The Crossing of Ingo
Helen Dunmore
The fourth spellbinding story in the critically-acclaimed Ingo series, by prize-winning novelist Helen Dunmore.Sapphire, Conor and their Mer friends Faro and Elvira are ready to make the Crossing of Ingo – a long and dangerous journey that only the strongest young Mer are called upon to make. No human being has ever attempted this thrilling voyage to the bottom of the world. Ervys, his followers and new recruits, the sharks, are determined that Sapphire and Conor must be stopped – dead or alive…
THE CROSSING OF INGO
by
Helen Dunmore
Copyright (#ulink_37c3e784-7881-5db0-b51f-09e3ce85b4dc)
HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
First published in hardback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2008 First published in paperback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2009
Text copyright © Helen Dunmore 2008
Helen Dunmore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007464135
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007373253
Version: 2017-03-28
Dedication (#ulink_a2a135e1-65bc-5eae-b51d-ade463e85875)
TO JODI AND GABRIEL
Contents
Cover (#ubc240a7f-d92b-5403-8097-c92b39eefa5c)
Title Page (#u1a6b389a-78d0-5555-b966-4bc20247f3d5)
Copyright (#ub10fe283-d6ef-5acd-ba99-f540464c62e7)
Dedication (#u54d6b500-539d-5533-a54a-a6e9bff7026f)
Chapter One (#ue15d830f-76b3-5fba-bf9a-79152115fcfc)
Chapter Two (#u2e03d802-579a-53b7-8c61-2d10eb02552a)
Chapter Three (#u015b2a6b-29f6-5c31-9a62-9158b912c539)
Chapter Four (#uc1f319ed-13c8-54a8-981c-41915ea0ce95)
Chapter Five (#uf4bae8fa-17b7-57a0-85f5-5d9582ca4594)
Chapter Six (#u3ff6406c-8b91-5ee9-9f2d-a5b560e48963)
Chapter Seven (#u0fcf191f-3d78-5c23-87c0-087533d72a90)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
In this Series (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b340be22-4af1-508f-aa53-d42b5b4c8c29)
“I see that the guardian sharks have returned,” says Ervys. Both he and Saldowr glance upwards. Far above them, shadowy shapes patrol, gliding across their territory and then turning with a whip of the tail.
“Yes, they are back,” says Saldowr. His face is watchful. “They gave you no trouble on your journey to the Groves of Aleph?”
“No trouble at all,” says Ervys with cold satisfaction. “The sharks and I know each other well.”
“Perhaps a little too well,” murmurs Saldowr.
Ervys doesn’t reply. His powerful tail stirs as if he’d like to lash out at Saldowr, but he does nothing.
“The sharks also know it is their duty to guard the Groves of Aleph,” continues Saldowr, still watching Ervys closely. Ervys’s face remains expressionless, but his broad, muscle-packed shoulders give a small shrug. Saldowr lets it pass.
Ingo needs every drop of strength that Saldowr possesses now. Ervys grows bolder day by day. The wound that almost killed Saldowr when the Tide Knot broke has been slow to heal, but he cannot allow himself to relax for a second. Ervys has lost one battle, but this is war and there are many more battles to be fought. He has more followers now than ever. Already too many of the Mer are forgetting what they owe to the human children who ventured to the Deep, fought the Kraken in all his shape-shifting terror and defeated him. They listen to Ervys rewriting the past and telling them what their future should be. Saldowr has his own spies hidden among Ervys’s supporters. Ervys sways the crowd with his speeches just as the sea sways great ropes of oarweed.
“Human beings have always longed to rule over Ingo! We know from the gulls that humans are growing ever more ambitious and greedy for Ingo’s wealth. They are no longer content with polluting our world and killing its inhabitants. Now they scheme to trap the tides and give themselves the tides’ power. They plot to build metal monsters and plunge them down through the waters of Ingo, so that their arms can beat the sky and destroy the birds that travel over Ingo. Who knows what humans will plot against us next? They must be driven out of Ingo! If we are forced to shed their blood, then so be it!”
Saldowr knows how Ervys’s voice thunders out over the crowds, and how they roar back their agreement.
“Fight for what is ours by birth and by blood! Defend Ingo! I offer myself to you as a leader who will sacrifice the last drop of blood in his body for the Mer and for Ingo that is ours by birth!”
The crowd roars again. Saldowr’s spies make sure to join in the applause. They gaze at Ervys with a look of blind faith, so they won’t stand out from the crowd as Ervys’s gaze sweeps over it.
“Follow me, and I will make you free,” declares Ervys. “You will rule your own lives. You will not need Saldowr or those half-and-halfs who dare to meddle in the affairs of the Mer.” There’s a murmur of protest, but Ervys is on to it immediately.
“You say that they saved your own little ones from the Kraken? You think that’s a reason to be grateful to them? I tell you, the Kraken only woke in the first place because it felt the polluting presence of humans in Ingo. I tell you again, the Kraken is sleeping now. His lair lies deeper than the trenches of the Deep. You have no cause to fear him any more. The Kraken will not wake. Saldowr tells you stories to keep you afraid, so that you will cling to him like children. But you are Mer!”
“Yes, Ervys, we are Mer!” bellows back a hand-picked group of Ervys’s closest supporters.
“Then will you join with me to cleanse Ingo of humans?”
Again the group yells its answer: “Cleanse Ingo of humans! Cleanse Ingo of humans!”
More and more of the crowd join in. But not everyone, Saldowr’s spies tell him. Not yet.
“The time has come to fight!” Ervys’s voice thunders above the tumult. “If we are weak, the humans will take over Ingo as they have already taken over the whole of the dry world. We must fight for what we love! Fight for what is ours by birth and by blood!”
“Ours by birth and by blood!” roar his supporters.
As the clamour swells Ervys holds up his hand for silence. Instantly there is a hush.
“Will you take me as your leader?”
A second of silence, and then a crash of voices: “Ervys! Ervys! Ervys!”
And now Ervys is here in the Groves of Aleph, in Saldowr’s own domain. He is growing bold – or more likely, he wants something. Saldowr will not challenge Ervys yet. The tide is running too strongly in Ervys’s direction, sweeping too many of the Mer with it. This thing must run its course if Ingo is not to be torn apart.
“So tell me, Ervys, exactly why you have come,” says Saldowr aloud. He speaks calmly, and a flicker of scorn crosses Ervys’s face. He wants a fight, but Saldowr refuses to give him one.
Ervys tosses back his thick mane of dark hair. Light ripples over his body, emphasising the blue tinge of his skin. His eyes glitter.
“I am here because it is time to gather the cohort of young Mer who are of age to make the Crossing of Ingo,” says Ervys. “The Assembly must choose which of them will make the Crossing.”
“Indeed,” agrees Saldowr. “I am not forgetful of my duty, Ervys. I shall make the Call as I have always made it, and the Mer will hear it as they have always heard it.”
“As you have always made it,” Ervys repeats. His eyes flash mutinously. “Saldowr, I have come to the Groves of Aleph alone, without protection. I have shown trust in you.”
“I am honoured,” says Saldowr politely.
“I have done this so that you and I can speak frankly. There is no one to hear us. We two can drop the pretence that things now are as they have always been. The world is changing, Saldowr! The Mer must change with it. They must learn to find the old in the new.”
“You are right,” says Saldowr. His eyes gleam with mischief as he notes the surprise that Ervys cannot quite hide.
Then Ervys’s expression darkens. “You are no friend of change, Saldowr.”
“I tell you, Ervys, you are the one who wants to shut the door against the future, not I.”
“It’s time for the Mer to have a leader who has their true interests at heart,” replies Ervys.
Saldowr laughs softly. “Is that the sum of the change you are talking about, Ervys? A leader? And who might that be, I wonder? We Mer have never needed leaders. We have had our guides and Guardians, and they have served us well. The Mer were glad enough to accept my guidance when the Kraken woke and their hearts were cold with fear.”
“But the Kraken is sleeping now. There is nothing more to fear from him.”
“Tell me, Ervys, what makes you so sure of that? Everything that sleeps knows how to wake again, except the dead. The Kraken, I think, is alive.”
The Groves appear to have grown darker. Perhaps heavy black clouds have swept over the sun, high above in the Air. A restless current ripples the folds of Saldowr’s cloak. Faro, hidden behind a heap of rough boulders, presses himself flat against the sand. He must not move. If Ervys even suspects that he’s here, listening…
And Saldowr must never know. He sent Faro away to the borders of Limina, to give company to an ancient Mer woman who was about to leave Ingo and enter the other world, from which no one ever returns. Fithara had always liked Faro. She used to pop sea grapes into his mouth when he was little. Saldowr said, “Stay there with Fithara until I send for you.”
Faro sat with her for a while, until Fithara grew tired and closed her eyes. He had never disobeyed Saldowr before. He knew he ought to stay, but fear had been gnawing in him all day. Saldowr had tried to get him well away from the Groves of Aleph. Faro was sure there was a reason for it. Saldowr would never have sent him so far away just because he wanted to be alone. If Saldowr ever seemed to need solitude, Faro would vanish in the flash of a tail.
There must be some danger that Saldowr didn’t want him to share. But if there really were danger, Faro’s place was at Saldowr’s side. Even if it went against Saldowr’s command, he must go back.
As he swam down towards the Groves he came face to face with the guardian sharks who patrolled against intruders. Faro was used to them. He’d known them since he was too young to talk, and they knew him. They understood that Faro had his duty with Saldowr. The sharks knew about duty because theirs was inherited from their ancestors. They must challenge any stranger who might threaten the Tide Knot or its Guardian.
But today the sharks seemed to have forgotten that Faro wasn’t a stranger. Instead of giving way immediately as normal, the lead shark blocked Faro’s way and stared at him with a cold, malevolent eye. However well you think you know a shark, there is a place inside it that you can never reach. Faro knew that. Sharks are not swayed by sympathy or pity. They carry out their duty without emotion. For a few seconds, as he gazed into the eye of the lead shark, even Faro was afraid. The shark’s jaws moved, as if he were thinking. Faro hung still in the water, his heart racing. Slowly, very slowly, the cold eyes seemed to remember who he was. Grudgingly the shark moved aside to let him pass.
Everything in the Groves appeared silent and deserted. For a moment Faro wished he had not come back. Saldowr would be very angry at his disobedience. But, thought Faro, I am Saldowr’s scolhyk and his holyer. I have to be with him if he needs me. Cautiously Faro swam forward, keeping in cover behind weed, boulders and the uprooted trunks of huge branching weeds. For once he was grateful for the devastation left behind when the Tide Knot broke. It hadn’t all healed itself yet and the debris gave him plenty of hiding places. He glided from thick, tangled weed to the shelter of a pile of rocks, and settled himself to wait, his tail curled under him.
Faro did not hear them coming, but suddenly they were there, close together, in front of Saldowr’s cave. Ervys and Saldowr. Faro’s fists clenched in shock and anger. How had Ervys dared to return to the Groves of Aleph? And why was Saldowr talking to him so calmly? Ervys had no right to be there after the way he’d plotted against Saldowr.
Saldowr should have banished him when he had the chance, thought Faro. Ervys was weak then, after we defeated the Kraken. If Saldowr had used all his powers, we would never have seen Ervys again.
But he must not be disloyal to Saldowr, even in his thoughts. Whatever Saldowr had done or not done, he had good reason. It will be part of a pattern that is too big for anyone else to see, thought Faro hopefully.
Ervys looked formidable. Resolute. His defeats seemed to have done nothing but polish his anger and his hunger for power. Faro looked at the tall, powerful figure, and dread rippled through him. But Faro refused to be afraid. He was about to fling back his head defiantly, but just in time he remembered that he must be still and silent. There would be plenty of chances to confront Ervys, he told himself. Now he must watch, and listen, and wait…
“…the Kraken, I think, is alive,” says Saldowr, and Faro watches the Groves darken.
“Are we going to talk about the Kraken for ever?” demands Ervys. “It’s time to move on. The Kraken is sleeping.”
“Let us hope he does not turn over in his sleep and remember us,” says Saldowr. “But you are right in one thing, Ervys. It is time for me to make the Call. It takes many days to bring together all the young Mer who wish to make the Crossing of Ingo.”
Ervys swishes his tail. “There are many among the Mer who will not answer when you blow the conch,” he says, putting the faintest emphasis on the word “you”.
Faro has to dig his nails into his palms to stop himself from crying out in protest at this insult to Saldowr. But a small, reluctant part of his mind knows that Ervys is telling the truth. Many of the young Mer in Faro’s own age group have turned away from Saldowr and everything he stands for. They follow Ervys now. They want what he promises them – freedom, independence, an end to this mingling with humans. Pure-blooded Mer must unite and build a future together. If that means that they have to fight, then so be it. Only old people and has-beens say that the Mer must resolve all their conflicts peacefully. Ervys is a real leader, a man for our times.
