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

“Has Conor surfed them?”

“No.”

The strange thing is that I’m no longer anxious about Conor. I’ve nearly forgotten that the whole reason I’m here is that I had to find him and bring him home. I haven’t quite forgotten; it’s there somewhere in the back of my mind, like the daytime world when you’re in the middle of a dream. But it doesn’t seem to matter all that much. Conor’s fine. He’s safe with Elvira, talking to the sunfish. All that really matters is the rush of the currents, the tingle of flying water – again, again, again. I don’t want it ever to stop.

But just as we slide off a tricky little current that Faro says goes too near the Great Currents for safety, I look up. Between me and the skin of the surface a huge shape hangs. A shape that I’ve known all my life, although this is the first time I’ve ever seen one.

Wide jaw, gaping. Body as long as a helicopter. Fins, tail—“Faro!” I whisper, afraid it might pick up the vibration of my voice through the water. “Faro, there’s a shark!”

Faro flips on his back, stares up. The shark hangs above us. Its jaws are spread wide, waiting for something. Or someone.

“I know,” says Faro. He lies on his back, sculling with his hands, watching the shark. “She’s been here a lot this season. This is a good feeding ground for her.”

I’m still shivering with shock. How can he be so relaxed? “But Faro, it’s a shark .”

“You don’t need to be scared of her. She’s a little-feeder.”

As if she’s heard him, the shark slowly turns her great head. She’s seen us.

“She can smell us,” says Faro. He’s watching the shark carefully, but he still doesn’t seem worried.

“What do you mean, Faro? What’s a little-feeder?”

“Watch her.”

I watch as the shark points her head forward again, jaw wide, and advances very slowly, swinging her whole body from side to side in the way an elephant swings its trunk. With her mouth open like that, she looks as if she’s hoovering the sea.

“She’s feeding,” says Faro. “Everything goes into her mouth. Her throat acts as a sieve. Most of the stuff she eats is so small you can’t see it.”

“You mean, like plankton?”

“Plankton. Whatever. You Air People have a word for everything, don’t you? Especially for things you don’t know much about. It takes a long time to get to know a shark. Keep still, Sapphire! Sharks don’t like being disturbed. And don’t stare too hard. She can sense when she’s being watched. Lucky for you she’s not a seal-feeder.”

“But Faro, sharks that eat seals don’t come here. There aren’t any dangerous sharks in Cornish waters.”

But as I say it, a shiver of memory runs over my skin. There was something about sharks on TV a while ago. A fisherman thought he’d seen a Great White, two miles off Newquay. He claimed that he’d found a half-eaten seal in his net. No other creature but a shark could have torn into a seal like that, he said, and the camera showed how the seal’s belly had been ripped away. I’d wished that Dad was there, so I could ask him whether it really could have been a Great White. Dad would have known.

I had forgotten about the Great White shark off Newquay.

Until now.

“When you say ‘seal-feeder’,” I ask Faro, “does that mean the same as a Great White?”

“How should I know all your Air names? Seal-feeders eat seals. Sometimes they’ll hear you and sometimes they won’t, so it’s best to keep away from them.”

“Do they ever hurt you?”

“I told you. You can’t predict what a seal-feeder’s going to do. They do what they want, so you have to keep out of their way. Sometimes they can’t hear that we’re Mer. They want to hear that we’re seals, because they’re hungry or because they feel that way. And they’re very fast, not like her up there.”

The shark above us swings her head again. The gape of her mouth shines wide. Even though Faro says she’s a little-feeder, she’s still a shark—

“She heard us,” says Faro sharply. “She doesn’t like us talking about her. Let’s go.”

Faro jackknifes into a dive. When we’re a long way from the shark, we slow down and I ask him, “Why do we have to be so careful? You said she wouldn’t hurt us. You said she only eats little sea creatures like plankton.”

“I don’t know how you humans ever get anything done, you ask so many questions.” Faro does two perfect somersaults, head over tail, head over tail. “She’s got cousins all over the place,” he says casually, flicking back his hair. “You don’t want to offend a shark, Sapphire, not even a little-feeder like her. Sharks may not be very clever, but they’ve got long, long memories, and they stick together. They’re terrible for holding a grudge. You’ve got to remember that sharks are fish. I told you, fish share their memories. They never forget a place where they can find food, and they never forget an insult.”

“I thought she looked very intelligent,” I say loudly, and Faro laughs.

“If we meet any more sharks, I’ll let you do the talking,” he says sarcastically.

“Well, at least I noticed the shark.” I feel triumphant. I may have ‘slow human reactions’, but I saw the shark first. “You didn’t see her until I pointed her out, even though she was right above us.”

“Oh, didn’t I?” asks Faro. He rolls lazily in the water. “Of course, we Mer aren’t very observant, compared to Air people like you. You even put air on your backs and come down and peer around.”

“Do you mean divers?”

Faro shrugs. “Air people dressed in black, with air on their backs. It’s bad to bring Air into Ingo. They shouldn’t do it.”

“Ingo?” My heart thuds. I have the strangest feeling, as if I know that word better than I know anything else in the world. But it’s hazy, distant. There’s a part of my mind I can’t reach while I’m underwater. “Faro, what is Ingo?”

“Don’t you know that? I thought you knew so much. Ingo is where we are. Ingo is everything that doesn’t belong to the Air.”

“So am I – am I away in Ingo now?”

“Not all that far away,” says Faro in a voice that sounds as if he’s secretly laughing at me inside himself. “Just on the edge of it, maybe.”

“Ingo,” I repeat, tasting the sound of it in my mouth. “I’m in Ingo.”

“Those – those divers – they bring Air with them, so they can go down where they shouldn’t come. They poke around where they shouldn’t be,” goes on Faro. “ Exploring , they call it. Spying , we call it. Trying to get into Ingo without going through the skin. Luckily they don’t see much. They don’t enter Ingo at all.”

“But they dive down here, don’t they? How can you say they don’t enter Ingo?”

Faro shrugs. “A stone drops into the water. That doesn’t mean that the stone is swimming. Divers come into the water, but that doesn’t mean they’re in Ingo. So, you saw the shark first, did you? Look around, Sapphire, and tell me what else you’ve noticed ,” he challenges.

I peer through the water.

“Well, rocks – over there, look, sharp ones. I wouldn’t want to go near them. And there’s a fish! Just going out of sight, look, it’s a really big one.”

“Huge,” Faro agrees. “It must be at least as big as this,” and he puts his hands a few centimetres apart. “What else have you noticed?”

“Um – is that a current over there? And I think I saw something scuttling down on the sea bed just now – but it’s so far down, it’s hard to tell—”

“Anything else?”

“I noticed that shark, anyway. And you didn’t.”