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

I step forward cautiously, one foot after another on the hard sand that slopes downward slightly to the water. White, echoey swirls of mist stroke my skin.

“Conor! Conor, where are you? Are you here?” I call softly. I don’t dare call too loud. Anything could come out of this mist.

Nobody answers.

“Conor! Conor! Please, if you’re here, come out!”

I don’t like hide-and-seek when I’m the seeker, and everyone’s hiding and waiting and watching, ready to jump out. Coming, ready or not! I hate things that jump out on me. But I’m still sure I was right to come down to the cove. I’m sure Conor came this way, and that he’s here, close.

But I’m scared to call again. I glance back up the beach, but even the rocks have vanished now. I’m surrounded by white, choking mist. The sound of the sea seems to come from everywhere. Haaa… Haaa… Haaaa…

I clench my hands so tight that my nails dig into my palms. You’re safe, Sapphire. Don’t be such a stupid little baby. It’s all right, because as long as the sand slopes downward, then it must be leading towards the sea. I know the shape of this cove as well as I know the shape of my own hand. The sea bed slopes gently for a long way, nearly as far as the mouth of the cove, but then it drops down sharply. When you’re swimming you can see the water go suddenly dark, where the deep comes. Conor has tried to dive to the bottom, but neither of us has ever touched it.

I hold my arms out in front of me and step forward, fumbling through the mist.

And that’s when I hear the voice. It’s far away, over the water, and it’s singing.

I wish I was away in Ingo

Far across the briny sea,

Sailing over deepest waters

Where love nor care never trouble me—

Dad? Dad, it’s Dad! My body prickles all over as if I’m standing in lightning.

“Dad!” I call, “Dad, where are you? It’s me! It’s Sapphy! Dad, please come back!”

The singing breaks off, and there is a long silence. I hear the echo of the song in my head. I know that song so well, and the voice singing it…

But do I? Very softly, very far away, the singing starts again. And this time I am not so sure. The singing is beautiful. The voice is so sweet and pure that I can’t tell if it’s a man’s voice, or a woman’s, or a child’s. It’s so sweet that I want the mist to lift me and carry me away to where the voice is.

Come tell to me the very reason

That I am slighted so by thee…

I asked Dad once what the word “slighted” meant. He told me that to slight someone was to put them aside and take no notice of them. To make them feel that you don’t want them. In the song, the singer wants to know why that has happened. Why he’s been slighted by the one he loves.

Slighted. I don’t need to ask what the word means now.

Why have you left us, Dad? Didn’t you want us any more? Weren’t we good enough for you? Where are you, Dad? If you can hear me, please, please answer…

But I don’t say these words aloud. I stand as still as a stone in the mist, trying to catch the echo of the singing. It’s Dad’s song, but the more I listen the less I can believe that the voice is his. The song is Dad’s, but the singer isn’t him.

Now something else is happening. The mist is starting to lighten. It’s lifting. There’s brightness in the air and as the mist swirls again it parts to show a white disc of sun, struggling to come out. I look back and the outline of the rocks appears. There are the caves. There are the boulders. I turn towards the sea. And there, down by the water, perched on one of the high rocks at the side of the cove, is a boy.

He’s facing out to sea, away from me. I can only see his head and shoulders. But that dark wet hair… It looks like – it must be—

“Conor!”

The boy turns round. Even from here I can see that he’s not Conor, but a stranger. A shiver of fear runs through me. He raises one hand and waves as if he knows me. But I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him in my life. He waves again, and this time he beckons. He wants me to come over.

And suddenly I’ve got to go to him. My feet are pounding over the hard wet sand towards the rock. There’s a pool of water around the base of the rock, and I splash through it. The boy leans over the side of the rock and looks down.

“Can you climb up to me?” he asks.

“Of course I can.”

But it’s not so easy. The rock is overhung, slimy and covered with seaweed. There are mussels and limpets that hurt my hands. A baby crab scuttles over my fingers and I nearly lose my grip.

The boy doesn’t scramble down to help me, as Conor would. Maybe that’s because he’s wearing a wetsuit – or at least I think he is. I can’t see properly from this angle, but it looks as if he’s wearing a wetsuit pulled down to the waist.

I grab hold of a spur of rock near the top and haul myself up. And that’s when I see him clearly for the first time.

