Authors: Helen Dunmore
“Faro,” I say quietly, “will you make the Crossing of Ingo?”
“It’s not for me to decide, Sapphire,” answers Faro, glancing up from his task. “I’ll present myself to the Assembly and declare myself ready and willing. Then the decision is for the Assembly. Some are chosen, some are left behind. You can present yourself year after year and never be chosen.”
Faro’s face is set. He doesn’t have to say how important this is to him. He’s got to be chosen, especially now that he knows he’s not one hundred percent Mer. I’m quite sure now that Faro has human blood in him, maybe from far back in the past. So many clues are starting to fit together. Faro’s always visited the shore more than most of the other Mer. He can stay in the Air for a long time. And then there’s his curiosity about the human world. He’s always asking me questions. He mocks the way human beings live, but he can’t hide his fascination.
His dark eyes have no Mer silver in them. There’s no Mer tinge of blue to his skin. Once I start to think about it, it’s obvious.
I’m equally sure that Faro hates having even a single drop of human blood. He won’t see it as a bond between us, but as a weakness. I won’t risk asking him about it.
Faro only wants to belong in Ingo.
“Faro…,” I say hesitantly, scared that he’ll refuse, “Faro, when you go to the Assembly chamber, can I go with you?”
Faro drops the fish-bone needle and stares at me. A long stare, as if he’s reading my thoughts. And perhaps he is. I’m not stopping him.
A brilliant smile lights up his face.
“Yes, little sister,” he says, “you can come with me.”
I
’
M SO USED TO
F
ARO SWIMMING
alongside Conor, and Conor holding on to Faro’s wrist, that I think it’s still happening even when it isn’t. I don’t notice that there’s clear water between the two of them. We’re close to land, traveling not far below the surface. I look across to ask Faro how far it is now and see that there are more than two meters of water between Faro and Conor. They haven’t separated by accident. Conor’s not struggling. He’s swimming strongly.
“Conor!”
He turns. He looks completely normal, not pale and pinched and blue around the lips. He’s not fighting for oxygen. He’s drawing it from the water, just as Faro and I do.
“Conor, you’re not holding Faro’s wrist!”
“I know. Good, isn’t it?”
I can still hardly believe it. Conor, swimming without support and as much at home in Ingo as I am. But why, after all this time? Something must have changed, but what?
“I expect it’s because you have the talisman my sister made,” says Faro confidently.
“No, it can’t be the talisman,” I say, “because Conor was wearing it earlier, before we went to the Deep. He still had to hold on to you then.”
Faro shrugs. He’s swimming with his hands clasped behind his back, using only his tail to drive him through the water. “What does it matter?” he says carelessly, in the way people do when they want to drop an argument they’re going to lose.
“Do you feel okay, Conor?” I ask him anxiously. “Really okay?”
“I feel amazing,” says Conor. He shakes his head in disbelief. “Why didn’t you tell me how incredible it feels? I’m going to try what you’re doing, Faro.”
He puts his hands behind his back, clasps them, and starts to swim quite differently, moving from the waist as Faro does. His legs are together, his feet joined. It looks weird, as if…
As if Conor has a tail. And he’s going so fast. Too fast. I can hardly keep up with him.
“Don’t, Con!”
“What’s the matter, Saph?”
“Don’t swim like that.”
“But it’s amazing. It’s so much faster than the way we normally swim. I can’t believe I didn’t ever try it like this before. It’s like wearing fins!”
I plunge after him. “Maybe that’s how Dad started, Con. Maybe he kept swimming like that, and when he wanted to go back to swimming normally, he couldn’t. Maybe it’s part of…you know…
changing
.” I’m whispering because of Faro. He’d be mortally insulted. What could be better than becoming Mer?
“Don’t be crazy, Saph—nothing like that’s going to happen to me. You’re much more likely to end up with a tail than I am.”
“All right, Conor, but please don’t do it.
Please
.”
