The Crossing of Ingo

by Helen Dunmore

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Mum.” Mum laughs. Her hands drop to my shoulders.

  “Look how tall you’re getting,” she says. “Nearly as tall as me. It’s right you ask questions now you’re getting to the age when you can handle the answers. You ought to ask more questions at school, Sapphy, then they wouldn’t say you’re such a mazeyhead.” Mum lets go of my shoulders with a final loving little shake. “Do you know this is the longest dream I’ve ever had that makes sense.”

  “I’ve got to go now, Mum.”

  “I know. I’ve got the feeling I’m going to wake up in a minute. Let’s say goodbye before I do.”

  “Goodbye, Mum.” I try to keep my voice calm. Mum doesn’t know I’ve got half the world to cross before I’m home again, or that Ervys would spill my blood without a qualm, just as Mortarow spilled Faro’s. Mum believes I’m back in our cottage, sleeping.

  “Goodbye, lovely girl. Go on then.”

  She watches me go down the path. I turn to wave goodbye and she looks like a ghost in her white dressing gown, standing in the moonlight until I disappear from sight. I step behind a big spiky plant, so that she’ll think I’ve gone. Mum waits a little longer, then she turns and goes back up the steps. It’s so still that I hear her bare feet patter on the wood. She opens the door, goes inside and closes it again.

  Mum doesn’t think I’m really here, I remind myself. She would never close the door on me if she thought I was real. I know that, but I still feel empty as I stare at the closed door. I could always go and hammer on it with my fists until Mum and Roger both come out and then Mum will know that it can’t be a dream because Roger sees me too, and I’m solid flesh and blood …

  For a few seconds I contemplate the scene that would follow. Mum’s disbelief, Roger’s logic homing in on me. Once they knew it was really me, they’d never let me go. I’d never complete the Crossing. I’d have to go home on a plane with Mum and Roger. The others would face the spears without me, and Ingo would never be healed.

  The door glistens faintly in the moonlight. Leave it, I tell myself. It’s much better like this.

  The dolphin is still there. I wade out into the warm water of the lagoon, and as soon as it’s deep enough to swim I plunge in, dip down, and take a deep breath of Ingo. I am home again. The little building with the tin roof and the rustling, rattling scrub around it was alien. I’d have been scared to be trapped there.

  I swim up to the dolphin, but I don’t greet him because I remember my promise to Seiliko. I touch him gently on his flank instead, and he turns to me. He dips down for me to climb on to his back, and waits for me to settle against him. I keep my promise and don’t say a word, but I can’t help stroking his side gratefully. I can’t imagine what I’d have done if he hadn’t waited for me.

  Slowly the dolphin eases forward towards the gap in the reef. Soon we’ll be out of the lagoon and back in the wild Pacific. I shut my eyes, feeling exhausted. The noise of water thundering on the reef grows louder and louder until it’s on all sides of us, and then we are through. I open my eyes again to moonlight on the free-surging ocean.

  This time the dolphin leaps higher than ever when he breaches. His whole body soars, makes a perfect arc high in the air and then plunges down and down into Ingo, beyond the moonlight. Phosphorescence pours off us as we rise through the skin of the water, and we dive back into an ocean of silver-green light.

  At last the dolphin slows. Our beautiful, strange journey is almost over. There, logging on the surface, are the other three dolphins and their riders, still sleeping. Seiliko is a little way apart, and awake.

  The dolphin dips down in the water so I can float away from him. I kick backwards a few strokes, and then he rises again. He is very close to me now, but somehow he looks less solid. Phosphorescence still clings to him, outlining his body. And what are those marks on his flanks? I didn’t notice them before, but now I see a pattern picked out in light. A criss-cross pattern, cut into the skin, as if …

  … as if he’s tried to fight free of a net, struggling while the mesh cut deep into his flesh. Phosphorescence burns around him more and more brightly. The shape of the dolphin shows brilliantly, and then, as if a light has been switched off, it vanishes.

