The Complete Ingo Chronicles: Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep, The Crossing of Ingo, Stormswept. Helen Dunmore

      He’s right. It’s like the roughest rollercoaster in the world. I make a grab for Faro even though I know I don’t need him any more. But the current’s too strong and it tears our hands apart and sends me swooping and tumbling over and over as it rushes me south.

      I hate it and I love it. If it goes on for one more minute I’ll die, but at the same time I want it never to end.

      “Pull OUT, Sapphire!” Faro’s yelling. “Now!”

      We burst out into warm, still water. The icy current is gone, racing south without us.

      “Time to feel the sun,” says Faro.

      Feeling the sun doesn’t mean going up into the Air. It means sunbathing a couple of metres below the surface, in the brightest water. Faro takes my wrist. We rise together, towards the shining surface. Faro knows something about Dad, I think. I’ll find out. I won’t let Faro know that I’m still searching. I’ll keep it secret.

      “Let’s have a sleep,” says Faro.

      We close our eyes. I’m tired from the current pummelling me all over. Water rushes gently in my ears. Faro’s right, it’s good to feel the sun. All my worries are slipping away from me. I stretch out my arms and legs to the delicious warmth, and let myself rock and drift on the swell of the water. I will find Dad. But now I’m away in Ingo… far, far away, in a garden of seaweed and sea anemones.

      Memories flood into my head. A boy and a girl, side by side, peering into the depths where blue and silver fish flick from rock to rock like electric darts. The boy has dark hair, like Conor. I can’t see his face. But where his legs should be there is thick, glistening sealskin. I try to move my legs and feel the powerful flick of my own strong tail and I shoot upwards through the water laughing as my brother chases me—

      It’s the cold shadow passing over me that wakes me. I open my eyes at once with a feeling of panic, and stare up through the water. The surface is black. Something is directly above me, blocking out the light. A shark. Fear whips though me. No. It’s not alive. The dark shape is solid and dead-looking. Man-made. Not something of Ingo, but something of Air. How do I know that?

      A boat, I think. It’s a boat, but I’m seeing it from upside down and it looks quite different. That’s why I didn’t know what it was. I’m looking straight up through the water at its hull. The boat is about the size of a fishing boat. I can see the rudder and the propeller. A small boat that wouldn’t hurt me even if it passed right over me. But the engine isn’t running. The boat is drifting silently.

      And then it happens. A face looms over the side of the boat. A face and shoulders, part of a body in a blue shirt. Someone looks down, staring deep into the sea where I am. The face is distorted by Air. It wobbles. But upside down and distorted as it is, I can see it. It’s a man’s face. And if I can see him…

      That’s when it happens. The eyes look down and catch sight of me. The face goes still with shock. The man stares and stares as if he can’t believe that what he sees can possibly be real.

      With a shock, I know what he sees, and why he can’t believe it. He sees a girl, deep under the water, looking back at him. We meet each other’s eyes. He sees me and I see him. It’s a long moment and even through Air and water I recognise the frozen disbelief in his face. It can’t be real. A girl sunbathing way below the surface. A girl with her eyes open, who doesn’t need to breathe like Air People. Not a drowned girl but one who is alive, and looking back at him. A mermaid. I think I see the word form on his lips. And as his mouth opens to cry out and tell someone else on the boat to get a net and catch me and take me away and put me in a glass tank in a freak circus—

      I dive.

      I dive with hot terror pulsing through me. Down, down, down, into the deepest water, where the Mer can live but Air People can’t follow them. And in that moment for the first time I understand why Faro hates and fears divers. They are Air People who can put air on their backs and come where only the Mer should be. That man in the blue shirt can’t follow me. But a diver in a wetsuit with air on his back could have swum down after me and caught me. Faro’s right. Divers are dangerous.

      I see that face again, staring down into mine. Shocked and disbelieving but something else too. Recognising. I know that I know the face, but whose is it? My memory is full of Ingo. Too much else is crowded out. I struggle to remember who that man could be… where I’ve seen him before…

      No, don’t struggle, Sapphire, I tell myself. You’re safe in Ingo. The deep water rocks me gently. Yes, Faro’s right, my blood is becoming like his. I put my finger on my wrist and feel how slow the pulse beats there. Faro says—

      But where’s Faro gone? Why am I alone?

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

      “I’m here,” says Faro’s voice, soft and close. “But where were you? I was so scared, Faro! I woke up and there was a boat up above, with a man looking down at me.”

      “I know. I saw him too.”

      Suddenly, when I’m not even trying, the name behind that man’s face swims into my mind. Of course. It was Mum’s friend. Roger. Roger, out in his boat, exploring. Not diving yet, just mapping out the area so he can come back and dive.

      But I left Roger back at home with Mum, playing cards. I must have been asleep in the sunwater for a long time. Or maybe I wasn’t asleep. Maybe it’s only the difference between human time and time in Ingo again. Why is time in Ingo so different from Air time anyway?

      I think of time folding and unfolding like one of those fans you make out of a piece of paper. Time folds up tight like a closed fan, then it spreads open wide. There’s the same amount of paper in the fan whether it’s open or closed. Maybe time is the same substance, whether in Ingo or up in Air. But it’s folded differently, and so it doesn’t look or feel the same. When I’m in Ingo, Ingo time seems natural. When I’m in the Air – at home, I mean – then that’s natural too. But I can’t belong in both times, can I?

      I’ve got to stop thinking like this. My thoughts are making my head hurt. If you try to have Air thoughts when you’re in Ingo, they don’t work.

      “He’s a diver,” says Faro. His voice is cold and hard. Faro hates divers.

      “How do you know?”

      “We’ve seen his boat before.”

      “I know him,” I say.

      Suddenly I want to punish Roger for laughing like that with Mum, both of them so happy and relaxed as if there wasn’t a thing wrong in the world. As if Dad had never existed. Roger thinks he can go wherever he likes. He makes himself at home in our cottage, and he wants to dive into Ingo and make it his own, and take its treasures. But I’m not going to let him. None of what Roger wants is going to happen.

      “He explores for wreck sites,” I go on, headlong. “He’s bringing a team of divers.”

      “He shouldn’t be here at all,” says Faro, like an echo of my own thoughts. “He should stay in his own place.”

      “It’s our cove, not his.”

      “Air People are like that. They want to change everything.”

      I like the way Faro agrees with me about Roger. It’s comforting. It silences the little voice that says I shouldn’t have told him what Roger was doing. After all, I did promise…

      No, you didn’t. You only promised not to tell your friends at home and at school, I tell myself firmly, but I still feel uneasy. It’s Roger’s fault. If he would just disappear back to where he came from, everything would be all right again. Mum wouldn’t really mind. She hasn’t known him long, so she couldn’t miss him that much.

      “I