The Tideseer’s voice died away. Leo, Mimi and Bertha stood motionless, stunned by those dreadful final words.
‘Three questions have been answered,’ the Tideseer murmured. ‘Leave me.’
She lifted her thin white hands and put them on her lap. But still the fingers opened and closed, opened and closed, and Leo realised with a shock that while she had been speaking, the water had risen to her waist. She was half-submerged now in a shadowy pool. The seaweed cloak floated around her, its yellow fronds plumping and freshening, mingling with the drifting veil of her hair.
Leo blinked. The drifting hair looked green. Was it a trick of the light? Or…
The Tideseer was now ignoring her visitors completely. Perhaps she thought they had already gone. She was breathing slowly and deeply. The slanting lines of scales on her cheekbones and forehead were broadening and brightening. And something was moving beneath the shadowy surface of the water, beneath the coiling seaweed – something large and sinuous.
Leo felt a thrill of fear. He grabbed Mimi’s hand. It was very cold.
‘We have to go,’ he heard himself say.
Mimi turned her head. Her eyes were huge and so dark that they looked almost black.
‘We have to go,’ Leo repeated.
She nodded abruptly.
‘Indeed we do!’ Bertha squeaked, splashing around to face the archway, which now looked like a miniature waterfall. ‘The sooner the better!’
Together they ploughed knee-deep through the rising water, pushing through the clutter of objects bobbing on the surface, kicking aside the seaweed that wound around their legs like flabby fingers. As they neared the archway, the sound of running water grew very loud.
‘We’ve been here much too long,’ Leo muttered.
As he spoke there was a thundering sound from outside, and the next moment, water surged through the archway, almost knocking them over.
‘Quickly!’ Bertha shrieked, as they all regained their balance. ‘Before another big one breaks!’
As he followed her and Mimi out of the cave, Leo looked back. The pool in which the Tideseer sat was hidden in shadow, but he could hear a swirling, splashing sound, as if the rising water was being thrashed to foam. He turned quickly away again, his scalp crawling.
Daylight gleamed like a welcoming beacon at the end of the sloping tunnel that lay beyond the archway. Mimi had almost reached the opening already, despite the water still streaming down the smooth rock. Bertha was close behind her, slipping repeatedly but gamely pushing on.
Leo splashed after them, his mind a blank, his eyes fixed on the patch of light.
Then there was a roar, and the light was blotted out. Foaming water rushed down the tunnel. Choking and screaming, Mimi and Bertha were swept down with it. Then Leo was overwhelmed. For a long, terrifying moment the water raged over their heads, dragging at them, threatening to carry them with it as it thundered through the archway and down into the Tideseer’s cave. Then the flood subsided, leaving them gasping and floundering like stranded fish, with daylight again taunting them from above.
‘Now!’ Leo shouted, staggering to his feet and hauling Mimi up. ‘Quick! The next one will be bigger!’
Sobbing and coughing, Mimi began wading up the streaming slope again.
‘You go next, Leo!’ Bertha cried, nudging him roughly.
Her nose was running. Her eyes were reddened with salt. Her flower-laden hat hung limp and ruined on the back of her neck.
‘Go, Leo!’ she shrieked, nudging him again. ‘I’ll follow!
Leo went. He went with his throat aching and his heart twisting in his chest. He knew that Bertha wasn’t sure she could reach the end of the tunnel before the next wave came. She was making him go first so she wouldn’t hold him back.
Ahead of him he could see Mimi silhouetted against the light. She had turned round and was looking back. He realised that she had reached the mouth of the tunnel and was standing on the sand outside it.
‘Hurry!’ she screamed, beckoning wildly.
Without slackening his pace, Leo risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Bertha was walking unsteadily about a body length behind him. Her head was down and she was frowning, placing her trotters carefully as water rippled past them, down into the cave.
The Tideseer’s pool will be overflowing by now, Leo thought. Soon the whole cave will be full. Soon she’ll have room to swim. Another wave or two…
When he looked back to the front again, he saw a sight that made his throat tighten.
A great, swelling wall of green was rising behind Mimi’s beckoning figure.
‘Mimi, look out!’ he roared.
Mimi swung round and saw her danger. He heard her scream his name as she sprang away from the light, out of sight.
With a yell Leo launched himself forward, fell flat on his stomach and, reaching out desperately with both hands, caught hold of the rock on one side of the tunnel entrance. Instinctively he ducked his head, flattened his body, screwed his eyes shut and held his breath.
And the next instant, the giant wave dashed itself against the rock with a sound like thunder. Foaming water roared over Leo, surging down the tunnel with the noise and force of a speeding train. Leo heard Bertha’s thin scream lost in the raging sound of the flood. Grimly he held on, unshed tears burning behind his eyes.
The roaring sound died. The water no longer dragged at him, but streamed over him softly, lapping over the sandy threshold of the tunnel. For the moment, the sea had drawn back.
Leo made his cold fingers loose themselves from the rock. He crawled painfully out of the tunnel, splashing through the water that trickled over the threshold. He felt fresh air on his face. He saw the sea, calmly lapping against the edge of the rocks beside him, and line upon line of white-capped breakers rolling in. When he stood up, his feet sank so deeply into the sodden sand that he found himself wallowing knee-deep in water. Ahead, another great wave was forming.
He swivelled round and peered into the darkness of the tunnel.