I topple backwards. I nearly fall. I would fall, except that the boy’s hand shoots out and grabs mine.

“Careful,” he says.

It’s a costume. He’s wearing a costume. He must be. It can’t be real. He can’t be—

“You can’t be,” I say aloud, without meaning to. “It’s impossible.” I look down at the hand that is still holding on to me. Human fingers, just like mine. Human arms, head, neck, chest… but then…

“I’m asleep, aren’t I? You’re part of a dream.”

He squeezes my fingers tight, and then lets go of them.

“Did that feel real enough? I can pinch you if you like.”

“No, no, that’s all right. But you can’t be a—”

I still can’t get the word out. It’s not a word I’ve ever heard outside a story. It doesn’t belong to real life. I stare at the dark curve of what I thought was a wetsuit, and the smooth place where flesh like mine joins on to – what? It reminds me of something. It’s not like the scaly fish tail you see in a kid’s book. It’s like the tail of another creature altogether. Powerful, glistening, sleek, made for water and not for land—

“A seal,” I whisper. The two halves of what I’m seeing won’t join up. I see a boy like Conor, with dark wet hair and brown eyes and suntanned skin. And I see the curving tail of a seal.

He looks as if he’s heard every thought I’ve had. “Seals can’t talk,” he points out. His teeth are perfectly white and even. His mum won’t be nagging him about going to the dentist.

Why am I thinking about dentists, when I’m looking at a—

“You thought I was Conor, didn’t you? Don’t worry, Conor’s here somewhere. He’s with my sister.”

“Your sister?” I bleat. Thoughts and pictures whirl in my head. The girl with the long wet hair. The girl in the wetsuit. His sister.

“I know your name,” he goes on. His eyes glint with satisfaction. “I know all about you. You’re Sapphire. Conor told me about you.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t you want to know mine?”

“Your what?”

“My name,” he says.

“Oh. Um, yes, that’d be good.”

“My name is Faro,” he says with grandeur, as if I must have heard it. But I still can’t get my mind working.

“How come you’re speaking English?” I blurt out. “I mean, you’re not—”

“Not English?”

“Not – um – human.”

“Human? I should think not,” says Faro, as if there aren’t many worse things to be. “And how do you know we’re speaking English anyway? We might be speaking Mer.”

“I can’t speak anything except English,” I say. This is one thing I am certain about, at least.

“You think you can’t,” says Faro. “But if your mother was here, she wouldn’t be able to understand a word we’re saying.”

“She wouldn’t be listening. She’d be too busy yelling at me for coming down here on my own.”

“That’s true,” says Faro, as if he knows Mum well.

“But I thought – I mean, don’t mermaids have tails like fish? With scales? I’m sure that’s what I’ve seen in pictures.”

Faro raises his eyebrows. “Mermaids. That is such a human way of talking. I suppose you’re friends with lots of maids at school, are you?”

“Well no, we don’t call them maids, not any more. That was in the olden days. The Tudors or the Victorians or something.”

“So what makes you think the Mer are living in the olden days?” asks Faro, laying a faint sarcastic emphasis on the last two words.

Of course you’re living in the olden days, I want to say. You sit on rocks and you have a golden comb in one hand and a mirror in the other and you sing all day and comb your hair and wait for sailors to come past so you can tempt them into the sea. That’s not exactly twenty-first century behaviour, is it?

“So, that’s two things you’ve got wrong,” says Faro, almost purring with satisfaction. “One, I’m male, not female, so how could I be a mermaid anyway? Anatomically impossible. Two, all that scaly-tail and hair-combing mermaid and merboy and merman stuff comes from humans. It’s got nothing to do with the way we live. It’s all up in the Air.”

“So what do you call yourselves?” I ask curiously.

Faro’s eyes darken. His smile disappears. “I can’t tell you that,” he says. “We don’t talk about it to Air people. But you can call us ‘the Mer’ if you want. That’s the word we use when we’re talking in the Air. Mer, Meor, Mor, Mare… any of those will do.” He shrugs his shoulders as if the whole subject bores him.

The sun is coming out more and more strongly now, burning up the mist. Everything is clear again. And Faro is as clear and solid as the shape of the rock. I glance sideways at his tail. I don’t want to stare too much. Now that the mist is burning off, his tail is drying too. It doesn’t shine as much. I wonder if he should dip it in the water. There are patches of sand on his skin.

