The Crossing of Ingo (4 page)

He is right. It was just one gull to begin with, and then two, but sometimes there’s a whole row of them standing motionless on the spine of our roof now. They watch everything. They know that Conor and I are alone in our cottage.

“I counted eight yesterday evening,” says Conor.

We’re not really alone,
I tell myself quickly. Granny Carne told Mum she’d watch out for us. Our neighbour Mary Thomas and everyone else in the village “keeps an eye”, which can be quite annoying at times. We go to school as normal. But at night we’re alone in the cottage.

Don’t be so pathetic, Sapphire. You can manage fine. Look at how Rainbow and Patrick cope when their parents are away in Denmark for weeks on end. They just get on with it.

The trouble is that I spent so much time and energy convincing Mum it was safe to leave us, that I forgot about how I might feel once she was gone. As soon as Mum and Roger’s
taxi had bumped away down the track and I saw one gull watching from the roof, I began to feel uneasy. If Mum had known about Ingo, or the forces that were gathering there, or the battle between Ervys and Saldowr, or any of a hundred things that Conor and I know and have kept from her so carefully, then she would never have left the cottage.

Saldowr said we would see Dad again, when the Mer assembled to choose who would make the Crossing of Ingo. Dad will have his own free choice too, one day – to decide whether to stay in Ingo or return to Air. He’ll be able to decide his own future. What if Mum knew that?

It’s strange how different it feels now that Mum isn’t here. Even Roger’s absence changes things. It’s as if we are boats which were held safe by an anchor, and we never realised it. Now the anchor has been pulled up and we might drift anywhere. When it gets dark the wind roars around our cottage so loudly that it feels like being in a boat at sea. You can easily believe that you have already left the Earth and are halfway to Ingo. Winter is coming. The dark is growing stronger every day.

“I’m going to see if I can reach that nest. Help me get the ladder out of the shed, Saph.”

“You can’t destroy their nest, Con! What if there are babies in it?”

“I won’t do anything to them. And why would gulls try to lay eggs at this time of year anyway? The chicks wouldn’t have a chance of survival.”

“What if they come back and attack you?”

What if the gulls are spying for Ervys?
is what I want to say, but I keep quiet. Conor will think I’m imagining things as usual. But to my surprise he says what I’m thinking.

“I don’t want them spying on us.”

“Do you think they
are
spies, Con?” I ask, lowering my voice to a whisper.

“Whatever they are, I don’t want them there.”

“Don’t get the ladder, Con.
Please.”
I’ve lost Dad – or as good as lost him. Mum’s gone to Australia. My brother’s got to stay safe.

Conor’s expression changes. “Don’t panic, Saph. I’m not planning to fall off the roof and break my neck. You hold the bottom of the ladder and it’ll be fine.”

The ladder is heavy. We drag it across the garden and hoist it against the wall. It’s the one Dad used when he painted the outside of our cottage. I remember the last time he did that. The fresh white against the storm-battered old paint.

“Hold it like that, Saph. Lean all your weight against it.”

“Be careful, Conor.”

He goes up the ladder quickly. Con’s used to ladders because his bedroom is up in the loft. “Can you see anything?” I ask.

There’s a pause. Conor is at the top. He hasn’t got anything to hold on to now. He braces his feet on the top rung and leans forward, then carefully stretches to his right, towards the chimney.

What if they come back? If they strike at him now, when he’s
off balance, he’ll fall. I turn and scan the horizon. No black dots of gulls. I turn back to Conor. “Is it a nest?” I shout up.

“Yes.” His voice sounds strange. He’s leaning right across to the chimney. His hand is almost in the dark mass of the nest. He’s taking something out of it. Now he’s looking at what’s in his hand.

Conor freezes. Sadie and I stare upwards in suspense. Slowly Conor’s hand closes around whatever he’s found. He teeters as if he’s forgotten he’s at the top of a ladder. For a second I think he’s going to lose his balance. At my side, Sadie lets out a volley of warning barks. I turn around and see dark specks on the horizon, growing bigger as I watch. The gulls.