“Saph, you are so neurotic. You know I’m never going to become Mer. But if it keeps you happy…” Conor unclasps his hands and begins to swim a smooth, effortless crawl. Relief washes over me.
“What is that kind of swimming, Conor?” asks Faro with apparent innocence. I guess that there’s a sting in the question somewhere.
“Front crawl.”
“Crawl—what is ‘crawl,’ exactly?”
“You know, Faro, going along like a—like a—” I search my mind for a sea creature that could be said to crawl. “Oh, I don’t know, Faro, it’s just a stroke.”
“What a lot of effort you humans put into ‘strokes.’ We Mer prefer just to swim.”
Conor’s so elated by discovering that he can travel alone in Ingo that he doesn’t react to Faro’s teasing. For the first time he’s fully part of Ingo. I think back to the day two years ago when I first let go of Faro’s wrist and knew I could survive underwater. Conor’s right—it’s an amazing feeling. It changes you.
“Thanks, Faro!” Conor calls.
“What for?”
“For all the times you took care of me. Now you won’t have to do it anymore.”
“No, you are my brother now,” says Faro. His mood seems to have changed completely. He’s suddenly very serious. “You are my brother, and Sapphire is my sister. We are bound forever by what we shared in the Deep. Our lives lay in one another’s hands, and we did not betray ourselves.”
“I’d never do that,” says Conor.
I know it’s true. Conor has such strength. He doesn’t even gossip behind people’s backs at school; he never has. People trust Conor. If he says he’ll do something, it’s done.
I’ve spent too much of my life wishing I were like Conor. Maybe it’s partly because I always thought there was a look in Mum’s eyes that said,
What a pity that you’re not more like your brother.
But it’s not only that. Conor has qualities anyone would want.
“For a long time I was not sure,” Faro says thoughtfully. “Sapphire, I was sure about her from the first day. But you—no. Even when you sang to the seals, even when you read the keystone, I still wasn’t sure. But now Ingo has rewarded you because of what you did in the Deep. Ingo has given you a sign that you belong here.”
Conor frowns quickly. He hates people telling him what to do with his life. “We’re not slaves,” he says. “We don’t belong to anyone. Or anything.”
But we do, Conor.
You’re wrong. I’m not going to say it, though. It would just lead to an argument. Faro doesn’t argue either, but this time I don’t think it’s because he’s afraid of losing.
The human world is coming closer. We pass below a red buoy and then another. They mark the lobster pots.
“We can’t be far from the cove now,” says Conor.
“No.”
Suddenly I remember Sadie, not in the foggy way that I remember Air and Earth when I’m deep in Ingo, but with all my feelings alive again. I feel a surge of joy at the thought of putting my arms around Sadie’s warm neck and hugging her while she pants with excitement and tries to lick my face. It’s like waking up and remembering that it’s my birthday. And Mum…
But with the thought of Mum and Roger, problems come rushing back too. I wish I didn’t always have to hide
things from them. Half my life is a secret from Mum. I’ve also got a horrible feeling that Mum hides things from me too. She doesn’t really trust me, not as she trusts Conor.
Sometimes I think you’re growing away from me, Sapphy.
Mum said that about a week ago. I didn’t know what to answer. I could have said,
Sometimes I think the same about you,
but Mum would have been so hurt that it wasn’t worth it. I wish Mum could say the things the whale said.
You please me.
Of course I know Mum loves me really. The trouble is that there are so many things about me that she wants to change and improve.
My chest hurts. There’s pain tightening its way around my ribs.
You’re still in Ingo, remember,
I tell myself.
Don’t risk thinking of the human world. Ingo’s wild and dangerous, and it can kill you; but it doesn’t hurt you the way the human world can hurt you.
Faro swims up close to me. “You’re leaving me again, little sister,” he murmurs. “Always coming and going, coming and going. When are you going to learn that you can’t live in two worlds?”
“I have to, Faro. I don’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice. You just haven’t made it yet.”
