‘You’ll see.’ And, delighted, Marina ran back to her spot on deck.
Her father was up on the bridge and Brown had returned to his work. She watched the whales alone. And as she stood there, she fancied she could send some part of herself down into the water and hear, in the echoing cavern of the sea through which the animals moved, something astonishing. The mother was singing – in some ancient, wordless language – to her calf, and the calf understood the ocean through its mother’s voice.
All of this Marina grasped, without being able to articulate it very clearly to herself. She understood not in her mind, the way she was meant to understand multiplication or French verb endings. She grasped the meaning in her body, as a feeling, as if she were a bell being struck.
Marina took one last look at the whales. There was a language of joy and kindness and creation, somewhere in the world, she was sure. But where was it to be found? Perhaps it had got lost. Or perhaps no one else but she knew of its existence. I will look for it, she told herself. Even if it takes my whole life to find it and another whole life to learn it. She would go anywhere, follow the whales in their endless progress through their watery worlds. I’ll find that lost language of truth . . . The water shivered where the whales had dived and she followed them in her imagination. I’ll journey through the lost seas, too. I’ll learn to live without air, without light, dive deeper than anyone has ever been. I’ll find those precious words that can make a different sort of world and pluck them like pearls from the drowned depths of the ancient, sunless sea.
19
Gulls screeched a raucous welcome to the Sea Witch as she sailed into Svengejar, the most northerly port in the Grand Duchy of Finnmark.
Marina and Jones had been up at first light, excited to see land after so many days at sea. The boat slid into port, leaving streamers of white lace on the surface of the shallow green water of the harbour.
Marina leant right over the side of the boat. ‘The sea is like my mother’s dress,’ she whispered. She reached out her hand as if to stroke the water. It looked just like moiré silk ruffles. ‘She always wore green. At least I think so.’
‘That’s one of the things I’m frightened of,’ Jones said, quietly.
‘Green dresses?’
‘No.’ He elbowed her. ‘Forgetting. Not being able to remember how my mam smoothed her apron or how she tied her shawl. Her fingers were always so red and sore.’
‘You won’t forget.’ But Marina had – if she’d ever known.
‘But the more I think about her, the harder it is to hold the memory fresh in my mind.’
As they spoke, the water became agitated, as if it were being stirred from below.
‘Do you think there are creatures down there?’ Marina asked Jones. It was a foolish thing to ask, but she suddenly wanted to know what he thought.
‘Of course there are!’
‘But . . . like us?’
Jones turned to face her. It had been a mistake to say anything, she knew. ‘Are you touched in the head or something?’ he asked.
‘It’s just that there was something in the nets . . . Something that didn’t look like a fish. Trenchard said it was a sea witch . . .’
‘All sorts come up from the deep. We can’t know everything.’
‘Perkins said his grandfather had seen a mermaid. And Brown sings that song about how the mermaid sings a boat to the deep.’
‘There’s lots of sailors say they’ve seen mermaids . . .’
‘But do you think they exist?’
‘I don’t suppose so. Any more than unicorns or dragons. I mean, if dragons did really fly around stealing gold and breathing fire, someone would have seen them by now.’
‘They’d be pretty hard to miss.’ Marina laughed. She stared harder at the sea and the patterns being made by the Sea Witch’s progress. ‘I wish mermaids did exist,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’
‘Because I think that I could swim with one . . . What? Why are you laughing?’
‘You? Swim? That didn’t go very well for you the last time you went in the water!’
‘But they’d give me a magic shell or something that would mean that I could breathe underwater. Wouldn’t you want to swim through the endless, infinite oceans? With a mermaid? Perkins’s grandfather said they are very beautiful. The one he saw was sitting on a rock, combing her hair.’
Jones shuddered. ‘Remember, Marina. I didn’t want to go down the mines. I like breathing air and looking at the sky! I’m not interested in listening to mermaids singing their sad songs. They’re no friends to sailors. They’re dangerous company.’
‘I don’t care! I want to swim with the mermaids and follow the path the sea is showing me.’ During the days she had spent on the Sea Witch, Marina had had a creeping feeling that if she could just find a way of understanding the sea, its moods and its movement, it would take her where she wanted to go. She shook her head. It was all very confusing and sounded silly now she’d tried to say it out loud.
Jones stared at her, astonished. ‘The only path you’ll find with that attitude is down to the bottom of the ocean!’
‘To the Drowned Sea,’ Marina whispered.
‘What did you say?’
‘The place where the creature in the nets came from.’ That gentle, trusting beautiful face. ‘A whole other realm, where there are no dreadnoughts and wars. I’d like to go there one day.’
‘There’s no such place, Marina.’
‘There might be. It’s a place that sailors talk about: we have a map at home which my father drew for my mother, and it has the Drowned Sea marked on it.’
Jones gave her a disbelieving look.
‘My father did say that it was just a made-up place,’ Marina admitted. She frowned. ‘Although he’d drawn Pechorin Island on the map as well.’
Jones shrugged. ‘I dunno.