“Conor! Get down quick! The gulls are coming.”

Conor scrambles down the ladder one handed. As he jumps to the ground, Sadie leaps around him, barking protectively. The sky is suddenly full of gulls. A cloud of beating wings hides the chimney as they circle the nest, screeching out their anger.

Conor’s holding a handful of seaweed. “Is that what the nest is made of?” I ask.

He nods. “It’s all woven together.”

“But gulls don’t make nests like that.”

Conor shrugs. He is very pale. He pushes apart the strands of weed and I see a pale, glistening oval, about the size of a fingernail.

“That’s not a gull’s egg.”

“Look at it, Saph.”

I look at the egg. It is translucent green. Inside it there is a tiny
creature, moving. A creature with fins and a tail. A fish. I shudder.

“The nest was crammed with them,” says Conor.

“But if they hatched, they wouldn’t be able to breathe in the air.”

“I don’t know what they are,” says Conor. “Touch the shell, Saph.”

I put out a finger reluctantly, and prod the egg. It is rubbery. There’s liquid inside in which the little fish can swim. I snatch my hand away. There is a ringing sound in my ears. My mouth turns dry.

“Why have they put the eggs on our house?” I whisper to Conor.

“They’re just trying to scare us.”

“Do you think
he’s
behind it? Ervys?”

“Probably.”

“What are we going to do with this horrible egg thing?”

“Feed it to Mary Thomas’s cat.”

I laugh, but my spine crawls with horror as I imagine fish hatching out of the eggs and swarming all over our roof. I know what Ervys is telling us.
You human creatures are coming into my world. I have my powers too. I can make Ingo come to you.
It’s happened before. Fish swam in the streets of St Pirans after the Tide Knot broke and the sea flooded the town. Ervys thought that was a great victory for the Mer, in the battle between Ingo and the human world.

The gulls have settled on the roof again, in a long line, watching and waiting.

“What are we really going to do with the egg?” I whisper.

“I don’t know. Bury it?”

“No. That’s what they expect us to do. Let’s give them a surprise, Conor. Let’s take the egg down to the sea and release it.”

Conor looks at me, eyebrows raised. “You’re very peace loving all at once, Saph.” But he gives me the egg in its nest of weed. I am just putting it in the watering can so it won’t dry out before I can take it down to the cove when there’s an explosion of wings and silent, furious, stabbing beaks.

“Sadie!”

We both rush to her, screaming at the gulls. They fly off, climbing steeply into the sky like planes after they’ve dropped their bombs. Sadie stands silent, quivering all over. On the golden fur of her back there is a long, ugly wound. Her blood wells and spills down her coat.

“Sadie!”

She is too shocked even to bark. I rub her face, calling her name.

“Bastards,” says Conor. “Quick, Saph, help me get her into the cottage. I’ll call Jack’s and ask them to help us get her to the vet. She needs stitches.”

It’s early evening. Sadie is asleep on the hearth rug. I’ve lit a fire, and the reflection of flames dances on her coat. The vet has
stitched her wound and dressed it, and given Sadie an injection against infection. Conor spent his savings to pay the vet’s bill.

Mary Thomas said we’d have to get someone up from the council to do something about those gulls. We just nodded.

Rainbow and Patrick will be here in half an hour. Rainbow is bringing some pasties from St Pirans, because we told her what had happened to Sadie and that we hadn’t had a chance to cook.

Conor reaches forward to put another log on the fire. “So are you still going to release that fish back into the sea?” he asks. His voice is harsh.

“Yes,” I say.

“You’re crazy, Saph. Mary Thomas’s cat should have it.”

“No,” I struggle to explain. “If we act like them – like Ervys – it will never end. There’ll be one revenge, and then another, and then another …”

“I get the point. There’s another solution, though, Saph. We could walk away.”

“What do you mean?”

“We get out of it. Turn our backs on Ingo completely. If you don’t feed your Mer blood by thinking of Ingo and going to Ingo, it’ll grow weaker. In a few years’ time you might not even remember that it’s there. You’ll look back and believe that Ingo was one of those things you used to be interested in before you grew up.”

