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

it sounds pathetic.

      “You think you can have everything, don’t you, Sapphire?” demands Faro. He sounds nearly as angry now as he was when he was talking about oil-spills and dead seabirds. “Do you think you can have a tour of Ingo, stare at us all as if we’re creatures in a zoo – yes, believe me, I know all about your zoos! – find out all our secrets and then go home? Ingo is not like that. As long as you belong to Air, you’ll only see this much of Ingo,” and he dives to the sea floor, takes up a handful of sand and pours it through his fingers until there’s one grain left. He holds out the single grain to me. “This much.”

      “I’ve got some Mer in me,” I say sulkily. “You told me so yourself.”

      “I know.” Faro looks at me, his eyes serious, not so angry now. “Listen, Sapphire, that’s why we can meet. You and me. It’s because you’ve got some Mer in you. But I still don’t know how much, or how strong it is. You don’t either, do you?”

      “Sometimes, when I talk to you, Faro, I feel as if I don’t know anything any more. I’m so confused.”

      Faro lets go of the grain of sand and it spins down through the water to join its brothers and sisters on the sea bed. “We can’t talk about it now. You must hurry. But you have got Mer in you, Sapphire. And I—” he hesitates, and looks at me intently, as if he’s deciding whether or not to trust me. “I’ve got—”

      But at that moment noise hits the water like a bomb. My ears sting with pain. The sea throbs as if it’s got thunder in it.

      “Quick, Sapphire, swim for the shore! It’s the boat coming!”

      As soon as Faro says it I recognise the sound of an engine. Faro grabs my wrist, grips tight for a second and then launches me towards the shore. I ride on the wave he’s made for me, and it hurls me up, swooshes me in, and throws me flat on the sand. I struggle to my feet, coughing and choking, my eyes blind with salt. My ears are full of sand. I can’t see and I can’t hear. I’m back in the Air, where I belong.

      Faro has disappeared. The boat is chugging round the other side of the rocks, towards its mooring. The noise of its engine thuds around the cove like a warning of danger.

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      “Please don’t go off like that again, without telling me where you’re going, Sapphire,” says Mum. “If Conor hadn’t said you were taking Sadie for a walk, I’d have been worried.”

      “Sorry, Mum. It was so hot that I took Sadie to play in the stream.”

      “I can see that. You’re soaked through. You’ve been gone hours.”

      Only hours, I think. So Mer time and human time haven’t been so different from each other this time. If time is a fan, then for once it hasn’t opened wide enough to separate Mum’s time from mine. Clever Conor, to think of saying that I’d taken Sadie out. Mum wouldn’t doubt what he said, because Conor doesn’t lie.

      But Conor’s just told a lie for my sake. Or maybe it was for Mum’s sake? Conor wouldn’t want Mum to be frightened.

      I don’t always tell the truth, I must admit. When I was little I used to scream and yell if people didn’t believe what I told them about fairies living in a cave I’d made for them under the rosemary bush. And I had an imaginary kitten which had to have milk every morning and only ate Whiskas, just like the cats I’d seen on TV. Dad bought a can of Whiskas for the kitten, but Mum got really annoyed and wouldn’t let me open it.

      “Sapphy has a vivid imagination,” Dad said.

      “Stop humouring her, Mathew. She’s got to learn the difference between what’s real and what’s not,” said Mum.

      But sometimes real and not-real are hard to tell apart, and life is easier if you bend the truth, just a little…

      “Where’s Conor now, Mum?” I ask casually.

      “He’s gone out in Roger’s boat. They were planning to take it right out, to test the new engine, and then Roger’s going to come in to take soundings by the Bawns. You know, he needs to prepare for diving there. Now, Sapphy, why don’t you go up and change, and tidy your room while I finish this ironing. And then maybe you’d sort the washing for me. I need to put another load in the machine before the boys get back. The trouble with Sundays is that there’s always so much to do.”

      The boys, I think angrily. As if Roger is part of our family. I go slowly upstairs, thinking hard. I know what soundings are. Roger’s trying to find out how deep the water is in different places, and how difficult it will be to dive there. The Bawns are part of a reef about a mile offshore. Most of the reef is underwater, but the Bawn Rocks show above the surface. The part of the rocks that you can see is black and jagged, but what you can’t see is the line of the Bawns that runs beneath the surface, like teeth. These hidden rocks are the most dangerous. In the old days, when shipping routes ran closer inshore than they do now, ships would lose their way in storms. The wind and tide would drive them on to the rocks. Sometimes, at night or in fog, a ship would break her back on the Bawns.

      When the weather’s bad the Bawns are lost in a white thunder of waves. Spray breaks and tosses high, as if the rocks themselves are spouting water, like whales. It makes me shiver to think of having to swim in those seas. Dad told me that a boy was found in our cove one morning after a wreck. He was thrown up on to the sand, still clinging to a piece of slimy wood. The people who climbed down to rescue him couldn’t get the wood out of his grasp at first.

      The miracle was that the boy was still alive. They wrapped him in blankets and carried him up the cliff path, and put him in front of a fire and poured brandy down him. He couldn’t speak a word that anybody understood. They never found where he came from, or what language he was speaking. They named him Paul, because St Paul in the Bible was rescued after a shipwreck too. The Treveals took the boy in, and he grew up with their children. His grave is in the churchyard.

      Shipwrecked Paul was my age. He was the only person who survived that wreck. No one ever knew where his ship came from, or what cargo it was carrying. Even when he learned to speak English, he never talked about the wreck, or what his life was like before he was found in the cove. On his gravestone it says that he died in 1852. He married Miriam Treveal and they had eight children. And then maybe all of those eight children had eight children, and then those eight children had eight children, Dad said. So no doubt all of us around here have got a drop of that shipwrecked boy’s blood in us somewhere.

      Dad won’t go near the Bawns, even on a calm day.

      And don’t you ever go there, Sapphire, when you’re old enough to take the boat out by yourself. Those rocks are a powerful place, and they’ve got a bad appetite for boats and human flesh. To sail near them is like putting your head into a wolf’s jaws. After Dad said that, I could always see the shape of a wolf’s head in the farthest of the Bawns. We never went in close, not even for fishing. But now Roger has taken Conor there. Conor must have agreed, even though he knows how bad the Bawns are.

      I rush downstairs. “Mum! Did you tell Roger not to take Conor close to the Bawns?”

      “Roger’s a very experienced diver, Sapphy. He knows all about risk assessment.”

      “Oh, Mum! He doesn’t know this coast like we do. It’s dangerous by the Bawns.”

      A shadow of fear crosses Mum’s face, but she makes a big effort and answers cheerfully. “Conor’s safe with Roger. And look how calm it is today. Now, have you sorted the washing? I want the whites first.”

      “Mum, it’s the Bawns, they shouldn’t go there—” but Mum’s closed her ears. I can’t believe that this is Mum, who hates the sea and fears for everyone that goes on it. And now, the one time she should be frightened, she isn’t. Mum, who used to issue storm warnings every time Dad took me out. I can