Grinvill's Tin

18: Grinvill's Tin

At the moment when Incarna turned to gloat at Erica, the light from the moon dimmed. A terrible gloominess descended. At the same time as this, the sea climbed into the air. The waves just rose and rose and rose. It was the prophesy Sedna talked of. Erica was like an inconsequential fly held fast in a web. Pinned in her cave, heart squeezed and palms sweating, she looked on as the ocean began towering upwards away from the seabed. 

She could not let this happen. She had to escape and help her father and Hamish. She tried to shout, but no sound came and her silence was swallowed in the deafening roar from the sea.

 She was not the only one who was terrified at what was happening. The Finfolk were whispering frantically, racing aimlessly, hopelessly, to escape the impending torrent of sea. They did not get far, though, for onto the scene stumbled none other than the young Giant. Gone was his earlier artlessness, though: he was so much taller than Erica had remembered - or had he perhaps grown while he slept in the barn? He loomed over the rushing Finfolk, exuding strength and determination. There was something almost mythical about him, and the Norse god Thor suddenly came to Erica's mind. 

'Land where you will, golden tin,' he boomed, his voice managing to beat the slapping rush of the sea as the waves ascended ever higher into the air. 

 'One by one you brought us here. First the girl human, then the boy, now me. You spat the humans out, though, and left them. But with me you have stayed, and I know what I need to do...' He swung his hand back in a great arc, then thrust it forward, releasing a glinting object. Grinvill's Tin cut through the air. 'Now it is time. Use your power to save Lorna!' 

The tin hit the ground and a low rumbling noise started up, the vibrations rapidly growing in volume. A great light tumbled out. It was piercing, too terrible to look at. It radiated out across the shore and transformed the upside down ocean into an electric blue wall of water: the huge waves were hung, suspended above the shore. The scattered spray was transfixed too - the droplets looked like dazzling diamonds. They glimmered and glinted around the ominous mass of sea, but were unable to fall. 

The boom and the flash from the tin not only stilled the movement of the water, but also caught the Finfolk mid-flight. They halted instantly. But this was only for a moment, for swiftly the tin sucked in each of them: one by one, it swallowed them all up. The last one to be pulled in was Incarna, and then the lid slammed itself tight shut. 

 The only people left on the shore were her father, Hamish and the Giant. Of Mrs Withy, all that remained was a heap of green seaweed, piled high, glistening with hundreds of flies crawling on its surface. 

Erica didn't care now what she'd heard Incarna say about the Odin Stone. She knew he was wrong. It was he who was deluded to think that it was nothing: she'd felt its heat and seen its silver slivers come alive. She knew it contained the power of Odin. It must be put back in the Temple - now was the hour, the hour when the sea was rising and the sky itself blowing to the four corners of the universe. 

 Even though the waves and the sea-spray were caught mid-air, Erica was able to move. She went over to Hamish who was bent over their father, holding his hand. Gone were his halucinations of before. He now saw his father as he really was: weak, barely breathing. He faced Erica and said that he couldn't leave him and he asked her to go on her own to the Temple. Would she be able to manage? She was not at all sure she could. She seemed to have lost all control over her body: she found it hard to reach her hand out without it visibly shaking - and she could actually hear her teeth rattling, lower jaw loosely knocking into her upper jaw. She had thought that was only something that happened in stories... 

 She detested the thought of leaving their father. How could she do that so soon after finding him? And worse yet to leave him in that state, his life drained by the Finfolk, his skin blistered by the whale's poisonous acids. Yet she couldn't stop any longer to consider, not while the ocean was still suspended, vast waves hanging in the sky and, in their midst, an evil black hole. She had to go.