“Don’t you ever try that, my girl,” says Granny Carne. “Those who can’t talk to the bees won’t ever talk to nadron, who are the children of Earth.”
Conor can talk to the bees…. “Granny Carne, could Conor ever do that with a snake? Hold it, like you did?”
“You don’t want to go calling her snake. She has her proper name just as you do. Yes, your Conor has it in him to talk to my lady there, should he think of wanting to do it.”
He’ll get plenty of chances in Australia, I think grimly. Everyone says Australia is full of snakes, the most poisonous ones in the world. And poisonous spiders and crocodiles. No doubt Roger will plan trips to see them all.
We walk back to Granny Carne’s cottage, and I fill a bowl of water for Sadie while Granny Carne puts her kettle onto the fire. I don’t want to sit down at the table, but there’s a silent pressure that makes me do so. I’m not comfortable here. I never have been. The cottage is too closed in. Too earthy. The night I once spent here was one of the worst of my life.
I wish Granny Carne hadn’t shown me that tunnel deep into the earth. When I shut my eyes, I can still see it. I don’t want to know about Earth things. I want wild water foaming over black rocks. I want the taste of salt and the slap of waves. I don’t want Granny Carne to try to change me.
I glance suspiciously at Granny Carne, who is slicing a loaf of brown bread. “Fetch me the butter from the larder, Sapphire.”
Granny Carne’s larder is on the north side of the cottage. It is cool and dark, and there’s a marble slab where she puts milk and butter and cheese. Granny Carne has never had a fridge or a freezer. I fetch the butter and take a deep breath. Remember, Sapphire, you didn’t come here to think about snakes and Earth things. You came because of Ingo: the Kraken and what’s going to happen now that Ervys is locked in combat with Saldowr. And Gloria Fortune.
“Gloria mustn’t go to Ingo,” I say as I put the butter down on the table.
Granny Carne looks at me quizzically. “Mustn’t go to Ingo?” she asks. “Not when you think Ingo’s next door to heaven?”
“If she goes, it’ll be like Dad going. I mean, Gloria’s got Rob, and they really love each other. What would he do without her?”
Granny Carne shakes her head. “You came here for your own sake, Sapphire. Leave Gloria Fortune to tell me her own story.”
“But I’ve got to help her!”
“You may think that if you want, but the truth is you came for yourself. There’s too many folk that rush round helping others so they won’t have to look at what needs help in themselves.”
Granny Carne makes tea and spreads the brown bread with butter. As she hands me a plate, she observes, “Australia’s a fair old distance, Sapphire, near at the bottom of the world.”
Did I even mention Australia? I’m sure I didn’t.
“You ever seen those old maps they used to draw, with whales spouting and mermen and ships falling over the edge of the world, before they thought that the earth was round?”
“No.”
“Course we’ve come on since then.” Granny Carne smiles ironically. “We’ve even got those satellites taking pictures to tell us what the queen keeps in her back garden. We know everything about the Earth now, except how to keep her alive.”
I munch my slice of bread. It’s sticky and full of plump raisins. Granny Carne’s tea has a faint taste of smoke in it, maybe because her kettle hangs directly over the fire.
The tea is good. I feel more relaxed now. “I don’t want to go to Australia,” I say.
“Best you don’t go then,” says Granny Carne equably.
“But Mum will be so upset and miserable. She’ll say she won’t go without me.”
“Knowing Jennie,” says Granny Carne, “I reckon she’ll go. Long as she’s sure you’ll be safe and happy, she’ll come round to going. What about your Conor? Does he want to go?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“Question is, my girl, will your Conor go without you?”
“That’s the trouble. I don’t want to mess everything up for him. He ought to be able to go to Australia if he wants.”
I say it as firmly as I can because I know it’s right, but I can’t imagine spending three months without Conor. Conor’s always been there. I can’t really even imagine a week without Conor.
I suppose at least if he goes to Australia, it means he’ll be safely away from falling more and more in love with Elvira. Look on the bright side, Sapphire….
But none of the sides seem very bright.