Saldowr’s silence goads Ervys into recklessness. “Many among the young Mer no longer recognise your authority, Saldowr,” he says.
“I am aware of that,” answers Saldowr quietly.
Why won’t he fight? thinks Faro, burning with anguished fury against Saldowr. Why doesn’t he destroy Ervys now that he’s got him here alone? Saldowr could do it; I know he could.
“Then let us act on it,” says Ervys smoothly. “Let us make the Call together. You will call your people, and I will call mine.”
“They are not my people,” says Saldowr with sudden anger. “I am privileged to be Guardian, no more than that. The Mer belong to no one but themselves.”
Ervys looks at him consideringly. “Do you agree that we should both make the Call?”
Saldowr appears to be thinking deeply. His cloak swirls around him, his hair flows across his face, hiding it. At last he draws himself upright, pushes back his hair and says, “We will each blow the conch in turn. But hear me, Ervys, everyone in the age group for which the conch blows must be free to answer its summons. No one shall be prevented, understand me? No one.”
The power than Faro has longed to see is alive in Saldowr now. His eyes burn with inward, hooded fire. Ervys moves back, just a little.
“Of course,” he says, with the first touch of uncertainty in his voice.
“I want to hear none of your talk of pure blood, and half-and-halfs. Neither from you nor from your followers. Ingo can only be healed when it accepts that it is not complete in itself. Do you understand me?”
Ervys raises a hand in protest, and then slowly his hand drops to his side. How can he understand? Faro wonders. Even I don’t understand what is in Saldowr’s mind now. But after a long hesitation Ervys bows his head in agreement.
“Wait here while I fetch the conch,” says Saldowr with all the old authority in his voice.
Saldowr swims to his cave entrance and disappears inside. Faro watches Ervys closely. The man’s face is knotted with concentration. He is thinking something through, and Faro wishes he knew what it was. When Saldowr emerges with the conch in his hand, Ervys shakes his head as if a shoal of tiny fish were nibbling at his skin.
Faro eases himself a little way further around the side of his boulder, holding a bunch of weed in front of his face to camouflage it, and peering through the strands. The conch is as big as a man’s head. It is full of lustrous, changeful colours: dark at the tightly whorled tip, pearly at its broad base. Saldowr lifts it high and flings back his head. His lips touch the lip of the conch. Water pulses through it, building up pressure, and the conch begins to sound.
At first the Call is no more than a palpitation of the water. Faro is disappointed. He has heard the sound of the Call before. Even though he was always too young and he knew that the Call was not meant for him, his whole body had thrilled down to the tip of his tail. Perhaps the Call doesn’t sound the same if you are too close to the conch.
But the Call grows. It begins to beat the water like a whale’s tail, sending waves of sound to crash against Faro’s ears. Now he hears it truly. It enters his body and vibrates against every part of it. The Call is in his muscles, in his bone. It is inside his heartbeat. It grows louder and louder until his whole body shivers with the impact. He wants to leap through the water, to turn a thousand somersaults, to fly down the currents like a dolphin. This time, the Call is for him.
Faro curls up tight, tight, hugging his tail. He must not be seen. If Ervys and Saldowr knew that he’d watched this…
The Call thrums through him, on its way to the ends of Ingo, on its way to the ears of the young Mer who are ready to hear it. Elvira hears it as she sorts red weaver-weed to make dressings for wounds. Her skin prickles and her eyes grow brilliant. Girls diving with dolphins hear it and backflip, stunned, listening. Boys surfing wild currents hear it and fight their way out of the surging bubbles, shaking their hair out of their ears. The Call flows over the rocky cradles of Mer babies. Ancient Mer shake their heads and smile, remembering the past as the Call rushes past them. Mothers press their young children close, glad that it’s not yet their time for danger and adventure. The Call races through Ingo, into every underwater cave, through the hulls of sunken treasure ships, into coral reefs and gullies where conger eels live, through kelp forests and shadowy underwater caves, searching out the Mer who are ready to make the Crossing of Ingo.
The Call is like a snatch of music thrilling through Ingo, so irresistible that those who hear it will do anything to hear it again. It’s time, the Call says. Time to leave your family and your home behind. Time to say goodbye to all the places where you’ve played and learned and slowly grown up. Time for your own journey to the bottom of the world and for your own adventure.
At last, Saldowr lowers the conch. “Your turn,” he says, passing it to Ervys.
The conch must be much heavier than it looks. Ervys’s shoulders sag as he takes its weight, and for a second it looks as if the conch will fall to the sand. But Ervys braces himself and lifts the conch to his lips.
The Call is different this time. Ervys blows a harsh, blaring sound. It is loud, but it does not touch Faro. He hears Ervys blow on the conch, and feels nothing. But some of the Mer will answer it, thinks Faro. Some of them, who won’t answer Saldowr, will answer Ervys. They’ll come to the Assembly chamber and present themselves as candidates for the Crossing of Ingo, because Ervys has blown the conch.
It’s an ugly thought. Faro doesn’t understand why Saldowr even let Ervys lift the conch. He could have smashed Ervys’s skull with it. If I’d been holding the conch, that’s what I would have done, thinks Faro. Ervys’s body would have drifted down to the sand, his tail limp and his blood making red smoke in the water. Faro’s eyes sparkle as he considers the defeat of his enemy.
But he’s getting cramped, hiding behind these rocks. Surely Ervys will leave now that he’s got what he wants. Ervys lowers the conch. Saldowr swims forward and takes it. He seems to hold the weight without effort. Faro thinks that the lustre of the conch looks less bright now that it has been blown. It will be put away and it won’t emerge from Saldowr’s cave for another five years, when the next group of young Mer is ready to take on the challenge of the Crossing.
But if Ervys gets more power, everything will change. He won’t blow the conch for the whole of Ingo as Saldowr does. He’ll blow it, but only for his followers. Instead of a whole age group of the Mer travelling to the Assembly together, there will be angry arguments. Fights, maybe.
Faro’s fists clench again. He wants to leap through the water to Saldowr’s side and fight for him. Now’s the time to stop Ervys, while he’s alone and before he can grow any stronger.
It’s already too late. Ervys turns with a twist of his broad, powerful shoulders, and strikes off through the water with a blow from his tail. In a surge of bubbles he is gone, and Saldowr has done nothing to stop him.
But Faro is still stuck behind his rock. He can’t come out now. Saldowr will know that he saw and heard everything. His fingers tingle with cramp, and he unclenches his fists. His tail aches for free water.
“Come out now, Faro,” says Saldowr.
Faro’s heart jumps in his chest like a fish on dry land. Saldowr has turned to face the rock where Faro is hiding. His face is stern. Faro braces himself. This is the worst thing he has ever done. He has spied on Saldowr and eavesdropped on his conversation. How could he have been so stupid as to believe Saldowr wouldn’t sense his presence? Saldowr had only kept silent until now to shield Faro from Ervys’s fury. Cold, heavy trepidation fills Faro. He’s not afraid of any punishment, but if Saldowr says that Faro can no longer be his scolhyk and his holyer, he would rather die. He can’t imagine a life where he doesn’t serve Saldowr, and where Saldowr no longer teaches him and prepares him for the future.
All these thoughts flash through Faro’s mind in a couple of seconds. Already he’s swimming out from behind the rock. He won’t make Saldowr call him twice. He swims to within an arm’s length of Saldowr, and then the Guardian of the Tide Knot holds up a hand.
“Why did you disobey me, Faro? I told you to stay at the borders of Limina with Fithara until I sent for you.”
Faro bows his head. He could argue, but he will not.
“You should not have seen me blow the conch. One day I would have shown you, but not this time.”
Perhaps Saldowr is going to bar him from making the Crossing. Faro bites his lip, staring at the sand.
“Look at me, Faro.”
He looks up.
“You are loyal. You want to serve me.”
Faro nods.
“You must believe that there is a pattern in what I do. You were angry because I did not attack Ervys. But if I had done that, Ervys’s followers would have risen up in fury. They would have said that their leader had been killed by my treachery. That I had invited an unarmed man to come to my cave alone. That I did not care about the Mer, only about clinging on to my own power. Understand me, Faro, I would have lost my influence with the Mer. Without their trust I can do nothing. Even those who follow Ervys, I think, still trust me in their hearts. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Saldowr,” says Faro reluctantly.
“You want to fight.” Saldowr’s voice is warmer now. There is humour in it, and affection. Faro looks up, full of hope. Perhaps Saldowr is not going to send him away. Perhaps he is not going to bar him from following the Call.
“You must wait, my son. There will be a time to fight, and we must be ready for it. If we act too soon, we destroy all our chances.”
Saldowr is still holding the conch as easily as if it were one of those fluff feathers that drift down from under a young gull’s wings and lie on top of the water.
“You heard my Call,” he says.
“Yes,” replies Faro.
“You will answer it. And there are others who will answer it. Your friends. They will hear the Call but they will need your help to reach the Assembly chamber. You must go to them, Faro.”
“To Sapphire and Conor?”
“Of course.”
The echo of the Call seems to thrum through Faro. Sapphire and Conor will hear it too. Their Mer blood will dance in their veins as his does.
“We’ll come to the Assembly together,” he says eagerly. His blood tingles, turning a hundred somersaults in his veins. “All of us together.”
“Listen carefully, Faro. Your friends are called not only for themselves, but for the healing of Ingo. If those who come from the world of Earth and Air, and who have both Mer and human blood can be called and chosen, and can complete the most important journey in the life of the Mer, then there is hope that Mer and human will come to understand each other in peace. But where there is a great prize to be won then there is also great danger.”
“Ervys will try to stop us.”
“Yes. You must be prepared for that. Now go to Sapphire and Conor. Quickly, Faro.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_624ce5ac-8186-505a-b5fd-376071a335b5)
“I wasn’t born with a duvet-washing gene just because I’m a girl,” I shout up the stairs to Conor.
Saturday. I tick off a list on my fingers. Laundry, do the vacuuming, clean the bathroom. Dig over the potato bed. Go up to the farm for eggs. There’s my maths homework, and I’m supposed to be handing in my project on climate change after half term and so far all I’ve done is download some photos of deserts.
Saturday morning. Work, work, work. I might as well be at school. And we’re coming to the end of all the food Mum stacked in the freezer before she and Roger went to Australia. Shepherd’s pie, chicken casserole, homemade soups, lemon drizzle cake (my favourite) and gingerbread with almonds (Conor’s favourite). Mum made more cake in a week than she usually makes in a year. Roger called it guilt cooking, and he put a stop to it when he came in the morning before they left and she was baking cakes and crumbles for the freezer instead of doing her packing.
“You’ve got to stop all this guilt cooking, Jen.”
“What do you mean?” Mum asked fiercely, her eyes bright as she wielded the flour sifter.
“You’ve no call to feel guilty. These kids want to stay here, surely to God you’ve heard that from them enough times. I know I have. Sapphy’s a great little cook and Conor’s no slouch. You go on upstairs and finish your packing or you’ll end up in Brisbane without a bikini, which is a crime under Australian law.”
I couldn’t help laughing, just as I couldn’t help liking Roger when Mum put down the sifter, rubbed her hand over her face (leaving an extensive trail of flour) and smiled reluctantly.
“Come and help me pack, Sapphy?” she asked.
Mum and Roger have been gone for a month now, and we’ve eaten all the dinners Mum left in the freezer, apart from some grey frozen parsnip soup.
“Conor! You need to wash your sheet and your duvet cover.”
“I’m still in bed.” Conor’s voice floats down from the loft, blurred and sleepy. “It’s Saturday morning, Saph, for God’s sake.”
“You can’t be asleep if you’re shouting at me. It’s ten o’clock, Con. I need to get the washing on or it’ll never dry.”
I am turning into Mum. I sigh and start sweeping the floor while Sadie pads round me, thumping her tail against the flagstones. She’s desperate for a real walk. I took her out for ten minutes when I first got up, but she wasn’t impressed.
“Oh, Sadie.” I throw the broom down, drop to my knees and wrap my arms around Sadie’s warm neck. She whines sympathetically, rubbing her head against me. “Shall we leave all this and go for a long, long walk?” I ask her. Sadie’s tail whacks against my legs. “Walk” is her favourite word.
Just then Conor staggers downstairs, still wrapped in his duvet, clutching a bundle of sheet and pillowcases. He drops the duvet on the floor, flops down at the table and puts his head in his hands.
“Are you OK, Con?”
“I got up too quickly.”
Got up too quickly! I have been up since eight thirty and I’ve already cleared the kitchen, done the washing-up and scraped a layer of grease off the stove.
“You could at least take the duvet cover off the duvet.”
Conor looks up in surprise at my tone. “I’m going to, I’m going to. Relax, Saph, it’s Saturday.”
“It doesn’t feel like Saturday to me. It feels like Monday morning.” A wave of self-pity sweeps over me. School all week, cooking every evening, chopping wood for the stove, homework, taking Sadie out, washing, cleaning, digging the garden… It all takes so long and there’s never any free time. I have to admit that usually Conor does half of everything, but this morning I’ve had enough.
