The Crossing of Ingo. Helen Dunmore

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.”

       CHAPTER THREE

      All 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 СКАЧАТЬ