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

I struggle to explain. “It’s not like that. I don’t have a choice. I feel as if I’m only half here. Only half-alive. Our life here in St Pirans is all wrong for me. I feel as if I’m watching it on TV, not living it. Oh, Conor, I wish I was away in Ingo—”

“Don’t say that!”

“It’s true.”

“I know,” says Conor slowly and heavily. “You can’t help wanting what you want. I don’t blame you, Saph. I do know how you feel. It’s so powerful, so magical. It draws you. It draws me, too… But I think that if you try as hard as you can – if you really struggle – you can stop yourself taking the next step.”

“What next step?”

Conor shrugs. “I don’t know. I was thinking aloud.” His voice changes and becomes teasing instead of deadly serious. “But there’s something you haven’t thought of, Saph. You’re so keen to talk to dolphins that you’re forgetting Sadie.”

“What?”

“They don’t have dogs in Ingo, Saph.”

As if she’s heard him, Sadie pushes up close to me, nuzzling in. She always knows when things are wrong, and tries to make them better. Her brown eyes are fixed on my face. How could I have forgotten Sadie, even for a minute? They don’t have dogs in Ingo.

Maybe they do. Maybe they could. Sadie’s not like an ordinary dog. Could she come with me through the skin of the water, and dive into Ingo? I don’t know. I try to picture Sadie’s golden body swimming free, deep in Ingo, with her nostrils closed so that the water won’t enter them. But it doesn’t work: the picture I create in my mind looks like a seal swimming, not like Sadie at all.

Sadie whines. It’s a pleading, plaintive sound from deep in her throat. She puts her front paws up in my lap until her whiskers tickle my face.

“You’d never have got Sadie without Roger,” Conor goes on.” He really pressured Mum.”

I know that’s true, but I don’t feel like agreeing with Conor just now. Besides, why bring up Roger? Roger may have been the one who made sure I got Sadie, but he’s also taken Mum and split my family apart.

Sadie gazes at me reproachfully, as if begging me to admit that my version isn’t quite true. Who split your family apart, Sapphire? Was it Roger, or was it your own father, who loved you and Conor so much that he left you both without a backward look or even a note to let you know where he was going?

Your father, who has never seen you or spoken to you since.

Angry, bitter thoughts rise in my mind. I’m so used to loving Dad, but I’m beginning to realise that it’s also possible to hate him. Why did he go? What father who cared about his children would take his boat out in the middle of the night and never return? I can taste the bitterness in my mouth.

No, I’m not going to let that wave of anger drown me. I’m going to ride it. Dad disappeared for a reason. It’s just that he hasn’t been able to explain it to us yet.

Suddenly an upstairs window bangs. Our house here in St Pirans is tiny, even smaller than the cottage. Downstairs there’s one large living room, with the kitchen built into one end. Upstairs is larger because the house has something called a “flying freehold”. This sounds more exciting than it is. All it means is that part of this house is built above the house next door. We have three bedrooms and a bathroom. My room is so tiny that a single bed only just fits into it, but I don’t mind that at all because the room also has a round porthole window which hinges in the middle and swings open exactly like a real porthole on a ship.

Mine is the only window in the house from which you can see the sea. My bedroom is part of the flying freehold. I like it because it feels so separate from the rest of the house. I can’t hear Mum and Roger talking. I’m independent. When I kneel up on my bed and stare out to sea, I can imagine I’m on a ship sailing northeast out of Polquidden, out of the bay altogether, and into deep water—

The window bangs again, harder. The wind’s getting up. This is the season for storms. When storms come, salt spray will blow right over the top of the houses. I can’t wait to hear the sea roaring in the bay like a lion.

“Better shut your window, Saph.”

“Are you sure it’s my window that’s banging?”

“Yeah. No one else’s bangs like that. Your porthole’s much heavier than the other windows.”

Conor was right. The porthole has blown wide open. I kneel up on my bed and peer out. Beyond the jumble of slate roofs, there’s a gap in the row of studios and cottages through which I can glimpse the sea. The wind is whipping white foam off the tops of waves. Gulls soar on the thermals, screaming to each other. We’re very close to the water here. I’m used to living up on the cliff at Senara, and it still seems strange to live at sea level.

“I’m going down to the beach,” Conor shouts up the stairs.

“I’ll come with you.”

