Gruff sat there for some time, listening to the calls and laughter behind him as the survivors of the final Wounded Sea storm set about the long job of cleaning up. He collected the pieces of rubbish that had melted from Dylan’s wound – a scrap of fishing net and a plastic bag, a bottle cap, a disposable latex glove – and held them, washed clean by the sea. Then he waded ashore and placed them up on the coast path with the rest of the storm rubbish that was being collected, ready to be sorted and recycled.

Nain descended on him, dressed in a dry pair of trousers and a checked shirt that were obviously borrowed from Iolo. ‘You … I’m so angry … I’m … thank you.’ She pulled him into a tight, tight hug. ‘You brave boy. And I saw you just now, out there, with him – was that him? Is he gone?’

Gruff nodded. ‘He’s gone. He’s free.’

One after another, and sometimes two or three at a time, the other adults came over to give him soggy, laughing hugs, heady with relief and joy for their lives. Only John was quiet, and he drew Gruff and Nain to one side.

‘What about Matty?’ he whispered. ‘What about my Mat and the lifeboat?’

Gruff could only shake his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Mat?’ Nain snapped, shocked. ‘You don’t mean she’s –’

‘News!’ Iolo hurried up to them, waving his walkie-talkie. ‘The lifeboat’s safe, and all on board her. They’re escorting the fishing boat they went to help back to Trefynys – it was Gareth Jones and his son out there, but all safe now.’

Relief burst in Gruff’s chest. ‘What about Mat?’ he and John asked as one.

Iolo’s grin turned slowly to confusion. ‘Mat? Surely she didn’t go out with the boat?’

John and Gruff exchanged glances. ‘No,’ John said eventually. ‘She didn’t.’

Gruff searched for words, to help himself as well as John. ‘She should be fine,’ he said. ‘So long as she keeps on being Mat the morgen. She’ll be okay. She can breathe underwater.’

Nain gasped and Iolo’s eyes fairly popped out of his head. ‘What?’ he yelped. ‘Mat can what now?’

Gruff left John to explain and ran back to the water. ‘Dylan!’ he shouted. ‘I don’t know if you can hear me, but my friend Mat, the morgen, is still out there somewhere. Is she okay? Do you know if she’s okay?’

The waves sucked and shushed innocently, the morning sun glinting off their edges.

‘Dylan!’ Gruff called again. ‘Dylan Ail Don, ni thorrodd don o dano erioed; a wnewch chi siarad â mi?’

Gruff counted his heartbeats. Five. Ten. Fifteen. Hope ebbed quietly away with the retreating tide.

But then the water a few feet from him began to swirl and pulse with invisible life. Gruff ran forwards, splashing through the shallows. The disturbance was around him, little eddies and whirlpools swishing in the stillness. It looked a little like a meeting of deep water currents, where fish are brought to the surface and seals and gulls feast, but it was only as wide as Gruff’s outstretched arms. The droplets of Dylan, brought together at Gruff’s call.

‘Hello,’ Gruff said, hoping that this new form of Dylan could understand him. ‘I’m worried about Mat. She’s the morgen who went to help the lifeboat but she hasn’t come back. I just want to know she’s okay.’

The eddying water quickened, taking on a new urgency. It tugged at Gruff, seeming to want to carry him away.

Do I trust him? Gruff thought. And then, Yes. He pushed off from the sand into a front crawl. Dylan’s droplets gathered themselves around him and sped him out from the beach.

They swam together away from the cottages, past the headland and round the coast. Swimming with Dylan was like flying. Gruff brought his arms round and kicked his legs like he normally would, but the power around him surged him forwards as though he was turbo-charged. He grinned with exhilaration and wondered if this was how Mat felt when she swam as a morgen.

Gruff sensed a change in their direction and looked up to see that they were entering the bay that held the jetty and the lifeboat station. There was no movement at the station – the lifeboat was still escorting Gareth Jones’s fishing boat back to Trefynys.

‘Is she here?’ Gruff whispered to the water. Even as he asked the question, he felt the purpose of the droplets around him fading and saw a dark head that was not a seal bobbing in the middle of the bay. It was her. Mat was here; Mat was safe.

‘Diolch! Diolch, Dylan. Thank you, thank you, thank you!’

The morgen had brought him to the morgen. The swirling, energised water dispersed and Dylan returned to the sea.