“I’m going down to the cove.”
Conor looks up. “What about my duvet cover?”
“You can mop the floor with it for all I care.”
Conor leans back, tilting his chair. “Rainbow’s coming up later, maybe Patrick too. I’ll cook dinner.”
“We mustn’t forget about Mum this time.”
Last time Rainbow and Patrick were round for the evening, we lit a fire outside and sat round it for hours, talking, working out chords for a new song and trying to tell each other’s fortunes. We didn’t hear Mum call. At the weekends she usually calls late in our evenings, which is early in her mornings. She calls from an Internet café about ten kilometres from where she and Roger are staying, and then we call her back. I can’t believe how early that café opens, but Mum says it’s the way things happen there, because the middle of the days get so hot.
We’ve got a webcam and Internet calling, which Roger installed on his state-of-the-art computer before they left. There will be no escape from communication! This is both good and bad. It’s lovely to talk to Mum, but when I’m tired or not in a great mood it’s hard to hide it from her. Conor reckons that Mum calls when it’s late in the evenings here to check that we’re both safely back at home.
People say how amazing communications are these days, because you can feel as if you’re in the same room as someone in Australia. But you don’t really feel that way. You keep telling each other news about your lives, but it feels false. Conor is better at it than me. Sometimes I find myself wishing the call was over. At home we never sit down face to face for fifteen minutes with Mum and talk about everything we’ve done that day. We might wander into the kitchen and chat a bit. Often I prefer just being quiet with people.
Seeing Mum’s face on the flat, cold screen of a computer makes it seem as if she has already gone far, far away from us, much farther than the thousands of miles she has travelled physically. She looks different. Her skin is deep brown from being out in the open all day long instead of working in the pub as she does here, and her hair has light streaks in it. It’s late spring in Queensland, and Mum says it’s much warmer than a Cornish summer. Mum looks more relaxed than I’ve ever seen her. She and Roger are staying in a little beach house, which someone has lent to them. It’s very remote. Mum gets up with the sun and pretty much goes to bed when the sun goes down, except when they light a fire and sit round it. The stars are enormous, she says.
It makes me feel as if Mum isn’t the same as the Mum I know. She is meeting a lot of people out there. She knows all Roger’s colleagues in the diving project, and their friends. She says Australians are amazingly friendly, and they are always getting asked to parties and barbies. Mum and Roger have already got a whole new Australian life together. It feels very, very weird, as if she might suddenly announce that she likes it so much out there, she’s decided to stay for ever.
Get a grip, Sapphire. You chose to stay here. You could have gone with her.
“Don’t swim outside the cove,” says Conor.
“You sound just like Mum.”
“You know what I mean.”
I know what Conor really means. Stay where it’s safe. Don’t go to Ingo without me.
I sit back on my heels. Sadie’s warm, questioning brown eyes gaze into mine, wondering what I am planning. A long walk over the Downs, maybe? A rough scramble along the cliff path? Her mind buzzes with a map of a thousand smells – farmyards, rabbit holes, flat stone boulders where adders come out to sun themselves on the warmest autumn afternoons…
“Do snakes have a smell, Sadie?” Sadie barks.
“You can’t not take her out now, Saph. Look how excited she is,” says Conor.
“All right, Sadie, this is the deal. You and I will walk for one hour max, then you promise not to whine and scrabble at the door and look pathetic when I go to the cove and you can’t come.”
The way down to the cove is too steep for Sadie. Besides, she would hate it there. Our cove is a gateway. Most human beings wouldn’t guess it but dogs can sense what’s really going on. Sadie would know straightaway that the smell in her nostrils was the smell of Ingo.
Sadie gives me a wise, impenetrable look. I decide to believe that she’s agreeing with me. “Walk, then be good at home,” I repeat firmly.
I open the door, cross the garden, lift the latch of the gate and kick it where it sticks. Sadie bounds through. “Wait, girl.”
I look up at the sky. It’s a perfect October day. You would think it was still summer, except that the sun is lower in the sky and there’s a clear, tingling taste in the breeze. A few bronze leaves stir on the rowan tree by our door. I’ll swim without my wetsuit today. The sea still has most of the summer’s warmth in it.
At that moment there’s a slash in the air above my head. Something hurtles past me, raking my hair with its claws. I flinch and throw my hands up to protect my face. The gull squawks loudly as it soars back into the sky.
“Conor! One of those gulls went for me again.”
Conor comes to the door and squints up at the roof. A second gull sits squat by the chimney, watching us with its hard yellow eye. The first gull wheels round from its attack, glides back to the cottage roof with one powerful stroke and alights, folding its wings. I brace myself in case it dives again. It gives a mocking screech, but stays up on the roof.
“Every time we go out of the house, they’re waiting.”
“I know,” says Conor.
“I’m worried about Sadie. Mary Thomas’s cat had to have ten stitches in its back. It was the worst gash from a gull the vet had ever seen. Do you think a gull would attack a dog as big as Sadie?”
“They’re territorial,” says Conor.
“Only when they’re nesting. They can’t be still nesting at this time of year. It’s too late.”
The gulls shriek, as if they’re laughing at us. A third gull circles way above the roof, like a police helicopter over the scene of a crime.
“They never used to settle on the roof like this,” Conor says.
“No. It’s only since Mum and Roger left.” As soon as I’ve said the words, I want to call them back. The gulls frighten me. They watch the human world, and report back to Ingo. I remember how one of them slashed my hand down by the cove. I thought then that it was one of Ervys’s spies.
Conor flaps his arms and shouts at the gulls. “Go on, get out of it!” They squawk back in derision. Sadie barks furiously, but the gulls take no notice of her.
“I’ll get the ladder,” says Conor. “I’m going to check if there is a nest up there.”
“No, don’t, Conor!” If he’s up the ladder and the gulls attack him, he’ll have no chance. He’ll have to put up his hands to shield his face, and then the gulls will get him off balance. In my head I see Conor slowly toppling backwards. “Mum’ll kill me if you fall off the ladder.”
The gulls screech again, as if they’re imitating me. Slowly, in their own time, they take off from the roof. They wheel above us, mocking our Earth-bound anger with them, and then they take aim at the horizon and fly straight out to sea. They are as sleek as rockets homing in on a target.
“Imagine being able to do that,” I say, shading my eyes and squinting after them. “They can go from one world to another whenever they want.”
But Conor’s not listening. “Saph, look. They are building a nest. Look up there, by the chimney.”
“But it’s the wrong time of year.”
“They’re building it, all the same. I wonder why.”
“I don’t like them. They patrol that roof like prison guards. Every time we come out or go in, they’re watching.”
“That’s crazy, Saph. They’re just birds.”
“Sadie! Sadie!” I shout. She’s gone into the ditch again. It’s always full of rich, smelly mud, even when there hasn’t been rain for weeks. She’s definitely going to need a bath now. “Sadie, you bad girl.”
But I’m glad really. Bathing Sadie will stop me thinking about the gulls. I fetch her zinc bath and lay it on the gravel. I fill saucepans with water and put them on the stove to warm while Conor unwinds the hose. Sadie stands watching, quivering with excitement. Sometimes she hates her bath, sometimes she loves it.
Today she’s decided to hate it. She keeps trying to escape and she sloshes water all over us. Conor helps to hold her while I wash her with special dog shampoo. She whines piteously, as if we’re torturing her.
“Sadie, if you keep on jumping into ditches you’ll keep on having to have baths.”
“Cause and effect, Sadie girl,” says Conor, passing her towel. I rub her hard all over. She likes this part. By the time she emerges from the towel, golden and gleaming, Sadie looks extremely pleased with herself.
“You know you’re beautiful, don’t you?” I ask her.
“Of course she does,” replies Conor.
“She’s the most beautiful dog in Cornwall… Hey, Con, we could take Sadie to a dog show! She’d be sure to win a prize.”
Conor raises his eyebrows. “She’d hate it, Saph. Think about it.”
I think about it. Lots of poodles with pink ribbons around their necks, mincing past the judges – and Sadie bounding around the ring, chasing imaginary rabbits. Maybe not…
“I am going to get that ladder,” says Conor. “While the gulls are out of the way it’s a good chance.”
“Don’t, Conor. What if they come back?”
“I don’t like the way there are more and more of them all the time,” says Conor quietly.
He is right. It was just one gull to begin with, and then two, but sometimes there’s a whole row of them standing motionless on the spine of our roof now. They watch everything. They know that Conor and I are alone in our cottage.
“I counted eight yesterday evening,” says Conor.
We’re not really alone, I tell myself quickly. Granny Carne told Mum she’d watch out for us. Our neighbour Mary Thomas and everyone else in the village “keeps an eye”, which can be quite annoying at times. We go to school as normal. But at night we’re alone in the cottage.
Don’t be so pathetic, Sapphire. You can manage fine. Look at how Rainbow and Patrick cope when their parents are away in Denmark for weeks on end. They just get on with it.
The trouble is that I spent so much time and energy convincing Mum it was safe to leave us, that I forgot about how I might feel once she was gone. As soon as Mum and Roger’s taxi had bumped away down the track and I saw one gull watching from the roof, I began to feel uneasy. If Mum had known about Ingo, or the forces that were gathering there, or the battle between Ervys and Saldowr, or any of a hundred things that Conor and I know and have kept from her so carefully, then she would never have left the cottage.
Saldowr said we would see Dad again, when the Mer assembled to choose who would make the Crossing of Ingo. Dad will have his own free choice too, one day – to decide whether to stay in Ingo or return to Air. He’ll be able to decide his own future. What if Mum knew that?
It’s strange how different it feels now that Mum isn’t here. Even Roger’s absence changes things. It’s as if we are boats which were held safe by an anchor, and we never realised it. Now the anchor has been pulled up and we might drift anywhere. When it gets dark the wind roars around our cottage so loudly that it feels like being in a boat at sea. You can easily believe that you have already left the Earth and are halfway to Ingo. Winter is coming. The dark is growing stronger every day.
“I’m going to see if I can reach that nest. Help me get the ladder out of the shed, Saph.”
“You can’t destroy their nest, Con! What if there are babies in it?”
“I won’t do anything to them. And why would gulls try to lay eggs at this time of year anyway? The chicks wouldn’t have a chance of survival.”
“What if they come back and attack you?”
What if the gulls are spying for Ervys? is what I want to say, but I keep quiet. Conor will think I’m imagining things as usual. But to my surprise he says what I’m thinking.
“I don’t want them spying on us.”
“Do you think they are spies, Con?” I ask, lowering my voice to a whisper.
“Whatever they are, I don’t want them there.”
“Don’t get the ladder, Con. Please.” I’ve lost Dad – or as good as lost him. Mum’s gone to Australia. My brother’s got to stay safe.
Conor’s expression changes. “Don’t panic, Saph. I’m not planning to fall off the roof and break my neck. You hold the bottom of the ladder and it’ll be fine.”
The ladder is heavy. We drag it across the garden and hoist it against the wall. It’s the one Dad used when he painted the outside of our cottage. I remember the last time he did that. The fresh white against the storm-battered old paint.
“Hold it like that, Saph. Lean all your weight against it.”
“Be careful, Conor.”
He goes up the ladder quickly. Con’s used to ladders because his bedroom is up in the loft.
“Can you see anything?” I ask.
There’s a pause. Conor is at the top. He hasn’t got anything to hold on to now. He braces his feet on the top rung and leans forward, then carefully stretches to his right, towards the chimney.
What if they come back? If they strike at him now, when he’s off balance, he’ll fall. I turn and scan the horizon. No black dots of gulls. I turn back to Conor. “Is it a nest?” I shout up.
“Yes.” His voice sounds strange. He’s leaning right across to the chimney. His hand is almost in the dark mass of the nest. He’s taking something out of it. Now he’s looking at what’s in his hand.
Conor freezes. Sadie and I stare upwards in suspense. Slowly Conor’s hand closes around whatever he’s found. He teeters as if he’s forgotten he’s at the top of a ladder. For a second I think he’s going to lose his balance. At my side, Sadie lets out a volley of warning barks. I turn around and see dark specks on the horizon, growing bigger as I watch. The gulls.
“Conor! Get down quick! The gulls are coming.”
Conor scrambles down the ladder one handed. As he jumps to the ground, Sadie leaps around him, barking protectively. The sky is suddenly full of gulls. A cloud of beating wings hides the chimney as they circle the nest, screeching out their anger.
Conor’s holding a handful of seaweed. “Is that what the nest is made of?” I ask.
He nods. “It’s all woven together.”
“But gulls don’t make nests like that.”
Conor shrugs. He is very pale. He pushes apart the strands of weed and I see a pale, glistening oval, about the size of a fingernail.
“That’s not a gull’s egg.”
“Look at it, Saph.”
