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

Tides are powerful. Tides know where they want to be and they take the whole sea world with them, dragging it to and fro. Faro says tides are the moon talking to Ingo. When the moon talks, Ingo has to listen.

We come in on the tide together, me and Faro and the seals. Faro finds a current first, and then we feel the tide folding us into its strong journey. It’s strange that the same tide is still rising, even though I seem to have been with Faro for hours.

“Conor and Elvira have already come in on the tide,” says Faro. “Conor’s left Ingo now.”

I feel calm and easy about Conor again. All my fears have drifted away. I can’t remember why I cried out for him, or why I felt so desperate. I’m holding Faro’s wrist, and I am safe in Ingo.

Faro takes me as far as the mouth of our cove. I don’t want him to come any farther, because I know how much his lungs would burn, and how terror would seize him as he went through the skin of the sea, into Air. He says he’ll come with me all the way if I want, but I say no. I’m not worried about leaving Faro, because I know I’ll be back. The pull of Ingo has got into me, strong as the tide.

“It’s all right, Faro, I know where I am now. You don’t need to come any farther with me.” I can see that he’s relieved, although he tries to hide it.

The seals are still with us. It’s easy for them to slip from Ingo into Air, because they can live in both. So they’ll come all the way with me, swimming in on the tide. I’m still holding Faro’s wrist when I see the place where the deep, deep water meets the shelf of sand. He mustn’t come any farther. I’m safe to swim in from here.

“It won’t hurt you to go through the skin,” Faro reminds me. “You’re going home this time.”

“Don’t come any farther in, Faro,” I tell him. I feel protective of him now. He’s been looking after me deep in Ingo, and I’m going to look after him here, where we’re coming close to my own country. The surface of the sea wobbles not far above out heads. The light is sharp and dazzling, and the air will hurt Faro like knives, the way the sea hurt me when I first went down.

There are flickery broken-up shadows of sunlight all over the sea floor and all over Faro. He looks like a boy and a seal and a shadow all at once as he does a last back-flip and his tail swirls around his head. And suddenly there’s only a shadow, and Faro’s gone. I haven’t said goodbye to him. I haven’t asked when I’m going to see him again.

I don’t need to. I’m sure that I’ll see him soon.

The two seals are close to me, one on each side. They want to push me onwards into the shallower water. The tide’s pushing me too and there’s sand not far below me, almost underfoot now—

“Tell Faro that I’ll be back,” I say to the seals. They roll and circle round me and I don’t know if they understand or not. Mer , I think. Speak Mer to them, not Air . I open my mouth and the cool sweet underwater rushes into it. Speak Mer, not Air . I let the sea flow out of my mouth and make its own words.

“We will,” says the seal closest to me in a gravelly voice like the tide sucking over a pebble beach. I feel his breath on my ear, and then he’s gone with his partner, and I’m diving up through the skin of the water, into Air.

It doesn’t hurt. It’s like stepping off a boat after hours out at sea with Dad. The land feels wobbly when you do that, as if it’s still going up and down, up and down. You can’t get your balance. Dad says it’s because you’ve still got your sea legs, and you have to get your land legs back. In a while you get used to it and the land stops behaving like the sea, and you’re back at home.

I’m back in the Air. I wade through the shallow water, up the beach, towards the rocks at the back of the cove, where I have to climb. It’s a perfect day now, hot and still, without a trace of mist. The sand is warm underfoot.

I climb the rocks very slowly. My legs are tired. The rough, dry rock feels so strange under my hands. I’ve got used to the textures of Ingo. My arms and legs feel much too light, now that there’s no water pressing against them.

I clamber up the rocks, through the gap between the boulders, and haul myself up over the grassy lip of the cliff.

Conor.

Conor’s sitting there, waiting. He’s pale and there are dark shadows under his eyes. He jumps up when he sees me. He looks shocked, as if he can’t believe it’s really me. He grabs hold of my arm, and drags me on to the grass. He holds me so tight it hurts. For a moment I’m scared. Conor looks furious. I even think for a second that he’s going to hit me. But of course he doesn’t. He just stares and stares at me, as if he hasn’t seen me for years. Our faces are very close. Conor scans mine, searching for something.

“Saph,” he says very quietly, as if he can hardly believe it’s me. He shakes me gently, the way he does when he’s trying to wake me on a school morning.

“Saph, where’ve you been ? I’ve been waiting and waiting for hours. I thought you were never going to come back.”

“Back from where?”

“Where do you think!” he explodes. “Don’t try and fake it, Saph! I know where you’ve been. You’ve been away nearly twenty-four hours. Mum would’ve gone crazy if she’d known. But the car wouldn’t start, so she stayed overnight in St Pirans after work. She got Mary to come up last night and check if we were OK. I lied for you. I said you were in the bath. And then I came out here to look for you. I’ve been waiting all night.”

I look around. There’s Conor’s sleeping bag, and his torch, a KitKat wrapper, and a bottle of water. Maybe… maybe it’s true…

“Twenty-four hours,” I repeat slowly. I remember the other day, when I saw Conor on the rock with the girl, Elvira. Conor thought he’d only just cleaned out the shed, but it was already evening. He didn’t know how much time had passed, because he was away in Ingo. Like me. So time in Ingo is different from time here .

“If I’ve really been gone twenty-four hours, then time must move more slowly in Ingo…” I say, thinking aloud.

“Ssh! Don’t talk about it here!” hisses Conor.

“Why not? There’s no one but us.”

Conor glances around, as if the grass might be listening. A herring gull swoops low, screaming over our heads. Everything sounds hollow and noisy, now that I’m back in the Air.

“You don’t know who might be listening,” he whispers.

“But Faro said that you were in Ingo too, at the same time as me. He said you and Elvira were talking to the sunfish.”

“I wasn’t talking to them. I don’t know how. Elvira was.”

“But that was only a little while ago. How could you have been there in Ingo, and up here waiting for me on the cliff, at the same time?”

Conor pulls a grass stem out of its sheath and nibbles the sweet end of it, thinking too.

“What Faro tells you,” he says at last, “I mean, the things that Faro says, they’re true in his mind. But they may not be true in yours.”

“Do you mean he’s lying?”

“It’s not like that in Ingo. Elvira’s just the same. There isn’t only one thing that’s true, and everything else is a lie. And I think maybe time’s like that in Ingo, too. It stretches out – then it presses itself together, like this –” and Conor squeezes his hands together, as if he’s crushing time.

“Who told you all that? Elvira?” I ask jealously. “ Were you there with Elvira, like Faro says, or not?”

“Yes, I was there… but I don’t know how long for. I think time in Ingo isn’t just different in how fast it goes, but in the whole way it works. You said it was only a little while since I was in Ingo, but I’ve been back here for ages. Since yesterday. So maybe time there moves quite differently.”