Free Stormswept by Helen Dunmore Page A

it swirls around his shoulders. He looks from me to Jenna, and back again.
    “There are two Morverens,” he says. He shows no surprise and his face remains a watchful blank. Suddenly I’m intensely aware of what this must be like for him, with Jenna and me peering down at him over the edge of the pool. The water is deep and salty, but it’s still only a pool, with rocks all around it. He cannot escape. The stone channel that connects King Ragworm Pool to the big sea-pools is far too narrow. King Ragworm Pool has saved his life, but it is still a prison. They will take me away. They will imprison me and take away my freedom. If humans catch the Mer, that is what will happen.
    I move back a little, so that I’m not looming over him. He glances again from my face to Jenna’s, as if we’re something written in a code that he doesn’t understand. But Malin, I already suspect, is one of these people who prefer to wait for answers rather than ask questions. Yesterday he was much too ill to notice the first thing about us that everyone notices: that we look the same. Or “identical”, as people call it, but I can’t stand that word. No two people are identical, even if their DNA says that they are.
    “This is my sister, Jenna. She helped you to the pool yesterday.”
    “But she is another Morveren.”
    “She looks the same, but she isn’t the same. She’s a completely different person. Don’t the Mer have twins?”
    “I have heard of them,” says Malin guardedly, in a way that makes me think that twins may not be that popular among the Mer. “But they do not possess the same body, as you do.”
    This sounds creepily vampiric, so I say quickly, “Jenna and I each have our own bodies, just like everyone else. How is your – your tail?”
    “It is healing,” says Malin, as if he’s closing a door. He’s even more wary than he was yesterday. Maybe it’s because Jenna’s here, or it could be because he’s fully conscious now, and back in his own element. This is salt water, even if it is only a pool and not the open sea.
    “He’s tired, Mor. We should leave him to rest,” says Jenna.
    As usual, she’s right. Malin’s eyes are heavily shadowed and we can both see what an effort it is for him to stay on the surface. He’ll be weak after losing so much blood. All the same, I don’t like the way Jenna has to point it out, and talk about Malin instead of to him.
    “Are you hungry?” I ask him. “We’ve brought you some food.”
    “Food?”
    “Yes – an apple and sausages, and some of our mum’s egg custard,” I begin, but out here, with Malin, the list sounds ridiculous.
    “Human food,” says Malin slowly. “No, I am not hungry. The water feeds me.”
    “Do you think he eats plankton?” whispers Jenna.
    “ Shut up ,” I say through my teeth.
    “I wasn’t joking, Mor.”
    What do the Mer eat, I wonder. Fish, maybe? I could get hold of fish for him. For a second I have a weird image of myself standing on the edge of the pool holding out a fish, as zoo-keepers do to seals. I crush the picture. This is all wrong. We’re speaking the same language but we’re not communicating. If I were in the water, not up here on the rock, then maybe he would trust me a little. Jenna’s presence holds me back. She doesn’t want any of this to be happening. Her uneasiness spreads through us both, and I’m sure Malin is picking it up.
    “We’ve got to go. Someone might see us,” says Jenna.
    No one can see us, unless they climb right up on the rock. Why is she so nervous?
    “I heard something,” she says, turns, ducks down and wriggles to the edge of the rock on her stomach. She peers over cautiously, keeping her head down. I hear it too. A shrill whistle, blown on the wind. I crawl into place beside Jenna. A few hundred metres away, at the other end of the bay, a dog is racing along the sand towards us.
    “He’s coming this way,” says Jenna. “It’s Shadow.”
    Shadow is the Kemps’ Irish