I look at the egg. It is translucent green. Inside it there is a tiny creature, moving. A creature with fins and a tail. A fish. I shudder.
“The nest was crammed with them,” says Conor.
“But if they hatched, they wouldn’t be able to breathe in the air.”
“I don’t know what they are,” says Conor. “Touch the shell, Saph.”
I put out a finger reluctantly, and prod the egg. It is rubbery. There’s liquid inside in which the little fish can swim. I snatch my hand away. There is a ringing sound in my ears. My mouth turns dry.
“Why have they put the eggs on our house?” I whisper to Conor.
“They’re just trying to scare us.”
“Do you think he’s behind it? Ervys?”
“Probably.”
“What are we going to do with this horrible egg thing?”
“Feed it to Mary Thomas’s cat.”
I laugh, but my spine crawls with horror as I imagine fish hatching out of the eggs and swarming all over our roof. I know what Ervys is telling us. You human creatures are coming into my world. I have my powers too. I can make Ingo come to you. It’s happened before. Fish swam in the streets of St Pirans after the Tide Knot broke and the sea flooded the town. Ervys thought that was a great victory for the Mer, in the battle between Ingo and the human world.
The gulls have settled on the roof again, in a long line, watching and waiting.
“What are we really going to do with the egg?” I whisper.
“I don’t know. Bury it?”
“No. That’s what they expect us to do. Let’s give them a surprise, Conor. Let’s take the egg down to the sea and release it.”
Conor looks at me, eyebrows raised. “You’re very peace loving all at once, Saph.” But he gives me the egg in its nest of weed. I am just putting it in the watering can so it won’t dry out before I can take it down to the cove when there’s an explosion of wings and silent, furious, stabbing beaks.
“Sadie!”
We both rush to her, screaming at the gulls. They fly off, climbing steeply into the sky like planes after they’ve dropped their bombs. Sadie stands silent, quivering all over. On the golden fur of her back there is a long, ugly wound. Her blood wells and spills down her coat.
“Sadie!”
She is too shocked even to bark. I rub her face, calling her name.
“Bastards,” says Conor. “Quick, Saph, help me get her into the cottage. I’ll call Jack’s and ask them to help us get her to the vet. She needs stitches.”
It’s early evening. Sadie is asleep on the hearth rug. I’ve lit a fire, and the reflection of flames dances on her coat. The vet has stitched her wound and dressed it, and given Sadie an injection against infection. Conor spent his savings to pay the vet’s bill.
Mary Thomas said we’d have to get someone up from the council to do something about those gulls. We just nodded.
Rainbow and Patrick will be here in half an hour. Rainbow is bringing some pasties from St Pirans, because we told her what had happened to Sadie and that we hadn’t had a chance to cook.
Conor reaches forward to put another log on the fire. “So are you still going to release that fish back into the sea?” he asks. His voice is harsh.
“Yes,” I say.
“You’re crazy, Saph. Mary Thomas’s cat should have it.”
“No,” I struggle to explain. “If we act like them – like Ervys – it will never end. There’ll be one revenge, and then another, and then another…”
“I get the point. There’s another solution, though, Saph. We could walk away.”
“What do you mean?”
“We get out of it. Turn our backs on Ingo completely. If you don’t feed your Mer blood by thinking of Ingo and going to Ingo, it’ll grow weaker. In a few years’ time you might not even remember that it’s there. You’ll look back and believe that Ingo was one of those things you used to be interested in before you grew up.”
“How can you say that, Conor? Ingo is real.”
“Of course it’s real. But it doesn’t have to be real for us. Look at Sadie. That happened because of us going to Ingo. Do you really want to live like this, Saph?”
“Conor, I can’t believe you—”
And at that moment it comes. A low, thrumming sound that is sweet and piercing at the same time. It seems to begin deep in the shell of my ear, as if it’s growing from inside me. But it’s not just inside me, it’s outside me too. It beats the air like a bell, but it’s not an Air sound at all. It’s salty, full of tides and currents and vast undersea distances. It sounds like the sea beating on the shores of my understanding. It’s a summons, an invitation, a command.
Conor hears it too. The log rests in his hand, forgotten. The sound grows until there is nothing else in the room, nothing else in the whole world. Every cell in our body vibrates to it, and now, suddenly, I grasp its meaning. I am hearing the Call. I am being invited to come to the Assembly chamber as a candidate for the Crossing of Ingo. It’s what Faro told me about, but I never thought it would feel like this. I glance down at the bracelet of woven hair that is always on my wrist. My hair, twined so close into Faro’s that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. My deublek bracelet. Faro’s voice comes back to me. And then, little sister, we will present ourselves to the Assembly, and say that we are ready to make the Crossing of Ingo.
The Call thunders through us. Faro will hear it too in Ingo. And Elvira. The log falls to the floor as Conor reaches out and grabs my hand. I’ve never seen Conor look like this. Lit up, like a face with a torch shining on it, except that the light is coming from inside him.
“Saph,” he says, “you hear it too, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong. Everything I said was wrong, Saph. We’ve got to answer the Call.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_65813243-b37e-5569-8a89-9943662b3e8a)
All yesterday evening Conor remained lit up with excitement. I was sure that Rainbow and Patrick would sense the Call thrumming through him, even though they don’t know about Ingo. Maybe Rainbow did, in a way. She was very quiet, and she kept glancing at Conor when he wasn’t looking, and then away. Rainbow likes Conor; really likes him. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if Conor had never seen Elvira. Conor almost never talks to me about Elvira, but I know he thinks of her. He keeps her talisman around his neck. But whenever we’re with a group of friends it seems that Rainbow and Conor will end up sitting together talking. Conor’s face is full of warmth and life when he’s with Rainbow. They laugh a lot, but it’s not as if the rest of the world has vanished into nothing, as it is when Conor’s with Elvira. Rainbow isn’t dreamy like Elvira. She’s always aware of other people.
It was a good evening, but because of the Call it felt as if Conor and I were on one side of a sheet of glass, and Patrick and Rainbow on the other. I think they felt it too. We chatted about music for a while, and then everyone lapsed into silence. Patrick had brought his guitar, but he didn’t play. We built up the fire because it gets cold when evening comes down, and sat around it watching the flames. You know how it is with watching a fire: you don’t have to talk. The flames twist and pucker round the logs, never making the same shape twice. It made me think of the fire I saw once, when Granny Carne showed me the passage that runs to the centre of the Earth, from the standing stones. A log hissed and crackled. I suddenly thought, There’s never any fire in Ingo. It sounds so obvious, but I’d never realised it before. Faro had never sat by a fire and watched the flames and dreamed, and he never would. Faro watches baby fish flicker in rock crevices and dark red sea anemones quivering. He would scorn the idea of fire. Humans are very strange. Why should anyone want to change the temperature of their world? Why not live in it as it is? It would be impossible to explain to Faro about shivering with cold on a winter’s night. He’s never felt anything like that. He’s in his element, slipping through it, part of it. Faro would hate this fire.
Conor’s eyes were shining with dreams. I saw that Rainbow was watching Conor, not the fire. I couldn’t work out her expression. Rainbow is someone who understands much more about you than you ever tell them. Conor felt Rainbow’s eyes on his face and he looked up and smiled. Rainbow smiled back. They are so similar, even though Conor is dark and Rainbow has hair the colour of sunlight. They have the same warm-coloured skins. They are responsible in the same way.
“Conor,” said Rainbow, “Patrick thinks he can get you a Saturday job at The Green Room, don’t you, Pat?”
The Green Room is the surf shop where Patrick works. Everybody wants to work there because they pay over the minimum wage and you have an amazing reduction off all the stuff. Conor leaned forward eagerly. “D’you think you really can, Patrick?”
Patrick nodded. He is a person of few words. Then I saw Conor remember, and the eagerness faded from his face. The sound of the conch thrummed in my head and I knew that Conor heard it too. It drowned out everything.
“I’ll call in one day,” said Conor awkwardly, and I saw the surprise and disappointment on Rainbow’s face. She’d expected him to seize the chance of the job. But I couldn’t think about Rainbow too much, because my mind was full of Ingo. The flames of the fire made shapes like waves. I listened and I could hear the swell beating against the base of the cliffs. The tide was high, almost at the turn. Ingo was coming close. I saw Rainbow shiver.
“The sea’s loud tonight,” she said.
“You always hear it like that up here,” said Conor quickly. “It must be the way the wind blows.”
“It never sounds as loud as this in our cottage,” said Rainbow.
“And we’re closer to the water than you are,” said Patrick. “The tide comes almost to the door. Or through the door sometimes.” He was thinking of the flood and the way their cottage filled with sea.
“It won’t come like that again,” said Conor. He threw another log on the fire and the sparks shot upward. Rainbow leaned forward, holding out her hands to the flames.
“I love fires,” she said.
I know, I thought. You love fires and horses and dogs, and everything that belongs to Earth. You’ve never heard Ingo calling and you never will. You’re not half one thing and half another. You’re all Earth, like Granny Carne. You don’t have to choose because the choice has already been made in you.
The sea boomed against the cliff. I felt it ebb, then surge forward and smash on the rocks. Rainbow was right. Ingo was very close tonight. Faro was there somewhere in that deep wild water, and my father, and my baby half-brother, little Mordowrgi, and all the others. Soon I would be there too, and Conor. Excitement raced through me like an incoming tide.
But this morning everything is flat and gloomy. The rain is coming down in a thin, steady drizzle. The hilltops are hidden in mist. The only thing that is sharp and clear is the impossibility of our dreams.
How can I leave Sadie? She trusts me and believes that I’ll always be here to take care of her. I think of Sadie padding up and down, whining, sniffing the air, scratching at the door, waiting for me. I can’t abandon Sadie. Besides, there’s Mum. She’ll call us, as she does every day, and we won’t be here. She’ll call again and again, and still we won’t answer. How much human time does it take to make the Crossing of Ingo? Mum will panic and get on the next plane back from Australia.
We have to think about school as well. They’ll notice our absence, and Mum has given them contact details for everyone who is supposed to be responsible for us while she’s away. In practice that means they will contact Mary Thomas, because Granny Carne has no phone. Mary will come over and find an empty house. In less than an hour the entire village will be searching for us. They’ll remember Dad’s disappearance. They’ll whisper, “God forbid it’s another Trewhella lost to the sea.” They’ll scour the cliffs and coves and all the deserted places where we might have fallen or become trapped. In my mind I see the searchers moving steadily forward, beating at the furze on the cliff tops. I see divers with waterproof torches scanning the backs of caves. They’ll risk their lives to find us. We can’t let them do that.
Even if we managed to fix school, it’s impossible to fix the whole neighbourhood. If you cough at one end of the churchtown, someone the other end will ask if you have a cold.
But we must go. We have no choice. I can’t hear the Call any more but the memory of it is twined into every fibre of me. It won’t let me alone. You only hear that Call once in your life; if you ignore it, it won’t come again. Faro will turn his back on me. He’ll rip off the bracelet he made from our hair, and he’ll never call me “little sister” again. Dad will be at the Assembly. It’s our chance to see him again.
Ingo needs us to make the Crossing. We are mixed in our blood, Mer and human. Ervys hates us for it: he wants nothing human in Ingo. I used to hate it too because I wanted to be one thing only, instead of being torn two ways. But now I’m beginning to understand that to be double adds things to you as well as taking them away. I’ve been to Ingo so many times and there’s still so much I don’t know. I will never know Ingo truly unless I make the Crossing. Saldowr believes that the Mer world and the human world can come together, and stop fearing each other and trying to destroy each other. If human blood can make the Crossing of Ingo then maybe there is hope for a different future, where we’re not all battling for what we want and trying to destroy what is different from us.
Ervys will do anything to stop us. He wants Mer and human to remain apart. Fear and distrust is what drives his followers, and gives him his power.
I’ve got to go, but I can’t…I must go, but how can I…?
By ten o’clock this morning my head felt like a hive of swarming bees, full of thoughts that couldn’t live together. I was so desperate for distraction that I even dug one of my school set books out of my bag. Now I’m sitting at the kitchen table, trying to read Pride and Prejudice. The words dance and dive. If only Jane and Lizzie realised how lucky they were. All they had to worry about were their embarrassing parents and the embarrassing men who kept trying to marry them. They were never going to go to Ingo in their shawls and long dresses and elaborately curled hair…
Sadie is under the table, asleep. She’s been trying to hide under things ever since she got back from the vet’s. I keep telling her, “You’re safe now, Sadie girl. No gull will ever come into our cottage.” I wrap my arms around her neck and kiss her cold black nose, but she looks at me with scared eyes and I see she doesn’t really believe it. Even in her sleep, Sadie twitches and whimpers. She’s dreaming of gulls with cold yellow eyes and beaks that stab at her flesh. I’ll never let it happen again. I’ll throw myself on top of her so that they can’t get to her.
