“We will escort you past the Lost Islands,” says Wave-Rider as we swim away together. “We will keep company with you westward until you are well beyond these sharks’ territory. But there we shall have to leave you. We have young ones who cannot travel farther, and Scylla needs time to recover from her wound. Keep well out of land. There are nets which have trapped many of our people. They hold us beneath the water and we drown. Swim on until there is no more land to the west of you. Then listen until you hear where north is. From there, you must find your way.”
CHAPTER TEN
The dolphins have left us now. It was hard to see them go. I pressed my cheek against Scylla’s face and told her we’d never forget that the dolphins had risked their own lives to protect us from the shark.
Just before they left, the dolphins made a circle around us as they did when the shark attacked. They wove in and out of one another, plunging and somersaulting. They leaped upwards, breached the surface, then crashed down through the water. They rushed towards us, stopped dead so that the sea surged around them, and nuzzled us gently with their snouts.
“Goodbye, dear Scylla.”
“Goodbye, Wave-Rider.”
“Goodbye, Amaris.”
“Goodbye …”
We stared after them until we couldn’t see them any more. The last of their calls faded into the sounding of the sea. We felt very alone without dolphin music all around us.
We’ve been alone for three days now. At first we were on edge and looking out for sharks all the time. We’ve seen plenty of basking sharks, and a pod of minke whales passed us and greeted us, but there’s been no sign of a Great White. We’re beginning to relax, but we don’t sleep much. One of us is always on guard while the others float, resting. I dream a lot, but I don’t sleep deeply. A part of my mind is always alert and watchful.
It’s strange when it’s your turn to stay awake while the others sleep. The sea is never still and never silent. You jump at a shadow, but it’s only a shoal of fish. You hear a distant calling of whales, but can’t make out what they are saying. Moonlight filters down, making ghostly blue glimmers on the others’ faces.
None of us rests for long. We’ve got to keep swimming, and besides, you don’t seem to need much sleep in Ingo. We don’t need to eat much either. Faro and Elvira have showed us all the edible weeds and sea grasses. Sometimes we find sea grapes, and there’s another type of fruit which only grows in fast-flowing water. Elvira calls them current berries. They look like frogspawn and they feel slimy when you swallow them, but they are very filling.
Faro and Elvira know every plant, but they won’t touch even the smallest shrimp. They can’t imagine eating a fish, let alone another mammal like a seal. It’s as barbarous to them as eating a baby would be to us. Once, when I first knew Faro, I made the mistake of saying that mackerel have to be eaten quickly once they’re caught or they go off. Faro looked at me with fascinated disgust. “Go off,” he repeated and shook his head. “Why not eat them when they’re alive, then?”
“Faro, that would be horrible!”
“So killing them isn’t horrible?”
The Mer have other ways of nourishing themselves besides eating. If we grow tired Elvira tells us to rest and draw the sea deep into our lungs so that the nutrients and minerals can pass into our bodies. It’s a wonderful feeling. I imagine breathing pure oxygen must be like this. You feel a rush of energy and power. Your heart seems to pump more strongly, and you can think more clearly. I never really feel hungry in Ingo.
“Isn’t it strange that what drowns you in the human world is what feeds you here?” I said to Conor once.
“Our world, you mean,” he answered sharply. Conor moves as easily through Ingo as I do now. He never struggles for oxygen as he used to do, as if he was having an underwater asthma attack. That was so frightening. But even though Conor’s as much at home physically as me, mentally the human world – Air – is always home to him.
We’ve been travelling west, as the dolphins instructed. We are a long way from land now. You can smell land when you’re in Ingo, just as you can smell it when you’re out sailing and you catch the first scent long before you see the smudge of a cliff on the horizon. It’s a sharp, mineral smell, quite different from the smell of Ingo. You can smell the pollution too: all the filth that humans pour into Ingo, as Faro expresses it. I’d hate to swim near the mouth of an estuary where there’s a big city like London or New York. The taste of the water would make me gag.