But I’m too tired to want to think about this. Faro doesn’t understand what it’s like to feel that you belong in the human world and that you belong in Ingo too. He’s determined not to face the fact that he’s probably got
human blood in him. He takes it as an insult. I’m sure that’s wrong. You have to accept what you are, instead of fighting to pretend you’re something different.
In a way I’m growing more Mer; I know I am. I don’t even have to think about whether I understand what the whale is saying; I just do. But at the same time I’m not as desperate to escape from the human world as I was just after Dad disappeared. Home seemed so empty, even with Conor there, but now it’s filling up again.
There’s Sadie. No one can feel empty when a dog is pouring love all over them. I’ve made friends with Rainbow. And Granny Carne gave me the rowan. She didn’t give the rowan to Conor, even though he’s got so much more Earth in him than I have.
“Did you mean what you said about the Crossing of Ingo?” Faro’s voice hardly stirs the water by my ear, but Conor hears.
“No, she didn’t,” he says sharply. “She’s going home now, Faro, back where she belongs. Come on, Saph—we’re almost there.” And Conor kicks out strongly, increasing his speed until he overtakes us both.
I’m not going to argue. I’d have to yell if I wanted to speak to Conor now anyway. He’s powering toward the shore, as if he can’t wait to get home.
Faro and I drop back. The water is still deep enough and salty enough to be Ingo. Ingo has its arms wrapped around me. Maybe it’s only when you have to leave somewhere
that you really know how much you love it. There’s sand beneath us now, and the sea turns turquoise.
“Faro?”
“I’m here.”
There’s no hurry. We’ve been to the Deep and returned alive. The Kraken’s voice is silent. That’s enough for now. Faro smiles, as if he knows what I’m thinking. He probably does.
“We must make a bracelet of our hair, Sapphire,” he says.
“What?”
“It’s what we Mer do as a sign of friendship. We each cut a lock of our hair, and then we weave the hair together so tightly that the water can never separate it. There are many weaving patterns. We must choose one that has meaning for us.”
I look at Faro’s long hair, swirling around his shoulders in a cloud. The color is not very different from my own. If his hair and mine were woven together, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell where one ended and the other began.
“What do you cut your hair with?” I can’t imagine that there are scissors in Ingo.
“The edge of a clamshell.”
“There isn’t time to do it now, Faro.” But I’d like to. Part of me would always be in Ingo then.
“Next time I see you then.” Faro’s eyes glow with
eagerness. “Let’s make our bracelets before the Assembly, Sapphire. We’ll wear them there. It’ll be a sign that when they choose one of us to make the Crossing of Ingo, they’ll have to choose the other as well.”
Sometimes Faro’s confidence is outrageous. He turns every “if” into a “when.” But I like it too. I love the way he makes me feel that anything could happen, and the only thing that could stop me is myself.
“But are you sure you want me to come, Faro? You might have a better chance without me.”
“Better chance!” Faro scoffs. “Why are you so timid, little sister? We’ll make our own chances.”
N
O ONE COMES TO OUR
cove. Well, people do, of course, but not often. The climb is too steep, and you can’t carry stuff down, and the tide sweeps in too fast. Nearly everyone prefers Morvrinney Cove, about a mile down the coast.
But there’s someone there now, on the flat white sand up by the rocks, as Conor and I swim up through the surface. At first I don’t notice. I’m busy fighting for breath. I’ve been in Ingo too long.
“You okay, Saph?”
I turn on my back and take great painful gasps of air. My lungs feel like paper bags that have been scrunched into a tiny ball. They don’t want to expand.
“It’ll be better in a minute,” Conor comforts me.
“I know, I—”
“Don’t talk.”
I float until my breathing settles. As soon as I look a bit better, Conor says warningly, “There’s someone in the cove, Saph. We’re going to have to be careful.”
We roll over and start to swim in. At least whoever it is can’t have seen Faro: He didn’t even enter the cove this time. It may seem eccentric to go for a long swim in April, but that’s our business. The trouble is that whoever it is probably knows Mum, because only local people know the way down here.