Rainbow thinks I can do it if I want to. Change things, I mean, instead of always being changed by them. She thinks I should tell Mum and Roger what I want to have happen, instead of waiting until they tell me what’s going to happen. I wish I had as much confidence in myself as Rainbow seems to have—
“She’s a fine girl, Rainbow,” says Granny Carne meditatively, as if we’ve just been talking about her. “She’d do for your Conor, I’d say.” I stare at Granny Carne in shock. Conor and Rainbow! Conor and Rainbow? But Conor’s besotted by Elvira, and anyway, Rainbow’s my friend, not Conor’s. Conor and Rainbow…
I think it over. Rainbow’s warmth and kindness, her good sense, her strength and independence. Rainbow isn’t mysterious; she’s as transparent as sunlight. Her short bright hair is the opposite of Elvira’s floating locks. When I think of Conor with Elvira, I always see them with their backs turned, swimming away from me. I see Elvira taking Conor away from me. I don’t think Rainbow would do that. Rainbow and Conor—could it ever really happen?
“But Conor’s going off to Australia,” I say aloud.
“It’s a funny thing how everyone wants to go to the bottom of the world,” says Granny Carne, watching me closely.
Her words echo and echo in my head. They have such power that they make my skin prickle. The whale said that the Crossing of Ingo would take me to the bottom of the world. One day, little barelegs, you may go to the bottom of the world too and meet my daughter. I’d love to meet the whale’s daughter. It sounds odd, but I think it would be almost like meeting a sister.
I don’t want to go to the bottom of the world on a jumbo jet, crammed in with hundreds of people. That’s not traveling. I want to surf the great currents past continents and islands. I want to be in living water, not in dead airplane air. I want to meet all the creatures of Ingo. I want to be with the Mer.
“Earth needs ones like you, and Ingo needs ones like you,” says Granny Carne. “You understand what I’m saying, Sapphire? Sometimes I reckon you think it’s a curse, the way your blood’s equal. You’ve got your human blood pulling you one way and your Mer blood pulling you the other. Your Mer blood’s pulling you strong now, am I right? You want to belong to Ingo. You think you can belong there. Is that it? Am I right, my girl?”
“Yes,” I say quietly.
“But you can’t belong in one place,” says Granny Carne. “That’s not what’s written for you in the Book of Life.”
That’s horrible. She makes it seem as if everything’s predestined and I don’t have any freedom. I won’t believe that my future is already written down in some book, particularly in one that I never want to see again because it’s so scary. Words swarming at me like bees—ugh.
“Maybe the Book of Life is wrong,” I say rebelliously.
Granny Carne gives a crack of laughter. “Never thought I’d sit here and someone would dare say that to my face.”
“Well, it could be.”
“You’re thinking wrong. You’re thinking it’s like a recipe written down for the future. No. My Book of Life shows what’s there, like flour and salt and fat and honey, not what you make of them. But it shows what’s not there too. You can’t make sweetness where there’s no honey or salt where there is no salt.
“You can’t belong, my girl, neither here nor in Ingo. But you ones who can’t belong are what the future needs. You ever seen a boulder lifted by a lever? That’s how they raised those standing
stones.”
And you probably watched, I think. I can easily picture Granny Carne standing on the hillside, wrapped in an earth-colored cloak, watching Bronze Age people heave and sweat to raise the stones. I’ll bet those Bronze Age people used to come up here and tell her their troubles too.
“The lever doesn’t look like much, compared with a granite boulder that’s heavy enough to crush a dozen men.” Granny Carne goes on. “But it’ll lift that boulder. You don’t look many, you ones with your blood mixed between Earth and Ingo. But you’re the only chance that one day someone’ll learn how to put Earth and Ingo back together, so that we find an end to destruction. That’s why there’s no easy answer. Yes, I know you could slip into Ingo easy as this”—she snaps her fingers—“just like Mathew did. And one day you’d look down at yourself and you’d be Mer, like him. But I don’t know that it would make you any happier than it’s made your father.”
