The Crossing of Ingo

“Of course you’ve got to go,” says Conor immediately. I know my brother well enough to be sure that he’s not even thinking about how brilliantly this all fits in with our plans. Mum and Roger not calling us for two whole weeks! Nothing could be more convenient. Conor goes on, “It’s the chance of a lifetime, Mum. A trip like that would cost a fortune if you had to pay for it. You have to go.”

“You’d love it out here, Conor. Next time you two are definitely coming with us.”

Next time? What is going on? Mum sounds so full of life, as if Australia has turned on a switch in her which has been off for years. Since Dad went, maybe. No, be honest, Sapphire. Mum wasn’t like this even when Dad was at home. She’s changed. She’s stronger, bolder, more alive somehow. I’m not sure that I want her to change too much more – I don’t want Mum to become someone I don’t even recognise…

I lean forward and open my mouth, but as I do Conor grabs hold of my wrist under the table, out of sight of the webcam. He squeezes tight, warningly. “Two weeks is nothing. We’ll be fine, won’t we, Saph?”

“Ye-yes.”

“Are you sure?” asks Mum eagerly. She really wants to make this trip, but she’s worried too. The deal was that she would see us and speak to us every day unless it was completely unavoidable. In a minute another switch will turn on inside Mum: the guilt switch.

A Call with as much power over the pair of you as that, it’ll make its own path through your lives.

It’s happening this minute through the Internet as Mum waits for our answer. The Call is making a path for us. Mum’s eyes search my face.

“Of course we’re sure,” says Conor. “Everything’s fine here. No problem.”

“Except that Conor needs to learn where the washing machine is,” I say. Mum’s face relaxes.

“As long as you’re both well and happy.”

“We had Rainbow and Patrick round last night,” says Conor with apparent casualness. Mum looks even happier. She likes Rainbow and Patrick more than any of our friends. She senses that Rainbow is like her, that’s what I think. Someone who will anchor us to Earth. And Patrick’s ambition to become a doctor is exactly the ambition Mum would love me to have. I’m sorry, Mum, but it’s never going to happen.

A big trip north, into the bush… Poisonous spiders, king cobras, crocodiles… “Be careful up there, Mum. Crocodiles are really cunning. They use their tails as levers to spring out of the water and get you. If a croc chases you, you have to run in zigzags because that confuses them. And there’s loads of snakes in the bush too. You can’t walk around in flip-flops.”

Mum is laughing. “Is this my daughter talking, or is it my mum?”

“I’m serious, Mum.”

“I’m sorry, Sapphy, I didn’t mean to laugh at you.”

Mum seems so real that I feel I could put my hand through the screen and touch her face. But I can’t, and in a minute her screen image will disappear. People get lost in the bush. They die because there’s no water. I take a deep breath. Mum will be with Roger, who probably knows how to dig a bore hole if need be, and kill a fighting cobra with one karate chop. Mum will be fine. What a role reversal. Mum spends her life worrying about us, and now I’m panicking about her.

“We’ll be completely safe,” says Mum earnestly. “Roger’s mate knows the bush. He wouldn’t take tourists anywhere dangerous.”

But Mum knows, as I do, that nowhere in the world is ever completely safe. Your life can change in the blink of an eye, on a calm and beautiful Midsummer night. You lose what you love while you think it is still safe beside you.

“I know, Mum,” I say. “You’ll have a great time.”

Mum smiles back, reassuring and reassured. “I know I can trust you two – to take care of everything,” she says, looking at Conor. He looks straight back.

“I’ll look after Saph, Mum, don’t worry.”

“And I’ll look after Conor’s underpants.”

“Is Sadie all right?” asks Mum quickly.

“She’s fine.” I nearly add, She’s just in the kitchen, but pull myself back. First rule of deception: Never lie when you don’t have to.

“I’m so glad you’ve got Sadie. A dog in the house is good protection.”

“For God’s sake, Mum,” says Conor, “you sound like the mum in that film of Peter Pan.” I nearly laugh, thinking of Sadie padding round the house like Nana, pulling us back from Ingo by the seat of our pyjamas. I know why Conor sounds sharp. Guilt. He’s not exactly lying to Mum, but he’s certainly misleading her. Mum, however, doesn’t realise any of this. She thinks that Conor’s just cracking a joke, and she laughs with her new Australian lightheartedness.

