Have you seen these women? it said at the bottom of the posters.
But of course no one had, because women like that do not exist. And so the days passed and still the police had no clues to go on. The Aunts’ Agency had closed down and it seemed as though the stolen children and their kidnappers had vanished off the face of the earth.
Chapter Eight
Aunt Etta woke and stretched and immediately felt very strange. Something had happened. And the something was important: perhaps the most important thing that had ever happened to her.
She got out of bed and went to the window. Her long grey pigtail hung down her back; her hairy legs and bony feet stuck out from under her flannel nightdress, but her mud-coloured eyes were as excited as a young girl’s.
Yet there was nothing unusual to be seen. A flock of gulls were out fishing; the sun was just beginning to come up behind the two islands to the east.
‘All the same, there is something,’ thought Aunt Etta, and the excitement grew in her. ‘Only what?’
Then she realized that the excitement was coming from her feet. It was being sent through her toe bones, and up her ankle bones and through her body.
For a moment she felt quite faint. Could it be …? But no … that would be a miracle; she had done nothing to deserve anything as tremendous as that.
The sound of heavy breathing made her turn. It was Coral. She too was in her nightdress, folds of it wrapped round her like a bell tent, she too was barefoot and she too was panting with excitement.
‘Oh, Etta,’ she gasped. ‘I feel so strange.’
Coral’s long hair, which she dyed an interesting gold, hung down her back; she looked like a mad goddess. ‘I feel as though … only it can’t be, can it? Not after a hundred years?’
‘No … it can’t.’
But they clutched each other’s hands, because it hadn’t stopped, the extraordinary, amazing … feeling.
‘We must wake Myrtle. She’s musical.’
But there was no need to wake Myrtle. Myrtle did not wear a nightdress; she wore pyjamas because she often went out before dawn to talk to the seals and she thought that pyjamas were more respectable. They were made of grey flannel so that she did not show up too much in the dusk and for a moment her sisters did not see her lying on the floor with her face pressed to the threadbare carpet.
‘Myrtle, do you feel—’ her sisters began.
But before she could answer, Myrtle lifted her head. They had never seen their sister look like that.
‘Can it be?’ began Coral.
‘We must go up the hill,’ said Myrtle and she spoke like someone in a dream. ‘We must turn our faces to the north.’
‘But dressed,’ said Etta, coming to her senses for a moment. ‘Not in our nightclothes. Not even if—’
But her sisters took no notice and Etta herself only had time to put on her dressing gown before there was a thumping noise from next door. It was the Captain’s walking stick banging on the wall and it meant, ‘Come at once.’
The sisters looked at each other anxiously. If he had heard it too it could strain his heart. So much excitement is bad for old people.
And when they first saw the Captain they were very worried. He was lying slumped on his pillows, his eyes shut, and he was trembling so much that the whole bed shook. But when they came up to him, they were amazed. Captain Harper was a hundred and three years old, but he looked for a moment like a boy.
‘I’ve heard it,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve heard it and I’ve felt it. Even if that’s all, even if there’s no more than that, I’ll die happy now.’
‘We’re going on to the hill, Father,’ said Etta. ‘We’ll tell you as soon as—’
The door burst open and Fabio and Minette came running into the room. They had tumbled straight out of bed, bewildered and still half asleep, and followed the sound of voices.
‘Something’s happened,’ said Minette. She was wearing quite the silliest nightdress that even her mother could have bought, covered in patterns of dancing elephants and picnicking zebras, but with her dark hair wild about her shoulders and her bewildered eyes, she seemed to be listening to music from another land. ‘We were woken …’
‘It’s a feeling … only it isn’t only a feeling.’ Fabio shook his head, trying to understand. ‘It’s a sound, except it’s all through us. We’re not making it up.’
The three aunts and the old Captain looked at the children, and nodded. It was a pleased nod, and it meant that the children were all right; they were proper ones, without a touch of a Boo-Boo or a Little One. Lambert, they were sure, would have heard and felt nothing.
‘You’d better come with us. Get your shoes on at least.’
Outside the feeling was stronger. Minette and Fabio, struggling for words to describe it, were lost. They followed the aunts on to the turf path which led to the hill. Minette wore Myrtle’s shawl round her shoulders — no one had taken time to dress properly.
The ‘feeling’, whatever it was, was growing stronger. It came through the soles of their feet, but also now from above, from everywhere. If they’d been doubtful whether it meant anything, the creatures would have put them right at once. In the dawn light the birds wheeled round the cliff in a frenzy of agitation. The seals, usually drowsing on the point at this hour, were all in the water, swimming towards the northern strand — and in the lead was Herbert. Like all selkies he slept with one eye open: he had been the first to know that something incredibly important was going to happen and at once he had put aside his everyday worries. What did it matter now whether one was a man or a seal? He moved through the waves like a torpedo — and close behind Herbert came his mother.
The sky was changing. It was filled with strange colours which belonged neither to the dawn nor to the sunset; colours that the children had never seen and afterwards could not describe.
On her great nest, the boobrie honked with all her power … honked and stirred … and flapped her wings, trying to fly off after the others, but she couldn’t, with the eggs so heavy and stuck inside her … and she pushed her muscles together, pressing and pressing as she tried to become airborne …
The stoorworm came out of the lake and slithered over the ground, following the aunts and the children. He was no longer the muddled creature who had lost control of his far end. He moved like a great serpent, controlled and lean and fast.
Down by the house the goats butted their horns against the walls of their sty, and broke free and went galloping along the shore like mad creatures.
The door of the mermaid shed opened and Loreen and her daughters slithered across the rocks and plunged into the water.
‘To the north,’ she shouted, holding Walter in the crook of her arm, and they set off for the wild strand beneath the hill.
‘Wait for me, wait for me,’ shouted Old Ursula, but they had gone and she was left beating her tail furiously against the side of the sink.
The Sybil had come out of her cave. The mucky old prophetess was not talking about the weather now. She was writhing and moaning, her face had turned blue and her hair was standing on end. ‘It’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘It’s going to happen.’
But the aunts did not wait for her to tell them what. They raced panting up the hill with the children beside them, and all the time the feeling was getting stronger, was going through every cell in their bodies.
They reached the top of the hill — and then they were certain. From all sides it came now, like the breath of the universe. Below them the sea boiled against the northern shore; the mermaids, their troubles forgotten, trod water and stared towards the horizon; the seals made a semicircle, and those who were more than seals, who had been human once, could be seen bowing their heads.