Conor has gone back to bed. In his view sleep is the best thing to do with a rainy day like this. I tried to talk to him about the Call but he was grumpy and monosyllabic – “Yeah, all right, Saph, we’ll work it out” – and then he dived back under the duvet. I’ve got to wake him up at one o’clock because we’re due at Jack’s house for Sunday dinner at one thirty.
When the knock comes at the door, I shout, “Come in, it’s open,” and quickly shove a heap of ironing off the table into the laundry basket. Some of our neighbours are all too curious about “How those two younguns are coping with their mum off in Australia”. They come round with a pie or a bunch of onions and their eyes dart round the kitchen, checking every heap of unwashed mugs.
It’s Granny Carne. Her old brown coat is dark with rain. She takes off her boots at the door and steps inside. Fortunately she has no interest in dirty crockery or unswept floors.
“Those gulls are thicker’n ever on your roof, my girl.”
“I know. Do you want a cup of tea?”
“Cup of tea would be good.” Her eyes burn on my back as I fill the kettle. “You want to do something about them,” she says.
“Yes,” I reply.
“I hear they hurt your Sadie.”
“We took her to the vet. She had to have stitches, but she’s OK now, except she’s been asleep most of the time since. She doesn’t want to come out from under the table.”
Granny Carne bends down and whistles softly. Immediately Sadie stirs. Shaking her head as if to shake away a bad dream, she creeps out from her shelter and rubs against Granny Carne’s long skirt. Sadie trusts Granny Carne more than anyone except me, ever since she almost died and Granny Carne healed her.
“She’s not looking so good, spite of what the vet’s done for her,” observes Granny Carne. A pang of dread goes through me.
“She’s all right. The vet said she was.”
“All right, is she?” asks Granny Carne. I look at Sadie. Her tail is down. She’s huddling against Granny Carne as if she wants to make herself disappear.
“She’s still scared that the gulls will get her,” I say.
“With reason good,” answers Granny Carne. “A dog can’t stay in a house all day long, cowering under a table. It’s not in her nature.” She bends down and strokes Sadie with a strong, reassuring hand. “It’s not in her nature, what’s going on here. You let me take Sadie, my girl.”
“Take Sadie!”
“You let her come up to my cottage where she’ll be safe. There’s no shadow of a gull there.” Granny Carne looks up, straight at me, hard and clear.
“But… but I look after her. I won’t let anything hurt her.”
Granny Carne glances down at Sadie’s back. She doesn’t say anything about the injury. She doesn’t need to. “Listen, Sapphire. Nothing of Ingo is going to come close to where I am. Sadie can walk on the Downs with me and be free. Those gulls lifted off your roof the moment they saw me put my foot to your threshold. But once I’m gone, they’ll be back, and more of them each day. You want your dog to be frightened out of her life? You give Sadie to me and no harm will come near her.”
Sadie is watching Granny Carne’s face very closely, following the conversation. She whines deep in her throat, as if agreeing.
“But I can’t. She’ll miss me too much.” I’ll miss her too much, is what I don’t say. “Sadie needs me.”
“How will you look after Sadie where you’re going?” asks Granny Carne. Her face is stern, intent. There is no point trying to pretend I don’t know what she means.
“How do you know?”
“You’ve been called to make that Crossing. You remember I told you once, my girl, neither hell nor high water would stop you once your heard that Call. And your brother too. Look at your face. Look at those gulls gathering. There’s some in Ingo don’t want you to make it, seemingly.”
“But we can’t go. Sadie – Mum—” Suddenly the reality of it hits me as hard as a blow. I am only going to hear that Call once in my life. If I don’t go, I’ll feel as if something has reached inside me and ripped my spirit down the middle like a piece of paper.
“Some things, if you don’t do them, they follow you all your life, whispering in your ear,” says Granny Carne. She faces me sternly as if she’s judging me. “You’ll find a dozen good reasons why you pulled back from the Call, and you’ll even fool yourself that you had no other choice. But in your bed at night you’ll curse yourself for a coward.”
I stare at her in astonishment. Why isn’t Granny Carne trying to keep me here, as she’s always tried before? It feels like a cold wind whistling through me. Granny Carne isn’t going to stop us. The choice is completely ours.
I hear the creak of Conor’s loft ladder. He’s heard voices and he’s coming down to see who is here. The door opens and he ambles into the room, yawning and wrapped up in his duvet as usual.
“Granny Carne.” A slow, warm smile spreads over Conor’s face.
“Yes. I’ve been talking to your Sapphire. The two of you are going out into the world, seemingly.” Conor shoots me an accusing look.
“I didn’t tell her. She knew,” I say quickly. “But, Con, I can’t see how we’re going to do it. There’s Sadie, and Mum, and everyone else. They’ll think we’ve – we’ve disappeared.”
“Like Dad,” says Conor. He frowns, thinking. Conor is logical. He always looks to find a path to a solution. Usually it works, but this time logic isn’t going to help. Granny Carne isn’t going to help either. She stands there, watching, waiting.
“There’ll be more than those gulls wanting to stop you,” she observes.
“I know,” says Conor.
“I’ve no rowan berries for your protection this time. You’ll have to go alone.”
Without meaning to, I glance down at the bracelet on my wrist. My deublek. Granny Carne’s gaze follows mine. “Earth can’t help you in the Crossing.”
“We’re not helpless,” says Conor hotly.
“I know that, my boy.” Granny Carne’s ancient, hardened face remains impassive, but her eyes soften as she looks at Conor. “I can’t give you anything. No berries, no touch of fire. There’s no Earth magic where you’re going, only what’s inside yourselves.” She pauses. Her owl eyes are lit up now, fierce and bright. “But never forget how strong that is. Come here, give me your hands.” She takes Conor’s outstretched hands and presses his thumbs together. “Think of what’s strongest for you here on Earth,” she whispers. “Let it come to you. Don’t force your thoughts now.”
Conor closes his eyes. I look away. I feel as if I shouldn’t spy into his thoughts. There is a long silence, then Conor opens his eyes again. He looks surprised, as if what came into his mind wasn’t what he’d expected.
“Now you, Sapphire.” My thumbs touch. It feels like a connection being made. “Think of what’s strongest for you here on Earth,” she says. “Let it come to you.”
I don’t even have to think. Sadie leaps into my mind, bounding down the track towards me. Her eyes glow, and her golden coat shines in the sun. I hear her bark. My thumbs feel as if they have fused, like legs into a tail.
“If you forget Earth, touch your thumbs together like this and press. Sure enough it’ll come back. Wherever you are, however deep in Ingo you travel, you can’t lose what’s deep inside you,” says Granny Carne.
The pressure is released. I let my hands drop to my sides. The Sadie in my head vanishes. The real Sadie is watching me with scared, questioning eyes.
“I’ll take your Sadie with me now,” says Granny Carne. “Best I do that. As for your mother, you’ll find a way. A Call with as much power over the pair of you as that, it’ll make its own path through your lives. You and Conor have good brains between you. I won’t wait for that tea now, my girl, I’ll be on my way.”
“But, Granny Carne…” I can’t believe she’s just going to go like that. I’d expected her to stand in our way, as she did in the lane long ago when she stood between me and Ingo and wouldn’t let me go. But now she’s stepping aside.
Granny Carne has her hand on Sadie’s collar, steadying her. Objections whirl in my head. I’ve got to stop her going – why won’t Conor stop her?
“But what about Sadie’s food bowl – her food – and there’s her lead—”
“Sadie and I can manage. Say your goodbyes, Sapphire.”
I kneel down at Sadie’s side. There is a shaved place in her coat where the vet put in the stitches. The gash went deep. The vet said he’d never seen a wound from a gull as bad as that. There is still a faint smell of antiseptic. I don’t ever, ever want Sadie to be hurt like that again. What if the gulls had gone for her eyes?
“You’ll be safe with Granny Carne, won’t you?” I whisper. Sadie’s beautiful shining golden coat is a blur. I swallow. I don’t put my arms around her body in case I touch her wound. Instead I rub my face against her soft, cold nose. “Goodbye, Sadie darling,” I say, keeping my voice as steady as I can. “You’ll be fine. Granny Carne will look after you. Be good now.”
Sadie doesn’t make a sound. She pushes her nose into my cheek. She knows what’s happening. I feel terrible. It would be better if she protested.
“I love you, Sadie,” I whisper. “Don’t forget.”
I stand up again. I want Granny Carne to take Sadie away now, quickly, before I have time to think about it. Granny Carne seems to understand. She moves to the door and opens it. “There’s no gulls now,” she reassures Sadie. She bends down and slips her hand though Sadie’s collar reassuringly, then says over her shoulder to Conor, “Your mother has a second cousin somewhere upcountry, Plymouth way. Could be it’s time for you and Sapphire to pay a visit there, with your half term holiday coming. Anyone in the village who asks, that’s where I’ll tell them you are.”
One moment an old woman is looking at us over her shoulder, the next moment her outline blurs and trembles. I see a young, strong woman with ropes of gleaming earth-coloured hair. The outline shimmers and vanishes. I see an owl with fierce, unblinking eyes. Its wings are spread, ready to fly off into the dark. The owl fades. Only its eyes remain, deep in Granny Carne’s weather-beaten face.
The wind blows. The door bangs. Granny Carne is gone.
At first the day went on quite normally. We went up to Jack’s, and his mum made one of her classic dinners with roast beef, Yorkshire puddings and what she calls roast-pan gravy. Jack’s dad talked endlessly about whether he would get a government grant for re-laying a stretch of Cornish hedge. Jack kept trying to change the subject. He thinks his dad is extremely boring most of the time, but I didn’t mind. Hedging is as good to talk about as anything when there’s a storm raging in your mind.
We’re back at the cottage now, and it’s almost ten o’ clock, the time when Mum usually calls on a Sunday. But it’s not Sunday for her, it’s already Monday morning. While we are still enjoying the last hours of the weekend, Mum is in a world that’s going back to work.
Mum’s face comes on screen. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail. She’s wearing a dark red T-shirt and she looks tanned and cheerful, but apprehensive too.
“I’ve got some news for you guys.” You guys. Mum sounds more like Roger each day. She pauses. We can see her taking a deep, steadying breath. “We’ve got the chance to take a big trip north, up the coast. It’s a mate of Roger’s who runs these trips into the bush. He’s offered us a freebie if we go as chief cook and bottle washer to the paying customers.”
“Bottle washer?” I ask.
“Doing all the stuff tourists don’t want to do for themselves,” says Mum succinctly. “It’s for two weeks, though, and we’ll be way out of contact. We won’t have access to a phone and anyway there’s no signal up there. How would you feel about not getting calls for a while? Listen, you can be straight with me about this, Sapphy. Nothing’s fixed yet. I won’t go if you’re not happy about it—”
“Of course you’ve got to go,” says Conor immediately. I know my brother well enough to be sure that he’s not even thinking about how brilliantly this all fits in with our plans. Mum and Roger not calling us for two whole weeks! Nothing could be more convenient. Conor goes on, “It’s the chance of a lifetime, Mum. A trip like that would cost a fortune if you had to pay for it. You have to go.”
“You’d love it out here, Conor. Next time you two are definitely coming with us.”
Next time? What is going on? Mum sounds so full of life, as if Australia has turned on a switch in her which has been off for years. Since Dad went, maybe. No, be honest, Sapphire. Mum wasn’t like this even when Dad was at home. She’s changed. She’s stronger, bolder, more alive somehow. I’m not sure that I want her to change too much more – I don’t want Mum to become someone I don’t even recognise…
I lean forward and open my mouth, but as I do Conor grabs hold of my wrist under the table, out of sight of the webcam. He squeezes tight, warningly. “Two weeks is nothing. We’ll be fine, won’t we, Saph?”
“Ye-yes.”
“Are you sure?” asks Mum eagerly. She really wants to make this trip, but she’s worried too. The deal was that she would see us and speak to us every day unless it was completely unavoidable. In a minute another switch will turn on inside Mum: the guilt switch.
A Call with as much power over the pair of you as that, it’ll make its own path through your lives.
It’s happening this minute through the Internet as Mum waits for our answer. The Call is making a path for us. Mum’s eyes search my face.
“Of course we’re sure,” says Conor. “Everything’s fine here. No problem.”
“Except that Conor needs to learn where the washing machine is,” I say. Mum’s face relaxes.
“As long as you’re both well and happy.”
“We had Rainbow and Patrick round last night,” says Conor with apparent casualness. Mum looks even happier. She likes Rainbow and Patrick more than any of our friends. She senses that Rainbow is like her, that’s what I think. Someone who will anchor us to Earth. And Patrick’s ambition to become a doctor is exactly the ambition Mum would love me to have. I’m sorry, Mum, but it’s never going to happen.
A big trip north, into the bush… Poisonous spiders, king cobras, crocodiles… “Be careful up there, Mum. Crocodiles are really cunning. They use their tails as levers to spring out of the water and get you. If a croc chases you, you have to run in zigzags because that confuses them. And there’s loads of snakes in the bush too. You can’t walk around in flip-flops.”