“Don’t go flying out of any windows,” she says.

“We won’t,” I say, looking Mum in the eye. Just for a second I feel a surge of guilt, as if I’m the parent lying to her child for its own good, so that the child won’t be afraid. The mark of the Call must be blazing across my face. Doesn’t Mum see? Can’t she guess?

But no. Mum notices nothing, and we say goodbye.

CHAPTER FOUR

Conor lifts the globe from its place at the back of our living room’s deep windowsill. He pushes it with one finger so the globe turns a slow circle on its stand. The land is dark brown, with the names of countries written in close, spidery writing. The oceans must have been deep blue once but they have faded and now they are a pale blue-brown. The Indian Ocean… The Northwest Passage…

I used to trace the names with my finger when I first learned to read. They were the oceans Dad used to talk about when he said, “One day, Sapphy, I’ll take you to see the world. We’ll cross the five oceans. North Atlantic, South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, South Pacific, maybe even the Southern Ocean. Or we might go north, way up here through the North Pacific until we come to the Arctic Ocean.”

“But that’s not five oceans, Dad, that’s seven.”

“Ah well, the North and South Pacifics really only count as one, same with the Atlantics.”

If Mum was there she’d frown with annoyance. “Filling the child’s head with crazy ideas, getting her excited about things that will never happen. Why do you do it, Mathew?”

“Who’s to say what will happen and what won’t?” Dad would murmur, touching the globe again to make it spin.

I believed every word he said. The oceans seemed to belong to me already. I imagined Dad and me in the Peggy Gordon, cutting through the brilliant waves of the Southern Ocean. We’d discover a rake of tiny islands scattered across the water like stars in a deep blue sky. We would catch fish to eat and when our jerry cans were empty we’d steer for a green island to fill them up with fresh water from a little bubbling spring. We would pull the Peggy Gordon up on a beach at evening and maybe curious people would come down to talk to us. We’d eat and drink with them, and Dad would trade songs with the island singers…

Conor traces a line between Cornwall and the huge continent of Australia. His finger travels around the western bulge of Africa, past the Cape and eastwards across the Indian Ocean. How easy the journey looks when you’ve only got to turn a globe. To the bottom of the world and home again in a few seconds. But it won’t be like that for us.

“It’s so far,” I say.

“I know,” replies Conor.

“It’s quite – quite scary, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. You know that time I went climbing on the cliffs with Jack up by Godrevy, near Hell’s Mouth? I never told you what happened. We got stuck. Couldn’t go back, couldn’t go on without kind of jumping and throwing ourselves on to the next handhold. The sea was boiling down below.”

“You should have told me,” I say.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to scare you. In the end we had to do the jump. Jack was in front of me so he went first and I had to watch him. Worst moment of my life. Well, nearly the worst.”

“But he didn’t fall.”

“Course he didn’t, idiot. He’s still alive, isn’t he? After that bit, it was easy.”

“So once we set out it’ll be easier.”

“Maybe.”

Later, when Conor has gone up to the farm for the eggs, I go to the chest where Dad stored his prints and negatives. The chest has six long, shallow drawers which glide in or out at the touch of a finger. I go to the fifth drawer down and slide it open.

I haven’t looked in this drawer since Dad went away. Nothing’s changed. Dad’s drawers were always kept ship-shape. I slide my hand to the very back, and my fingers touch a familiar, fragile roll of parchment. It just fits the shallow drawer.

I take out Dad’s map. I don’t know why I call it “Dad’s map” really because he always called it “the Trewhella map” or “our map”. But I associate it with him because we spent so many hours together poring over it. It’s very old. A length of faded black tape ties the rolled-up map. The parchment is yellow brown and stained. I used to think the brown stains were blood, but Dad said they were just where sea water had darkened the parchment. This map has travelled the oceans, Sapphy. It’s been in our family for hundreds of years.

We can’t display the map on a wall because it has to be kept away from the light, which would quickly fade the outlines and the writing. Besides, Dad always said such a map is a private thing. You don’t want outsiders to ask questions, or tell you that it ought rightly to be in a museum. This map was made by Trewhellas, Sapphy. It’s to be kept with the Trewhellas.