Faro catches me looking and raises his eyebrows again. I feel myself blush.

“Do you think that we are speaking Mer? Really?” I ask quickly. I listen to the words as they come out of my mouth. They sound the same as always. They don’t seem to make different shapes.

“Not full Mer,” says Faro. “But you’ve got a bit of Mer in you. You must have, or you wouldn’t be here. It means we can speak to each other. But if we were speaking full Mer, you’d be able to understand what he’s saying.” And Faro nods at the gull that’s riding the air above us, screaming out gull abuse.

“What’s he saying?”

“Think of all the swear words you know, and then double them.”

I stare up at the gull. It tilts its wings to balance itself more comfortably on the air, and stares back with its cold yellow eye. It opens its beak wide and lets out another volley.

“They don’t like people looking at them,” says Faro.

“Can you talk to it?”

“Talking’s a waste of time, the mood he’s in. He doesn’t like me talking to you.”

“Why not?”

“Gulls are like that. They think it’s safer to keep separate. Humans are bad news to most of them.”

“Oh.”

Faro watches a tiny spider crab haul itself up a strand of bladder wrack.

“Can you hear what he’s saying?” he asks.

“No.”

“You might be able to – if you weren’t in the Air.”

“But I can’t live out of the air.”

“You only think you can’t,” says Faro. “Listen to that gull. Listen. Really listen.”

I strain my ears but all I can catch is the usual cry as the herring gull swoops low, skimming the water, then soars again.

“You were looking for Conor,” says Faro, after a pause.

“Yes. Yes, I was,” I say slowly, realising that I haven’t thought of him since I saw Faro. I can’t believe that I forgot I was searching for Conor.

“I told you, he’s with my sister. He’s quite safe.”

“But where are they?”

Faro shifts a little. Out of the water, the tail is strong and smooth, but also a little clumsy. He puts his weight on his arms and moves himself forward again, so that he can look over the edge of the rock.

“They’ll be in the water,” he says. “Somewhere down there.”

I look where he points and I see that the flat sand has gone. The tide is bubbling around our rock. Already the water is deep. How has it come in so quickly, without me noticing?

“How has it come in so quickly?” I repeat aloud.

“It’s only the tide,” says Faro easily. “It always comes in like this.”

“But – it was low tide a few minutes ago.”

“Was it?”

“I’ll have to swim back to the rocks. I’ve got to go back now, before it gets too deep.”

I’ll have to be careful. The incoming tide can be dangerous. It can sweep you against the rocks and bruise you or worse. Keep in the middle of the cove and swim straight for the shore.

“Where are you going?” asks Faro, as I stand and peer over the edge of the rock to see if it’s safe to jump. Jumping’s quicker than climbing down – and the water is rising fast—

“I’ve got to get back. I’ll get caught by the tide.”

“But your brother’s still here,” says Faro casually.

My body freezes. Slowly, I turn back to him. How could I have forgotten Conor again? How could I ever think of getting myself home safe, and leaving him behind?

“Where? Where is he?”

“I’ll take you to him,” says Faro. “Take my hand, Sapphire, and I’ll take you to him.”

Faro is poised on the edge of the rock now. His strong seal tail hangs above the water and his arms are braced as if he’s ready to push off from the rock and plunge in. He faces the mouth of the cove, where the fresh water of the new tide is pouring in. I know in every bone of my body that Faro’s not going to take me in, to the safe sand at the back of the cove, where I can climb up and find the path home. He’s going to take me out into deep water, beyond the mouth of the cove. But I’m not allowed to go there – it’s too dangerous—

“I can’t,” I say. “I’ve got to get back.”

“Without Conor?” asks Faro, critically. “If I knew that my sister was in the Air, I would never leave her. I would never go home without her.”

“Do you mean that Conor’s in danger?”

Faro looks at me but says nothing. He’s testing me, I know he is. If Conor were really in any danger, how could Faro just sit here on this rock and tell me about it without doing anything to help? People don’t act like that.

People. Humans. I glance down at Faro’s curved, powerful tail. I can hardly see the place where human flesh ends and Mer flesh begins. One part of Faro seems to melt into another. Faro catches my glance.

