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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ my tongue and my palate, filling my throat. If I can make words out of water, Faro will hear me.

      In my head there are words I didn’t know that I knew. Say them, Sapphire. All you’ve got to do is speak. They fill my mouth. They echo in my ears. They pour out in strange syllables that I’ve never spoken before. It’s a new language that sounds like the oldest and most familiar language in the world, shaped out of salt and currents and tides.

      “Faro, I ask you in the name of our ancestors to come to me now.”

      The words echo more and more loudly, booming in my head, making waves of sound that are picked up by the water and carried away. Faro… in the name of our ancestors… Faro… Faro…

      And he is here. Suddenly there on the other side of Conor, swimming alongside us, his hand closed tight around Conor’s wrist. As I watch, the blue fades from under Conor’s eyes and from around his mouth. Warm brown floods back into Conor’s skin. His eyes open, bright and alert. He looks around, as if he’s just woken up.

      “Wow! This is like being inside a fantastic Jacuzzi, Saph!”

      And suddenly it is. The violence of the sea isn’t terrifying any more. It’s like a huge, wild game. We twist and turn and plunge and dive. It’s like bodysurfing, but a million times better because we are part of the waves and free to go with them wherever we want. Like surfing in a world where the wave never breaks.

      “Roger,” yells Conor as he balances with Faro on a surging rope of current. “We mustn’t forget Roger.”

      “Roger? Who is Roger?” asks Faro, his voice smooth as silk. But I know he’s only pretending. He knows full well who Roger is.

      “He’s a diver. I told you about him. But he doesn’t mean any harm. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

      “You are talking Air to me now,” says Faro, his tail savagely slashing a cloud of bubbles. “It wasn’t Air talk that brought me here to help you. If I remember our ancestors, then so must you.”

      “I do remember them.”

      “You remember them when you want to, Sapphire. When you need them. Not when Ingo needs you. Your head is full of Air.”

      “I wish you two would stop arguing,” says Conor. “We must be close to the Bawns now.”

      “It’s all right, Con. They would never dive in this,” I say quickly. “It’s much too wild.”

      “But it’s not wild on the surface,” says Faro. “It looks perfectly calm, up there. You’d never guess there was a storm in Ingo.” He grins at me, his face bright with malice. “Perfect diving conditions.”

      “Don’t, Faro!”

      Faro rolls to face me. “You are going to see something, my little hwoer.”

      “I’m not your sister. Elvira’s your sister.”

      “It’s just a figure of speech. Mer speech, that is. Look ahead. There are the Bawns.”

      I would never have thought the Bawns would be so huge. They loom ahead of us like a mountain country. The part that you can see above the water is nothing compared to these underwater peaks and valleys. I thought the Bawns were just rocks, but that was an Air thought.

      “You’re going to see something,” repeats Faro, pulling us forward.

      We are in the shadow of the Bawns now. The surge of the sea is calmer. The water is clear and there is a strange light, like moonlight. Every detail shows: white glistening sand below us, scattered with shells and crab skeletons, sculptured rock, darting fish.

      “This way. Quietly.”

      We swim around a broad shoulder of rock then suddenly stop dead as Faro back-fins.

      “There,” he says.

      A plain of sand spreads out in front of us, protected by the mountain range of the Bawns. The wind dies. The surge of the sea fades to stillness. Here, the sea is as quiet as a garden at the end of a long summer day. And scattered on the plain of soft, glistening, rippled sand there are figures like ghosts, or dreams. I blink, believing they’ll disappear like shadows, but when I open my eyes the figures are still there. Bowed, bent, their hair as silver as the sand, they rest, half lying, half drifting in the still water.

      “They are our wise ones,” says Faro. “They will die soon.”

      As I watch, a gentle current lifts a lock of silver hair from one of the figures, and lets it fall back, softly, against the bowed shoulders.

      “Nothing can hurt them. Nothing comes near them,” says Faro. “Look. The seals guard them.”

      It’s true. Watchful and powerful, grey seals patrol the edges of the plain. They swim to and fro, along a borderline that’s invisible to me, turning their heads to scan the water and the mountain range of rock that rises behind us.

      “They’ve seen us,” says Faro. He raises both hands, palms flat and outwards, saluting the seals. “We can come this far,” he adds, “but if we tried to go down to the plain, the seals would attack us.”

      “But you’re Mer. Why would they attack you?”

      “I’m not ready to die yet. The seals know that. Only Mer who are ready to die will cross the borderline. Their families will come this far with them, but no farther.”

      “It’s beautiful,” says Conor under his breath. “But they’re not all old, are they?”

      I look where he’s pointing. He’s right. Among the old there are a few young Mer. One looks like a girl, younger than me.

      “We get sick, just as you do. We have accidents, just as you do,” says Faro. “Not everyone lives to be old.”

      “What’s that music?” asks Conor suddenly.

      I strain my ears. I haven’t noticed any music.

      “There it is again,” says Conor. “Listen!” He looks at me, his face bright with pleasure, but I still can’t hear anything. Faro looks at Conor with surprise, and something else which I can’t identify.

      “What kind of music can you hear?” he asks.

      “I don’t know,” says Conor. “It’s a bit like the sound you get when you hold a shell up to your ear. But it’s much sweeter, and it’s full of patterns. Listen, there it is again. Can’t you hear it, Saph?”

      “No,” says Faro. “Neither of us can. It’s rare to hear it, even for us. And you’re human. Some Mer have the gift of hearing it all their lives, but most of us only hear it when we come to die. It’s the song the seals sing to us when we come to Limina.”

      “This place is Limina?” asks Conor.

      “Yes.”

      “Of course. You’re right, that’s what they’re singing,” says Conor, and for a strange moment it’s as if he knows more about this place than Faro. “That’s what they are singing СКАЧАТЬ