on the island, Bale would have to believe him.
Find the tracks, he told himself. Not even Bale could argue with that.
And it should be possible. Torak might not be any good at skinboating, but he knew how to find a trail.
As he reached the south end of the bay, dusk was coming on or rather, the brief blue glow that counted for dusk this close to Midsummer. Leaving his skinboat on the beach, he crossed the stream, and started working his way along the bank. Terns hovered and dived above him, but he ignored them.
It was a good time for tracking: the low light would sharpen the shadows. He was glad, too, that the Seals were busy waking the fires for nightmeal, so that nobody saw him come ashore. He didn't feel like explaining what he was doing.
No prints in the soft mud. But there, on the grass: the merest hint where something small the Follower? had brushed off the damp as it passed.
It was hard to trace dew trails always are but Torak used the trick his father had taught him, turning his head to one side and looking at it from the corner of his eye.
After a few false starts, he tracked it to a stretch of limpet-crusted rocks that tilted into the Sea. Beyond the rocks, at the very edge of the bay, stood a clump of birch. To his surprise, the trail didn't lead towards them, but onto the rocks. He found a tiny piece of scuffed lichen, and a scent of rottenness where the Follower had scampered across a pile of dead seaweed.
Finally, in a patch of sand left by a previous tide, he saw it: a perfect, sharp-clawed print. Very fresh. No time for ants or sand-midges to blur the edges.
Look at this, Bale, he shouted in his head.
A cackle of laughter to his left and there it was: a small humped figure shrouded in long hair like mouldy seaweed.
Torak was too elated to be scared. Here was the proof he needed. If he could catch it, Bale would have to admit defeat.
The creature turned and scuttled away.
Torak scrambled after it.
The seaweed was slimy under his bare feet, and a voice of caution sounded in his mind. The Follower would like nothing better than if he took a tumble into the Sea.
He reached a cleft in the rocks where the swirling Sea sent up jets of spray. The cleft was too wide to leap, but somehow the Follower had got across. There it was on the other side: eyes gleaming with malice, daring him to jump.
'Oh, no,' he panted, 'I'm not that stupid!'
The Follower bared its brown teeth in a hiss and sped into the gloom, its claws clicking on the rocks.
Torak raced round the edge of the cleft to where the seaweed was drier and less treacherous. It occurred to him to wonder how a patch of dry seaweed had come to be in the middle of all this wet . . .
Too late. The seaweed gave beneath him and he pitched into the Sea. Torak, you fool! A pitfall! The simplest trap of all!
Winded by the cold and covered in seaweed, he kicked to keep himself afloat as he sought a likely place to haul himself out. The swell was heavier than it had appeared from the rocks, but it should be easy enough, and the only harm done would be to his pride. The Follower, of course, would be long gone.
Clawing the seaweed off his face, he reached for a handhold. The seaweed was tougher than it looked. He couldn't seem to get it off his face or push his hands through it to reach the rock.
Because it isn't seaweed, he realised in surprise. It's rope made of kelp, knotted kelp, and this is a seal net. You've fallen into a seal net. Which, presumably, was exactly what the Follower had intended.
The swell threw him against the rocks, knocking the breath from his chest. Treading water was becoming difficult, as the net clung to his legs, hampering movement. It seemed to be tied to the rocks at the top, and weighed down with something, maybe a stone, because he had to work to keep his head and shoulders above the water.
How Bale will laugh about this! he thought bitterly. How they'll all laugh when they find me floundering in a net within arrowshot of camp!
If he'd had his knife, he could have cut himself free, but the Seals hadn't trusted him with weapons. He'd have to call for help, and endure the inevitable taunts.
'Help!' he shouted. 'I'm over here! Somebody!'
The wind whistled across the bay. Terns screamed overhead. The Sea slapped noisily against the rocks.
Nobody came. Nobody could hear him.
Treading water was tiring. And strangely, the waves seemed to have risen: now they reached to just below his chin.
That was when the truth hit him, and he began to be frightened. He was trapped in a seal net, out of earshot of the camp, and the tide was coming in.
Fast.
TWENTY-TWO.
The tide was creeping higher, and Torak had to fight to keep his chin above the waves.
The swell kept sucking him backwards, then smashing him against the rocks. The Sea was pounding the breath out of him. Her salt smell was thick in his throat, her restless moaning filled his head. She had taken him, and she wasn't letting go.
He tried to close his mind to her; to think what to do. There had to be some kind of opening in the net. After all, he'd fallen into it, so there must be a way out. But somehow he couldn't find it.
The mesh was small he couldn't force his fist through and the knots were hard as pebbles; a waste of time trying to unpick them with fingers grown numb. And the kelp was far too tough to rip apart with his hands, or bite through. 'They've got to be strong to hold a full-grown seal,' Detlan had told him at daymeal. 'And they are.'
If only he had his knife . . . What else could he use? Again he smacked against the rocks, scraping painfully over the limpets.
Limpets. They had sharp edges, didn't they? If he could prise one off, maybe . . .
