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

her warm golden back. Minute by minute Sadie’s coming back to herself. Already her fur feels sleek, and her eyes are brighter. She turns her head and looks at me as if to say,
      “It’s all right, I’m not going to leave you.” Why are dogs so forgiving? My eyes are prickly, but I’m not going to cry.
      Sadie hates it when I cry.  
      Here’s the gray stone cottage that looks like part of the granite hill . Granny Carne pushes open the door and we go inside. There’s just one large room downstairs, painted white, with a stove to heat it and a few splashes of brilliant color from the tablecloth and cushions. The room is very simple but not bare. Everything looks worn smooth by years and years of use. I remember the last time I came here, with Conor, that hot summer day when Granny Carne first told us about our Mer inheritance. It was the day Conor talked to the bees. That seems a long time ago.
      “I’ll bring down an old blanket for Sadie,” says Granny Carne. “She’ll need to sleep the night here, to get her strength back.”  
      Granny Carne disappears upstairs before I can protest.
      Sadie can’t stay here overnight. We’ve got to get back before Mum realizes I didn’t go to school today.
      “You’ll be staying over too, Sapphire,” says Granny Carne, returning with a folded blanket. It doesn’t look like an old blanket. It’s made of thick, creamy wool, and it looks as if it came off Granny Carne’s own bed. She lays it down by the stove for Sadie.
      “I can’t stay, Granny Carne. I’ve got to get back before it’s dark. Mum thinks I’m at school—”
      “Sadie needs you here.”
      “But Mum—”
      “I’ll get a message to her. Soon as you’re settled, I’ll walk down to the churchtown and speak to Mary Thomas. She’s got a telephone.” Granny Carne says this as if telephones were something rare and undesirable. “Your mother will know you’re safe enough with me.”  
      Granny Carne has two bedrooms upstairs, a large one and a small er room, which she calls the slip room. That’s where I’m going to sleep. I’m resigned to it now; I can’t leave Sadie. There’s a china washstand with a jug of water that Granny Carne brought in from the trough where the spring rises. There’s no bathroom. When Granny Carne wants a bath, she heats water on the stove and fil s an enamel bathtub, which hangs from a hook on the wall . It’s quite small with a shelf inside to sit on. Granny Carne calls it a hip bath.
      “Try it yourself, my girl,” she says, but I say that a wash will do me fine. There’s no toilet in the house either. The outside toilet, which Granny Carne calls the privy, is so cold that I hope I don’t have to go at night. She hasn’t even got any toilet paper, only cut-up squares of the Cornishman stuck on a nail.
      It gets dark early. Sadie doesn’t want to eat, but she drinks some water. Granny Carne has gone down to the churchtown, so Sadie and I are alone in the cottage. I wonder what Mary Thomas will think when Granny Carne tell  s her we are staying here. As far as I know, nobody has ever stayed overnight at Granny Carne’s cottage. People respect Granny Carne, but they’re also afraid of her because of all that she knows. There are a lot of stories about the way she can see into the future and heal wounds that ordinary medicine can’t cure. I don’t mean sicknesses like cancer; I mean sicknesses that are inside people’s minds. Granny Carne has a power with those.
      I still don’t know whether or not I really believe that Granny Carne can see into the future. I’m sure that she can see and understand things that ordinary people can’t. She has gifts that come from Earth. Years ago she might have been caught and burned as a witch because she knows too much.
      That’s what Dad always said.
      I follow Granny Carne in my mind as she goes down the path to the churchtown and then as she takes the road round to the track that