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

trying to make a beetle walk along a grass stalk. We both crouch down to see if it will. I squint, and my squint makes the stalk look as big as a log. This is what it must look like to the beetle. A big rough log, a climbing conundrum that he has to work out. Maybe there’s a Beetle world, just as there’s a Mer world. In Beetle world, shoes look like boulders, and flowers are as big as bike wheels. We’re giants, and a puddle of water would be as deep as Ingo…

      “I wish we’d brought a bottle of water, Conor,” I say. “I’m really thirsty.”

      “There’s a stone trough round the back of the cottage. It’s spring water.”

      “How do you know?”

      Conor hesitates. “I came here with Dad once.”

      “You never told me! When?”

      “Last summer. Early last summer.”

      “Before he left.”

      “Yeah, that’s right. Before he left.”

      “What happened?”

      “Me and Dad were out walking. He was taking photos at the top of the Downs, and we came back this way. He said he would just call in on Granny Carne.”

      Conor stops. Like me, he can hear the echo of Dad’s voice saying those exact same words. Dad’s voice always made you want to hurry along where he was going.

      “Dad went inside the cottage, but I didn’t,” Conor goes on. “I was thirsty and I heard water trickling, so I went round the back and found where the spring ran into the trough. There were some baby frogs.”

      “What do you think Dad asked her about?”

      “I don’t know. He was in there a long time, but I didn’t bother, because I was watching the frogs.”

      Conor is good at watching. He’ll watch the seals for hours until they lose their fear and come right up on the rocks, close.

      “Then he called me,” Conor says. “He and Granny Carne had finished talking. She stood in the doorway and watched us go, with her arms folded like this. I don’t think they even said goodbye. I thought maybe they’d quarrelled.”

      “Did she look angry?”

      “I’m not sure. Maybe not angry. But they both looked serious.”

      “Did Dad tell you anything?”

      “No. He walked so fast I almost had to run to keep up with him. But he did say one thing.”

      “What?”

      “He said, That’s the last time I ever go there.”

      “Then they must have quarrelled.”

      “Maybe Granny Carne told Dad something he didn’t want to hear.”

      I try to think what that could be. It must be terrible to see into the future. To know what’s coming, but not be able to change it. Like a curse.

      But if Granny Carne has earth magic, then maybe she can use her power to change the future. Then the future wouldn’t be like an accident rushing towards her – it would be a thousand possibilities. Not all of them have to come true.

      The beetle has decided it’s not going to bother walking down the grass stalk, however invitingly Conor waggles it. It scurries away, back into Beetle world, away from the two mysterious giants who do things it can’t understand.

      Suddenly, the bright sun on Conor’s hand is covered in shadow. We look up at a tall figure dressed in white, with a white veil over its face, and white gloves. It takes me a moment to recognise that it’s Granny Carne.

      “I’ve been seeing to the bees,” says Granny Carne. She takes off her bee keepers’ hat and veil, and carefully peels off her gloves. She’s wearing a white smock, with trousers tucked into her boots.

      “Where are the bees?” I ask.

      “Up on the moor,” she says. “I’ll take my things off in the shed and then we’ll go in.”

      People say strange things about Granny Carne’s home, but they don’t say them aloud and they don’t say them in front of children. But we know it all anyway. Nobody says they believe in witches these days, but whether you say you believe or not, it doesn’t alter what’s there. It’s probably dark and a bit creepy in the cottage. I’m glad Conor’s here with me.

      Granny Carne emerges from the shed in her usual shabby old clothes that make her look like part of the moor.

      “I made a honey cake, seeing as you were coming,” she goes on, taking us in. Inside, it’s not at all as I’d imagined. The downstairs is all one room, clean and white and bare, like a cave. It is cool and calm, with all the things in it you need and none that you don’t. A strong wooden table that looks as if you could dance on it without breaking it, wooden chairs with red cushions, a smooth dark floor.

      “Sit down.”

      There’s a sticky-topped honey cake on a blue plate. There are three mugs, ready for tea, and a blue pitcher of water with three glasses. One for her, one for Conor, one for me. Did she really make that honey cake because we were coming? Did she put out those three glasses before we arrived? She can’t have known. We only just decided to come this morning. Maybe she saw us climbing up the hill, from a long way off? But no, if she was tending the bees, she couldn’t have been here in the cottage at the same time, making cake and setting the table.

      “My kettle takes a while to boil,” says Granny Carne. “But it’s a hot day and you’ll be thirsty from walking up. Drink some water.”

      Conor pours, and I lift my glass. The water smells pure. But it’s earth water, sweet, not salt. It belongs to the earth. I lift it to my lips, then put it down. I want salt. I want the taste of the sea. The green and turquoise sea with its deep cool caverns underwater where you can dive and play. I want to plunge through the waves and roll over and jack-knife deep into the surging water that is full of bubbles and currents and tides. But Granny Carne’s cottage is more than two miles from the sea. It’s buried in the side of the hill, locked into the land.

      I feel trapped. I want to get out. Mum and Dad took us to London once and we went in a lift in a tube station. I thought it was already packed as full as it could be, but people still kept shoving in and squashing up until my face was crushed against a fat man’s suit and I could hardly breathe. I could smell the man’s sweat. Everyone kept pushing until I was so squashed I couldn’t see Mum or Dad or Conor. I felt as if the lift was closing in on me. I feel like that now. The cottage walls press in around me. My chest hurts. I can hardly breathe.

      I want the space of the sea. I want to taste salt water and open my mouth and know that I can breathe without breathing. Down, down, down into Ingo…

      I push back my chair and it clatters on the flagstone floor. Instantly, Granny Carne is beside me, tall and strong as an oak.

      “Sapphire. Sapphire! Drink this.”

      She’s holding the glass of water to my lips. I try to twist my head away but she insists. “Sapphire. I know you’re thirsty. Drink your water.”

      The glass presses against my lips. Earth water, sweet, not what I want. I want salt. But I’m thirsty, so thirsty. I need to drink. I open my lips, just a little. The water touches them, then it rushes into my mouth. It covers my tongue and it tastes good. I swallow deeply, and then I drink more and more, gulping it down. The more I drink the more I know how thirsty I am. I feel like a plant that’s almost died from lack of water. Granny Carne refills my glass from the jug and I drink again.

      The cottage walls aren’t pressing in on me now. They’re just ordinary cottage walls again, white and clean. I don’t know why I was so frightened.

      “Good,” says Granny Carne. “Remember, my girl, you mustn’t ever drink salt water. Even if you crave it, you mustn’t drink it. It makes a thirst that nothing can satisfy.”