The Seventh Tide Read Online Free PDF Page B

revolting details of her last cold. He draped the Professor carefully round his neck, reassured by the warmth, worried by the lifeless way he hung there.
    ‘But you don’t want to hear about that,’ Gladrag interrupted herself abruptly.
    The Queen jerked round wildly, unsure of what hadhappened. But there was nothing in the feeble little figure of Eo that suggested treachery. The Kelpie felt she was being tricked, but couldn’t quite see how. Just exactly what kind of threat was a child wearing a fur collar likely to pose?
    She glared at the crowd but found no clues there. Nothing but sea of blank G expressions faced her –some deliberate, some the result of not having a clue and some stemming from being in a state of near-catatonic shock. The Queen’s eyes narrowed to slits, but she still couldn’t see through to whatever their deception was.
    Finally she gave up.
    ‘I am tired of your squirming,’ she said in a voice thick with menace. ‘Let the Challenge begin.’
    ‘No,’ said Hibernation Gladrag. ‘Not quite yet.’ The Head of the G turned her back on the Kelpie. She walked calmly to the nearest cluster of her people and spoke to them quietly – so quietly no one else could hear. From there, the word went out through the crowd, a wave of whispers, until everyone knew what they had to do. Throughout the crowd, hair of every colour and texture coiled itself serviceably out of the way and, grim-faced, the G began to leave.
    The danger was old and unremitting. The souls of the G were so full of life that demons of every variety never gave up hope of breaking through to such a luscious world. So the G were prepared. If the first line of defence was breached, there was a second plan, a contingency plan – a worst-case plan.
    Change! Scatter! Hide !
    Spreading out across the isles, the G would find formsthat were camouflaged, changing into the unnoticeable shapes of life that are easy to miss. One more sprat in a shoal, or limpet on a rock. A midge among millions, or a mouse snug among the heather roots. But what about the children of the G, who hadn’t yet grown into their shape-shifting abilities? On the backs of dolphins and whales, they would be taken and laid away in secret caves, in a self-induced cold sleep. They would lower their heart rates and slow their breathing until they were as near to rock as a living thing can become. In this state they would wait, and hope for a miracle.
    The G practised these plans regularly and with some care, to be ready for the worst-case scenario no one ever believed they would see. With a word, Gladrag had set the plan in motion. This is not a drill. This is not a drill.
    In a shorter time than seemed possible, the crowd of G had gone. The beach and the cropped grass of the dunes were empty. Only when Eo and the three were the last remaining, did Gladrag turn her attention back to the Queen of the Kelpies.
    ‘Let the Challenge begin now ,’ she said sweetly.
    The Queen looked as if she were about to explode but there was nothing she could do. There was nothing laid down in the ancient Rules to control the movement of bystanders. Her own people were contained, but the slippery G… The Head’s expression was bland and blank. For a long moment they stared at each other, but it was the Kelpie who broke the contact first.
    With a snort, the Queen turned on her heel and stalked back across the sand. When she was right underneath the looming slanted side of the vortex she paused andthen, without warning, thrust her hand into the maelstrom. It must have been the G’s imagination that made them think the gigantic phenomenon flinched away from her touch. And the scream they heard could perhaps be explained by some law of physics that governs the interruption of water moving at impossible speed and under unbearable pressure. But it seemed much more as if the vortex screamed like a creature whose flesh had been torn. The figures within shrieked violently as well.
    The sounds