‘Bertha!’ he yelled, his voice breaking.
There was no answer. He thought he could see the dark gleam of water at the end of the tunnel, but he could see nothing else.
‘Leo!’ Mimi’s terrified scream was as faint and high as a seabird’s call.
Leo saw her floundering towards him through the shallow water that now flooded the sand beside the rock shelf. She was beckoning and pointing at the sea. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the great wave rising. If he stayed where he was he would be dashed against the rocks, or swept back into the tunnel.
He pulled his feet free of the sucking sand and blundered towards Mimi, the water grabbing at his ankles as if it were trying to hold him back.
Behind him, the great wave broke with a roar. Water pounded into his back, pitching him forward. He rolled helplessly in surging foam, his eyes stinging, his ears roaring. Then, with a hissing sound, the wave began to retreat. He felt himself being dragged back with it and dug his fingers into the sand, holding himself rigidly still until the danger had passed.
He sat up, dizzy and sick. Water streamed from his nose and rang in his ears. Clambering unsteadily to his feet he saw that the wave had caught Mimi too. Mimi had been swept further along the beach, and dumped closer to the waterline. She was on her knees, coughing and spluttering, utterly bedraggled. Sand was thick in her dripping hair, and a strand of seaweed had wrapped itself around her wrist. She was facing the sea, looking wildly from side to side. It suddenly came to Leo that she was looking for him.
‘Here!’ he croaked, his voice husky with salt.
Mimi’s head jerked round. Her face convulsed with a relief so intense that it looked like pain. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles in a strangely childish gesture, and stared past Leo, on to the entrance to the Tideseer’s cave. Feeling as if his arms and legs were weighed down with stones, Leo turned and looked too.
Only the top half of the opening was still visible – a dark semicircle glooming above swirling water. Then even that was lost to sight as another wave crashed over the rocks, smothering them in foam.
Bertha. A burning ache seared the back of Leo’s throat. He bent his head. Hot tears filled his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. He let them fall.
Dimly he wondered where Conker, Freda and Spoiler were, and then remembered that the Tideseer had said they were hiding from the ogre in the entrance to the Crystal Palace Gap. No doubt they would emerge soon, see Leo and Mimi alone, and come running, shouting questions, asking about Bertha.
Or perhaps the ogre would come, carrying the fish he had forced the fisherman to give him, hurrying back to his castle before high tide made entry impossible.
Leo found he didn’t care.
Seabirds cried high above him. Water ran up the beach. It reached Leo and surged past him, tugging at his knees. He ignored it, just as he ignored the wave that followed.
By the time he looked up, the rock shelf was swirling with foam, the low sands beside it were flooded, and the entrance to the cave was invisible.
Mimi’s cold hand slipped into his. ‘I can’t believe it!’ she said, her voice choked with tears. ‘Bertha…’
Leo wondered how long she had been standing beside him. He seemed to have lost all track of time.
‘She made me go first,’ he heard himself saying. ‘She was right behind me – I saw her – but the wave… She fell back…’
He stared blindly at the water that now lapped over the place where the cave entrance had once gaped, and watched as it was inundated by another wave. A larger wave was swelling further out, rising relentlessly.
He knew that he and Mimi couldn’t do anything to help Bertha now. They would be drowned, and their bodies dashed to pieces on the rocks, if they tried.
You can’t go in there. It’s too dangerous.
Spoiler had told them – had tried to tell them. Leo knew he should have listened – should have refused to enter the cave, and refused to let anyone else enter it either. He was well aware that sea caves were treacherous. But he had gone anyway – driven by the Rondo effect, obsessed with the questions he wanted the Tideseer to answer. Then, repelled but fascinated by what he had found in the hidden cave, he had forgotten his ten-minute rule.
And what was the result of his stupidity? Bertha had lost her life. All they had received in return for her sacrifice was the certain knowledge that Rondo was doomed – doomed because Leo and Mimi, by their own impulsive, wrong-headed actions, had enabled the Blue Queen to collect the dreams of the Ancient One.
Mimi shrieked and clapped her hand over her mouth. Leo blinked, stared, and his heart seemed to leap into his aching throat.
The latest wave had spent itself, and something large and pale had become visible beneath the surface of the foam-speckled water that hid the tunnel entrance. The thing was moving fast – very fast – growing larger, shooting outward and upward.
And the next moment, in a shower of spray, Bertha was soaring out of the water. Like a leaping pink dolphin with madly pedalling legs, she flew through the air in a great arc, and then, almost opposite the place where Mimi and Leo stood gaping, she plunged headfirst into the heart of the new rising wave.
The faint cries of seagulls filled the air. The tip of the wave whitened. Clinging together, Mimi and Leo clearly saw the shadow that was Bertha struggling inside the towering wall of green. And below it, just as clearly, they saw another shadow – a shadow sleek as a fish, with streaming hair and a long, supple tail – streak through the glassy water, turn, and dive, making for the open sea.
The wave curled and broke. Foam smashed down onto the rock shelf at the base of the headland. Foam surged over the low sands beside it, turning their placid waters into a churning whirlpool. Foam thundered onto the beach where Mimi and Leo stood gaping, and surged around them, knocking them over yet again.
And when at last the giant wave receded, and they managed to crawl upright, they found that they were no longer alone.
There at their feet, sprawled on the gleaming sand, panting, coughing and spluttering, was Bertha.