I untie the black tape. I know what’s inside so well that I wait for a moment, not unrolling the map but letting every detail of it rise to my mind. It’s a map of the world, but not like any you could buy now. At each pole there is a vast prowling mass of icy land. In the centre of the Arctic mass a jagged black rock rises sharply from the whiteness. It is marked The North Pole. Our map was drawn at the time when people thought there was solid land at the North Pole, not a mass of frozen sea.

Australia doesn’t appear on the map at all. Where it should be, there’s a sheet of empty ocean. The shape of South America is wrong, much shorter and wider than it really is. California is an island. The British Isles are drawn out of proportion, and there are beautiful tiny drawings of sailing ships making way out of London and Bristol. The European part of the map is detailed and complete with rivers and mountain ranges, but the northwest of America and the east of Russia and China are vast unmarked territories, enclosed by uncertain lines. It looks as if the mapmaker was guessing at the boundaries.

When I first saw the map I didn’t question it. It was Dad’s map, so it must be correct. I even told my teacher that the world map on our classroom wall was wrong, but he said that mapmakers these days had satellite photographs to make their maps absolutely accurate. The next time Dad let me look at his map I felt as if it had tricked me. I said, “Dad, they’ve got it wrong on your map. Africa doesn’t go like that. And look, they haven’t even put Australia and New Zealand in.”

Dad said, “Those men who risked their lives to make this map weren’t stupid, Sapphy. This is their world. They drew what they knew.”

“But they’ve put sea dragons in the ocean. And look, there’s a man spouting water and blowing on a seashell.”

“That’s Neptune, Sapphy. God of the sea.”

“But maps ought to show real things. There aren’t any real dragons.” I was at the age when you’re proud of knowing that there are no such things as dragons and fairies.

Dad said, “Maybe there were dragons then. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that your ancestors knew less than you do, Sapphy.”

“The map’s wrong, though. We’ve got satellite pictures nowadays. We know what the Earth really looks like.”

Dad laughed scornfully. “You don’t learn what the world is like by looking at a picture that’s been sent from a piece of metal and plastic orbiting miles above the Earth’s atmosphere. Think of all the salt seas they fought across to make our map, and all the storms they weathered in a wooden ship that you wouldn’t believe could sail as far as France.”

The map is old and very fragile. Even the careless touch of a human hand can damage it, Dad used to say. Carefully, as he taught me, I unroll it and spread it out on the table. A piece of paper falls out. Not old parchment like the map. Twenty-first century paper, folded. My heart jumps with excitement. All at once I’m certain that this is a message, hidden by Dad for me to find. I was always the one who wanted to see the map, not Conor. I pick up the paper and unfold it, my fingers trembling. But there’s nothing to be excited about. Just a few scribbled figures.

22 30 7 6

23 00 9 6

23 15 15 6

23 30 19 6

It’s Dad’s handwriting. The sight of it hurts me. I don’t want to think about Dad’s hand picking up the pen and writing these figures. It must have been important or he wouldn’t have bothered to put the paper inside the map. I look at the figures again, trying to add them up and guess their meaning. They refuse to give up their secret.

I turn back to the map, and weigh down its corners with the smooth pebbles Dad always used for the purpose. Automatically my gaze goes to the place where we live. The coast of Cornwall is beautifully drawn by someone who knows every cove. The mapmaker has made Cornwall look a lot bigger than it really is in proportion to the rest of the British Isles. Dad said there was a reason for that too. If you’re making a map, you might make more of something that’s important to you.

As I bend closer I see something I am sure I’ve never seen before. In the blue-brown waters off the west coast of Cornwall there is a new word, written in tiny, exquisite writing. It looks exactly like the handwriting on the rest of the map, but the ink is new. Not faded brown, but sharp and black.

Ingo

Ingo. A shiver runs over my skin. I seem to hear the wash of the waves in the coils of my ears. No one else can have written that word except Dad, before he left us. I scan the map again. Yes, there is something else that wasn’t there before. How could I have missed it? In the corner of the map, where the known dissolves into the unknown, there is a small figure. Dad always drew well. This is one of his best drawings. It shows a Mer woman. Not a mermaid with long golden hair, a scaly fish tail and a comb in her hand, but a Mer woman like those I’ve seen in Ingo. She has long dark hair and a strong seal tail.

