Gruff led Mat into the living room and sat her down in Nain’s high-backed, winged armchair, hundred-year-old horsehair exploding out of the armrests. He fetched the small electric fire from the corner, plugged it in and switched it on. He crouched down and watched the coils burn orange-red as they warmed. He was so cold the heat was almost painful. His clothes hung heavy on him and his trainers squelched. Shudders ran through him. He was leaving a damp patch on the hearthrug, and Mat must be doing the same to the armchair. He turned to look at her. Her eyes were closed and her breath steady in sleep.
The danger of her doing a runner back to the sea seemed to have passed. Perhaps he should wake her to go home and get dry?
‘Gruff?’ Nain poked her head round the living room door. She flicked the light switch and Gruff squinted up at her. Her sleepy expression became wide-awake and seriously angry. ‘Gruffydd! Have you been swimming?’
‘Er…’ Gruff got to his feet, his eyes darting towards Mat. Nain followed his gaze.
‘And you took Matylda?!’ she shrieked.
Mat woke up. Very few people could sleep through a bout of Furious Nain. ‘What?’ she said. She scratched at her neck and looked surprised to find seaweed in her hair.
‘I didn’t take Mat,’ Gruff protested through his sandpaper-sore throat. He cast about for words, trying to decide whether Nain would believe the truth. ‘And I didn’t mean to go in the sea –’
‘You didn’t mean to go in the sea?’ Nain repeated incredulously. ‘Are you telling me you left the house in the middle of the night and accidentally wandered into the ocean with a girl who can’t swim?’
Nain was at her sarcastic best and Gruff suddenly couldn’t face the conversation. ‘I’m not lying,’ he snapped. ‘And we’re being really rude,’ he added in English, ‘because Mat doesn’t speak Welsh. Mat,’ he said, turning to her fiercely, ‘you didn’t miss much. Nain’s just not listening to me.’
Mat stared at him. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ she whispered. And she burst into tears.
‘Gruffydd ap Owain,’ Nain hissed. ‘What have you done?’ Pulling her threadbare dressing gown off, she swept across to Mat and wrapped her in it. ‘Oh, cariad, you’re soaked to the skin.’
Gruff stood paralysed in front of the electric fire, the warmth licking his clammy legs and his sore throat burning. Mat was sobbing. How could she not know what she was doing here? She had walked with him all the way back from the beach.
‘Gruffydd,’ Nain snapped. ‘You go and get this poor girl’s family right now.’
Dreading their reaction, Gruff did as he was told.
By the time he had brought a groggy, shocked and confused John and Zosia back to the farmhouse, Dad was awake and making tea and Nain had bundled Mat off to the bathroom for a hot shower. Zosia had an armful of clean, dry clothes and Gruff showed her where the bathroom was before retreating back downstairs.
Dad and John were clustered round the boiling kettle, frowning at it as though it was a crystal ball that could give them answers. Gruff paused at the kitchen door and wished he could run back out into the night. He wanted to explain, but Nain’s outburst and Mat’s tears seemed to have put a cork in his words and he could only stand in silence and wait for whatever came next.
Dad glanced up and saw him. ‘Gruff!’ He crossed the kitchen in two steps and put his hands on Gruff’s shoulders. ‘You’re soaked.’
Gruff nodded.
Dad gave him a long, quiet look. ‘We’re going to need to hear what happened, Gruff,’ he said. ‘But you don’t have to tell us right now.’
Gruff nodded again. He didn’t seem to be able to do anything else.
‘Next!’ Nain said behind them. Her bony hand gripped his shoulder and Gruff found himself swept up the stairs and into the bathroom, passing a pink-cheeked and dry-clothed Mat coming out, Zosia’s arm clasped protectively round her daughter’s shoulders. Mat met Gruff’s eyes and said quietly, ‘I did this, didn’t I?’