The swell drew him back, then battered him once more. As he kicked his way to the surface, the Sea's endless laughter rippled through him.
Don't listen to her, he told himself. Listen to yourself, listen to the blood drumming in your ears anything but her . . .
Still kicking to stay above the waves, he pushed his thumb and two fingers through the meshing and grabbed the nearest limpet.
The creature clamped hard to the rock and refused to let go. Snarling, Torak clawed at its shell, but it stuck fast. It had become part of the rock.
Then he remembered the black and white bird he'd seen attacking a limpet on the shore. He'd spotted similar birds here on the Seals' island, Detlan called them oystercatchers. Torak remembered the way the bird had struck the limpet with its beak: abruptly, giving it no time to cling on.
He found another limpet and tried the same thing, striking a glancing blow with his fist. It worked. But the limpet slipped from his fingers and spiralled down, out of reach and through the net.
Again the Sea's vast laughter shuddered through him. You cannot win, she seemed to whisper. Give up, give up!
No! he shouted in his head. It's too soon!
The shout became a sob. Too soon. He had to find the cure, and make sure that the clans were safe. He had to see Wolf again, and Renn, and Fin-Kedinn . . .
If that stone weren't dragging down the net, he'd have a chance.
The thought woke him like a slap in the face. If he could get free of that stone, the tide would become his friend: he could make the Sea work against herself, make her lift him and carry him onto the rocks.
So why are you wasting time with limpets? he thought frantically. Get under the water and deal with that rock!
He took a deep breath and dived.
It was frightening being in her world, in a swirling chaos of black water and murky seaweed. He couldn't find the rope that tied the rock to the net, couldn't even tell up from down.
He surfaced again, gulping air. The waves were lapping higher. Now he had to strain to keep his mouth above them. Salt burned his lips, his throat, his eyes. His legs were heavy, his thoughts fogging with cold.
'Help!' he yelled. 'Somebody!' His cry ended in a gurgle that was horrible to hear.
The light was failing, and he couldn't see much: just the rock looming over him, and a deep blue sky pricked by faint stars that seemed to be sinking further and further away from him . . .
Drowning. The worst death of all. To feel the Sea Mother squeezing the life out of you, wrenching your souls apart. And without Death Marks, they would never find one another again. He would become a Sea demon, wandering for ever, hating and craving all living things, striving to snuff them out . . .
A wave washed over him, and he coughed seawater.
I am beyond pity or malice, the Sea Mother seemed to murmur in his ear, beyond good and evil. I am stronger than the sun. I am eternal. I am the Sea.
He was so tired. He couldn't keep treading water, he had to stop, just for a little while, to rest.
He sank, and the Sea Mother wrapped her arms about him tight, tight, until his chest was bursting . . .
A silver flicker in the darkness.
A fish, he thought hazily. A small one, maybe a capelin?
And now there were more of them, a whole shimmering shoal, come to watch this big creature dying in their midst.
Down he sank, and the silver darts divided and flowed about him like a sparkling river, as the Sea crushed him in her arms . . .
A sickening jolt deep in his belly, as if his guts were being pulled loose. And now, quite suddenly, he was free of that crushing embrace; free of the cold and the darkness. He could no longer feel the net dragging him down, or the salt burning his throat. He couldn't even hear his own blood thumping in his head. He was light and nimble as a fish and like a fish, he was neither cold nor warm, but part of the Sea.
And he could see so clearly! The murkiness was gone. The rocks, the floating weeds, the other capelin flowing about him all were vivid and sharp, although strangely stretched at the edges. In some way that he didn't understand, he had become fish. He felt the tiny ripples in the water as each slender body flickered past; he felt the shoal's wary curiosity. He felt the stronger surges coming back from the rocks; and beneath them the vast sighs of the Mother.
Without warning, terror invaded the shoal. Panic coursed through them like lightning and through Torak, too. Something was hunting them in the deep. Something huge . . .
What is it? asked Torak, fighting to master their terror, which had become his own. What is it that hunts us?
The shoal didn't answer. Instead it whipped round and fled for the deep Sea fleeing the Hunter prowling beneath them leaving Torak behind. Another sickening jolt inside him . . .
. . . and he was Torak again, watching the capelin vanish into the dark.
His chest was bursting, the blood roaring in his ears. No time to wonder what had just happened. He was drowning.
Blindly he kicked out, fighting the Sea Mother's lethal embrace and the net fought him, holding him back.
At that moment, a column of white water sent him spinning sideways, and something big plunged in beside him. Powerful teeth savaged the net tearing him free . . .
Then hands were reaching down for him, trying to pull him out. They weren't strong enough he was slipping back again, scraping his palms on limpets.
With his last shred of strength he gave a tremendous kick. It pushed him a little further out of the water: enough for the hands to grab him and wrench him out.
The Sea Mother gave a sigh, and let him go.
Torak lay gasping like a landed fish. He felt the roughness of limpets against his cheek, and the grittiness of seaweed between his teeth. He'd never tasted anything so good.
'What were you doing?' whispered a voice that was oddly familiar.