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

“But you heard what she said,” says Conor. “About his singing and everything. Just as if she’d heard him herself. Do you remember how Dad always used to say Granny Carne had never been any younger than she is now? Never any younger, and never any different. Maybe she does remember.”

“You mean you think she’s hundreds of years old?”

“I don’t know. It sounds impossible when you say it like that. But when you’re with her, don’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“Her power,” says Conor slowly. “That’s why I want to know why she’s talking to us. I think she wants us to do something.”

“Or not do something,” I mutter, remembering how Granny Carne’s force barred the way to the sea.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I say.

It’s dark inside our cottage, after the brightness of the day. Conor goes around shutting the windows, locking the back door that we never normally lock. I watch him without saying anything. I’m trying to remember everything I can about the story Dad told me, long ago, about the man who vanished with a mermaid, and who had the same name as him.

“Conor,” I say at last, “time doesn’t work like that. One person can’t live for hundreds of years.”

“I don’t know… time in Ingo isn’t like time here, is it? Maybe there are all kinds of time, living alongside each other, but usually we only experience one of them. Granny Carne might be living in her own time, and it might be quite different from ours. Think of the way oak trees live for a thousand years.”

“Earth time,” I say, not really knowing why I say it.

“Yes. If she’s got earth magic, then she could be living in earth time. And Faro and Elvira are living in Ingo time. So what are we living in?”

“I don’t know. Real time? Human time?”

“They’re all real. But human time; yeah, could be. So let’s say there’s earth time and Ingo time and human time, that’s three kinds of time already, and there could be more.”

“Ant time, butterfly time, planet time, cream-tea time—”

“I’m not messing around, Saph. Wait a minute. Look at Ingo time. I don’t think Ingo time is fixed against ours. It’s not like one year of Ingo time equals five years of human time, or whatever. It’s more complicated than that. Sometimes Ingo time seems to run at nearly the same pace as ours, but sometimes it’s quite different… almost like water flowing faster or more slowly, depending on whether it’s running downhill or along a flat surface – yes, maybe that’s it, something to do with the angle of Ingo time to human time—”

I switch off. Conor will carry on like this for hours once he gets going. That’s why he’s so good at maths.

Josie Sancreed’s jeering face comes into my mind. “I wonder what they really said when that first Mathew Trewhella disappeared,” I say. Were there people like Josie living then? Probably.

“I bet they said he’d gone off with another woman,” says Conor. His face is hard. “Just like they say about Dad.”

So Conor knows.

“Did you hear about what Josie said to me, Conor?”

“It’s what everyone says behind our backs. Josie said it to your face, that’s the only difference.”

“But Dad hasn’t gone off with another woman! He hasn’t gone off with anyone. He would never do that to us.”

“Maybe not.”

“You know he hasn’t, Conor,” I say angrily. Conor has got to believe in Dad. We’re a family . Me and Conor and Dad and Mum.

Me and Conor and Mum.

“I don’t know anything any more,” says Conor. He shrugs. “Sorry, Saph. Everything’s upside down and inside out today.”

It’s so rare for Conor to have doubts about anything that I don’t know what to say. Conor’s my big brother, the one who knows things. If he doesn’t know where he is, then where am I?

“It’ll be OK,” I say doubtfully. “Maybe Granny Carne just likes telling old stories because she’s old.”

“She told us about that first Mathew Trewhella for a reason,” says Conor, in the same way as he’s always explained things to me, like who is in which gang at school, and why. I knew how the playground worked before I even went to school, because of Conor. “Don’t get scared, Saph, but I think Granny Carne believes we’re in danger.”

“How could we be in danger?”

“He never came back, did he? The Mathew Trewhella in the story, I mean. Maybe Dad won’t ever come back either.”

“Conor, don’t .”

Conor turns and grips my wrists hard. “They got Mathew Trewhella, didn’t they? I know what it’s like, Saph. You’re out there in Ingo, and they make you feel that everything back here on land is nothing. Even the people you love don’t count. You can’t even remember them clearly.”

“I didn’t forget you and Mum!”

“Didn’t you?”

“You just got a bit cloudy and far away.”

“I know. And so you go on, deeper and deeper into Ingo, until you don’t care about anything else—”

“Did you feel like that?”

“Of course I did! I would’ve stayed. I’d probably still be there now. It was the first time I’d got so close to the seals. Elvira said she was going to take me to the Lost Islands. But I heard you calling. I didn’t even want to hear it. I tried to pretend I hadn’t heard you. Can you believe it, Saph, me trying to pretend I couldn’t hear my own sister when she might’ve needed me? But you kept on calling and I was afraid something bad was happening to you, and you were calling to me for help. And so I had to come back.

But when I got up on to the shore, there was no one there. You’d totally disappeared. I waited for you for hours and hours, thinking you weren’t ever going to come back. I went up to the cottage, I searched everywhere, I came back down here – I even went back into the sea again to look for you. But I couldn’t get into Ingo again. Not without Elvira. I dived and dived but nothing happened. The water wouldn’t let me in. It pushed me up like a rubber ball every time I dived. The water was laughing at me.”

“But – but it wasn’t more than a few minutes after I called you that I came back. It can’t have been longer.”

“Believe me, it was. You were so deep in Ingo that it felt like minutes. But it was hours , Saph.”

I’m almost scared of Conor now. He looks like he did after Shadow had to be put down, the summer before last. Shadow was fifteen, which is old for a cat. We all loved Shadow, but Conor really loved him. I think of Conor searching along the shore, searching the cottage, trying to find me, running back to the cove, frantic, afraid that something terrible had happened to me.

“I’m sorry, Conor. I really didn’t know. I didn’t think I’d been away so long.”

“It’s all happening again, that’s what scares me,” says Conor in a low voice. “First, the olden-days Mathew Trewhella disappears. OK, it’s only a story that’s supposed to have happened a long time ago. But then Dad disappears. And then I can’t find you. I really thought I was never going to be able to find you again.

“I’ll tell you something, Saph, I won’t go there again. Whatever Elvira says, I’m not going to Ingo again. It’s too dangerous.

“Granny Carne doesn’t want us to go. She’s stopping us. I can feel it. You know when you try to push two magnets together, and they won’t? It’s like that.

“But Elvira wants me to go. And she didn’t want me to come back either. Do you know what she said? That can’t have been your sister’s voice. These currents make strange echoes. I didn’t hear anything . But I knew I’d heard you. How could I be wrong about my own sister’s voice?”