The Complete Ingo Chronicles: Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep, The Crossing of Ingo, Stormswept. Helen Dunmore
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Название: The Complete Ingo Chronicles: Ingo, The Tide Knot, The Deep, The Crossing of Ingo, Stormswept
Автор: Helen Dunmore
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Детская проза
isbn: 9780008261450
isbn:
Faro shrugs. “Can’t be sure. It’s too far away. It could be anything.”
His voice is carefully casual, but his face is tense. Something is going on, and it’s serious.
“You’ve got to tell us, Faro!”
“I did tell you. The seals are guards. If they sense a threat to Limina, they’ll deal with it.”
“What threat?” Conor’s voice is harsh. “What can they see that we can’t?”
But I’m watching the seals. They mass together, move apart, turn, raise their heads as if they’re—
“They’re listening!” I say. “They can hear something.” And suddenly knowledge leaps into my head. They’re listening to something that I’ve heard too. A noise that doesn’t belong to Ingo. The throb of an engine. A boat’s engine, far away up on the surface.
“Roger’s boat,” says Conor.
“They’ve come, then.”
We stare at each other. The fear in Conor’s face mirrors and doubles the fear I know must be in mine. Only Faro isn’t afraid. He looks relaxed but his face is intent, like a cat’s when it’s watching, waiting…
“Faro, you can’t let this happen!”
“I can, Sapphire,” he says very quietly, but with complete determination. “They’d think nothing of destroying the Mer, your divers. Can’t you see what will happen to Limina once divers get near that wreck? Once humans know there’s gold there? We’re nothing to them. They don’t even see us. They’ll destroy our world and they won’t even know they’re doing it. Why should I help them? I am Mer, Sapphire. I belong to Ingo, not Air. I’ve made my choice.”
I feel as if Faro has claws which are tearing the two halves of me apart. I could never say what he’s just said. I could never say, I am Mer, without betraying the part of me that is Air, and human. Faro knows what he is, and I don’t. I half belong, but I’m half a stranger.
I don’t even like Roger. I wanted him to disappear out of our lives. And now I’m terrified, because it could be about to happen.
“Faro can let it happen,” says Conor, with a determination that sounds equal to Faro’s. “But I can’t. I’m going to stop the seals.”
“Conor, they’ll kill you!” Their teeth, their claws. One seal would be hard to stop, and there are dozens of them. I swallow the taste of fear. Can’t Conor see? These grey seals are the guardians of Limina. They’ll do whatever they have to do to protect it.
“I can’t let it happen, Sapphire,” repeats Conor. “I can’t let them kill Roger.” He isn’t boasting. He just sounds quiet, and determined.
“But you’ve forgotten one small detail,” says Faro in his silkiest voice. “You need to hold on to my wrist. Sapphire’s strength isn’t enough for you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
For long seconds Faro and Conor stare at each other like enemies.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Faro repeats.
“So you think you’ve won,” says Conor. Slowly, deliberately, he unclasps his hand from Faro’s wrist. “But you haven’t,” he says, looking straight into Faro’s eyes, every word full of purpose.
“Conor! Don’t let go of him!”
“I’ve already let go, Saph. I’m going.”
“Conor, no, no, you can’t—”
But he’s turned away.
“Conor!” I plunge forward, forgetting Faro. “Wait for me!”
He’s swimming slowly, and I catch up with him in a few seconds. We are side by side, and as he glances at me I see that already he’s paler.
“Take my wrist, Conor!”
“I’m going to the seals, Sapphire. Don’t think you can stop me.”
It was instinct that made me rush after Conor. My brother, going into danger. I had to follow him, stop him. Nothing else mattered.
But something else matters to Conor.
“Got to warn Roger.”
Roger. In Ingo everything human seems far away. Even Mum, even our home. They don’t seem real. But when Conor says those words, Roger comes into my mind as clear as day. He’s standing in our kitchen. He’s telling me about his black Labrador, Rufie.
Rufie was the best thing in my life, after we came back from Australia.
Roger told Mum she should change her mind about us having a dog. He didn’t have to do that, but he did. Maybe… just possibly Mum was telling the truth when she said Roger cared what happened to us…
“Don’t try to stop me, Saph,” says Conor.
“I won’t. I swear I won’t. I’ll – I’ll help you.”
“Swear and promise?”
“Swear and promise.”
It’s the strangest swear and promise we’ve ever done. We slap hands though the water and press our way forwards, to where the sea is thrashing with the movement of the seals. We skirt the jagged edges of the Bawns, keeping well clear of the borderline we must not cross. On one side there’s the calm of Limina. On the other the wildness of angry water. Through the churn of waves around the Bawns the bulk of a grey seal looms, then vanishes. I peer through the seethe of bubbles. A great bull seal shoots upwards towards the surface, then another seal follows, and another. We stare up at them. So many seals. Now they’re so close together that there isn’t a chink of light between them – I can’t count them, but more are still arriving—
What are they doing?
A wall of seals, solid, shoulder to shoulder. And then it parts. They are separate creatures again, twisting and diving. One, two, seven, nine – they’re leaving the surface, coming back into Ingo—
But surely that’s not a seal? Not that one there, the thin spindly one? It looks puny and out of place next to the strong sleek seals. And that’s not a seal either, that black, stick-like body, turning over and over as it sprawls through the water—
“Oh my God,” says Conor. “They’ve got them.”
I see what Conor’s already seen. Those stick-like creatures are two divers in wetsuits with air on their backs. The seals have got them. The divers’ limbs flail as the seals toss them high, then let them fall. As each diver falls, another seal butts his body upward. The divers’ heads flop back like puppet heads.
“They’re СКАЧАТЬ