Her mother must have felt the pain, too, because she pulled Marina close. And then Marina heard a wondrous sound: her mother was singing to her, and it wasn’t a song of sadness and pain. The music, in all its shining complexity, was a song of becoming, a song of the ocean, a song of the self, and it was made from a language in which it was impossible to lie. This wondrous song was made from just one word: Marina.
Hours, days, or years later – Marina couldn’t tell – the song came to its end. A single tear formed at the corner of her mother’s dark, expressive eye – round and pale and translucent, like a pearl made from ice. Her mother took it in her slender fingers and held it out to Marina.
And the moment that Marina closed her hand round the precious gift, she felt herself pushed upwards on a rising current of water. She tried to resist, but the current was too strong. She looked down to see great gates swing open at the bottom of the sea – and beyond that, a beautiful, ancient sea garden. Her mother sank down through the gates, no longer in pain, no longer in anguish, but released from all care and suffering. The gates swung closed. Marina panicked. She wanted to be with her mother. But she could not get her body to stop floating upwards towards the light. A wisp of song as the gates locked. As the notes faded away, Marina realized that she could not follow her mother to that ancient, lost sea: her own skin was too warm for such icy waters and her eyes too bright for the dark.
The Drowned Sea would never be her realm.
A sharp pain in her chest. ‘I must breathe!’ she gasped. ‘I must go home.’
She couldn’t see her father. She couldn’t see Paddy. Had they left without her?
‘Wait!’ she cried. ‘Wait!
A black wet nose. Triangular ears of the softest fur. One blue eye, one brown, and a quizzical, curious gaze. ‘Paddy?’ Marina hugged the dog to her chest.
‘Finally!’ Jones’s voice. ‘You’ve decided to wake up.’
‘But where am I?’ Marina’s head was heavy, as if it were filled with water.
‘You’re on the Sea Witch. Where do you think you could be?’
‘But I was in the water . . . I fell in . . . I thought I would drown . . .’
‘I knew you were still alive. I tried to get Finchin to understand, to stop him sailing back to Portsmouth, but he wouldn’t agree. So I went to the Chief Engineer. I told him you couldn’t have perished, see. You must still be somewhere on the ice . . .’
‘How did you know that?’ Marina looked up at him, his face intense, but proud.
‘I could still hear your voice in my head.’ He smiled. ‘Remember I told you I’d lost the sound of my mam’s voice? But not yours. I could still hear you, catch the tone of you . . . I just knew that we would find you if we turned back. The Chief Engineer agreed. We locked Finchin in his cabin. Turned the Sea Witch round.’
‘You disobeyed an order?’
‘I’m going to get it in the neck, I know,’ Jones said, looking entirely thrilled at the prospect. ‘Although Finchin agrees I was right. I don’t think he’s so angry with me. But, still. The navy can’t have their men making up the orders.’
Marina uncurled her fist. There, lying in her palm was a large, translucent pearl.
Jones whistled in admiration. ‘It looks like it’s made of ice. It must be pretty rare, and probably worth a bit. No wonder you kept tight hold of it all the time you were ill.’
A pearl made from ice, Marina thought. Or perhaps a mother’s tear.
Perkins poked his face into the door of the cabin. ‘Commander! Come here! The little lady’s awake!’
Brown now appeared, his face all smiles. ‘Oh, but you gave us a real scare, old girl. Running off like that! Thought you’d caught it and no mistake.’
The men made way for her father. He smiled at her, and sat down on the bed and took her hand.
‘What happened?’ Marina asked ‘How am I here? And not . . .’
‘Drowned?’ her father asked. ‘You got caught up in the ropes. Paddy got his teeth into the net and I managed to pull you out. Luckily you had only been in the water for a matter of seconds.’
‘Seconds?’
‘Of course. Had you been in the water any longer, you would have drowned. Even though we got you out quickly, you caught a terrible chill. We thought we’d lost you. You’ve been delirious for the last two days. Muttering about a song you’ve heard and saying your name over and over as if you were worried you’d forget it.’
‘But . . . How did—’
‘How did we get away from Miss Smith?’
Trenchard peered in. ‘That might have something to do with me.’
‘Stay away from me!’ Marina cowered and tried to hide behind her father. ‘You traitor!’
‘Trenchard – a traitor?’ Her father shook his head. ‘Not at all. He’s the most loyal man in the British navy!’
‘But he was working for Miss Smith!’
‘After a fashion. But he was mostly working for me. It never occurred to Miss Smith that if you rely on a traitor, that traitor might not be entirely honest with you!’
‘Double agent!’ Trenchard beamed. ‘Waited all my life to say that. I mean, spying – that’s pretty basic stuff. But once you’re working for both sides, it takes it up to a whole other level!’
‘We needed someone who could speak that tricky Mordavian tongue without an accent. And Trenchard had a Mordavian mother and an English father: it made him the perfect choice for someone Miss Smith thought she could manipulate.’
‘So Miss Smith is Mordavian,’ Marina whispered. ‘She’s not from Northumbria at all.’
‘She tried, but she couldn’t quite shift her accent,’ Trenchard said, looking pleased with himself. ‘Unlike me. I’m able to pass as a native in both worlds. Happy to eat pickled cucumbers and sour