The wind’s really blowing up now. It pushes against us as we come round the corner of the houses and on to the steps.

“Do you think there’ll be a storm?”

Conor shakes his head. “No. The barometer’s fallen since this morning but it’s steady now. It’ll be a blow, that’s all.”

We jump down on to the sand. The cottages and studios are built in a line, right on the edge of the beach. The ground floor windows have big storm shutters that were hinged back when we first arrived, but now they are shut and barred. Some of the shutters are already half buried in sand that was swept up in the storms we had around the equinox, in late September

Sand could easily bury these houses. Imagine waking up one morning and finding the room dark because sand had blown right up to the top of your windows. Or maybe it wouldn’t be sand at all, but water. You could be looking at the inside of the waves breaking on the other side of the glass. And then the glass would break under the pressure, and the sea would rush in.

“I wonder how the sea always knows just how far to come, and no farther,” I say to Conor. “It’s so huge and powerful, and it rolls in over so many miles. But it stops at the same point every tide.”

“Not quite at the same point. Every tide’s different.”

“I know that. But the sea doesn’t ever decide to roll a mile inland. And it could if it wanted, couldn’t it? With all the power that’s in the sea, why does it stop here when it could swallow up the whole town?”

“Like Noah’s Flood.”

“What?”

“You remember. God sent a flood to drown the whole world and everything in it, because people were so evil. But Noah built his ark and he survived. And when the flood was over, God promised he’d never do it again.”

“Do you believe in God, Conor?”

“I don’t know. I tried praying once, but it didn’t work.”

“What did you pray about?” But I already know. Conor would have prayed for Dad to come back. I know, because I did the same. I prayed night after night for Dad to come back, after he disappeared. But he never did.

“You know, Saph.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“Did you pray as well?”

“Yes. Every night for a long time.”

“But nothing happened.”

“No.”

“You know what the story says that the rainbow is? The Noah story, I mean.”

“No.”

“It’s a sign that there’ll never be another flood like the one that drowned the world.”

“Hey, Con, I forgot to tell you. I met a girl called Rainbow.”

But Conor isn’t listening. He’s shading his eyes and staring into the distance, out to sea. At first I think he’s looking for surfers, but then he grabs my arm. “There! Over there by the rock! Did you see her?”

“Who? Rainbow?” I ask, like an idiot.

“Elvira,” he says, as if that’s the obvious, only answer. As if the one person anyone could be looking for is Elvira.

He never talks about her. Never even says her name. But she must have been in his mind all the time, since the last time he spoke to her. That was just after Roger and his dive buddy Gray were almost killed, when they were diving at the Bawns.

I remember how Conor and Elvira talked to each other, once we’d got Roger and Gray safely into the boat. Conor was in the boat, leaning over the side, and Elvira was in the water. They looked as if there wasn’t anyone else in the world. So intent on each other. And then Elvira sank back into the water and vanished, and we took the boat back to land.

“I can’t see Elvira,” I say. “I can’t see anything.”

“There. Follow where I’m pointing. Not there – there. No, you’re too late. She’s gone.”

“Are you sure, though, Conor? Was it really Elvira?”

“It was her. I know it was her.”

“It could have been part of a rock.”

“It wasn’t a rock. It was her.”

“Or maybe a surfer—”

“Saph, believe me, it was Elvira. I couldn’t mistake her for anyone else.”

I still don’t think it was. I have no sense that the Mer are close. Neither Faro, nor his sister, nor any of the Mer. But in Conor’s mind, a glimpse of a rock or a seal or a buoy turns into a glimpse of Elvira.

“I keep nearly seeing her,” says Conor in frustration, “but then she always vanishes. I’m sure it was her this time.”

“You can’t be sure, Conor.”

“She was out in the bay earlier on, when the dolphins came.”

“Are you certain? I didn’t see anything.”

“She was there; I know she was. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned she was gone. I expect it was because Mal and his dad were there. Elvira wouldn’t risk them seeing her.”

“Do you think they could?”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe it’s only us who can see the Mer. Because of what Granny Carne said, you remember, about our blood being partly Mer. Maybe even if Faro or Elvira swam right up to the boat, Mal and his dad still wouldn’t see them.”