We swim slowly to shore. The cold of the sea is starting to bite. In Ingo you don’t feel it, but as soon as you leave Ingo, the protection leaves you too. My arms and legs feel as if someone’s sticking needles in all over them.
“Can’t wait to g-get into dry clothes,” says Conor.
“It’s so cold!”
“Freezing.”
I stagger as I come out of the water. The tide is lower than it was when we left the cove. That was morning, and by the sun’s position it’s late afternoon now. The tide’s been out, and now it’s coming in again. I shake my head to clear it. I feel as if I’ve been away for years.
Conor left our stuff high up on the rocks, so it should still be dry.
The figure waves but doesn’t move toward us. For a terrible moment I think it’s Mum, but then I shield my
eyes, peer, and see that it’s Gloria Fortune.
It can’t be. Gloria couldn’t climb down to the cove on her crutches. She’d never risk such a fall.
“Hi, little mermaid,” calls Gloria Fortune, and swings down the sand toward us.
“Don’t say anything, Saph,” whispers Conor. “Let me handle it.”
But luckily Gloria is only joking. She thinks we’ve been for a freezing cold swim because that’s the kind of stupid thing that kids do, and as soon as she notices how much we’re shivering, she tells us to get changed quick before we catch pneumonia.
Why is she here? What does she know?
I grab my bundle of dry clothes, go behind a rock, pull off my wet clinging stuff, and then rub myself hard with the towel until some life comes back into my body. The dry clothes feel strangely hard and cardboardy, compared with how easy and flowing everything feels in Ingo. And the air is so thin and noisy. Gulls screeching, a helicopter way up in the sky making for St. Pirans, water slapping against rocks, waves swashing up onto the sand…
It’s pandemonium. Why do people think we live in one of the most peaceful places on earth?
I stuff my wet clothes into the bag with Conor’s, and we emerge to face Gloria Fortune. The best tactic is to start asking questions before she can—real questions, like,
Did you fly down that cliff?
“You must be wondering how I got down here,” understates Gloria. “Rob brought me round from Morvrinney in the Tregerthens’
Seagull
.”
“Oh. Is he—is he still here?”
“He’s coming back in half an hour. I wanted to be—well, I wanted to be here on my own. I’ve always wanted to visit this cove.” She pauses, frowns, and then goes on more uncertainly. “This is going to sound weird. I know this cove is your place, and you probably think I shouldn’t be here. But I keep feeling I’ve got to be here. As if the cove were pulling me down to it.” She tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I don’t think you should be here on your own,” says Conor, with such conviction that he sounds as if he’s the adult, not Gloria.
I don’t think she should be here on her own either. Half an hour sounds like a short time, but it’s long enough for a shining head to appear above the water or for a figure to be suddenly there, sitting on the rocks by the cove entrance, wearing a wet suit pulled down to the waist. Or at least that’s what it will look like until you get close. And once you’re close, it’s all too late. Once I’d seen Faro and I knew that what everybody else thinks is a myth or a fairy tale is hard, cold fact, then there was no way of returning to the life I’d been living five minutes before.
Her husband won’t guess that it’s dangerous to leave her
here. He won’t sense that this cove is a gateway to another world. He won’t realize that Gloria sometimes has a look of Ingo on her face.
“Don’t stay here on your own,” Conor says, frowning.
Gloria rubs her hands over her eyes as if she’s trying to rub something away. “I meant to go see Granny Carne today,” she says in a puzzled voice. “I can’t think why I didn’t.”
I can. Her Mer blood wants her to come here, to the cove, not to Granny Carne’s cottage.
“You two were swimming a long way out,” Gloria goes on. “I thought this coast was supposed to be so dangerous.”
“It is,” says Conor. “Saph and I know the currents.”
“Do you always go swimming with your clothes on?” Gloria asks, laughing.
“It’s—it’s warmer.”
