Tea in the farmhouse was subdued. Dad and Nain did not pretend cheerfulness now that Gruff had overheard their conversation and knew how precarious their clutch on the business and the island was, but they were still avoiding answering his questions about the farm directly. Frustrated, Gruff gave up.
Just before he went to bed, Gruff remembered the song Iolo had mentioned. He asked Nain about it.
Nain looked relieved that the question wasn’t to do with the farm. She put her newspaper down. ‘It’s not actually about the Sleepers,’ she said. ‘It’s a song about a fisherman who gets saved from a storm by a morgen.’
‘A what?’
‘They’re a bit like a mermaid. Don’t interrupt, or I’ll never remember the words.’ Nain gave him her best cross glare and Gruff managed a smile. He waited quietly, and after a moment Nain nodded to herself and murmured, ‘Yes, of course.’ She closed her eyes and sang in her clear, high voice, ‘Chwech Cysgwr ar y môr, pontio yw eu gwaith.’
‘Is that it?’ Gruff asked, disappointed. ‘It doesn’t even rhyme.’
Nain opened her eyes. ‘That’s the only bit of the song that mentions those forsaken stones. Please don’t be so rapturous in your applause.’
‘Thanks, Nain.’ Gruff patted Hywel and went upstairs, running the words through his head. Six Sleepers on the sea, bridging is their work.
Well, that was no help at all. Bridging is their work? They looked nothing like a bridge. Bridges should have two sides to them, but the Sleepers didn’t lead anywhere.
Gruff got into his pyjamas. He crossed to his window and leant on the sill, looking out at the white sea foam speckling the night. He tried to imagine not being here. The thought ripped his breath from him.
He glanced across at Blacksmith’s Cottage. Inside, Zosia and John and Mat were just beginning their new life on the island.
Jealousy burned. He shut the curtains and threw himself into bed.
Gruff dreamt of climbing out across the Sleepers. He jumped from rock to rock to reach the cloaked figure on the final stone, but when he reached it they were gone. The stone beneath his feet vanished and he was plunged into the merciless sea.
Gruff knocked on Mat’s door at ten to nine. Zosia answered it, looking bleary-eyed and clutching a mug of coffee. ‘Gruff!’ she said. ‘How lovely to see you. Are you looking for Matylda?’
Gruff nodded, smiling at Zosia’s morning zombie impression. He had been up for two hours already, sorting fleeces with Dad, Ffion and Nain. They had removed mud, beetles, hay, bits of twig and anything else they could find before sticking the loads into the scouring tanks. This was the first stage in preparing the raw fleece to turn it into yarn or felt.
In honour of Mat being new and shearing day having gone well, Dad had given Gruff the rest of the day off, on the understanding that he would show Mat the island.
Gruff was glad Dad had suggested this. His angry jealousy of the night before seemed petty in the daylight, and he realised he did want to try and make friends with Mat. He wanted to be the one to show her the island – to show her his island.
‘Matylda!’ Zosia called up the stairs, stumbling away from the door in her slippers. ‘Gruff’s come to see you!’
Mat bounced down the steps, obviously on far friendlier terms with the morning than her mum was. ‘Hi, Gruff!’ She looked hugely excited to see him, and Gruff smiled back at her.
‘Living by the sea is the best thing ever,’ she told him. Then shyness caught up with her and she twisted her hands together and looked away.
‘Um,’ Gruff said into the awkward pause. ‘Do you want to come and explore the island with me?’
Mat’s eyes shone and Gruff remembered that weird moment yesterday when he had seemed to see the sea inside them. ‘Yes please,’ she said breathlessly.
‘Dad’s made sandwiches.’ Gruff pointed at the rucksack on his back. ‘We can be out all day, and end up at the festival.’
‘What a good idea!’ Zosia said, plonking herself down at the kitchen table. ‘We were planning to go as well, once I’ve finished my top-up lifeboat training this afternoon. We’ll meet you there!’
Mat and Gruff crossed the farmyard, avoiding the shadows and keeping to the warm morning sunlight. There was a brisk breeze blowing and it was shaping up to be a fine day. Gruff deliberately led Mat away from the beach and the Sleepers and towards Bottom Field. Everything he had seen and heard yesterday sat on the edge of his mind like an uncomfortable dream, and he wanted, at least for a few hours, to avoid thinking about it.
‘Question,’ Mat said suddenly, as they walked down Bottom Field towards the sea.
‘What?’
‘Did-you-want-to-do-this-or-were-you-forced?’ Mat blurted.
‘Oh.’ Gruff was taken aback. ‘I did want to do this – Dad thought it was a good idea too, but I wanted to do it anyway.’ Because this is my island, and I don’t want you discovering it without me.
‘Thanks.’ Mat stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and didn’t look at him. ‘I’ve done the moving thing loads, and sometimes people have been told to be friendly when they don’t want to be. I’ve decided I like to know right from the start.’
‘Oh.’ Gruff looked at her sideways. ‘I’ve never moved. Is it hard?’