I remember the words Faro said to me: Open your eyes. Maybe that doesn’t just mean opening your eyelids and focusing. Maybe it’s to do with being willing to see things, even if your mind is telling you that they can’t possibly be real—

“Of course they’d see Elvira if she was there,” Conor argues. “You’re making the Mer sound like something we’ve imagined. Elvira’s as real as… as real as… Saph, why do you think she’s hiding? Why won’t she talk to me?”

“I don’t know.”

I don’t think I should say any more. Our roles seem to be reversing. Suddenly I’m the sensible, practical one, and Conor is the dreamer, longing for Ingo. No. Be honest, Sapphire. It’s not Ingo he’s longing for; it’s her. And maybe that’s what is making me so sensible and practical—

“We’d better go home, Conor. It’s starting to rain.”

“Saph, you said it!” Conor swings round to face me, smiling broadly.“You said it at last. I had a bet with myself how long it would be before you did.”

“Said what? What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you hear yourself? You said, ‘home’.”

CHAPTER THREE

“I’m just taking Sadie out, Mum!” I call up the stairs. It’s Sunday night. Mum and Roger are painting the skirting boards in Mum’s bedroom. They have stripped off the dingy cabbage-rose wallpaper, and now the bedroom walls are bare to the plaster. Our landlady says we can decorate as much as we like, and I’m not surprised. Her paint and wallpaper are not only hideous, but also old and covered in marks. When we got here, Mum wanted to paint all the rooms white.

“It’s a new start for all of us, Sapphy!”

I’ve painted my room blue and green, so that it looks like the inside of a wave. Our landlady, Mrs Eagle, has been up to see it, and she says it is ’andsome. Mrs Eagle is old. Her name doesn’t sound at all Cornish, but that’s because she married a man who came to St Pirans from upcountry during the War, she says. He died long ago. She must be about eighty, and she owns six houses in St Pirans, all of them full of cabbagey wallpaper, I expect. But the rent is low, Mum says, and that’s all that matters. Rents in St Pirans are terrible.

Mum appears at the top of the stairs. “It’s late, Sapphy. Can’t Conor take Sadie out?”

“He’s doing his maths homework.”

This is strictly true, but I haven’t asked him anyway, because I want to go out on my own. St Pirans is different when the streets are empty, and it’s dark, and there’s no one at all on the wide stretch of Polquidden Beach. I feel as if I can breathe then.

“All right, but don’t be long. Let me know when you’re back.”

Lucky it’s Mum, not Roger. Although he hasn’t known me very long, Roger is disturbingly quick to grasp when he is being told only a part of the truth, or indeed none of the truth at all.

The wind has died down over the weekend. It’s a cold, still night and the air smells of salt and seaweed. The moon is almost full, and it is riding clear of a thick shoal of clouds. I decide to take Sadie away from the streetlights on to the beach, where she can chase moon shadows.

I head down to Polquidden. The bay is full. It’s high tide. An exceptionally high tide. It’s not due to turn until eleven tonight, but look how far it’s come up the beach already. It reminds me of the autumn equinox, when the water came up right over the slipway and the harbour road.

There is still a strip of white sand left, but the water is rising quickly, like a cat putting out one paw and the next. Something else that surprises me is how quickly the sea has calmed. Surely the water should be much rougher than this after all the wind yesterday and today? The stillness is eerie.

Sadie doesn’t want to go down the steps. She puts her head down, with her legs braced apart.

“It’s all right, Sadie, you’re allowed on the beach now, remember?” I give a gentle tug on her lead, but she won’t budge.

“Sadie, you’re being very annoying…”

I am longing to be down on the sand. I pull a little harder, but she digs in her claws. I don’t want to force her.

“All right, then, Sadie. Wait here a minute.”

I loop her leash around a metal post. Sadie whines. There’s enough moonlight for me to see her face. She is pleading with me to stay, but I’m going to harden my heart this time. I’ve got to go down to the beach. The urge is so powerful that I ignore Sadie’s voice, give her a quick hug and say, “Stay, Sadie!” and then hurry down the steps.

There’s a sound of running water on my right. It’s the stream that tumbles down the rocks on to the beach. Children play in it and make dams in summer. The water glints in the moonlight as it pours over the inky-black rock. The sea is still rising. Why does it look so powerful tonight, even though there are no wild waves, no foam, no pounding of surf?