Mum is laughing. “Is this my daughter talking, or is it my mum?”
“I’m serious, Mum.”
“I’m sorry, Sapphy, I didn’t mean to laugh at you.”
Mum seems so real that I feel I could put my hand through the screen and touch her face. But I can’t, and in a minute her screen image will disappear. People get lost in the bush. They die because there’s no water. I take a deep breath. Mum will be with Roger, who probably knows how to dig a bore hole if need be, and kill a fighting cobra with one karate chop. Mum will be fine. What a role reversal. Mum spends her life worrying about us, and now I’m panicking about her.
“We’ll be completely safe,” says Mum earnestly. “Roger’s mate knows the bush. He wouldn’t take tourists anywhere dangerous.”
But Mum knows, as I do, that nowhere in the world is ever completely safe. Your life can change in the blink of an eye, on a calm and beautiful Midsummer night. You lose what you love while you think it is still safe beside you.
“I know, Mum,” I say. “You’ll have a great time.”
Mum smiles back, reassuring and reassured. “I know I can trust you two – to take care of everything,” she says, looking at Conor. He looks straight back.
“I’ll look after Saph, Mum, don’t worry.”
“And I’ll look after Conor’s underpants.”
“Is Sadie all right?” asks Mum quickly.
“She’s fine.” I nearly add, She’s just in the kitchen, but pull myself back. First rule of deception: Never lie when you don’t have to.
“I’m so glad you’ve got Sadie. A dog in the house is good protection.”
“For God’s sake, Mum,” says Conor, “you sound like the mum in that film of Peter Pan.” I nearly laugh, thinking of Sadie padding round the house like Nana, pulling us back from Ingo by the seat of our pyjamas. I know why Conor sounds sharp. Guilt. He’s not exactly lying to Mum, but he’s certainly misleading her. Mum, however, doesn’t realise any of this. She thinks that Conor’s just cracking a joke, and she laughs with her new Australian lightheartedness.
“Don’t go flying out of any windows,” she says.
“We won’t,” I say, looking Mum in the eye. Just for a second I feel a surge of guilt, as if I’m the parent lying to her child for its own good, so that the child won’t be afraid. The mark of the Call must be blazing across my face. Doesn’t Mum see? Can’t she guess?
But no. Mum notices nothing, and we say goodbye.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_cc002b7e-c378-55c6-8582-ce9c1663293d)
Conor lifts the globe from its place at the back of our living room’s deep windowsill. He pushes it with one finger so the globe turns a slow circle on its stand. The land is dark brown, with the names of countries written in close, spidery writing. The oceans must have been deep blue once but they have faded and now they are a pale blue-brown. The Indian Ocean… The Northwest Passage…
I used to trace the names with my finger when I first learned to read. They were the oceans Dad used to talk about when he said, “One day, Sapphy, I’ll take you to see the world. We’ll cross the five oceans. North Atlantic, South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, South Pacific, maybe even the Southern Ocean. Or we might go north, way up here through the North Pacific until we come to the Arctic Ocean.”
“But that’s not five oceans, Dad, that’s seven.”
“Ah well, the North and South Pacifics really only count as one, same with the Atlantics.”
If Mum was there she’d frown with annoyance. “Filling the child’s head with crazy ideas, getting her excited about things that will never happen. Why do you do it, Mathew?”
“Who’s to say what will happen and what won’t?” Dad would murmur, touching the globe again to make it spin.
I believed every word he said. The oceans seemed to belong to me already. I imagined Dad and me in the Peggy Gordon, cutting through the brilliant waves of the Southern Ocean. We’d discover a rake of tiny islands scattered across the water like stars in a deep blue sky. We would catch fish to eat and when our jerry cans were empty we’d steer for a green island to fill them up with fresh water from a little bubbling spring. We would pull the Peggy Gordon up on a beach at evening and maybe curious people would come down to talk to us. We’d eat and drink with them, and Dad would trade songs with the island singers…
Conor traces a line between Cornwall and the huge continent of Australia. His finger travels around the western bulge of Africa, past the Cape and eastwards across the Indian Ocean. How easy the journey looks when you’ve only got to turn a globe. To the bottom of the world and home again in a few seconds. But it won’t be like that for us.
“It’s so far,” I say.
“I know,” replies Conor.
“It’s quite – quite scary, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. You know that time I went climbing on the cliffs with Jack up by Godrevy, near Hell’s Mouth? I never told you what happened. We got stuck. Couldn’t go back, couldn’t go on without kind of jumping and throwing ourselves on to the next handhold. The sea was boiling down below.”
“You should have told me,” I say.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to scare you. In the end we had to do the jump. Jack was in front of me so he went first and I had to watch him. Worst moment of my life. Well, nearly the worst.”
“But he didn’t fall.”
“Course he didn’t, idiot. He’s still alive, isn’t he? After that bit, it was easy.”
“So once we set out it’ll be easier.”
“Maybe.”
Later, when Conor has gone up to the farm for the eggs, I go to the chest where Dad stored his prints and negatives. The chest has six long, shallow drawers which glide in or out at the touch of a finger. I go to the fifth drawer down and slide it open.
I haven’t looked in this drawer since Dad went away. Nothing’s changed. Dad’s drawers were always kept ship-shape. I slide my hand to the very back, and my fingers touch a familiar, fragile roll of parchment. It just fits the shallow drawer.
I take out Dad’s map. I don’t know why I call it “Dad’s map” really because he always called it “the Trewhella map” or “our map”. But I associate it with him because we spent so many hours together poring over it. It’s very old. A length of faded black tape ties the rolled-up map. The parchment is yellow brown and stained. I used to think the brown stains were blood, but Dad said they were just where sea water had darkened the parchment. This map has travelled the oceans, Sapphy. It’s been in our family for hundreds of years.
We can’t display the map on a wall because it has to be kept away from the light, which would quickly fade the outlines and the writing. Besides, Dad always said such a map is a private thing. You don’t want outsiders to ask questions, or tell you that it ought rightly to be in a museum. This map was made by Trewhellas, Sapphy. It’s to be kept with the Trewhellas.
I untie the black tape. I know what’s inside so well that I wait for a moment, not unrolling the map but letting every detail of it rise to my mind. It’s a map of the world, but not like any you could buy now. At each pole there is a vast prowling mass of icy land. In the centre of the Arctic mass a jagged black rock rises sharply from the whiteness. It is marked The North Pole. Our map was drawn at the time when people thought there was solid land at the North Pole, not a mass of frozen sea.
Australia doesn’t appear on the map at all. Where it should be, there’s a sheet of empty ocean. The shape of South America is wrong, much shorter and wider than it really is. California is an island. The British Isles are drawn out of proportion, and there are beautiful tiny drawings of sailing ships making way out of London and Bristol. The European part of the map is detailed and complete with rivers and mountain ranges, but the northwest of America and the east of Russia and China are vast unmarked territories, enclosed by uncertain lines. It looks as if the mapmaker was guessing at the boundaries.
When I first saw the map I didn’t question it. It was Dad’s map, so it must be correct. I even told my teacher that the world map on our classroom wall was wrong, but he said that mapmakers these days had satellite photographs to make their maps absolutely accurate. The next time Dad let me look at his map I felt as if it had tricked me. I said, “Dad, they’ve got it wrong on your map. Africa doesn’t go like that. And look, they haven’t even put Australia and New Zealand in.”
Dad said, “Those men who risked their lives to make this map weren’t stupid, Sapphy. This is their world. They drew what they knew.”
“But they’ve put sea dragons in the ocean. And look, there’s a man spouting water and blowing on a seashell.”
“That’s Neptune, Sapphy. God of the sea.”
“But maps ought to show real things. There aren’t any real dragons.” I was at the age when you’re proud of knowing that there are no such things as dragons and fairies.
Dad said, “Maybe there were dragons then. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your ancestors knew less than you do, Sapphy.”
“The map’s wrong, though. We’ve got satellite pictures nowadays. We know what the Earth really looks like.”
Dad laughed scornfully. “You don’t learn what the world is like by looking at a picture that’s been sent from a piece of metal and plastic orbiting miles above the Earth’s atmosphere. Think of all the salt seas they fought across to make our map, and all the storms they weathered in a wooden ship that you wouldn’t believe could sail as far as France.”
The map is old and very fragile. Even the careless touch of a human hand can damage it, Dad used to say. Carefully, as he taught me, I unroll it and spread it out on the table. A piece of paper falls out. Not old parchment like the map. Twenty-first century paper, folded. My heart jumps with excitement. All at once I’m certain that this is a message, hidden by Dad for me to find. I was always the one who wanted to see the map, not Conor. I pick up the paper and unfold it, my fingers trembling. But there’s nothing to be excited about. Just a few scribbled figures.
22 30 7 6
23 00 9 6
23 15 15 6
23 30 19 6
It’s Dad’s handwriting. The sight of it hurts me. I don’t want to think about Dad’s hand picking up the pen and writing these figures. It must have been important or he wouldn’t have bothered to put the paper inside the map. I look at the figures again, trying to add them up and guess their meaning. They refuse to give up their secret.
I turn back to the map, and weigh down its corners with the smooth pebbles Dad always used for the purpose. Automatically my gaze goes to the place where we live. The coast of Cornwall is beautifully drawn by someone who knows every cove. The mapmaker has made Cornwall look a lot bigger than it really is in proportion to the rest of the British Isles. Dad said there was a reason for that too. If you’re making a map, you might make more of something that’s important to you.
As I bend closer I see something I am sure I’ve never seen before. In the blue-brown waters off the west coast of Cornwall there is a new word, written in tiny, exquisite writing. It looks exactly like the handwriting on the rest of the map, but the ink is new. Not faded brown, but sharp and black.
Ingo
Ingo. A shiver runs over my skin. I seem to hear the wash of the waves in the coils of my ears. No one else can have written that word except Dad, before he left us. I scan the map again. Yes, there is something else that wasn’t there before. How could I have missed it? In the corner of the map, where the known dissolves into the unknown, there is a small figure. Dad always drew well. This is one of his best drawings. It shows a Mer woman. Not a mermaid with long golden hair, a scaly fish tail and a comb in her hand, but a Mer woman like those I’ve seen in Ingo. She has long dark hair and a strong seal tail.
When Dad drew this he couldn’t have known that Conor or I would ever find our way to Ingo. It was a clue, maybe, left for anyone who was capable of understanding it. Just one word, Ingo, and one figure. If this map went to a museum they would say that the Mer woman was a mythological figure. Someone would pore over the word Ingo, and maybe decide that it was a local name for one of the reefs.
But this map is never going to a museum. It is private and it belongs to the Trewhellas, because we are the only ones who truly understand it.
I look around for the pot where Dad kept his best pen. No one has touched it since he went. Mum took all Dad’s clothes to the charity shop in St Pirans, and she sold his camera and the digital printer he used for his work. But she kept the personal things for me and for Conor.
I take out the pen and unscrew the cap. The pen has a fine nib which is good for drawing. I bring pen to paper, and hesitate. It feels like sacrilege. I am breaking a rule that has been drummed into me since I was first allowed to see the map. But as the first line flows it feels entirely right. I am meant to be doing this. I am a Trewhella and this map is for the Trewhellas, to show us what the world is like.
Close to the word Ingo I draw four tiny figures. They are as small as I can make them without losing definition. Two are Mer and two are human. The Mer figures have strong seal tails and flowing dark hair. The girl wears a bodice of woven sea grass. The human figures are dark-haired too. They could be cousins to the Mer figures, except that they have legs instead of tails.
I understand now what Dad was trying to tell me about the mapmaker who made it. This map is about a person’s experience of the world, not about what a camera sees as it blinks in space.
I finish my drawing. The piece of paper with Dad’s writing on it is still lying open. I glance at it again, casually, wondering if it’s worth putting it back into the map before I roll it up. My glance sweeps over the numbers, and suddenly I realise that they are not part of a calculation. It was the layout that confused me. If Dad had put in the dots, I would have seen their meaning immediately.
22.30 7.6
23.00 9.6
23.15 15.6
23.30 19.6
They are times and dates. Half past ten in the evening on the seventh of June. Eleven o’clock on the ninth of June. Quarter past eleven on the fifteenth of June. Half past eleven on the nineteenth of June. Dates and times which were so important to Dad that he must have noted them at the time. So important that he hid the paper inside the map. He didn’t think anyone else would ever guess what they meant, but I know. I know which June it was. It was the month that Dad disappeared.
These must be the times and the dates when he heard Mellina singing. It was Dad who wrote the word Ingo on the map because even then he knew – or suspected – what Ingo was. My heart beats faster. Maybe these weren’t just the times that he heard Mellina sing. They might have been times when he went down to the cove, and met her, and fell so deep in love with her that he knew he would abandon everything for her.