“It must be strange to be divided, the way you are,” he says, with a tinge of pity in his voice.

“Divided?”

“You know,” goes on Faro, looking embarrassed, the way you do when you have to point out that someone’s got a splodge of ketchup on their chin. “You know, the way you are. Cleft.” He points at my legs. “Must feel strange, having two of those.”

“But it’s you that’s divided, not me. You’re half-human and half—”

“Half?” snaps Faro. “There you go again, with your Air thinking. I am not half of anything. I am wholly Mer.” He says it proudly, as if being Mer is like being royal, and he glances down at his tail with satisfaction.

“Conor is with my sister,” says Faro. “Now, are you coming?”

I have no choice. No matter how deep the shelf that drops away at the mouth of the cove, no matter how fast the tide pours in, it’s only Faro who can take me to Conor. And how can I go back home without Conor?

“I’ll come with you,” I say.

“Good,” says Faro. “But you have to leave your Air thinking here on this rock. We don’t swim as you do, half up in the Air.” He mimics someone doggy paddling along with their face stuck up out of the water.

“I can’t breathe underwater!”

“Don’t even think about breathing. Breathing is what you do in the Air. We Mer do things differently. Hold my wrist, just here. Clasp your fingers around me. Tighter than that. When I dive, you dive. Don’t try to hold your breath. Don’t even think about breathing. You must let it all out, all your breath. Hold my wrist. You won’t drown while you’re with me.”

Faro’s wrist feels warm and strong. It feels like that word he says so mockingly: human. But I look down at his strong smooth tail. It twitches, as if it already feels the water and wants to be in it.

“When I dive,” says Faro again, “you dive.”

I hold his wrist tight. I look down at the water which has risen so fast that it’s slapping at the rock less than a metre below us. I look at Faro and see that he has shut his eyes. His nostrils are narrowing, closing up like the nostrils of a seal before it dives deep.

I clasp Faro’s wrist. I shut my eyes, lean forward, take the deepest breath I can, and push off from the rock. We dive.

CHAPTER SEVEN

We dive. I cling to Faro’s wrist because there’s nothing else, but it doesn’t feel like a human wrist any more. It feels cold and smooth, like a thick stem of oar weed. My hands slip and I dig my fingers into the flesh. I’m too frightened to care if it hurts him.

I open my eyes. We’re moving faster than I’ve ever swum before, rushing down and down in a race of bubbles. Faro’s tail is driving us both. There’s salt in my nose and I want to cough but I can’t cough underwater. Water presses in on me, crushing my chest and making it burn. There’s a tight band around my ribs, squeezing in, like iron hands squashing my lungs.

I can’t breathe. The water won’t let me breathe. It’s choking me. The iron band around my chest is red hot now. My fingers tingle and sparks of light shoot across my eyes. The water’s rushing up past me and I don’t even know which way up we are any more. It’s like being wiped out by a wave when you’re surfing, but this time there’s no way up into the air. No way to cough and gasp and spit the salt away. The weight of the water won’t let me.

Terror rushes over me, and wipes me out.

“Conor! Conor!” I scream inside my head. I can’t make the words into sound because there’s no air to make them with. My eyes are full of darkness. The band round my ribs is a circle of fire. It hurts so much that I think I’m going to die.

Thoughts fly through my head like frightened birds. I’m going to die. Not sometime far away in the future, but now. Here. I see Mum’s face, turning to the door, waiting for me. I hear her voice calling me: Sapphy, Sapphy where are you? It’s time to come home! I try to call back, to say I’m sorry I broke my promise, to beg Mum to come and save me, but my mouth is full of salt and no words come out.

“Hold on to me,” someone says, close to my ear. “Don’t let go. As long as you hold on to me, you’re safe. You’re safe with me, Sapphire.”

I remember Faro. I open my eyes and he’s there, beside me. We’re deep, deep under the water and I’m still gripping his wrist as if it’s the only thing that holds me to life.

I can’t hold my breath any more. I’ve got to let go. The last of my human breath streams away in bubbles. Little bright pictures rush with the bubbles. Mum ironing in our cottage, the memorial service for Dad with the choir singing, the Midsummer Bonfire flaring up into the sky—

No bubbles of air come from Faro’s mouth. He turns to me with his hair streaming upwards. His nostrils are still closed.