  I wait for the slap of his wake against my body. Nothing. No sound of farewell. But then he never spoke to me, and I didn’t speak to him. Seiliko made me promise …

  “Seiliko!”

  “What is it, Sapphire?”

  “The dolphin! Where is he? Where’s he gone?”

  “Which dolphin?”

  “You know which one! The one you whistled for.”

  “He is gone.”

  “Could you whistle again? Would he come back? I never thanked him.”

  “No,” says Seiliko. She seems to be smiling, but then dolphins often look as if they’re smiling.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Faro is worried. “We are travelling too slowly. Taking the northern route has cost us too much time. We must travel fast and surprise Ervys.”

  “I’ve got to find the whale’s daughter first.” I’m afraid Faro will argue, but he doesn’t. “Yes, we owe it to her mother,” he says thoughtfully. It’s good to have a chance to talk to Faro on our own. The dolphins have been off hunting for fish, and now they’re taking one of the short rests that seem enough to fuel them for hours of travelling. Conor is playing sea snap with Elvira. They’re both laughing and they don’t seem to care that sea snap is way too young for them.

  “Elvira’s a bit better, isn’t she?” I say cautiously.

  Faro glances at his sister and his expression clouds. “She will go to the North, all the same,” he says. “We won’t be able to stop her.”

  “But look at her with Conor.”

  Faro raises his eyebrows. “You think so? I thought so once, but no, they are friends and that is all. She will go away.”

  “Faro, don’t be so – so fatalistic.”

  “We Mer see things as they are.”

  “Now you’re being pompous too.”

  “Am I?” He smiles at me with a touch of uncertainty.

  “Yes, you are. But I don’t mind; I’m used to it.”

  “We are used to each other, little sister.”

  “I’m really sorry about Elvira, Faro.” She’s his only sister. Faro hardly ever talks about his parents, but I know they’re both dead. Saldowr’s his guardian, of course, and you can see that he loves Faro like a son, but Elvira is Faro’s own blood. I can’t imagine what it would be like if Conor suddenly told me that he was going away, into a strange frozen world, because he felt more at home there than he did with me.

  Faro will never beg Elvira to stay. He’s much too proud for that. Perhaps something will happen to stop her going. Saldowr might be able to persuade her …

  “I don’t think so,” says Faro.

  “Get out of my thoughts, Faro!” I swipe at him and he ducks away, laughing.

  “Why? They were nice thoughts, Sapphire. I liked them.”

  “The dolphins are stirring. We’d better go.”

  It’s Seiliko who spots the pod of whales. Her echolocation picks up their vast shapes. “Whales are close now,” she tells me. “They are logging on the surface.” I strain my eyes, but can’t see anything.

  “Soon you will see them,” promises Seiliko, and she swims faster, skimming beneath the surface and then leaping high so I can see far away over the calm dark blue water. “There they are!” calls Conor.

  I’d have thought the glistening dark bumps on the horizon were rocks if Seiliko hadn’t been so sure they were whales. Seiliko reaches into the distance with clicks and whistles.

  “They are your friends; they are sperm whales,” she announces.

  All the dolphins stop. After the rush of our passage the water feels eerily silent, but then we get used to it and far in the distance we can all hear the whales. I recognise their voices: Seiliko’s right. They sound just like my dear friend.

  �
�Why are we waiting?” asks Conor.

  “I think your sister would like to talk to the whales alone,” says Elvira in her silvery voice. I don’t know how she guessed, but I’m grateful to her.

  “Would you, Saph?”

  “Yes, I – I think so. If that’s OK.”

  “You should not go alone, little sister. I’ll come with you,” says Faro.

  “She wants to go alone,” repeats Elvira.

  I do. I feel as if there’s already a relationship between me and the whale’s daughter, although we’ve never met. It’s almost as if we’re sisters. If I go on my own, I’ll be able to talk to her properly. I am sure she is there in the pod.

  “I can’t let you go alone,” Faro says to me.