I am not sure why he left a record of these times. Perhaps it was a clue for whichever Trewhella might come to read it one day.
My eyes sting. I so wish I could go back in time. If only I could come in and find Dad while he was writing those figures. He must have felt completely alone. Ingo was pulling him, the way the Call is pulling us, and he couldn’t tell any of us about it. All he could do was leave a message almost in code, and hope that maybe one day somebody would understand.
I roll up the map very carefully with Dad’s piece of paper inside it, exactly as it was. I wrap the faded tape around the parchment, and tie it so that the bow won’t loosen even if it has to wait for years before it is undone. I slide the scroll to the back of the drawer at the left hand side, where it fits perfectly.
I’ve left my own message now for whoever comes after me. I wonder if one day in the future some girl who looks a little like me will unroll the map and look at those four little figures, and understand what they mean.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_b755c553-6ccc-5248-b829-faddaae898d5)
“Watch out, Conor, I’m going to throw it.” “You’re crazy,” grumbles Conor. “I told you, you should have given it to the cat.” I take a small plastic bag out of my pocket, and shake out the bed of weed which is wrapped around the fish egg. The little fish is still alive, swimming inside its rubbery membrane. I shudder, draw my arm back and throw egg and weed as far away from us as I can into the waves.
Sea water swirls around my legs, almost knocking me off balance. I grab Conor’s arm and we stand together, waiting, watching the horizon. The Call is alive in both of us. It’s like music rising at the start of a crescendo, but it hasn’t got there yet. We are waiting for Faro.
The sky is dark today. The wind chops off the white crests of the waves. Even inside our cove, where the water is protected by a curve of cliff and by the rocks that guard the entrance, the sea is wild.
A wave sucks back, tugging at us, wanting to pull us with it. We manage to stay upright, but we have to fight for balance.
“There he is!” shouts Conor.
Faro’s head shows through the wave crests and then vanishes again. Next time he rises he is only fifty metres from shore. He waves, and we plunge forward. I dive through the first wave and then the next, cutting through the water with Conor beside me. We are not in Ingo yet, but the water feels like home.
We reach Faro. His head is above the surface and he is breathing air. He is pale and his face, like the sea, is stormy. I wonder if the air is hurting him. I thought it was growing easier for Faro to make the transition.
“Are you all right, Faro?” I ask.
“I was pursued,” says Faro, and anger blazes in his eyes. “Look.” He flips over so that we can see his tail. There is a gash in it at the base. “I am losing blood,” says Faro. “I have called my sister but she is with a child who was thrown against the rocks by a rogue current. She will come when she can.”
“Faro! It looks deep,” I say.
“It is deep. It was intended to be deep. Mortarow pursued me. The sea bull has gored me.”
“He did this to you?” demands Conor, and a fury equal to Faro’s flares in his face.
“Ervys’s followers have taken up arms,” says Faro. There is deep anger in his voice as he shakes back his hair defiantly. “He has taught the Mer to arm themselves against their brothers and sisters. He has defied the law of the Mer. Saldowr shall hear of this.”
“Faro, can you climb up on to a rock?” I ask him. “We aren’t healers like Elvira but if we press hard on the wound that might stop it bleeding.”
“It will weaken me more to leave the water. I came to tell you that in two nights we will answer the Call. But Ervys’s followers are waiting for us. They will pack the Assembly chamber if they can. They will try to turn the Mer against us so that we are not chosen to make the Crossing. They fear what will happen if we succeed. They don’t want peace: they want war, and victory.”
“What time? When shall we come?”
“Be here when the moon rises. I will come for you. You will know when the time is right, because the Call will grow so strong in you that you hear nothing else. This is what I have been told by those who have made the Crossing. I will be here for you.”
“But you’re badly hurt, Faro!” I stare through the water and see a cloud of blood around Faro’s tail. “Will you be strong enough?”
“Strong enough!” says Faro, looking at me as if I am Mortarow trying to stop him. Then his face softens. “Are you wearing our bracelet, little sister?”
“Of course.” I lift my arm to show him. “Faro, what kind of weapons have they got – Ervys and his followers?”
“They have taken up spears fashioned from the wood they find in drowned ships, and from sharpened stones and coral.”
I look anxiously at Faro’s tail. I know that people often get blood poisoning from coral wounds. “Was Mortarow’s spear tipped with coral, Faro?”
Faro turns aside and spits into the water. “Mortarow has taken human metal to tip his spear. He has been rummaging deep in the belly of a wreck and has found human weapons.” He spits again. “And our sea bull says that he is upholding the pure traditions of the Mer.” He’s very pale. Anger gives him energy, but he needs Elvira’s help, and quickly.
“Go, Faro, you’ve got to hurry. Are you strong enough? Shall we come with you to find Elvira?”
Faro shakes his head. “In two nights I shall be here for you.” He turns. There are no dazzling somersaults this time, or glittering plunges into deep water. Faro dips his head beneath the surface and swims down, down into Ingo until he is lost to sight.
“We shouldn’t have let him go, Conor. That wound was deep.”
“He’ll be all right, once he gets to Elvira.” Conor turns and wades back to shore. I catch up with him. “Only two nights to wait,” he says.
“Yes.”
Conor glances at me, his face sombre and thoughtful. “Aren’t you afraid, Saph?” he asks.
“Of Mortarow, you mean? But Saldowr wouldn’t let him hurt us… would he?”
“Mortarow has just struck at Faro, Saph. He knows that’s the same as striking at Saldowr himself. They’ve lost their fear of what Saldowr can do to them. Listen Saph. Do you really still want to make the Crossing?”
I stop dead in the shallow water, grabbing Conor’s arm to make him stop too. “How can you say that?”
“I’m not even sure that I should let you go.”
“Let me go! Conor, you’re my brother but you’re not my keeper. Don’t you understand? I’ve got no choice. I’ve got to go.”
Conor sighs. “I keep thinking what Mum would say if she knew.”
“You can’t think like that.”
“You’re my sister, Saph. My real sister.”
I know this is a dig at Faro. Conor doesn’t like it when Faro calls me little sister. “I know,” I say, “but I still have to go. And so do you, don’t you? You heard the Call.” Conor nods. “Ingo needs us,” I go on.
“You don’t have to tell me that, Saph. I’ve seen what Ervys can do. We’ve got to stop him. I just wish I could go alone. Being afraid for another person is much worse than being afraid for yourself.”
I shiver. “I’m so cold, Conor. Let’s get home quick.”
As we climb up the rocks I look back. The cove is filling. The tide’s coming in. A wild tide, full of anger. Next time we come here the moon will be rising. We’ll walk into the water and our journey will begin.
Rainbow is at the cottage. She has tethered Kylie Newton’s pony Treacle to the gatepost and he is munching placidly at a clump of grass. I glance up at the roof. The gulls attacked Sadie; they might go for Treacle too. Every hour of the day they are there now, watching. Sometimes they change guard as one posse flies out to sea and another flies inland to perch along the ridge of our roof. I wonder what else they have got in their nest now. As if it feels my thoughts, one of the gulls stretches out its neck and screams down derision.
I could have given your stupid egg to the cat, but I didn’t. You should be grateful, I tell them in my mind, but I don’t think the gulls can read my thoughts.
“They can’t be nesting at this time of year,” says Rainbow, puzzled. The biggest gull is staring at her and Treacle with its yellow eyes. Suddenly it looks aside, like a bully pretending to have lost interest when he spots that someone’s not going to be intimidated. He struts along the roof a little way, then flies upward in a wide circle that keeps well clear of us. One by one the other gulls lift off, squawking out their protests, and fly out to sea. For the first time since Granny Carne visited there are no gulls on our roof.
“I won’t have them on our roof,” says Rainbow as if she has perfect gull control.
“Don’t you like gulls?” asks Conor.
“I used to, but they’ve changed. They’ve become really aggressive. I don’t mind them dive-bombing to take food off people because that’s their instinct. They’re scavengers by nature. But the last year or two I’ve seen them attack for nothing. They went for my neighbour’s dog one day – you know, Sky. And she’s tiny, she’s only a Yorkshire terrier. I had to beat them off.” She strokes Treacle’s neck reassuringly.
“Does Kylie ever get a chance to ride her own pony?” I demand. Rainbow laughs.
“You know Kylie,” she says. “If she can get someone else to exercise Treacle for her, she will. She likes the idea of having a pony but she doesn’t like the work.”
I stroke Treacle’s nose while Conor goes in to make tea and rummage through the larder to see if we’ve eaten the last of the last Guilt Cake.
“Kylie is unbelievably lazy,” I agree. “If I had a pony I’d want to do everything for it.”
“They’re going to take me on at the stables on Saturdays,” Rainbow says.
“Which one?”
“Tregony. It’s mainly mucking out and leading the little ones out on rides. I don’t get paid but I’ll get two hours free riding and I can use the jumps any time I want.”
“It’ll be good for you to get up on something a bit more exciting than old Treacle,” I say. Rainbow’s a good rider.
Rainbow pats Treacle protectively. “How can you say that? He’s got the best temperament. You could put a cat up on him and he wouldn’t shy.”
“And he gallops exactly like his name.”
“Don’t listen to her, Treacle.” We both laugh. Conor comes out with a clutch of mugs in one hand and a plate of biscuits.
“No more cake?” I ask.
“No more cake.” He smiles at Rainbow. “You’re growing your hair.”
I hadn’t noticed, but he’s right. Rainbow’s bright hair is curling down over her neck now. She blushes a little. “I just felt like it,” she says, looking down at the mug of tea Conor hands her, rather than at him.
“It’s nice,” says Conor.
“But where’s Sadie?” asks Rainbow abruptly.
“She’s gone to stay with Granny Carne for a while,” I answer, not looking at Rainbow.
“We’ve had a call from family upcountry,” says Conor.
“Mum’s second cousin,” I put in quickly. “They want us to go up there for half term, and maybe stay on for a week afterwards, because of Mum being away. We’re going to write to our schools for permission to miss the time. But we can’t take Sadie because they live in a flat.”
Too much information, I realise as the words gush from my mouth. Second law of lying: don’t put too much icing on the cake. Silence falls, an awkward silence.
“In Plymouth,” I blurt out.
Rainbow looks from me to Conor. Her face is puzzled. Her blush returns and deepens. “I didn’t know you had any family in Plymouth,” she says. “Have you been up to stay with them before?”
“Yes,” I say.
“No,” says Conor at the same moment.
Another silence falls. Rainbow turns away and starts to fuss over Treacle. “There, boy, good boy, steady there…” Treacle looks surprised but smug, while Rainbow gulps down her tea, even though it must be too hot.
“They’re not well,” I blunder on. “Our cousin and his family, that is. That’s why they want us to go, to help look after them…”
“I’ve got to get going,” Rainbow mutters into her mug. “Kylie will want Treacle back…”
Kylie Newton wouldn’t care if you took Treacle out until the middle of next week, I think, but I say nothing. I have the feeling that Conor’s got to sort out this mess, not me. The silence drags on painfully. Rainbow puts her mug down on a flat stone, fumbles for her hard hat and puts it on.
“Rainbow,” says Conor.
“Yes?” Her voice isn’t cold – Rainbow’s voice could never be that – but it’s constricted.
“Rainbow, I’m sorry. That wasn’t true, what we said.”
“I know.”
“Saph and I do have to go somewhere. But we can’t tell you any more than that. We can’t tell anyone. If our schools think we’re with family there won’t be any trouble.”
“You didn’t have to lie to me,” Rainbow says.
Neither of us knows what to say. Colour rises under Conor’s brown skin. He frowns and his lips tighten. I hope Rainbow doesn’t think he is angry with her. He’s furious with himself, and with everything that’s forced him to lie to Rainbow. “I was stupid,” he says quietly.
“Yes, you were.” Rainbow is frowning too. Elvira would havemelted into sympathy by now, I think. But Rainbow’s not like that. She thinks a lot of Conor but she expects a lot from him too. They take no notice of me. In fact they’ve probably forgotten that I’m here. Rainbow is trying to work out what can have made the Conor she knows behave so much out of character.
Suddenly she gets it. Light breaks on her face. “Is it to do with your father?” she asks. I follow her thoughts. She believes that maybe we have been right all along. Dad is still alive, and we have managed to trace him. Conor hesitates. He can’t – no, he won’t – lie to Rainbow any more, but he’s got to give her some kind of explanation. It would be cruel to leave her thinking that we don’t trust her.
“In a way it is,” he says carefully.
Another flash of insight. “You’re going where he is, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” says Conor. You can see how relieved he is to be telling the truth. “But we can’t tell anyone else. It’s vital. People could get hurt.”
“Is it dangerous, then?” It’s an odd question, given all that Rainbow doesn’t know. It’s as if she understands what is going on by instinct.
“It could be. But Saph and I haven’t got any choice.”
This is where I have my own moment of inspiration. “Granny Carne knows,” I say.
