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

goes drinking salt water,” answers Granny Carne. “Now, tell me what you’re here for.”

      “She’s started speaking another language,” Conor says.

      “What’s that then? French or German?” asks Granny Carne, watching us keenly.

      “No, she knows it without learning it. Tell her, Saph. Tell her the words you spoke this morning.”

      “I can’t speak to her in that language. She belongs to N—” I manage to stop myself, but Granny Carne has noticed.

      “What do I belong to?”

      “To Earth.”

      “Yes, but that wasn’t what you were going to say. You were going to say that I belonged to Norvys, weren’t you?”

      I stare at her, astonished. “You can say it too! But you’re not part of Ingo.”

      “Earth and Ingo share some words. But that’s not the question, is it? The question is, how do you know about Norvys?”

      I am silent for a long time, while Granny Carne’s question presses in on me. Her eyes light on mine. They are amber, piercing—

      “It was you,” I say. “Wasn’t it?”

      Slowly, a smile fills her face. “Ah,” she says, “you were wide awake in the middle of the night, weren’t you? And why should you think that Norvys can’t go into the Air, if you can go to Ingo?”

      Conor looks from one to another of us, bewildered.

      “Granny Carne was the owl who came to me last night,” I explain.

      “No,” says Granny Carne. “It’s not as simple as that. I’m not the owl, but the owl is maybe one of my… shadowings.”

      “But your eyes are exactly the same.”

      “Yes.”

      “We came because of what happened last night,” Conor says. “Tell her, Saph. Tell her about the voice.”

      “It wanted me to come to it. It called me like this: SSSapphire… SSSSapphire…”

      “But that’s not your name!” interrupts Conor. “It doesn’t sound anything like your name. They must have been calling someone else.”

      “But in another language, Conor,” Granny Carne points out. “And who was calling? Do you know that?”

      “I think it was the seas of all the world,” I whisper, as if someone might overhear us.

      “Moryow,” says Granny Carne.

      “Yes.”

      “But she didn’t go,” says Conor, as if that’s the most important thing of all.

      “Why not?”

      “I don’t know. I think it was because of Sadie barking. And the… the owl.”

      “Sadie,” says Granny Carne thoughtfully. “Wasn’t Sadie that dog who came to you when I met you in the track below your house?”

      “Yes.”

      “Granny Carne,” says Conor abruptly, “my dad came to see you here, not long before he left. I was with him that day. Did he say anything – did he tell you anything? Anything that we don’t know? Did he know then he was going to leave us?”

      “The things that people say here are between them and these walls,” says Granny Carne.

      “But he’s disappeared. He might be in danger.”

      “He might,” agrees Granny Carne.

      “But if he is, we’ve got to help him!”

      “We won’t help him that way. We have to go gentle. But I will tell you this. When your father came to me he had a mark on his face that I see on your faces now. It was a mark you don’t often see… in the Air,” she adds, watching us carefully to see if we understand. We stare at her. My hand goes up, as if to cover my face. Granny Carne half smiles.

      “You won’t hide such a mark that way,” she says. “Not from me. We talked about it before, you remember, the last time I met you. Ingo puts that mark on a face. You know it, Sapphire. You’ve been there, in Ingo. You feel it pulling you, sometimes soft, sometimes strong.”

      I don’t say anything. I am frightened. How is it that Granny Carne knows so much?

      “Conor’s got the same inheritance,” Granny Carne goes on, “but it’s not so powerful in him. That’s the way things come out. Even brother and sister don’t inherit things from their parents equally.”

      Conor nods as if he understands, but I know he doesn’t. He must feel as dazed as I do.

      “But, Conor,” goes on Granny Carne, leaning forward and looking seriously into his face. “You have your own power that belongs to you, never doubt that. The time will come to use it. Sapphire has more of Ingo, but you have more of Earth. Both have their equal power. It’s when they become unequal that there’s danger.”

      They look at each other. I think again how alike they are. Granny Carne could be Conor’s ancestor. The same dark skin, the same shape of the eyes, the same shape around the lips when they smile.

      “There’s always been powerful Mer blood in the Trewhella family,” Granny Carne goes on. “The Mer blood goes way back beyond the first Mathew Trewhella.”

      “But it couldn’t have been passed down to us,” says Conor. “Mathew Trewhella went off with that mermaid, didn’t he? He didn’t have human children. He was a young man and he wasn’t married. It says so in the story.”

      “No, he wasn’t married, but he had a girl,” says Granny Carne. “He was in love with Annie, before the mermaid called to him. She was carrying Mathew’s baby when he disappeared. Annie gave the baby Mathew’s name, even though he’d left her and people were saying he’d betrayed her. It’s that little baby Mathew who carried the Mer blood down and gave you the inheritance.

      “Poor Annie, how she loved Mathew Trewhella,” goes on Granny Carne, as if she can see it all before her, clear and real as the honey cake on the table in front of us. “She would have fought the Zennor mermaid tooth and nail, and won Mathew back, if they’d met as equals. But she wasn’t just fighting the Zennor mermaid. She was fighting the old Mer blood in Mathew, that wanted to be away in Ingo.”

      I stare at Granny Carne. The way she talks about all these long-ago people makes me shiver.

      “So you’re saying that the story’s true? That Annie’s baby is our ancestor?” asks Conor.

      “Of course he is. How could it be otherwise?” asks Granny Carne harshly. “No more now. No more. I’m tired.”

      She looks tired. Not strong and tall any more, but empty and grey, as if the colour of life has poured out of her. She huddles back in her chair, shuts her eyes and takes a few deep breaths, then with her eyes still closed, she says in a low monotone that is almost like a chant: “But you’ve got a choice too. No inheritance can force you to accept it. You are the ones who choose. Salt water or sweet water.”

      “But we need to know—” I’m burning with impatience. Granny Carne has got to tell us more. Away in Ingo – why did she use those exact words?

      “Granny Carne, you’ve got to tell us more—”

      “Got to? Got to, my girl?” Granny Carne’s eyes flash amber. She fixes me with a gaze so stern that I flush red and drop my eyes. Her eyes blaze amber, like an owl’s eyes when it sees its prey. “Never throw a gift back to the giver, don’t you know that? Cut the cake now. Conor, open the damper on my stove. That kettle’s slow to boil.”

      And we know she won’t say one more word about Mathew Trewhella or the mermaid or Ingo or any of