Read Online The Tide Knot by Helen Dunmore - Free Book Online

she could go no more. She near burst her heart with fear for you.” Sadie is struggling to her feet. I rush to support her.
      “No, let her stand. She’s best alone for now. Give her a few minutes, and we’ll be able to walk her up to mine.” I don’t ask any more questions. To tell  the truth, I’m a little afraid of Granny Carne today. She knows too much. She makes me have thoughts I don’t want to have. I know people come to her with their troubles, but maybe they don’t always like the answers they get from her. She won’t let me touch Sadie. Surely Granny Carne can’t believe I’d ever hurt Sadie?
      “Yes, she’s been on a long journey,” repeats Granny Carne. “You ever seen a man near frozen after he comes out of the sea half drowned, after he’s been clinging to a piece of wreckage for hours? You don’t sit him by the fire.
      You let him warm gently, so his body can bear it. Sadie will find her way back to life, but she needs time. She needs Earth around her, Sapphire. The breath of Ingo is too strong for her, in her present state.
      “How’s your Conor?” Granny Carne goes on as we set off walking slowly up the footpath. Sadie pads along cautiously, as if she’s not sure yet that her paws will hold her up.
      “He’s fine.”
      “Happy in St. Pirans?”
      “I don’t know. I think so. He wants to be happy there anyway.”
      “And you don’t?”
      “It’s not so much that I don’t. It’s that I can’t. Granny Carne, I didn’t mean to hurt Sadie.”
      “I know that. But it’s hard to see a way clear in all this. I don’t see it myself yet. Only that there’s a reason why you and Conor are as you are. It’s for a purpose. Could be that a time’s coming when there’ll be a purpose in the two of you having this double blood. There’ve been others. The first Mathew Trewhel a was one: he that left the human world and went away with the Mer. Your own father was another. But I never knew any with the Mer blood and the human divided so equal as it is in you. Half and half, you are. It must be the way the inheritance has come down to you. It weakens in one generation and grows strong in the next.”
      “Do you mean that Conor and I are exactly half Mer and half human?”
      “Only you, my girl. Only you. The Mer blood is not near as strong in Conor, and it never will be, for he fights it down every day.”
      “I know.” Now I understand better what Conor meant when he said, If you really struggle, you can stop yourself taking the next step.  
      “Conor doesn’t want to be half and half, does he?” I ask.
      “He wants not to be Mer at all .”
      “Maybe he does.”
      Except for Elvira, I think.
      “He fights it,” says Granny Carne. “Your father didn’t fight so hard. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
      “No.”
      “You’re old enough to know now, my girl, that things don’t just happen to us. Somewhere in us we agree to them. We let things happen, though even those closest to us might think we’re still fighting.”
      I feel cold and tired. I know what she’s saying. She’s telling me that my father wasn’t snatched away against his will . And I do know that, really, after all these months. It is seventeen months since he left us now and his boat was found empty and upturned, wedged in the rocks. Everyone else thinks he drowned. Only Conor and I keep the faith.
      For a long time I could convince myself that some mysterious force was preventing Dad from communicating with us, but I can’t make myself believe this anymore. If Dad wanted to speak to me, he would.
      “Nearly there,” says Granny Carne. “She did well .”
      “Brave girl,” I say. “Brave girl, Sadie,” and I make my voice warm and full of praise because she deserves it, even if my heart is cold and tired. Granny Carne has been walking between Sadie and me, but now she steps aside. Sadie presses up to me, the way she always does. I stroke