Rainbow’s expression clears. “She knows where your father is?”
“Yes.”
“And she hasn’t tried to stop you?”
I think of Granny Carne standing in the lane a long time ago, keeping us from Ingo, giving us blackberries that tasted of Earth. She stopped us then, but time has moved on. We’re not strangers to Ingo any more, or visitors who can plunge beneath the skin, surf a few currents and come out unchanged. We’ve become part of it, even Conor, whether we want to be or not. Our future is tied to Ingo’s. That’s why Granny Carne won’t stand in our way this time, and why she can’t give us any protection. I see her in my mind’s eye, her red scarf flying in the wind, her feet planted on the Earth, her far-seeing eyes fixed on me. One of her hands is lifted. I don’t know if she’s greeting me or saying farewell. Her other hand rests on the hoary grey of a granite standing stone, while the adders – her nadron, the children of Earth – twist and twine at her feet. The vision is so powerful that I almost hear the snakes hiss.
I come back to myself. Rainbow is watching me curiously.
“Granny Carne hasn’t tried to stop us,” Conor confirms. “She’s the only one who knows where we’re going, though. You won’t tell anyone else, will you, Rainbow? Not even Patrick?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
Rainbow unhitches Treacle’s reins from the post and leads him away from the wall. He stops, placid and foursquare as ever. She puts her foot into the stirrup, and springs on to Treacle’s broad back. Her legs are way too long for him, but Rainbow is light and no burden.
“That animal’s more like an armchair than a horse,” Conor says, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Rainbow remains serious.
“You said it might be dangerous.”
“Yes,” says Conor.
“You will—” Rainbow clears her throat. “You will come back, won’t you?” The light is behind her, shining through the bright rim of hair beneath the hard hat. Conor puts his hand on Treacle’s neck. He is serious, too, as he gazes up at Rainbow.
“I’ll come back,” he says. “I promise you that.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_bb6f3dbe-0aa0-5179-9bab-c46cb96c2eeb)
Faro was right. When the time comes, we can no more resist the force that is pulling us towards that Assembly chamber than we could stop the blood flowing through our veins. The Call isn’t just one note blown on a conch: it’s a summons. Ingo wants us, needs us, and demands that we come now.
It’s a clear, still night, thick with stars. The moon will rise soon after nine o’clock, Conor says. It’s coming up to high tide. The salt tide of Ingo rises in me, growing stronger every minute.
We turn out the lights and lock the cottage door. A gull mews like a cat out of the darkness above our heads. Another answers, and then I think I hear wings. Conor stares up, trying to see what the gulls are doing. “Are they still there?”
“I think one flew off.”
“Do you think they’ve guessed where we’re going?”
“I don’t know.”
We are both whispering. Now that my eyes are getting used to the dark I can see the pale shapes of the gulls standing on the roof, silhouetted against the moonlit sky. There are six of them.
They make no more sound. Their silence seems more sinister than a flurry of angry squawking.
“Come on,” says Conor.
We cross the garden, open the gate and set off down the track. Our feet crunch more loudly on the hard surface than they ever do by day. I glance back. I can still see our home by starlight, although the moon hasn’t risen yet. The gulls are there, watching and waiting. They can wait there as long as they like, I think, but they’ll never be able to enter. The rowan will keep our home safe. I can just see the rowan tree’s shape against our door. No evil can cross a threshold which the rowan guards.
Lights glow through curtains from the scattered cottages where our neighbours live. In the morning they’ll see that no lights are on in our cottage. They’ll think we’ve left early to catch the train up to Plymouth. Granny Carne has told our neighbour Mary Thomas about Mum’s cousin, and the news will be around the village by now.
Down the track, down the path. The dew has already fallen and it’s cold. The air smells of autumn, of mushrooms, bracken and the sea. We don’t talk. The power that is taking us into Ingo now is too strong for words.
We’re almost at the place where the little hidden path curves away off this one, to the lip of the cliff where we’ll scramble down to our cove. Faro will be waiting—
Conor stops dead. I almost fall on top of him. “What’s wrong?”
“Listen.”
I listen, expecting to hear the sound of the sea or maybe the Call again, or maybe my own name carried on the wind from the sea, as I heard it once before:
Ssssapphiiire… Ssssapphiiire…
But there’s nothing.
“Conor, come on, we’ve got to hurry.”
“No. Listen, Saph. I’m sure I heard something.”
The night breeze lifts my hair. Prickles of fear run up my neck. Ervys can’t leave Ingo. But what if the gulls attack now, out of the night sky? They will be able to see better than us. There are hundreds of gulls roosting in the cliffs.
“Listen.”
This time I hear it too. A muffled groan. It could be an animal but I’m immediately sure that it’s not. It’s a human sound.
“Is anyone there? Are you hurt?” calls Conor. His voice is much too loud.
“Conor, don’t!”
“Answer if you can!” calls Conor, ignoring me. Again, a faint moan carries towards us. “It’s close. I’m going to shine the torch.”
We weren’t going to shine the torch until we needed it for climbing down to the cove in case its light gave us away. Conor flicks on the beam of light and passes it slowly and thoroughly over the dense mass of brambles, bracken and furze. The sound comes again.
“It’s down here!” Conor pushes forward, down the little hidden path that goes to the cove. I’m close behind. “Stop, Saph! Here! There’s someone here.”
He shines the torch down. A figure huddles on the path. There’s something else – two long pieces of metal reflecting in the torchlight. Conor kneels down. “It’s Gloria Fortune,” he says over his shoulder. “Hold the torch, Saph.”
I take the torch. “Don’t move her if she’s injured, Con.”
“I’m not stupid.”
I recognise Gloria Fortune now. The metal things are her crutches. She must have slipped and fallen.
“She’s soaking wet,” says Conor.
“Oh my God.” She has done it. Somehow she has crawled down over the lip of the cliff, down the rocks to the sand. She has got to the sea.
“Don’t shine the torch in my eyes,” says Gloria. Her voice is faint but steady.
“Are you all right? What happened?” asks Conor.
“I’m not hurt. Just – tired. Had to lie down a minute.”
“You were groaning. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“Cold, that’s all. Got to get home – Richard’ll be back soon. He’ll think s-s-something’s – happened to me.”
“Something has happened to you,” says Conor grimly.
“I should never have gone down there,” mutters Gloria.
“Can you get up if Saph and I help you? Your crutches are here. We’ll get you back home, it’s not far.”
“But, Conor!” I burst out. I can’t go back again. We’re more than halfway to Ingo. The pull has become so strong my whole body is possessed by it.
“We’ve got to, Saph.”
Gloria is moving. Slowly, painfully, she rolls over and struggles up on to her knees. She waits, gathering strength.
“Maybe we should get Richard. If you’ve damaged your leg any more you’ll need a stretcher,” says Con.
“No!” says Gloria. “He mustn’t see me like this. Help me up.” One on each side, we support Gloria under her arms and help her up. Her clothes are soaked with water. She smells of the sea.
“What happened?” asks Conor.
“I thought – thought someone was calling me. Into the water. Don’t know how I got down there…found the way somehow. I think I was on the rocks…A wave came over me and then I was afraid.” Her voice drops to a whisper. I lean close. “There was something in the water that hated me,” I hear her say.
I feel both horror and relief. Gloria hasn’t been to Ingo. Her Mer blood must be strong enough to take her to the gateway, but not to allow her to enter Ingo alone. There was no Faro there to guide her. What if she had gone into the water and found Mortarow there – or Ervys?
I thought Granny Carne was protecting Gloria and keeping her safe on the Earth. It must be the Call that is making Ingo so powerful tonight. No one would have seen Gloria go. No one would have missed her, until Richard came home. Gloria might have been found days later, washed up miles down the coast. No one would ever guess what really happened. They’d say it was a terrible accident.
“You must never do that again,” I say protectively. I can help Conor take her back to her cottage. It will only delay us for a few minutes, and what does time mean tonight anyway? Soon we’ll be in Ingo time, and human clocks will mean nothing.
“Got to get home – Richard…” mutters Gloria, sounding like an exhausted child rather than the strong woman I know she is.
Slowly, step by step, we get Gloria home. She is shivering with shock and cold, but it’s not far. The air is still but I feel as if I’m pushing into a strong wind with the effort of turning my back on Ingo. Their rented cottage is only a couple of hundred metres from ours. I don’t even glance at our cottage. I don’t want to see if the gulls are on the roof, or if one of them is flying off to deliver the message to Ervys that Gloria has survived. I remember Faro’s words. They don’t want peace, they want war, and victory.
Gloria’s cottage is dark. “Thank God, he’s not back yet.”
We push open the unlocked door. A wave of warmth enfolds us. Conor switches on the light, while Gloria slumps into a chair by the stove. “You need a hot shower,” I tell her.
“In a minute.” She opens her eyes, reviving. For the first time she cracks a faint smile.
“We’ll stay with you until Richard comes home,” says Conor.
“No! He’ll know something’s wrong if he sees you.”
To be here in Gloria’s cottage is torture. Faro is waiting for us. The Call is dragging at me. The time is now. But Gloria is cold, wet, weak. People die of hypothermia.
“We’re not going until you’ve had a hot shower and got into warm clothes,” I say decisively.
Their shower is downstairs. Gloria moves slowly but she seems stronger now she’s in her own place. I wait outside the door, listening to be sure that she’s all right. I hear the shower running, and after a few minutes Gloria comes out wrapped in a blue dressing gown. Conor brings her tea and she settles herself by the stove again, in the opposite chair because the first one she sat in is damp with sea-water.
“I’ll be all right now.” Gloria is an adult again, competent and calm.
“Promise me you won’t ever—” I begin, then stop. I don’t think I have any right to ask Gloria for promises. But she looks straight back as if she understands exactly what I mean.
“Never again,” she says. “Never, ever again.”
It’s safe to leave her now. As we close the cottage door and turn away down the track we see headlights bumping down off the main road. Richard is on his way home.
“He’ll look after her,” says Conor.
“Yes.”
“They should move,” Conor goes on angrily. “He should get her right away from here.”
I have nothing to say. I want Gloria to be safe. But denying her Mer blood isn’t going to make her safe, not for ever. There has got to be another way. Not Ervys’s way, with Mer and human battling and Ingo and Earth deadly enemies.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_7bba7d6d-a10a-54a5-baf9-465bc2a93514)
The cove is brimful of tide. No jumping down from the rocks on to clean pale sand tonight. “We’ll have to climb right out over the rocks until we’re sure we’re above deep water,” whispers Conor. I don’t know why we’re whispering, but we are, and we don’t call for Faro either. He may not be the only one of the Mer who is watching and waiting for us tonight.
The rocks are sharp and slippery. The starlight is strong enough to guide us as we lower ourselves into gullies then climb the steep rocky sides of the cove. We need to go right out, almost to the cove’s mouth. I follow Conor, reaching for handholds, and fitting my feet into the rock’s crevices. He hasn’t switched on the torch since we left Gloria Fortune’s cottage.
“Face the rock and let yourself go down backwards,” he whispers. “I’ll go first.” I glance down. In the starlight I can see Conor’s outline pressed against the rock. He lowers himself carefully, and then lets go and slides to the next foothold. The rock slopes at about forty degrees here. It looks dangerous. It is dangerous. If Conor slips too far he won’t fall in the water, he’ll fall on rock. But once he’s down, there’s a ledge above a sheer drop. It’ll be safe to dive from there.
“I’m down. Come on,” he calls softly.
I turn to face the rock, and press against it as Conor did. My fingers dig into a narrow crevice. I let go of my safe fingerhold and let myself slide. There’s no foothold or handhold. I scrabble desperately, my jaw cracks against the rock, I bite my tongue. But my foot jars against a spur of rock. I’m not sliding any more.
Foothold, slide. Handhold, slide. Suddenly, with a jolt, both my feet hit rock and Conor’s hand is behind my back, steadying me. “You’ve made it, Saph. You’re on the ledge. Turn round slowly.”
I shuffle my feet around cautiously, and turn to face outwards. At that moment the moon rises behind the curve of the cliff. First the rim, then the broad curve, then the whole moon floats free, lighting up the cove so brilliantly that it seems as if day has come. Below us the sea bulges, black and oily looking. There is hardly any wind, but a big swell. The water breaks as it enters the cove, slapping against the rocks with a hollow boom.
For the first time in my life I’m afraid of the sea. Even when the Tide Knot broke, the fear was different. Then, the sea came out of its bed, out of its element, and tried to take over the land. It was natural to be afraid. But this is different. It feels as if the sea is prowling below our ledge, waiting for us.
How I wish Faro would come. The fingers of my right hand have gone to my bracelet. I touch the deublek made of our woven hair. Of course Faro will come. We have to go to the Assembly chamber together.
The water is empty. No Faro. In two nights I shall be here for you. Faro has never broken his word to me. Something must have prevented him. Maybe the wound on his tail was more serious than he thought.
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