She sounds sorrowful. I remember how Dad and Granny Carne were always good friends. He taught me to take no notice when other kids said she was a witch, and that if I showed her respect, she’d be good to me. I can hear him saying it.
Dad’s trapped. He’s not happy. Granny Carne knows he’s not, and I do too. When he came to meet me that night, down at the Lady Stream pool, his face was full of suffering.
Don’t. Don’t think of it. Dad’s going to get his freedom. I know Saldowr says you can’t force people, but if I can see Dad and speak to him, then this time I’ll be strong. I’ll find out whether he is still our dad in his heart, or if Conor and I are as vague as dreams now and only Mordowrgi and Mellina are real. I’ve got to be brave enough to see Dad face-to-face, not in a mirror or in a pool. The only place I can ever see him face-to-face is Ingo. The only place where this tangle of belonging and not belonging can ever be untangled is Ingo.
“I’ve got to make the Crossing of Ingo,” I say.
Granny Carne’s face sharpens. “Do you know what that means?” she demands.
“I—I think so.”
Granny Carne draws herself up to her full height. Her eyes blaze like an owl’s eye when it sights prey far below.
“You think so?” she repeats.
I’m afraid. It’s like a veil lifting, showing me a depth of power in Granny Carne that’s like fire blazing in the center of the earth. I want to turn and run all the way down the hill to the safety of our cottage. My heart thumps like racing footsteps. Be brave, Sapphire. You’ve got to be strong now. If you start running, you’ll never untangle the knots that bind you. You’ll just pull them harder and tighter.
I stare back into Granny Carne’s eyes, and for a second I think I see flames leaping in their depths. My skin prickles.
“Be very sure,” says Granny Carne harshly, “that you understand what you’re doing before you bind your fortune so close to the Mer.”
“I’m not sure,” I say slowly. “I can’t be sure. But I’ve got to do it.”
“You won’t travel with my rowan this time.”
“I know.”
Granny Carne’s face relaxes. Her wrinkles are like the deep cracks in a dried-up riverbed as she smiles.
“You know, do you, my girl? You go on then,” she says, “you go on like you’re bound to do whatever I or anyone else on Earth tells you, come hell or high water. You go on and make that crossing, and then you come back here, my girl, and tell me what you know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AND NOW EVERYTHING’S changed again.
Conor isn’t going to Australia. I came home from Granny Carne’s and told him I’d made up my mind that I wasn’t going to go. I was going to live with Rainbow instead.
“No, you’re not,” he said.
Before I could get angry, he explained. He’d been thinking too. He’d talked to Roger and Mum about all their plans, and then he’d gone for a long walk to think things through.
“I went up to Granny Carne,” I said. “I had to talk to her.”
“I had to be on my own. It’s got to be my decision, not anyone else’s. I’m older than you, Saph.”
Conor told me the things he’d been weighing up in his mind. Australia had sounded amazing at first. Travel and new experiences and learning to dive with Roger. But something was nagging at him.
“It didn’t feel right to me, the four of us going out there as a family. I like Roger; you know I do. I was never against him, like you were. But he’s not Dad, and we’re not a family, not really. I mean, we get on fine here most of the time, but out there we won’t have our friends, or school, or anything. Just them. If I was five and you were three, then yes, we’d have to grow into a family. But it’s not like that.
“Mum should go, not us. She deserves a good time, after everything that’s happened. And you know what, Saph, I think Mum will have a better time if we’re not there, as long as she knows we’re fine back here and she doesn’t start feeling guilty.”
“You know Mum. She’s bound to feel guilty if we don’t go.”
“Not if we handle it right.”
We talked about it all for nearly two hours, going back and forth over all the arguments. I was worried that Conor wasn’t telling me the whole truth and that he was really giving up Australia because of me. It must have been obvious right away that I didn’t want to go even though I tried to hide it. But Conor said it wasn’t because of me.
“We’re in the middle of things here. We can’t just leave. There’s Dad.”
“I thought you’d given up on Dad.”
Conor flushes. “I’ll never do that. Okay, I don’t think he’s a prisoner the way you do, but I want to, you know, see him. Talk to him.”
