you have hatched...
Phelim, who is fourteen, and his friend Alexia (she's also fourteen) are standing in front of a fisherman's cottage, on the seafront. Standing on the roof of the cottage is a young man called Sweeney, who is about nineteen.
They're all staring at an older man sitting on a bench outside the house. He's got a pipe in his mouth, but it long since went out. He's just staring at the sea, and when Alexia waves her hand in front of his face, he doesn't move. There is, in fact, no response from him to anything at all.
There are others like him. His wife stands frozen at the kitchen window. Other fishermen sit frozen outside their houses.
Sweeney calls down from the roof: the merrows, he says, have stolen Uncle Murdo's soul. They must fetch it back then, Alexia decides, and she goes to look for a boat.
Sweeney tells them that a drowned village lies under the sea, not far out. He finds a way to leap and leap and ends up clinging to a mast as Alexia and Phelim head to the dock where a small boat is tied up.
As they row out, Sweeney explains that the merrows might be thought of pleasantly - the leprechauns of the sea - if it were not for their collecting of things. Like souls, which they keep like rabbits in their homes under the water.
Alexia talks a little about her Uncle Murdo, and how he's been a fisherman all his life, like his father before him, and his father before him. YOu can't take a fisherman away from the sea, she says. What belongs to the sea will always return to the sea. It's lore. That's why fishermen and sailors are buried at sea. If they were buried on land, the sea would come to claim them back.
After they get out aways, Sweeney tells them to listen for a bell. Alexia keeps rowing, until they hear the sound of distant bells. It's the church bell, she tells him, in the drowned village, clanging with the movement of the water. Here they must dive.
Phelim can hear his sister's voice nagging in his head: What are you doing, silly boy, trying to drown yourself? No such thing as merrows. No such thing as fairytales. Grow up, Phee McStupid!
He shakes off the thought as they lower a rope over the side, then Phelim and Alexia have a competition to see who can hold their breath the longest. Phelim wins, and over he goes, hauling himself down by the rope until he's among houses in the drowned village. He looks around for a bit, then swims up for air.
Alexia tells him to look for lobster pots. Souls glow green, she's heard, bright and shiny, and they keep them in lobster pots. So down he goes again.
And there they were: Uncle Murdo, and his wife, and his neighbours, green and glowing souls trapped in lobster pots. Phelim struggles to open the pots, and eventually has to use his penkinfe.
As the pots open, the green souls fly up towards the sun, rising like a cloud of butterflies and heading for their mortal bodies. Phelim follows them, lungs aching.
As he surfaces, a little way from the boat, he sees them, the merrows. Not sea-like creatures as he had imagined, but more like gladiators with nets and tridents. They hover over the water between him and the boat, but they're torn between attacking him and recapturing the escaping souls.
Some chase the souls, some try to overturn the boat as Phelim strikes out towards it. Sweeney roars with rage, leaps down at the merrows, draws a knife and attacks them with such ferocity that they are soon driven off. The others are too late; the souls have returned to their mortal forms.
Sweeney sees them off, and as they plunge back into the water, the merrows howl. Phelim clambers into the boat and they head back to the shore, exhausted.
Phelim wonders if Murdo will remember what happened, but when they get to the house, everyone seems perfectly normal, as if that time never happened. Murdo's wife invites everyone in for tea... and even Sweeney comes in. Although he climbs to the top of a cabinet and sits there to eat cake.
Murdo and his wife don't seem to notice that there's anything wrong with this.