Even way out in the Atlantic we find plastic drifting through the water. You have to be careful with small pieces of plastic and with plastic bags. They can get lodged in your throat and choke you. Faro says many creatures die that way every year.
I love it down here, just deep enough to feel safe but not deep enough to be swallowed up by darkness.
“It’ll be time to turn north soon,” says Faro.
“Faro, do you think Ervys is going to send some of his followers after us?” I ask.
Faro frowns. “The young Mer who make the Crossing in Ervys’s name will all take the southern route. No shark will stop them. Ervys will not want his supporters to scatter too far. The North is wide and they would struggle to guess our route.”
“But it’s possible, Faro.”
“I think Ervys will not attack us when we expect it, little sister. He is too cunning for that. He was defeated in the Assembly chamber, but he must have been sure that the shark would kill us. Now he wants us to forget to fear him. Only then will he strike. But I promise you, little sister, Saldowr and the dolphins will be doing everything in their power, every moment, to protect us from Ervys and his forces. It is a hard task. Ervys is as wily as he is strong.”
“You seem to know him really well.”
“Saldowr has taught me to know him.”
The two of us are swimming together, ahead of Elvira and Conor, who are having one of their deep discussions about nothing of interest to anyone else. I am keeping an eye on the Conor/Elvira relationship. They swim very close together, but the last time I dropped back and casually listened to a fragment of their conversation, Elvira was telling Conor how to articulate a damaged tail spine if the injury were close to the fin – Of course, with a higher vertebral injury the manipulation would be quite different – Conor appeared to be listening attentively, but did I detect a slightly glazed look in his eyes? I put on speed, and came up alongside Faro again.
“Elvira’s very dedicated, isn’t she?” I observed.
“To what?” asked Faro.
“To healing, of course.”
Faro grinned maliciously. “I wasn’t sure what you meant.”
The farther we get from the sharks, the lighter our spirits. Already it feels as if we’ve been travelling for weeks, not a few days. I wonder how much human time has passed, then I put the thought aside because it’s no use worrying about that. The truth is that I’m not really worrying at all. Ingo is so strong around me. My human life still seems clear – it hasn’t vanished into a fog as it’s done before when I’ve been in Ingo – but it has the clarity of a brilliant painting or a perfect description. I have to remind myself that human life is something real which I’ve experienced myself.
Faro is teaching me to whistle. It’s quite a different skill from whistling in Air. You make sound by blowing the water harshly from the back of your throat or softly against your palate. It’s one of those things that would be easy if you’d grown up doing it, but is frustratingly tricky if you try to learn it later on. I’m getting a better sound already. At least, I think so. It makes Faro laugh quite a lot.
“It’s easy for you,” I protest. “I’m always trying to do Mer things and you never have to try human things. I bet you wouldn’t make such a great goalkeeper.”
Immediately, I wish I hadn’t said this. Faro is so intensely curious, and he’ll want all kinds of technical detail about football which I won’t be able to supply. And besides, Faro would probably make a brilliant goalie, swi
ping the ball away with his tail in an exhibition of power and finesse which no two-legged creature is ever going to match. Except of course that football matches are not held underwater …
“What are you thinking about, little sister?”
“Nothing.”
“Shall I try to open your thoughts?”
“No, Faro, you’re not allowed to—”
But at that moment Faro’s face changes completely. “Hush, Sapphire.”
He stops dead, seizing my hand to stop me with him. The others almost swim into us but Faro doesn’t even notice.
“Faro,” I whisper as cold dread steals over me, “is it the sharks?”
“No. It is a Mer voice. Sapphire, he is calling …”
One of Ervys’s men. We were too confident that they wouldn’t follow us. They must have guessed about the northern route and swum after us to cut us off—
“… for you,” says Faro.
“I hear it too,” says Conor.
I listen. Through the water, faint and faraway, comes a voice that is terribly familiar and terribly out of place.