When Dad drew this he couldn’t have known that Conor or I would ever find our way to Ingo. It was a clue, maybe, left for anyone who was capable of understanding it. Just one word, Ingo, and one figure. If this map went to a museum they would say that the Mer woman was a mythological figure. Someone would pore over the word Ingo, and maybe decide that it was a local name for one of the reefs.

But this map is never going to a museum. It is private and it belongs to the Trewhellas, because we are the only ones who truly understand it.

I look around for the pot where Dad kept his best pen. No one has touched it since he went. Mum took all Dad’s clothes to the charity shop in St Pirans, and she sold his camera and the digital printer he used for his work. But she kept the personal things for me and for Conor.

I take out the pen and unscrew the cap. The pen has a fine nib which is good for drawing. I bring pen to paper, and hesitate. It feels like sacrilege. I am breaking a rule that has been drummed into me since I was first allowed to see the map. But as the first line flows it feels entirely right. I am meant to be doing this. I am a Trewhella and this map is for the Trewhellas, to show us what the world is like.

Close to the word Ingo I draw four tiny figures. They are as small as I can make them without losing definition. Two are Mer and two are human. The Mer figures have strong seal tails and flowing dark hair. The girl wears a bodice of woven sea grass. The human figures are dark-haired too. They could be cousins to the Mer figures, except that they have legs instead of tails.

I understand now what Dad was trying to tell me about the mapmaker who made it. This map is about a person’s experience of the world, not about what a camera sees as it blinks in space.

I finish my drawing. The piece of paper with Dad’s writing on it is still lying open. I glance at it again, casually, wondering if it’s worth putting it back into the map before I roll it up. My glance sweeps over the numbers, and suddenly I realise that they are not part of a calculation. It was the layout that confused me. If Dad had put in the dots, I would have seen their meaning immediately.

22.30 7.6

23.00 9.6

23.15 15.6

23.30 19.6

They are times and dates. Half past ten in the evening on the seventh of June. Eleven o’clock on the ninth of June. Quarter past eleven on the fifteenth of June. Half past eleven on the nineteenth of June. Dates and times which were so important to Dad that he must have noted them at the time. So important that he hid the paper inside the map. He didn’t think anyone else would ever guess what they meant, but I know. I know which June it was. It was the month that Dad disappeared.

These must be the times and the dates when he heard Mellina singing. It was Dad who wrote the word Ingo on the map because even then he knew – or suspected – what Ingo was. My heart beats faster. Maybe these weren’t just the times that he heard Mellina sing. They might have been times when he went down to the cove, and met her, and fell so deep in love with her that he knew he would abandon everything for her.

I am not sure why he left a record of these times. Perhaps it was a clue for whichever Trewhella might come to read it one day.

My eyes sting. I so wish I could go back in time. If only I could come in and find Dad while he was writing those figures. He must have felt completely alone. Ingo was pulling him, the way the Call is pulling us, and he couldn’t tell any of us about it. All he could do was leave a message almost in code, and hope that maybe one day somebody would understand.

I roll up the map very carefully with Dad’s piece of paper inside it, exactly as it was. I wrap the faded tape around the parchment, and tie it so that the bow won’t loosen even if it has to wait for years before it is undone. I slide the scroll to the back of the drawer at the left hand side, where it fits perfectly.

I’ve left my own message now for whoever comes after me. I wonder if one day in the future some girl who looks a little like me will unroll the map and look at those four little figures, and understand what they mean.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Watch out, Conor, I’m going to throw it.” “You’re crazy,” grumbles Conor. “I told you, you should have given it to the cat.” I take a small plastic bag out of my pocket, and shake out the bed of weed which is wrapped around the fish egg. The little fish is still alive, swimming inside its rubbery membrane. I shudder, draw my arm back and throw egg and weed as far away from us as I can into the waves.

Sea water swirls around my legs, almost knocking me off balance. I grab Conor’s arm and we stand together, waiting, watching the horizon. The Call is alive in both of us. It’s like music rising at the start of a crescendo, but it hasn’t got there yet. We are waiting for Faro.