  “No, Faro, I want you to dive with me,” insists Elvira. “There are pearls in the Southern Ocean, and ground pearls are precious for healing. I’ll need your help to find them. Besides, Seiliko will be with Sapphire. She won’t be alone.”

  Faro hesitates, glancing from me to Elvira. I know how much he wants to come with me. I close my mind so that he won’t see my longing to go alone and be hurt by it.

  “Come, brother,” says Elvira. Faro shakes back his hair. It’s the word “brother” that convinces him he should go, I’m sure of it. He won’t risk refusing Elvira when he’s so afraid of losing her.

  “Be careful, little sister,” Faro says to me, and dives after Elvira. As I swim away with Seiliko I turn and see Conor shading his eyes, following me into the distance.

  Whales look very strange from beneath when they are logging. The top of their heads and parts of their backs are above the surface, while the rest of their bodies are submerged. As Seiliko and I approach them we see their vast tails hanging down. Seiliko swerves and makes a wide circle to bring us round to the front of the pod.

  “It’s very bad manners to approach a logging whale from behind,” she observes. “Besides, there’s a risk they will lobtail.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They strike the water with their tails, not only when they are angry but also when they want the rest of Ingo to knows its place.”

  The whales’ echolocation will have sensed our presence long ago. They don’t seem bothered by our approach, but Seiliko still slows down courteously as she rises to the surface and breaches in front of the cliff of a whale’s head.

  Everything I see is so familiar. A rush of homesickness for my dear friend the whale almost overwhelms me. I long to see her and hear the happiness in her voice as she recognises me.

  Greetings, little barelegs. How long it seems since I’ve seen you.

  But this whale doesn’t know me. I look up at the vast box-shaped head, the skin that is so rough and creviced that it’s like the skin of a giant prune, and the jaw that hangs a little open, relaxed. Teeth show in the whale’s lower jaw.

  Slowly she swings her head and then raises it clear of the water. The sea makes a waterfall as it streams down her brow, and then she submerges herself again, like a hippopotamus sinking into the mud. She regards us with one eye. Behind her, to the left and right, the other whales are stirring.

  “Greetings,” says Seiliko.

  “Greetings,” rumbles the whale, “but what creature is it that rides on your back?”

  “A new kind of creature,” says Seiliko boldly, although I can feel tension in her body now. “One who has human form and Mer blood, and is at home in Ingo.”

  “Are you sure it is not a human being? It looks human enough to me. Are you sure that it hasn’t deceived you? Humans are full of deception. Once humans find our logging places, they come with ships and harpoons.”

  I think of how comfortingly my whale friend greeted me when she first met me in the Deep. I was afraid of her, but she put me at ease. She called me “little barelegs”. What if she’d held me responsible for the killing of sperm whales by whalers? If she’d felt the same way as this whale feels, she would have left me to die in the Deep. I’ve got to convince these sperm whales that I’m not an enemy. I haven’t deceived Seiliko, and I would never betray them to the whale hunters.

  “I am a friend,” I say aloud. “We came to find you because we are looking for the daughter of a whale – one of your kind – who lives on the other side of the world. She sent her daughter here to avoid the sickness that killed so many sperm whales in the oceans back where I live. Do you know her? Have you ever heard a story like that?”

  The whale dips her great head so that she can examine me more closely. It’s not a friendly inspection. “Come closer to me,” she says at last. “You will have to leave this dolphin if you want to speak to me. She claims that you can swim alone in Ingo. Show me.” The whale’s head rises. All I can see is her scarred, mountainous flank.

  “I’ll have to go alone, Seiliko. You go back to the others,” I whisper. I can feel Seiliko’s hesitation. She senses the whale’s hostility and she’s not happy about letting me approach her alone. I lean down until my lips are against Seiliko’s skin and whisper again, more urgently, “I’ve got to do it, Seiliko. She won’t trust me otherwise.”

