‘So what do we need to do?’ Mat asked, sword in hand. She knelt on the edge of the jetty near the lifeboat slip, Gruff beside her. The morning wind was half-heartedly throwing raindrops at them after a wet night. They had escaped together to see if they could finish what the blacksmith had started. Excitement fluttered like a trapped bird in Gruff’s chest.
‘She ducked the sword in and out of the sea seven times,’ Gruff said, ‘and then she held it underwater and hit it with the hammer seven times.’
Mat stroked the carved handle of the hammer, lying on the wooden boards between them.
‘I think you should do it,’ Gruff said. ‘The blacksmith did it all herself, and you’re the only one who can touch the sword.’
Mat wrapped her fingers round the hammer’s handle and made a small noise of surprise. Gruff saw that the tendons in her wrist were taut with the effort of trying to lift the hammer, but it did not budge.
‘That’s strange,’ Gruff said. ‘Dad and Nain could pick it up.’
Mat let go of the sword hilt and it scattered as water down into the sea. She wrapped both hands round the handle of the hammer and yanked hard. The hammer came up without any problem at all and she fell over backwards, laughing. ‘Oops!’ Hammer in hand, she bent down and fished for the sword again.
‘Got it,’ she said, but then the hammer fell out of her grasp and hit the jetty with a dull thunk. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It got heavy.’
Gruff frowned and picked the hammer up, turning it over in his hand. ‘So you can’t hold the hammer if you’re holding the sword?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
A little surge of pleasure flared in Gruff’s fingertips. Maybe he was needed after all. ‘Perhaps we can do it together,’ he said.
Mat grinned, nodding first towards the hammer, and then to the fluid hilt in her hand. ‘You’re the land and I’m the water.’ Her smile faltered.
‘You okay?’ Gruff asked.
Mat shrugged. ‘Yeah, fine.’ She looked down at the hilt in her wet hand. ‘I just … water doesn’t really belong anywhere, does it?’
‘Oh … I don’t know.’
Gruff wasn’t sure what she meant, or why it would make her look so forlorn. He couldn’t see anything upsetting about being the only person able to hold a magical sword. He hefted the hammer in his grip. ‘Do you want to try, then?’
‘Yeah.’ Mat bent down to the slapping wavelets and plunged the sword’s invisible blade and decorated hilt into the cold water. ‘One.’ She drew it out and plunged it back in. ‘Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.’
After the seventh plunge Mat turned to look at Gruff expectantly. Gruff shuffled closer, gripping the hammer. He aimed for where he thought the length of the sword had got to and brought the hammer down as hard as he could against the resistance of the water.
There was no connection, no ringing note. The hammer met nothing but sea, and the determination of Gruff’s swing almost carried him straight over the edge of the jetty. He pulled himself up with difficulty and tried another swing, this time very close to the hilt, where he knew there should be sword blade to connect with.
Nothing.
Gruff sat back, dripping seawater and raindrops.
‘It didn’t work.’ The disappointment was all the worse because he’d been so excited since he’d pulled the hammer from the Weeping Stone the day before. He’d even pushed aside thoughts of Mam and leaving – even ignored the fact that Mam had said she would ring, and had not – because the thought of finishing the sword had kept him going through the night, through the seven o’clock hen feeding and egg collecting, through helping out in the wool barn, through the walk to the jetty, which they had chosen as being the safest place to get out above deep water without fear of falling in.
‘The jetty,’ Gruff said.
Mat was slumped, rubbing her wet hand to get some feeling back into it. ‘That’s where we are,’ she said unnecessarily.
‘What if that’s what’s wrong?’ he asked, clutching for straws of hope. ‘What if the place is important?’
Mat stopped rubbing her fingers. ‘The seventh Sleeper?’
‘But it’s not there anymore,’ Gruff said, half to himself. He eyed Rosie Small’s little rowing boat bobbing against the jetty behind them and felt a bit queasy. ‘We’d never get a boat to stay in the right place – the current’s too strong and there’s no way to anchor one.’
‘We could swim,’ Mat said quietly.
Fear trickled down Gruff’s spine. ‘But you can’t swim,’ he said. ‘I mean, I know you did the other night, but you forgot who you were … it was scary. And I can’t swim in that current either.’
‘I remembered I’m me after, though.’ Mat turned to him, her brown eyes steady and serious. ‘If I did it then, I can do it again.’
Gruff shook his head, slowly. ‘But, Mat –’
‘My choice,’ Mat interrupted. ‘I’m going in. You don’t have to come.’
‘I do if you can’t hold the hammer.’ Gruff huffed crossly. ‘You weren’t there the other night, Mat.’
‘Yes, I was!’
‘But you don’t remember!’ Gruff thought of the girl on the beach, full of the power of the sea. The girl who had turned from him to walk back into the waves. ‘What if you don’t remember again?’
‘My choice,’ Mat said. She stood up, scratching at the irritated skin on her neck. ‘Coming?’
Gruff watched her walk away from him up the jetty. Going out to the Sleepers again was a terrible idea. They were lucky to have survived once. And what if Mat forgot who she was completely? What if she swam away and didn’t come back?
But what would happen if they failed to finish the sword? What might the storm bring? What might Dylan do?