The sky is dark today. The wind chops off the white crests of the waves. Even inside our cove, where the water is protected by a curve of cliff and by the rocks that guard the entrance, the sea is wild.

A wave sucks back, tugging at us, wanting to pull us with it. We manage to stay upright, but we have to fight for balance.

“There he is!” shouts Conor.

Faro’s head shows through the wave crests and then vanishes again. Next time he rises he is only fifty metres from shore. He waves, and we plunge forward. I dive through the first wave and then the next, cutting through the water with Conor beside me. We are not in Ingo yet, but the water feels like home.

We reach Faro. His head is above the surface and he is breathing air. He is pale and his face, like the sea, is stormy. I wonder if the air is hurting him. I thought it was growing easier for Faro to make the transition.

“Are you all right, Faro?” I ask.

“I was pursued,” says Faro, and anger blazes in his eyes. “Look.” He flips over so that we can see his tail. There is a gash in it at the base. “I am losing blood,” says Faro. “I have called my sister but she is with a child who was thrown against the rocks by a rogue current. She will come when she can.”

“Faro! It looks deep,” I say.

“It is deep. It was intended to be deep. Mortarow pursued me. The sea bull has gored me.”

“He did this to you?” demands Conor, and a fury equal to Faro’s flares in his face.

“Ervys’s followers have taken up arms,” says Faro. There is deep anger in his voice as he shakes back his hair defiantly. “He has taught the Mer to arm themselves against their brothers and sisters. He has defied the law of the Mer. Saldowr shall hear of this.”

“Faro, can you climb up on to a rock?” I ask him. “We aren’t healers like Elvira but if we press hard on the wound that might stop it bleeding.”

“It will weaken me more to leave the water. I came to tell you that in two nights we will answer the Call. But Ervys’s followers are waiting for us. They will pack the Assembly chamber if they can. They will try to turn the Mer against us so that we are not chosen to make the Crossing. They fear what will happen if we succeed. They don’t want peace: they want war, and victory.”

“What time? When shall we come?”

“Be here when the moon rises. I will come for you. You will know when the time is right, because the Call will grow so strong in you that you hear nothing else. This is what I have been told by those who have made the Crossing. I will be here for you.”

“But you’re badly hurt, Faro!” I stare through the water and see a cloud of blood around Faro’s tail. “Will you be strong enough?”

“Strong enough!” says Faro, looking at me as if I am Mortarow trying to stop him. Then his face softens. “Are you wearing our bracelet, little sister?”

“Of course.” I lift my arm to show him. “Faro, what kind of weapons have they got – Ervys and his followers?”

“They have taken up spears fashioned from the wood they find in drowned ships, and from sharpened stones and coral.”

I look anxiously at Faro’s tail. I know that people often get blood poisoning from coral wounds. “Was Mortarow’s spear tipped with coral, Faro?”

Faro turns aside and spits into the water. “Mortarow has taken human metal to tip his spear. He has been rummaging deep in the belly of a wreck and has found human weapons.” He spits again. “And our sea bull says that he is upholding the pure traditions of the Mer.” He’s very pale. Anger gives him energy, but he needs Elvira’s help, and quickly.

“Go, Faro, you’ve got to hurry. Are you strong enough? Shall we come with you to find Elvira?”

Faro shakes his head. “In two nights I shall be here for you.” He turns. There are no dazzling somersaults this time, or glittering plunges into deep water. Faro dips his head beneath the surface and swims down, down into Ingo until he is lost to sight.

“We shouldn’t have let him go, Conor. That wound was deep.”

“He’ll be all right, once he gets to Elvira.” Conor turns and wades back to shore. I catch up with him. “Only two nights to wait,” he says.

“Yes.”

Conor glances at me, his face sombre and thoughtful. “Aren’t you afraid, Saph?” he asks.

“Of Mortarow, you mean? But Saldowr wouldn’t let him hurt us… would he?”

“Mortarow has just struck at Faro, Saph. He knows that’s the same as striking at Saldowr himself. They’ve lost their fear of what Saldowr can do to them. Listen Saph. Do you really still want to make the Crossing?”

I stop dead in the shallow water, grabbing Conor’s arm to make him stop too. “How can you say that?”