  Seiliko’s answer is the softest murmur. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  I don’t feel very sure as I slide off Seiliko’s back and she turns with a graceful twist of her body and dives. I swim towards the whale’s vast, rugged side. It towers above me, making a heavy shadow through the water. There are tentacle scars deep in her flesh, and a healed slash that probably came from a giant squid’s beak. She’s been attacked while hunting in the Deep. As I swim close the shadow seems to darken even more. I peer around through the water. The other whales are drawing near, as if they want to talk to me too. Or maybe they’re just curious and they want to listen, I tell myself as I try to calm a mounting sense of unease.

  Through a gap between the whales I see a calf in the middle of a protective circle of adult females. All the whales in this pod seem to be female. The calf is afraid. Its anxious cries echo through the water, answered by booms of reassurance. But it can’t possibly be afraid of me. I’m tiny, even compared to a baby whale. I’ve got no weapons. Something that my dear whale friend said once tugs at my mind. The water turned red with our blood. She was talking about a whale hunt. Maybe whales teach their babies to be afraid of humans.

  “Come closer,” booms the whale. I wish she sounded more friendly. The voice of my friend calling me “little one” or “little barelegs” echoes in my head. I never even thought about how she could crush me with one blow from her tail.

  These whales loom over me, ominously. I remember how Dad taught me never to go into a field of cattle when the cows have their calves with them. Even a cow that knows you can kill you if she thinks there’s a threat to her young.

  How huge these whales are. None of them is logging quietly on the surface now. They’ve moved so that I’m cut off from the dolphins by massive walls of whales’ flanks. I’m not scared; of course I’m not. Whales are not our enemies. I clench my hands and will my heart to stop beating so fast.

  “Closer, closer,” orders the whale. I’m barely swimming now, but they are still moving. They are drawing closer around me, in a circle that tightens second by second. The free water between their bodies is shrinking. There’s barely a chink left to swim through.

  Way behind me I hear Seiliko’s voice, muffled by the whales’ bulk, calling to me, “Swim back, Sapphire! Swim back to me!” It’s when I hear the fear in her voice that for the first time I’m truly afraid.

  “Saph,” says a calm, familiar voice immediately behind me. I turn, and it’s Conor.

  “Con, how did you get here?” I’m so relieved to see him that I want to clutch him tight in case he disappears again.

  “Dived under the whales. I knew something was wrong when I saw them crowding together.”

  “Con, you shouldn’t have come! It’s dangerous. They don’t like us being here.”

  But even if Conor wanted to go back, I don’t think he could now.
In the few seconds he’s been here, the whales have moved even closer. We are surrounded by rugged walls of flesh. The only space is above us. My heart pounds in my ribs, almost suffocating me.

  “I’m going to speak to them,” says Conor.

  “Quick, before the gap closes.” I stare up the steep, pitted side of the whale who told me to come nearer. She deceived me, getting me to do that. But if we swim straight up, then maybe there’s still a chance of escape …

  The whales are all around us. If they even jostle us a little, we’ll be crushed to death like swimmers caught between a giant liner and the quayside.

  “It’s the calf that’s making them nervous,” Conor murmurs.

  “Another human,” rumbles the whale warningly as she sees Conor clearly for the first time.

  “She’s got to listen to us. She’s got to,” I mutter. “Conor, let’s go for the gap now.”

  The space between the whales is narrowing. I kick as hard as I can, and we shoot through the gap above us just before it closes. The water beneath us shudders as the whales’ vast bodies nudge together.

  “Up to her head,” calls Conor. “Higher, Sapphire!”

  I swim past the whale’s jaw. There is her eye, watching us as we come. Conor stops swimming, and sculls himself into position near the whale’s eye.

  “You don’t need to be afraid of us,” he says to her. In spite of the danger, I almost laugh. We’re surrounded by whales who are all at least ten metres long – apart from the baby – and who seem to hate us, and Conor’s telling this whale that she doesn’t need to be afraid. “Don’t be afraid. We haven’t come to hurt the little one. We are not hunters. There is no ship.”

  The whale’s eye is unreadable. “Why should I believe you?” she says. “Our blood has turned the water red too many times.”