And there’s Elvira, I think. “Maybe you can still get to Ingo from Australia,” I say aloud.
Conor sighs impatiently. “That’s not the point, Saph. What I mean is that these are our lives here. Our home’s here. All the really crucial things that have happened belong here. Rushing off to Australia isn’t going to solve anything.
“Anyway, I’d rather travel later on, when I’ve finished school. I’d rather go with friends, and get a job, and be independent. It’s not long to wait. I like Roger—don’t get me wrong; he’s a really good bloke even though you don’t think so.”
“I don’t hate him anymore, Conor. I even—”
“Even what?”
“Even think I’d really like having him around, if it wasn’t for Dad.”
“Yeah, Roger’s all right. But I don’t want to have to depend on him.”
“As long as it’s not me holding you back.”
“You don’t hold me back, Saph. You’re a nightmare sometimes, but you don’t hold me back.”
“When are you going to tell them?”
“Tonight.”
That was when the real difficulties began. Mum didn’t shout; she cried, and that was much worse. Roger didn’t cry, naturally, but it was just as hard in a way. He looked so disappointed. As if he’d bought a fantastic present for us both and we’d refused even to open it.
Conor put his arm round Mum and kept it there. I let him do most of the talking, because I knew he’d be more convincing. Mum clearly thought at first that Conor was just being a loyal brother and giving up a wonderful opportunity because I didn’t want to go. But he made it clear that wasn’t true.
We kept saying that Mum and Roger had got to go. They didn’t listen at first, and even by the time we all went off to bed, exhausted, Mum hadn’t budged on the question of going without us.
“It’s impossible. What kind of mother do you think I am?”
“The best,” said Conor, “but that’s not what we’re talking about.”
Mum smiled up at Conor; then her face creased again as she started listing more reasons why she couldn’t go without us.
The next day was better. Mum was up at dawn, pacing the kitchen, talking to Roger. She called in sick at work, which she never, ever does, and they went for a long walk together (taking a detour to avoid the pub where she wor
ks). By the time they came back, halfway through the afternoon, Mum seemed calmer. Roger announced that we were all going to sit down together and discuss the possibilities, and then Conor and I knew that the boulder was beginning to move.
Mum’s going. She’s not going for the full three months, but she’s going. She and Roger will fly out together, and she’ll stay for six weeks. Conor argued that it was crazy for her not to go for the whole time, but she wouldn’t budge.
Maybe, though, Conor says, she’ll stay a bit longer once she realizes we’re fine back here. He wants Mum to have the chance of doing the whole trip with Roger and going to New Zealand too.
I think it was Granny Carne who really changed Mum’s mind. Mum went up to see her. She was away the whole evening, and when she came back, she looked different. The worry lines on her face were smoothed out.
Mum wouldn’t tell us everything she and Granny Carne talked about, but she said that Granny Carne thought Mum was doing the right thing to go with Roger and let us stay here. Mum has huge faith in Granny Carne’s judgment, and she also knows that Granny Carne’s opinion counts for a lot in the village. Granny Carne told Mum she’d be our guardian while she was away.
When I heard this, I saw an owl hovering over its nest with fierce amber eyes and spread talons ready to slash at any predator. But of course Conor and I aren’t fluffy owlets. The idea of having Granny Carne as a guardian is about as scary as it is reassuring.
Conor and I are staying here in the cottage with Sadie. Mary Thomas, our closest neighbor, says we’re to come straight over, day or night, if there’s a problem. And she’ll look in every day. Gloria Fortune reminded Mum that she’s always around if we need anything, because “with this leg, I’m not going anywhere.” However, I suspect it might be us watching out for Gloria, rather than the other way round.
Rainbow hasn’t said much. She hugged me when she heard the news and said, “I knew you could do it, Sapphy.”
Jack’s mum says we can come up to Sunday dinner every week. Hmm, that could be a bit restrictive…. But I noticed Conor’s eyes lighting up. Jack’s mum makes great roast dinners.
The Deep Page 22