There’s not much beach left. I walk to my right, towards a spine of rocks that juts from the glistening sand. A wave flows forward, and I leap up on to the rocks to keep my trainers dry. But I’m still not quite high enough, because now the water is swirling at my heels. I scramble up again on to dry rock, and look back. The bay is full of moonlight and water. The sea is lapping around my rock already.

Sapphire, you idiot, you’re cut off! But it’s not very deep yet. Even in the dark I’ll be able to wade back easily before the tide comes in any farther. I’ll just take my trainers off. But I’d better be quick; look how the water’s rising—

“You’ll have to swim,” says a voice behind me. I start so violently that I almost fall off the rock. A strong hand grasps my wrist.

“It’s me, Sapphire.”

“Faro.”

“Yes.”

Suddenly I’m angry with him. “Why don’t you and Elvira come and see us in daylight, like you used to?” I ask sharply. “Conor keeps looking for Elvira. Where is she?”

“Here and there,” he says, with a gleam of laughter in his voice. “Around and about. Just like me.”

“Don’t laugh at me!” I say angrily. “I hate it when people are here one moment and then they just—”

I swallow the words I was going to say.

“I didn’t disappear,” says Faro seriously. “I won’t ever disappear. I promise you. But in St Pirans it’s more difficult for you to see us. Even at night it’s not easy. There are so many people. And besides, St Pirans is not our place.”

“I know that,” I say gloomily. “It’s not mine, either.”

“But you’re human. That’s what humans do, isn’t it? They crowd together in towns and cities. They love it when everything is covered over with concrete and Tarmac.”

Faro brings out the word Tarmac with pride. He loves to impress me with his knowledge of the human world.

“You’ve been talking to the gulls again. Do you even know what Tarmac is, Faro? Or concrete?”

“Of course I do. It’s stuff that humans pour on the earth to stop it breathing.”

The moonlight is strong enough for me to see his face clearly. “Faro, have you grown older?”

I know that their time runs differently from ours. Is it possible that Faro has grown a year, when I’ve only grown a few months? Or maybe he only looks older because of the expression on his face.

“You can enter Ingo in darkness, even from here, Sapphire. You already know that.”

A tremor of fear and anticipation runs through me. “But I can’t come to Ingo now, Faro. Mum’s expecting me back with Sadie. If I’m away more than half an hour at most, she’ll go crazy.”

“You don’t need to worry about that. Time is hardly moving at all tonight.” He says it casually, as if saying that a boat is hardly moving across the water.

“What do you mean?”

“What I say. It’s a fortunate night, Sapphire. Come to Ingo now, and you’ll be back almost before you’ve gone. Look up at the moon.”

I stare up at the moon. The clouds look as if they are flying away from its bright surface. Moonlight bathes my face with silver.

“You’re already in Ingo, Sapphire,” says Faro.

He is right. Deep in my heart, I’ve already left the Air. The powerful, silent swell of the tide is covering my feet, my knees, my waist. The next pulse of water lifts me from the rock, and swallows me into the sea.

Into Ingo. I let out my breath, and it hardly hurts at all. I am breathing without breathing, my body absorbing oxygen from the rich water. My hair flows upward, then swirls down around my face. I push it aside. Ingo. I am in Ingo again, just as I was two nights ago. There’s a path of moonlight striking down deep into the water. I plunge forward and follow it.

How strongly I can swim in Ingo. My strokes are far more powerful than anything I can do in the Air. Below me, moonlight catches the glisten of the white sand on the sea bed. The water doesn’t feel cold. It feels like – it feels like…

Like home. Like the place where I am meant to be. I open my eyes wide and turn my head, and there is Faro swimming alongside me. The underwater moonlight shines on his tail.

“Look!” He points down. There’s a shadowy hulk, half buried in the sea bed. It’s not a reef, or a dead whale, or anything that belongs to Ingo. It’s something that belongs to Air. Metal. Yes, that’s what it is. A metal ship, half rotted away with rust, sailing to nowhere.

“I know what that is,” I say. “It’s the wreck of the Ballantine. You can see her funnels from the beach at low tide.”

“The wind drove her onshore and she was broken up,” says Faro. “We called and called to warn the sailors, but they couldn’t hear us.”

“Faro, the wreck happened seventy years ago. Why do you always talk about history as if you were there?”