“How can you say that, Conor? Ingo is real.”

“Of course it’s real. But it doesn’t have to be real
for us.
Look at Sadie. That happened because of us going to Ingo. Do you really want to live like this, Saph?”

“Conor, I can’t believe you—”

And at that moment it comes. A low, thrumming sound that is sweet and piercing at the same time. It seems to begin deep in the shell of my ear, as if it’s growing from inside me. But it’s not just inside me, it’s outside me too. It beats the air like a bell, but it’s not an Air sound at all. It’s salty, full of tides and currents and vast undersea distances. It sounds like the sea beating on the shores of my understanding. It’s a summons, an invitation, a command.

Conor hears it too. The log rests in his hand, forgotten. The sound grows until there is nothing else in the room, nothing else in the whole world. Every cell in our body vibrates to it, and now, suddenly, I grasp its meaning. I am hearing the Call. I am being invited to come to the Assembly chamber as a candidate for the Crossing of Ingo. It’s what Faro told me about, but I never thought it would feel like this. I glance down at the bracelet of woven hair that is always on my wrist. My hair, twined so close into Faro’s that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. My
deublek
bracelet. Faro’s voice comes back to me.
And then, little sister, we will present ourselves to the Assembly, and say that we are ready to make the Crossing of Ingo.

The Call thunders through us. Faro will hear it too in Ingo. And Elvira. The log falls to the floor as Conor reaches out and grabs my hand. I’ve never seen Conor look like this. Lit up, like
a face with a torch shining on it, except that the light is coming from inside him.

“Saph,” he says, “you hear it too, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I was wrong. Everything I said was wrong, Saph. We’ve got to answer the Call.”

A
ll yesterday evening Conor remained lit up with excitement. I was sure that Rainbow and Patrick would sense the Call thrumming through him, even though they don’t know about Ingo. Maybe Rainbow did, in a way. She was very quiet, and she kept glancing at Conor when he wasn’t looking, and then away. Rainbow likes Conor; really likes him. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if Conor had never seen Elvira. Conor almost never talks to me about Elvira, but I know he thinks of her. He keeps her talisman around his neck. But whenever we’re with a group of friends it seems that Rainbow and Conor will end up sitting together talking. Conor’s face is full of warmth and life when he’s with Rainbow. They laugh a lot, but it’s not as if the rest of the world has vanished into nothing, as it is when Conor’s with Elvira. Rainbow isn’t dreamy like Elvira. She’s always aware of other people.

It was a good evening, but because of the Call it felt as if Conor and I were on one side of a sheet of glass, and Patrick and Rainbow on the other. I think they felt it too. We chatted about music for a while, and then everyone lapsed into silence. Patrick
had brought his guitar, but he didn’t play. We built up the fire because it gets cold when evening comes down, and sat around it watching the flames. You know how it is with watching a fire: you don’t have to talk. The flames twist and pucker round the logs, never making the same shape twice. It made me think of the fire I saw once, when Granny Carne showed me the passage that runs to the centre of the Earth, from the standing stones. A log hissed and crackled. I suddenly thought,
There’s never any fire in Ingo.
It sounds so obvious, but I’d never realised it before. Faro had never sat by a fire and watched the flames and dreamed, and he never would. Faro watches baby fish flicker in rock crevices and dark red sea anemones quivering. He would scorn the idea of fire.
Humans are very strange. Why should anyone want to change the temperature of their world? Why not live in it as it is?
It would be impossible to explain to Faro about shivering with cold on a winter’s night. He’s never felt anything like that. He’s in his element, slipping through it, part of it. Faro would hate this fire.

Conor’s eyes were shining with dreams. I saw that Rainbow was watching Conor, not the fire. I couldn’t work out her expression. Rainbow is someone who understands much more about you than you ever tell them. Conor felt Rainbow’s eyes on his face and he looked up and smiled. Rainbow smiled back. They are so similar, even though Conor is dark and Rainbow has hair the colour of sunlight. They have the same warm-coloured skins. They are responsible in the same way.