are you so stupid?” he demands furiously.
“Stupid! I’m trying to help you.”
“And I am telling you how you must help me!”
I take a deep breath. Keep cool, I tell myself. You don’t argue with someone who’s been shipwrecked and nearly drowned as well as injured. He’s probably – what is the word – delirious. “I can’t take you to the sea. You’d die. You need to go to hospital.”
“Look at me,” says Malin through his teeth. “Stop talking and look at me.” His hands scrabble at his sides, trying to clear away the sand. But he’s lying in an awkward position and he can’t manage it.
“Shall I help you?”
He nods furiously, and I lean forward and begin very gently moving away the sand. I’m afraid of hurting him, and just as scared of seeing whatever injury has caused all the blood. I work slowly and methodically, clearing the sand, until suddenly my fingers touch his skin. I snatch them back. “Am I hurting you?”
He shakes his head, with his lips pressed tightly together. “Go on,” he says. Cautiously, I move away more and more sand. His skin is very dark. It’s strangely thick, almost as if he were wearing an incredibly light and flexible wetsuit, made out of some material that hasn’t been invented yet. It reminds me of something but I can’t think what. “Keep going,” says Malin, with a strange smile on his face.
“I’m scared of hurting you.”
“I am strong.”
I take no notice of this. He doesn’t look very strong at the moment. I’m afraid he’ll faint, and so I dig away the sand more gently than ever. The curve of his thigh is almost uncovered—
My hand goes to my mouth in horror as I see the deep, long gash that gapes wide, full of dried blood and still oozing. It must have bled for hours. It is clogged with sand. Malin is struggling to raise himself on his elbows in order to see the wound. But he mustn’t. He’ll start it bleeding again if he moves like that—
“Keep still,” I say sharply. “It’ll be all right. It’s going to need stitching.”
“Stitching!” Malin’s eyes widen in horror, as if I’d said, “You need to be rolled in maggots and then we’ll cut your leg off.”
“That’s why we need to get you to hospital,” I tell him. I keep on clearing away the sand, in case there are other injuries. Suddenly, Malin heaves himself up, pushes my hands away and starts to brush off sand himself. As I feared, more blood oozes from the gash, but Malin won’t stop. His hands are quick and they clear the sand much faster than mine. I don’t want to look in case the storm really has torn off all his clothes and this is going to be embarrassing…
My hands won’t move. I stare, transfixed. My brain won’t make sense out of what my eyes are telling it. The shape in front of me wavers. My ears hiss as if they have got sand in them. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I’m going crazy. I’m the one who’s going to faint. It’s all right, I tell myself, it’s because you hardly got any sleep last night and you haven’t had anything to eat for hours. Just breathe.
After a long moment I open my eyes again. What I see is the same. Dark, strong, leathery skin. No, not leathery. Leather belongs to earth and this skin belongs to the sea. Sealskin. At last I find my voice, and it comes out in a squeak.
“Your— Your legs… What’s happened to them?”
“My legs,” repeats Malin with contempt. “My legs? Where are my legs, Morveren?”
Where are they? All I can see is a strong, curved shape. No thigh or knee or foot. Just a— just a—
A tail.
My brain whirs, still trying to make sense of what I see. It whirs but does not connect. He is a boy. He has no legs. Instead he has a—
A tail.
“Are you wearing a costume?” my voice bleats. Even as I hear the words, my brain knows how stupid they are. And so does Malin.
“Touch my skin,” he orders.
“I don’t want to hurt you.“
“Touch it.”
It is skin. I snatch my hand away as if it’s been burnt.
“Now you understand why you must help me to go back to the sea.”
“You mean… You live in the sea? You’re a mer… mer… person?”
“I am Mer,” says Malin, as if it’s the proudest claim that could be made by anyone.
“You are Mer,” I echo, as if I’ve been set to “repeat” mode. But Malin seems pleased with the answer.
“Now you understand and you will help me,” he says confidently. But the wound gapes wide. He’ll collapse if he goes back into the sea, even if he is… I try the word over in my mind. Mer. He’ll still die. One wave would roll him over on to the shore again, and strand him. Dolphins that are stranded can’t live long, because unless the sea is buoying them up, their own weight crushes their internal organs. Maybe it is the same for the Mer.
As if my thoughts have reached him, Malin sinks back against the dune and shuts his eyes. Without their glitter his face is drawn and lifeless. He must have lost a lot of blood in the night. I won’t think about him being Mer. I can think about all that later. First, I’ve got to make sure he doesn’t die.
“You really do need help, Malin,” I say softly, leaning over him. “Let me go and fetch my dad and Dr Kemp. They won’t hurt you, I promise.”
His eyes fly open. “They will take me away. They will imprison me and take away my freedom.”
“Malin, I swear they won’t. I’ve never heard of anything like that happening. Dad wouldn’t—”
“If humans catch the Mer, that is what will happen. Everyone knows it. We learn it before we can speak.”
“They won’t—“ I begin, but then I stop. How can I be so sure? Terrible things have happened to anyone – or anything – that is different. What if they put him in a tank and do experiments on him? People do experiments on animals, to find out about them. Scientists might say that Malin is an animal. A rare sea-mammal that needs to be studied in detail. They might say it’s research of national importance. Once they’d got hold of Malin, I wouldn’t be able to do anything. They’d brush me away like a fly.
“But… but you’re human! You speak English. They couldn’t do that to you,” I say, trying to convince myself as much as Malin.
“I am not human, Morveren. They will not give me the protection they give to their own kind. You kill among yourselves. Why should you not kill me?”
“I wouldn’t, Malin – we wouldn’t—” But I can’t meet his eyes. Chimpanzees look nearly human. They share most of their DNA with us. But we do research on them. We experiment on them and because they’re not quite human, that’s all right.
Maybe