“Sapphire … Sapphire …”
“He’s calling for you,” says Conor. His voice is without emotion.
“Dad?” I say very quietly, so only the others will hear me.
“I think it is your father, Conor,” says Elvira, but for once Conor takes no notice of her.
“Do you think he’s followed us, Con?”
“How else could he have found us? But we’re not in the Assembly chamber now. He can’t stop us.” Conor sounds as if Dad is a stranger, and a hostile one.
“Shouldn’t we answer him?”
“You can if you want.”
“I’m just as angry with him as you are, Conor. Dad didn’t speak for me in the chamber, either.”
Conor just shrugs. “You’ll never be as angry with him as I am, Saph.”
“Sapphire … Sapphire …”
He’s coming closer. We could still escape if we swam fast, but my arms and legs won’t move.
“You’d better answer him then, if you’re going to,” says Conor.
But I don’t need to. A figure comes swimming towards us through the gloom of the dark green water. My first thought is that Dad looks much older. He’s swimming strongly but there is none of the joy I remember from our days at the cove, when he would dive and swim and play in the water all day with me and Conor until the tide came in. He slows down, searching our faces. His hair has grown even longer. It is a thick tangle of weed that spreads out behind him. At his temples the hair is grey.
“I’ve found you at last,” he says. “I was so afraid …”
The moment when I should have hugged and kissed Dad has already passed. The truth is that I feel nothing. It’s as if I’ve hidden all my love for Dad so carefully that now I can’t find it, even when I want it. He is such a stranger. The powerful tail, which is so beautiful and natural on Elvira and Faro, looks like a deformity when joined to my father’s familiar torso. Dad’s face looks different too. It’s not just older, but heavier, too. When Dad used to wake us up in the mornings when we were little, we always felt that something exciting was about to happen. We’d go out in the Peggy Gordon, or we’d learn to set a crab pot, or Dad would teach us how to frame the image when we took photographs. Or he’d tell us crazy stories about what all the old respectable people in the village had been up to when they were little, or he’d buy marshmallows and we’d spear them on sticks over a fire—
I mustn’t think of all that. This is Dad, now.
“Thank God I found you in time,” says Dad.
The four of us have drawn close together.
“In time?” I say.
“The dolphins told me that you were going north.”
“You can’t stop us now, Dad.”
“I’m asking you to return with me.”
“For the sharks to kill us? Or perhaps Ervys?” says Conor.
A flash of Dad’s old spirit shows as he says, “Don’t back-answer me, Conor. I’m your father. I will not let you die on this crazy journey. Why else do you think I was silent in the chamber? I had to protect you. You don’t understand how ruthless a man like Ervys can be. You’ve got to go home, back to the Air, while you still can. If Ervys can be sure you will not come back to Ingo, he will leave you alone.”
Conor and Dad look very alike as they glare at each other. Conor has grown so much taller since Dad left. Soon they will be the same height.
“It’s too late for that,” says Conor at last. His tone is not angry as I expected, but it is final. “We might have been little kids when you went away – well, Saph was, anyway – but we’re not now.”
Words prickle in my head like thorns. You weren’t there for us, were you, Dad? We had to manage without you, and now we can. We don’t need you any more. I keep silent. There’s too much distress in Dad’s face for me to add to it.
“I can’t let you go,” says Dad, but his expression reveals that even he doesn’t really think he can stop us. No one answers. “Or perhaps I could come with you.”
“You are too old to make the Crossing of Ingo,” says Faro. I am sure that he doesn’t intend to be cruel, but Dad flinches.
“I’ve come a long way to talk to my children,” he says coldly, as if Faro is some stranger at a family gathering. I’m afraid Faro will snap back, but he holds his temper. Elvira takes her brother’s hand and draws him aside.
“I can never forgive myself for what I’ve done to you,” says Dad in a low voice.
“But, Dad—” I say, shocked.
“No, Saph, let him say what he wants to say.”