Gruff didn’t have a chance to answer. Nain was on a mission to get him warm and dry. A hot shower and a change of clothes later he found himself on the lumpy brown sofa, sandwiched between Dad and John and clutching a mug of intensely sugary tea. Warmth, relief, safety and tiredness came upon him in waves. He might have drifted into sleep if it wasn’t for the daggers Nain was giving him across the room. She and Zosia sat in the two armchairs and Mat was on Zosia’s lap, their arms round one another in a tangle of affection. Dad had his arm around Gruff, and Gruff leaned his head against Dad’s shoulder and wished he could just close his eyes.
‘You have a choice,’ Nain said, breaking the tea-sipping silence. ‘You either tell us what happened now, or you tell us what happened tomorrow. Either way, we’re going to be sitting here for a while longer, to make sure neither of you are about to go into the sort of shock that will require an air ambulance.’
She was looking directly at Gruff as she spoke, and he felt his words shrivel again. What could he say? The whole truth and nothing but the truth? That would involve a stone that moved on its own, a trip to a distant past with a ghostly blacksmith, and jumping into the sea after Mat only to be saved by her impossibly good swimming skills.
‘I…’ he croaked, swallowing to try and ease the pain in his throat and still not entirely sure what words were going to come out.
‘It’s my fault,’ Mat said, her voice muffled, her face buried in her mum’s hair. She sat up and Zosia winced at the shifting weight on her legs. ‘I went out on the Sleepers. Gruff told me not to. But I did. And Gruff saw me from his bedroom window and came down to stop me. But I fell in and Gruff jumped in and saved me. I’m sorry. I really am.’
Gruff frowned and Mat gave him a glare that said shut up. What was she doing? First she seemed to have lost her memory, now she was giving him conspiratorial looks.
‘Gruff, you should have told us instead of going down yourself,’ Nain snapped. But she did not meet Gruff’s eyes and he knew she was regretting jumping to conclusions.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think.’
Dad squeezed his shoulder gently. ‘If anything like that happens again, you tell us, all right?’ he said. Gruff nodded.
‘Thank goodness you were there,’ John said. ‘Mat can’t swim. Did you know that?’
‘We sort of saved each other,’ Gruff mumbled, heat climbing up his neck and taking his ears prisoner.
Slowly the adults relaxed and began to smile and chat about swimming lessons and sea safety. Gruff’s exhausted muscles ticked and jumped and his mind was equally agitated. Mat had half-lied and half-truthed. She had glared at him not to contradict her. Why? Did she remember after all? Did she remember swimming like a fish?
And at last, his brain was back in gear.
Gruff had seen someone else swim like that. He had seen them that very night, under bright sunlight and hundreds of years in the past.
Dylan. The man-fish the blacksmith had struck, who had torn the waves into fury. He had swum in the same way Mat had, hardly flicking his legs or hands, sinuous and powerful and sleek.
Gruff stared at Mat and forgot about his tea. He watched her sip from her own mug and smile at something her mum said, and he watched her come over to the sofa and receive a hug from John, and sit cross-legged on the floor and allow her eyelids to droop as the adults talked. He tried to imagine her being like that man-fish: scaled and impossible, a creature of the sea.
Surely she couldn’t be? She was clearly human. Dylan – well, he’d been quite a lot fish.
Gruff was too tired for this. His thoughts became steadily muzzier and his eyes closed of their own accord.
‘Gruff?’ Dad shook his shoulder and Gruff swam groggily out of half-sleep. Everyone was standing up. Mat looked as sleep-confused as him, her hand clasped in John’s. The new neighbours were on their way out, and Gruff stumbled to the front door with the leaving party.
As the adults said their last pleasantries, Mat tugged on Gruff’s jumper. He looked up to see that her eyes were clear. No leaping waves and no tiredness either. She was serious and awake.
‘Gruff, you’ve got to tell me what happened,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know what happened.’
Zosia and John set off across the yard, Mat hanging back though her hand was still in John’s. ‘Gruff!’ she whispered, an edge of panic in her voice.
Gruff nodded. ‘Okay,’ he croaked.
Mat turned away and leaned into John’s arm, letting him lead her round the corner of the farmhouse and out of sight. Gruff watched them go.
So that was it. She didn’t know what had happened.
There were two Mats: one could not swim and one swam like a fish. And the one who could not swim did not remember the Mat that had walked straight into the waves without a backward glance.