Island of the Aunts

Chapter 10

He seemed to be swimming quite slowly and peacefully, though the swell he left as he moved through the water could be felt on shores a thousand miles away.

Above him, the air was filled with flocks of birds which circled him, and the sea creatures ringed him down below. The sky was a hazy gold and the sunsets were glorious and lingering, as though the sun could not bear to go down on such a sight, and the sea glittered and glistened.

As he swam, the kraken hummed, but not all the time. Sometimes he stopped and turned his head to speak to someone who was swimming close beside him and when he did that, the birds in the air fell silent and the underwater creatures moved their fins and flippers carefully, so as not to make a splash. Because the person who was swimming beside the kraken was important, and they wanted to make sure that he understood what the kraken was telling him.

Strange things happened as the kraken moved south from his Arctic hideout. He came level with an oil rig where men were working the night shift. The lights of the rig were only distant specks to the kraken but he paused and changed his Hum to a deeper one, and on the rig a man called Dave O’Hara said:

“I’m going to shut off the waste pipe.”

His mates put down their beer mugs and stared at him.

“Why? What’s got into you? It’s always on at night.” This was true. The outlet pipe spilled its filthy sludge into the water night and day.

“I dunno,” said Dave, “but I’m shutting it off.” And he did so…and the kraken swam on.

On the Island, Herbert was the first to know.

His mother had come out of the sea a few days before and had tried to nag him again.

“You must make up your mind, Herbert,” she had said in the selkie language they spoke when they were alone. “You’re not young any more; and I won’t be around for ever. If you’re going to stop being a seal and start being a man you must do it now.”

For a while, Herbert only looked at her. Then: “Listen!” he said in his quiet and serious voice.

She had listened, and she had heard it because selkies are famous for the sharpness of their ears. Not the Great Hum with which the kraken sent out long-distance messages, but the quiet, thrumming noise he made when he was patrolling the ocean.

“This is not the time to be human, Mother. I shall greet him in the water, and proudly, as a seal.”

It was because of Herbert that Myrtle understood more quickly than the other aunts how near the kraken was. She had tried to play Herbert one of his favourite pieces — a minuet by Mozart. Usually he listened to this with his eyes closed, absolutely enchanted; Mozart was his favourite composer. But now he was restless, eagerly looking out to sea, and then he shook his head once as if to excuse himself and dived into the waves.

Soon it wasn’t only Myrtle who guessed. Aunt Etta saw three snow geese — birds she had never seen on the Island before — and Coral came back from a shell hunt, dancing with excitement.

“The sea is changing colour,” she said. “Only slightly, but it’s changing.”

Then suddenly it seemed as though everyone knew that the time was coming and the last-minute preparations began.

In his bed, the old Captain sat with the telescope glued to his eyes and tried to be gloomy.

“Of course he won’t be like the kraken was in the olden days. He’ll be smaller, like the seals are smaller and the sheep, and the bosoms of the ladies. Maybe he won’t be any bigger than a whale,” said Captain Harper. But if anyone tried to take the telescope away from him he became absolutely furious and, as the kraken came closer, he scarcely slept.

As for the aunts and the children, during those days they seemed to be welded together into one band of workers who thought of nothing except to make the best possible welcome for the kraken when he came. It was impossible to imagine that Fabio and Minette had been drugged and kidnapped against their will not three weeks before. There was no need to give them orders; they knew what needed doing almost as soon as the aunts and they, like the aunts, never spared themselves.

Then one day they too heard the Hum once more. It was the kraken’s Daily Hum, his Working Hum, the Hum with which he cleaned and healed the sea, and it was getting closer, and closer…

There was only one thing which puzzled the aunts. Every so often the Hum stopped and they heard a low rumbling which might have been the kraken speaking. They couldn’t understand the words from that great distance — and in any case none of the aunts spoke Polar — but they could understand the tone, and the feeling they had was that whoever the kraken was talking to was driving him a little mad.

But who could it be? The kraken had always been a loner.

They were soon to find out.