“I know how angry you are, Conor. I can’t ask you to understand what’s happened. If I could go back and change things …”
But would you, Dad? I wonder. Would you really want little Mordowrgi never to have been born? Would you really want to lose Mellina? I’ve seen the tenderness in your face, and in Mellina’s, when I looked into Saldowr’s mirror and watched you greet each other. Even the baby waved his little fists to greet you. They are your family; I understand that now. The words still hurt but I can’t pretend that they aren’t true.
You are Mer now. Even if you could undo it, you’d never be able to wipe out all the memories of your Mer life. You’d wake at night and long to hear Mellina singing again. Or you’d hear the cry of a gull and think it was Mordowrgi crying for his lost father.
It’s taken me such a long time to get here, Dad. I never thought I’d understand you, let alone feel sorry for you. All I could think about was the wrong you’d done to the three of us – Mum, Conor and me.
“What’s done is done, Dad,” says Conor. “Even Saldowr can’t make time run backwards.” He tries to smile, but it doesn’t work. “Let’s deal with things as they are,” he urges Dad. “Saph and I have to make this Crossing. It’s part of … well, it’s part of everything that’s happened since you went away. Maybe it’s the final part …”
“Don’t say that!”
“Oh, Dad, I don’t mean final as in we’re going to die. But the Crossing of Ingo is so huge – we can’t go around it, we have to go through it. If you’d been young – if you’d been in Ingo when you were young, I mean – if you’d been able to make the Crossing then maybe none of this would have happened. You’d have completed something and you’d have known where you were, instead of marrying Mum and still not knowing and always wanting something you hadn’t got. I don’t want to be like that, Dad! I want to know where I am. I want to know who I am. When I’ve made the Crossing, I’ll know. That’s what it’s about. Besides …” He hesitates, and then I know that he’s not going to tell Dad the deep reasons that we’ve got to complete the Crossing. Instead he lets his voice tail away.
“And does Sapphy think the same?” asks Dad in a low voice.
This is one time when I’d prefer Conor to speak for me, but he isn’t going to. I haven’t really stopped to consider why I am making the Crossing. I’ve heard the
Call, and answered it. Now, because of what Saldowr’s told us, I know we have a mission that goes beyond our own journey. I’m impressed by what Conor says about completing things and knowing where he is and who he is, but I have to admit none of it had crossed my mind. From the first time I heard about it, the Crossing of Ingo just felt … inevitable.
“I don’t know what I think, Dad. The only thing I’m sure about is that my Mer blood won’t let me do anything else.”
Dad stares at me, then at Conor.
“Go home, Dad,” I say as gently as I can. Now, for the first time, I feel no horror of his Mer nature and his Mer body. I want to put my arms around him and hug him until that terrible lost look leaves his face. “Please go home.” As the words leave my mouth, I realise that I don’t mean “home to Mum” any more, or even “home to the human world”. I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at last I’ve accepted that his home is here in Ingo, with Mellina and Mordowrgi. Maybe Saldowr got it wrong and Dad doesn’t have a choice to make any more.
“Mordowrgi’s lovely,” I say aloud. “I can’t wait to see him again.”
A gleam of hope shines on Dad’s face.
“You’ll be in my mind and my heart day and night,” he says.
Not very restful for Mellina, I catch myself thinking, although my throat aches and I can hardly bear to look at him.
“See you, Dad,” says Conor. He puts out his hand as if he’s intending to shake hands with Dad – which would be improbably weird as the two of them have never shaken hands in their lives – but halfway through the gesture he changes his mind, or else Dad changes his. Something happens, anyway, because for a brief second Dad’s arms are around Conor and Conor isn’t fighting free.
“Goodbye, Dad,” I say. I daren’t kiss him or hug him now in case it breaks my resolve.
“Goodbye, my girl,” says Dad. He hesitates. I hesitate. There’s so little water between us but it feels like an ocean. I can’t move. I never feel the cold in Ingo, but I’m frozen now.
The Crossing of Ingo Page 11
