The Tide Knot. Helen Dunmore

lights my candle. “Sadie will sleep in my room tonight, Sapphire.”

      “But—”

      “No. She’s not strong yet. She needs to be with me. She needs the Earth to make her strong. Don’t you feel that? Sadie’s an Earth creature. She loves you, and that’s what complicates it for her. Tonight Sadie will go into a deep sleep, like the earth’s winter sleep. It will heal her. You know how a bulb lies dormant in the earth all winter, Sapphire, growing strong for spring.”

      “Sadie’s not going to sleep all winter, is she?”

      “No. She’ll go through her winter healing in one night.”

      “You said Sadie loves me. I love her. I’ll look after her. I’d never let her be hurt.”

      “Never?” The candle flame leaps and a shadow flies over Granny Carne’s face. Her eyes are hidden. “Never, Sapphire?”

      I left Sadie tied up to a post, and went to Ingo. Sadie almost died… But I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want anything to happen to her, it was just that Ingo was so strong…

      I don’t say any of these things, but Granny Carne knows them, I’m sure. She lays her hand on Sadie’s head, and Sadie doesn’t try to come to me. She looks at me with her soft brown eyes as if to say, “Try to understand. I can’t be with you tonight.”

      The door closes on Granny Carne and Sadie. I wash quickly, and jump into bed. It’s cold. I wonder when someone last slept in this bed? Maybe it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago. I shiver.

      I wish I had gone down to our cottage. Just to see it. Granny Carne says that Mum won’t mind my staying here overnight, but suddenly I feel terribly lonely, longing for Mum and Conor and home. The little slip bedroom faces the side of the hill. It’s dark and quiet and earthy. I can’t hear the sea. I can’t smell salt.