Mat shrugged. ‘I’ve moved six times. We started in Kraków but I don’t remember that; then London; then South Wales; then Mama met John and we lived in three different places in Manchester, and now we’re here. Nowhere’s ever really felt right. But where Mama and John are, that’s what makes home.’
Gruff nodded uncertainly. He supposed that made sense. Where Dad and Nain were, that was home. But he also felt that the island was part of him, and he could not imagine life away from it.
‘When did your family move here?’ Mat asked, as they reached the seashore and turned right along the coast path.
‘Don’t know,’ Gruff said. ‘The earliest written record’s from the sixteenth century, but we think our family’s been on the island longer than that.’
Mat gaped. ‘That’s ages!’
Her words were a cold stab. ‘We might have to move away,’ Gruff said. ‘The farm’s in money trouble.’
He saw the stricken look on her face and didn’t trust himself to say anything else. He walked ahead of her along the path, green grass to the right and rocky foreshore to the left.
At the stile across the stone wall between Bottom Field and Evan’s farm, Gruff paused and waited for Mat to catch up. He felt bad for walking away, especially after what she’d said about people only pretending to be friends.
‘Are you going to school with Mrs Ellis?’ he asked as she climbed over the stile.
‘Yes,’ Mat said, smiling tentatively. ‘The school’s on the other side of the island, isn’t it? At Trefynys?’
Gruff nodded. ‘She teaches everyone, from five to fourteen. Then you have to go mainland to do GCSEs. No school this week though. Mrs Ellis’s sister in Cardiff’s had a baby and she’s gone to visit.’
‘Who else is our age?’
‘We’re it.’
‘Wow!’
‘There’s a couple of teenagers who go ashore for school, but they’re full of themselves and don’t bother talking to anyone younger than them,’ Gruff said. ‘And the rest of the kids are under five.’
Mat laughed. ‘That’s so different from my last school!’
Gruff tried to smile but his face wouldn’t cooperate. Mat was shining with an inner, growing excitement, the joy of a new chapter in her life.
This was his island. His home. Not hers.
His jealousy was an unsettling feeling and he wasn’t proud of it. As they picked their way round the shore he distracted himself by telling Mat all the island stories he had learnt from Nain and Taid and Iolo.
He showed her the cove where the lifeboat broke up in 1958 and the cliff hollow where they’d rescued one of Evan’s new-born calves, who’d got trapped the year before. They walked out onto the spit of land where it was said that anyone who heard singing on midsummer night would either vanish or speak in riddles for the rest of their lives.
He pointed out the island rocks that had stories told about them. With the Sleepers on his mind, Gruff noticed them all as though for the first time. There was the selkie stone, and the wishing stone, and the rock that was meant to have been chucked there from Ireland by a giant.
In return, Mat regaled him with facts about ocean wildlife. He knew some of it, but her knowledge went much deeper than his, at least in terms of textbooks. From her ecstasy when they spotted a seal’s head bobbing above the waves, he guessed she hadn’t actually seen most of the animals she’d described to him in such detail.
They made slow progress, stopping to skim stones or pick up rubbish left on the rocks by the retreating sea. When Gruff spotted a fisherman’s crate upside-down in a cleft, he clambered gingerly down to retrieve it. They loaded the other bottles and cartons and bits of old fishing net into it and took it in turns to carry it with them.
‘There’s a lot of rubbish in the sea,’ Mat said quietly, as she added another bottle to the box.
Gruff nodded. ‘Humans take a lot for granted.’
By the time they came round the headland and saw Trefynys, with its sturdy houses scattered around its high-walled harbour, Gruff felt that he and Mat had moved from acquaintances to friends. It was a good feeling.
Mat blinked. ‘Are we here already? It’s not even lunchtime!’
Gruff grinned. ‘It’s not a very big island! But we don’t have to go straight there. Let’s go inland and climb the hill, then we can cross to the other coast and go to the village that way.’
Mat turned to where he was pointing. The hill in the centre of the island rose sudden and craggy, an ancient mound that refused to be cowed by the winds and the winter storms. Scrubby bushes and bracken clung to its sides, and crowning it was another of the island’s stories.
‘Is that a building on top?’ Mat asked as she squinted towards it.
‘No, it’s a massive rock,’ Gruff said.
Mat laughed. ‘Another bit of rock! I bet it has a story, too.’
Gruff grinned. ‘Yup. It’s called the Weeping Stone. It’s meant to run with water when the island’s in danger.’
‘Creepy,’ Mat said with relish. She frowned at the stone wall in front of her and the field full of black cows beyond. ‘How do we get there?’
‘No bulls in this field,’ Gruff said. ‘And no very small calves – so we should be all right. Move slowly and calmly. Also, these cows know me, and they’re friendly.’ He heaved the fisherman’s crate onto the top of the wall and swung himself up after it. Mat stared at him, her eyes popping.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I can do this.’
‘It’s good to be wary of cows,’ Gruff said. ‘But these ones are very used to people, and Evan’s never had an issue with them. Promise.’ He helped her climb over the wall and together they walked through the curious cows towards the Weeping Stone.