Free The Tide Knot by Helen Dunmore Page A

his friends—and yet all the time he’s secretly looking for Elvira. Maybe he wishes he’d never met her; maybe it would be easier for him if he hadn’t ever gone to Ingo, because he’d be able to belong.
      “Time to sleep,” says Granny Carne abruptly. She gives me a candlestick and lights my candle. “Sadie will sleep in my room tonight, Sapphire.”
      “But—”
      “No. She’s not strong yet. She needs to be with me. She needs Earth to make her strong. Don’t you feel that?
      Sadie’s an Earth creature. She loves you, and that’s what complicates it for her. Tonight Sadie will go into a deep sleep, like the earth’s winter sleep. It will heal her. You know how a bulb lies dormant in the earth all winter, Sapphire, growing strong for spring.”
      “Sadie’s not going to sleep all winter, is she?”
      “No. She’ll go through her winter healing in one night.”
      “You said Sadie loves me. I love her . I’ll look after her. I’d never let her be hurt.”
      “Never?” The candle flame leaps, and a shadow flies over Granny Carne’s face. Her eyes are hidden. “Never, Sapphire?”
      I left Sadie tied up to a post and went to Ingo. Sadie almost died…. But I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want anything to happen to her, it was just that Ingo was so strong….
      I don’t say any of these things, but Granny Carne knows them, I’m sure. She lays her hand on Sadie’s head, and Sadie doesn’t try to come to me. She looks at me with her soft brown eyes as if to say, “Try to understand. I can’t be with you tonight.”  
      The door closes on Granny Carne and Sadie. I wash quickly and jump into bed. It’s cold. I wonder when someone last slept in this bed. Maybe it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I shiver.
      I wish I had gone down to our cottage. Just to see it.
      Granny Carne says that Mum won’t mind my staying here overnight, but suddenly I feel terribly lonely, longing for Mum and Conor and home. The little slip bedroom faces the side of the hill . It’s dark and quiet and earthy. I can’t hear the sea.
      I can’t smell salt.
      I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep. How many hours is it until morning? Hours and hours and hours. Time’s moving so slowly. It seems like a hundred years since I left St.
      Pirans with Sadie this morning.
      It’s cold in here, but it’s airless too. Stifling. Like being in a cave or a burrow under the earth. It makes me feel as if there’s a lid of earth on top of me. Like being in a coffin—  
      Sapphire, stop it. You are not a prisoner. In the morning Sadie will be completely better, and we’ll get the bus back to St. Pirans. I expect Mum will be angry, even though Granny Carne says she won’t be, but I don’t care. I just want to go home.
      It’ll be better if I open the window and get some fresh air into the room. The air in here tastes so old—that was what made me start thinking of coffins. I meant to check under the bed before I got into it, but I didn’t. I always have a horrible feeling if I go to sleep without checking that there’s nothing under the bed. Or no one. But I’m not going to stay huddled in bed just because I’m afraid of what’s under it. That would be ridiculous.
      The candle! Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll light the candle.
      I’m not too keen on the shadows candles throw on walls, but it’s better than the dark. Oh, no, I haven’t got any matches.
      Granny Carne lit the candle for me. Why didn’t she give me any matches? What if I have to go down to the privy? I can’t feel my way through the cottage in the dark the way I can at home. What if I stretch out my arms and touch…something?
      I wish Sadie was here. She’s only in Granny Carne’s room next door, but it feels as if she is miles and miles away. Sadie’s getting better, that’s the important thing, Sapphire. Remember how terrible she looked when she lay down at the bus stop.
      I shiver. It’s