I wish her husband would hurry up and fetch her. He was stupid to leave Gloria here. What if the weather changes and he can’t bring the boat round? People from upcountry don’t understand how quickly the sea can change here. Gloria could be cut off by the tide. She could never struggle to safety up those cliffs on her crutches.
“You really should go to see Granny Carne,” says Conor with a seriousness that makes Gloria stare at him. I can almost see the wheels of her mind working. Any minute
now she’ll come out with a question that we won’t be able to dodge—
“There’s the
Seagull
!” I exclaim, my voice loud with relief.
“Where?”
“Out where I’m pointing.”
“I see it!” Gloria leans on her left crutch, slips her right crutch free, lifts it, and waves it over her head. “Rob! Rob!”
She looks as if someone has switched on a light inside her and it’s shining out through her eyes. She must really love him. He seems quite dull to me, compared with Dad or even Roger, with his job in Exeter and his files of paperwork and his pale city skin. Nice, but dull.
He’s not using the engine. He’s rowing the
Seagull
in, and she’s riding easily over the swell. I’ve got to admit he knows how to handle her. I hope he knows how tricky it’ll be to bring her alongside at the landing place at this state of the tide. He must, because he’s not even going to try. He’s bringing her in onto the beach, and suddenly I realize why. Gloria wouldn’t be able to use the ladder. He glances behind him, sees Gloria waving the crutch, and waggles his left oar in salute. He’s laughing. He looks a bit less dull when he laughs.
Suddenly I’m overwhelmingly glad that she is still here, waiting for him. Ingo hasn’t taken Gloria. I’ve got to stop
her from coming to the cove again. I’m going to talk to Granny Carne.
They’ve gone. The shining sea is empty again. I wanted to stay until the
Seagull
was out of sight, even though Conor’s desperate for a hot shower. I wanted the cove to be empty again—and ours.
“Come on, Saph, Mum’ll be back from work soon.”
It must be still the same day, or Gloria would have known we were missing. Mum will think we’ve spent the day down here.
You can’t see a blow coming from behind, but there’s a millionth of a second when you feel the air rush toward you. A gull slices the air above my head, so close that its claws comb through my hair. It swoops almost to the sand, screeching, then swings upward over the water. And then it straightens out, drops, rolls, and comes round again in a wide circle. It’s passed me. It’s behind me and then—
“Look out, Saph!”
The gull dive-bombs me again. I duck, throwing my arms up to protect my head, and when the gull has gone, there’s a broad scratch on my hand from which blood starts to well.
“You okay, Saph?”
I’m shaking. “It—it attacked me.”
“It’s gone. Look, there it is, flying out to sea.”
I watch in case it sweeps back on itself again, but it disappears into the distance.
“It must have thought you had a donut,” Conor jokes. If you’re eating outside in St. Pirans, gulls dive close to scare you and make you drop your food, and then they snatch it.
But I don’t think this gull was after food. I shake my hand disbelievingly. It hurts, and blood drips onto the sand.
“Wash it in the sea, quick. You can put a Band-Aid on at home.”
I don’t say anything more until we’ve climbed to the top of the cliff. But I’m thinking hard. Gulls see everything. They know what happens in the human world. They’d make good messengers. If they were on Ervys’s side, if they were able to report back to him about what we were doing and where we were going…
Maybe the gull was telling me something.
We know where you are. We can still find you even when you’re not in Ingo. Don’t think that Ervys has forgotten about you.
I shiver. I can’t forget the cold, hard anger on Ervys’s face. It’s the kind of anger that will keep for years without ever weakening. My hand stings from the blow of the gull’s claws and the salt water.
“Nearly home, Saph,” says Conor encouragingly, as if I’m five years younger than him instead of only two.
“’M okay, Conor. Don’t
fuss
.”
Conor puts his arm round me, and suddenly I’m glad of his help. “For someone who’s okay, you don’t look too good, Saph. We’d better get your hand sorted out before Mum sees it.”