“Open your mind, Sapphire. Let’s talk to each other like we did last summer.” He saw my memories, and I saw his. That’s what the Mer can do, because Mer minds are not quite separate from one another, as human minds are.

“Do you want to see what happened?” asks Faro. He floats close to me. “Look at the Ballantine, Sapphire.”

I gaze into the shadowy depths. We could swim down with a few strong strokes, and touch the jagged metal sides of the drowned ship.

I don’t want to. The wreck scares me. It must be terrifying to be driven ashore, helpless, caught by storm and tide. To know that your ship is going to smash on the rocks and break up, and that the water is too deep and wild to swim for shore.

The wind is beginning to whistle. I hear voices, crying out in terror. The Ballantine surges forward on a huge wave, and crashes on to the hidden reef. The entire ship judders with the shock. Metal shrieks and rips and grinds as the side of the Ballantine is torn open and the sea pours into her belly. Then the jumble of sound is pierced by human screams.

“No, Faro! No! I don’t want to hear any more!”

Immediately, the window of memory closes. I’m back in the calm moonlit water, with Faro.

“You saw it, little sister,” he says with satisfaction.“I wasn’t sure if you would have lost your power, living in the town.”

I shudder. “How could that wreck be in your memory, Faro? You’re not old enough to remember it.”

“The memory was passed to me by my ancestors, and so I can pass it on to you.”

“I wish you hadn’t. I don’t want those memories in my mind. Let’s get away from the wreck.”

“We can go right away if you want. Will you come deeper into Ingo with me, Sapphire? There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Who?” My heart leaps. Perhaps – perhaps – could Faro possibly know someone who knows where Dad is?

“My teacher.”

“Oh.” I try hard to keep the disappointment out of my voice, but Faro picks it up at once.

“He is a great teacher,” he says, his voice proud, ready to take offence.

“I’m sure he is. Um… What’s his name?”

“Saldowr.”

“I can’t imagine going to school under the sea. What’s it like?”

Faro laughs. “We don’t go to school. We learn things when we need to learn them.”

“I see…” Faro sounds so sure that his way is the right way “…but wouldn’t it be easier just to go to school and learn everything in one place?”

“I’ve heard about ‘schools’. Thirty of you young humans together, with only one old human to teach you. All day long in one room.”

“We move to different classrooms for different lessons,” I point out.

“Hmm,” says Faro.

“We go outside at break and dinner time.”

“Human life is very strange,” says Faro slowly and meditatively. “All the young ones together, out of sight in these ‘schools’. Do you like it, Sapphire?”

“We have to do it. It’s the law.”

Faro nods thoughtfully. “I would like to see it. I expect the rooms are very beautiful, or none of you would stay. But, Sapphire, come with me to visit my teacher. He wants to meet you.”

“How far is it?”

“Not far,” says Faro carelessly. “A little beyond the Lost Islands, that’s all. We can be there and back by morning.”

“Morning!” All of a sudden the image of Sadie floods into my mind. Sadie, tied to an iron pole. She thinks I’m coming back in a few minutes. She’ll be worried already, pointing her nose towards the beach and rising tide, whining anxiously. I see her as clearly as I saw the inside of Faro’s memory. Usually the human world is cloudy when you‘re in Ingo, but Sadie’s image is bright and sharp. “I’ve got to get back, Faro.”

“Don’t worry about the time, Sapphire. Ingo is strong tonight. But I don’t need to tell you that, do I? You felt it. You slipped into Ingo almost before you knew it, and it didn’t hurt at all. Your Mer blood knows that Ingo is strong. Not only strong but happy. Listen, listen, Sapphire. You can hear that Ingo is lowenek.”

The word beats in my memory. Who said that to me? Of course, it was the dolphins. But they didn’t sound as if they were talking about happiness. It sounded urgent, dangerous. Like a warning.

“I have to go,” I say. “I must get back to Sadie. I left her tied to a pole by her leash.”

Faro somersaults through the moonlit water. His body spins in a pattern of light and shadow. When he’s the right way up again he says, “It seems to me that the one who is tied by a leash is you.”

“Me!”

“Yes. You’ve always got to go home. You stay in the shallows. You want to come to Ingo, but as soon as you’re here you want to go back again. Saldowr needs to speak to you. He has something to tell you.”