‘Wait!’ Gruff called, and he ran to catch up with her. ‘We’ll need wetsuits.’
*
Gruff dug the wetsuits out from the bottom of his jumper drawer. Luckily there were two. He’d got a new one for his birthday because the old one was getting a bit tight. He squeezed into his old one and let Mat have the brand-new one. It was her who needed maximum movability. If all went well, he shouldn’t have to do much swimming at all.
‘We need to tell someone where we’re going,’ Gruff said, when Mat came out of the bathroom wearing his new wetsuit, turning her plaits into a ponytail to keep her hair out of the way.
‘What’ll we say?’ she asked. ‘We’re just going in the sea, even though I can’t swim and Gruff nearly drowned the other night, no biggie.’
Gruff snorted. It shouldn’t have been funny, but her sarcasm was on point. Mat grinned. ‘You know they’ll just tell us not to.’
He sucked air through his teeth and imagined himself explaining to Nain and Dad what they were planning. At last he settled on sticking his head over the wool barn door and calling, ‘We’re just going down to the beach, Dad.’
‘Iawn,’ Dad said, without looking up from the carding machine. Okay. ‘You’re not planning to go in the water, are you?’
Gruff’s heart dropped, but he was saved from either telling the truth and being banned or having to lie by Tim at the loom saying, ‘Did you hear the total raised at the festival for the lifeboat?’
‘No,’ Dad said. ‘Did they get enough for the renovations on the slipway?’
Gruff left them to it, feeling guilty and relieved.
‘All right,’ he said, meeting Mat in the middle of the yard. ‘Let’s go.’
As they came to the head of the beach, the pulsing pull of the Sleepers drew Gruff’s eyes. To his horror, he saw little Prem half-way up the first of them, scrabbling for hand and foot-holds, scaling the mountain-like stone as though his life depended on it.
Before Gruff could start to run, he saw Prem’s mother, Deepa, splashing through the ankle-deep water to her son, her basket of seaweed swinging on her arm. She reached Prem just as he was nearing the top of the Sleeper and plucked him off it. He came away like an angry starfish, waving his arms and legs and shrieking. Deepa retreated with him to the other end of the beach, Prem in floods of noisy tears.
Gruff shivered. Prem, like any island child, knew that you never, ever climbed on the Sleepers. At least he was too young to be let out of the house on his own. But what if there was a next time and he slipped away when his mum and dad weren’t looking? What if he climbed out on the Sleepers when no one was around to save him from himself?
First Rosie, then Mat, now Prem. The stones were calling and nobody was safe.
Deepa was heading back towards the fishermen’s cottages, Prem held firmly by the hand. He was still wailing and looking back at the tempting line of the Sleepers.
‘We should wait for her to go inside,’ Mat said. ‘She might try and stop us.’
‘She would try and stop us,’ Gruff agreed. ‘And she’d be right.’ They watched until Deepa and Prem had disappeared inside their house, where Deepa would be turning the seaweed into her legendary laverbread and Prem would hopefully forget about the Sleepers for a while.
Gruff and Mat kicked their shoes off and put their towels under Gruff’s raincoat to keep them dry, and then ran down the sand and straight into the sea before either of them could change their minds. Gruff clutched the hammer tightly in one hand, and Mat reached out for his other one. He steeled himself before wrapping his fingers round hers as the water reached their stomachs and the waves buffeted them, trying to knock them off their feet. The barrage of water from Mat’s touch pounded against Gruff’s lungs. He forced himself to breathe in and out as normal, not letting the sensation trick him into thinking there really was water inside him.
Mat turned to him, grinning wildly. ‘This feels so … so right, doesn’t it?’ Waves leapt in her eyes and Gruff’s heart lurched.
‘Not for me,’ he said, forcing the words out. ‘It feels all wrong. Do you know what your name is?’
Mat laughed. ‘Mat!’ She flipped off her feet and onto her back, and with the smallest flick of her spine she was moving through the water. Gruff found himself dragged after her, kicking desperately, the hammer weighing him down. He felt like a newborn lamb, all arms and legs and no control over any of them.
Mat stopped and Gruff looked up to see the sixth Sleeper towering high above them. He couldn’t tread water with the hammer in one hand and his other in Mat’s, and he only got a glimpse of the stone before the water closed over his head. He felt the tug of the current against his body and swallowed the panic rising in him, as Mat readjusted her grip, wrapping one arm tightly around his chest and yanking him up to the surface. He broke through and found that they hadn’t moved a centimetre. She paddled her feet slowly in the water, keeping them both steady.
Gruff’s teeth were chattering but Mat’s cheeks were flushed with excitement. She drew her left hand out of the water, the hilt shining in her grip. ‘Here we go,’ she grinned. She plunged it into the water and pulled it out, and plunged it in again. And again, and again. ‘Ready?’ she asked as she ducked the sword under for the seventh time.
Gruff brought his hammer hand round and drove it towards the invisible blade, just below the hilt.
The hammer passed straight through.
‘No!’ Gruff hissed. ‘No.’
‘Gruff!’ Mat shouted.
Gruff looked up from his failed hammer strike and saw a great wave drawing itself up from the swell, sweeping towards them, three times the height of the waves around it. Within the wave he saw the face of a man, contorted in a silent scream of pain and fury.