“Let go,” he says urgently. “You’re safe with me.”

He’s talking! Faro’s talking underwater and I can hear him.

“Let go,” says Faro again. “Let go, Sapphire. Leave the Air. Let go, or you’ll drown.”

His words boom in my ears. Leave the Air, leave the Air. Can I do it, like Faro? How can I leave the Air? I’m not Mer, I’m human. My ears are bursting, my chest flares with fire that is licking up my throat now and into my brain. I’ve got to breathe in. I’ve got to. But I’m so far down underwater that I’ll never get back to the surface in time to breathe.

“Leave the Air,” says Faro imperatively. “Now.”

I have no choice. Water thrums in my ears. Let go or die, let go or die.

I let go. Mum’s face fades away as Air leaves me. All the bright pictures in my head fade and disappear as the sea rushes into me. Into my mouth, my nose, my ears, even my eyes. And suddenly it doesn’t matter. The sea is in me and I am in the sea. The tight band around my chest loosens. The burning eases. The darkness dissolves into light. I am breathing. I am in the water, but I am breathing. I’m cool and light and free. Why was I so terrified? I’m breathing, deep under the water, and all the pain has gone.

The sea combs out my hair and it flows behind me in the rush of our speed. We dive down, down, like swallows diving in summer sky. My hand is on Faro’s wrist, but I don’t cling to him any more. My feet are close together, like fins, and my free arm pulls strongly through the water. How fast we’re swimming! The sea floor rushes past as if we’re freewheeling downhill.

“I’m breathing!” I say in wonder. “I can do it, Faro!”

Faro laughs.

“You’re not Mer yet, Sapphire. But I let you in, so you’ll be safe here. I’ll look after you. You can let go of my wrist if you want.”

“I don’t want to… not just yet.”

“Don’t worry. It’s all right. I let you in, so you’re safe as long as I’m with you.”

I lift my hand from his arm, just for a second, then I grab hold of him again. I’m not ready to swim alone down here, in this strange place where the whole world is water.

We rush onwards, side by side. Sunlight strikes down through the water and we swim in and out of pillars of light and shadow. Below us is white sand, gleaming and glittering. The pull of the tide has made deep ridges in it, so it looks like ploughed land.

“Look up,” says Faro. I look where he’s pointing, and there’s a brilliant skin of light way up above us, wobbling and shimmering.

“That’s the surface,” says Faro. “Air.”

“Oh.” It looks so far away. “Can I get back to it if I want?”

“Yes, of course,” says Faro. But there’s something in his face – doubt, or maybe fear—

“What’s the matter? I can get back, can’t I, Faro?”

“If – when you want to go back, you can. But it hurts. You get a pain – here…” Faro puts his free hand on his ribs, exactly where I felt the burning circle of pain when I dived. I feel a shiver run through his body and into the wrist I’m holding.

“But it hurt exactly like that when I dived down with you. And I was going into the water, not leaving it.”

“That’s the way it is for humans. Some of them drown of it.”

“Some of them?”

“Well – most of them. Nearly all of them. We call and call to them but they can’t listen. They can’t let go of the Air, and that’s why they drown. It’s the other way round for us Mer. You drown in water. We can drown in the Air.”

“But you were in the air when I met you. You were all right, you weren’t choking or anything.”

Faro frowns. “Yes, some of us can go there. There are reasons—” he breaks off.

“What reasons?”

“Never mind. But it hurts when you go through the skin. It’s dangerous.”

“What skin?”

“Look up there.” Faro points at the bright, distant surface. “That’s the skin. You have to go through it. That’s what hurts. The change is bad every time.”

“So when I go back, it’ll hurt—”

“No, not for you. You’re human, aren’t you?You’ll be all right, going back to the Air. Anyway, you’re here now. Safe with Faro.” Faro smiles, and very gently peels my hand off his wrist. “There. Try again. You really don’t need me now. You only think you do, because of your Air thinking.”

We’re not moving any more. I’m floating free, in deep, deep water. My hair drifts across my face, then drifts away. The sea holds me like a baby. I’m not scared of it any more. I’m rocking, rocking in the hammock of the sea. Faro is right, the sea will look after me. Gently, my hand floats away from his wrist. I cup my hands and scull the water. Faro’s right. I am safe.