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

“My kettle takes a while to boil,” says Granny Carne. “But it’s a hot day and you’ll be thirsty from walking up. Drink some water.”

Conor pours, and I lift my glass. The water smells pure. But it’s earth water, sweet, not salt. It belongs to the earth. I lift it to my lips, then put it down. I want salt. I want the taste of the sea. The green and turquoise sea with its deep cool caverns underwater where you can dive and play. I want to plunge through the waves and roll over and jack-knife deep into the surging water that is full of bubbles and currents and tides. But Granny Carne’s cottage is more than two miles from the sea. It’s buried in the side of the hill, locked into the land.

I feel trapped. I want to get out. Mum and Dad took us to London once and we went in a lift in a tube station. I thought it was already packed as full as it could be, but people still kept shoving in and squashing up until my face was crushed against a fat man’s suit and I could hardly breathe. I could smell the man’s sweat. Everyone kept pushing until I was so squashed I couldn’t see Mum or Dad or Conor. I felt as if the lift was closing in on me. I feel like that now. The cottage walls press in around me. My chest hurts. I can hardly breathe.

I want the space of the sea. I want to taste salt water and open my mouth and know that I can breathe without breathing. Down, down, down into Ingo…

I push back my chair and it clatters on the flagstone floor. Instantly, Granny Carne is beside me, tall and strong as an oak.

“Sapphire. Sapphire! Drink this.”

She’s holding the glass of water to my lips. I try to twist my head away but she insists. “Sapphire. I know you’re thirsty. Drink your water.”

The glass presses against my lips. Earth water, sweet, not what I want. I want salt. But I’m thirsty, so thirsty. I need to drink. I open my lips, just a little. The water touches them, then it rushes into my mouth. It covers my tongue and it tastes good. I swallow deeply, and then I drink more and more, gulping it down. The more I drink the more I know how thirsty I am. I feel like a plant that’s almost died from lack of water. Granny Carne refills my glass from the jug and I drink again.

The cottage walls aren’t pressing in on me now. They’re just ordinary cottage walls again, white and clean. I don’t know why I was so frightened.

“Good,” says Granny Carne. “Remember, my girl, you mustn’t ever drink salt water. Even if you crave it, you mustn’t drink it. It makes a thirst that nothing can satisfy.”

“What does crave mean?”

“When you crave for something you want it so much you’ll stop at nothing to get it,” says Granny Carne. “But salt water’s poison to humans.”

“Sapphire’s been ill,” says Conor.

“No wonder, if she goes drinking salt water,” answers Granny Carne. “Now, tell me what you’re here for.”

“She’s started speaking another language,” Conor says.

“What’s that then? French or German?” asks Granny Carne, watching us keenly.

“No, she knows it without learning it. Tell her, Saph. Tell her the words you spoke this morning.”

“I can’t speak to her in that language. She belongs to N—” I manage to stop myself, but Granny Carne has noticed.

“What do I belong to?”

“To Earth.”

“Yes, but that wasn’t what you were going to say. You were going to say that I belonged to Norvys, weren’t you?”

I stare at her, astonished. “You can say it too! But you’re not part of Ingo.”

“Earth and Ingo share some words. But that’s not the question, is it? The question is, how do you know about Norvys?”

I am silent for a long time, while Granny Carne’s question presses in on me. Her eyes light on mine. They are amber, piercing—

“It was you,” I say. “Wasn’t it?”

Slowly, a smile fills her face. “Ah,” she says, “you were wide awake in the middle of the night, weren’t you? And why should you think that Norvys can’t go into the Air, if you can go to Ingo?”

Conor looks from one to another of us, bewildered.

“Granny Carne was the owl who came to me last night,” I explain.

“No,” says Granny Carne. “It’s not as simple as that. I’m not the owl, but the owl is maybe one of my… shadowings.”

“But your eyes are exactly the same.”

“Yes.”

“We came because of what happened last night,” Conor says. “Tell her, Saph. Tell her about the voice.”

“It wanted me to come to it. It called me like this: SSSapphire… SSSSapphire …”

“But that’s not your name!” interrupts Conor. “It doesn’t sound anything like your name. They must have been calling someone else.”

“But in another language, Conor,” Granny Carne points out. “And who was calling? Do you know that?”

“I think it was the seas of all the world,” I whisper, as if someone might overhear us.

“Moryow,” says Granny Carne.

“Yes.”

“But she didn’t go,” says Conor, as if that’s the most important thing of all.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I think it was because of Sadie barking. And the… the owl.”

“Sadie,” says Granny Carne thoughtfully. “Wasn’t Sadie that dog who came to you when I met you in the track below your house?”

“Yes.”

“Granny Carne,” says Conor abruptly, “my dad came to see you here, not long before he left. I was with him that day. Did he say anything – did he tell you anything? Anything that we don’t know? Did he know then he was going to leave us?”

“The things that people say here are between them and these walls,” says Granny Carne.

“But he’s disappeared. He might be in danger.”

“He might,” agrees Granny Carne.

“But if he is, we’ve got to help him!”

“We won’t help him that way. We have to go gentle. But I will tell you this. When your father came to me he had a mark on his face that I see on your faces now. It was a mark you don’t often see… in the Air,” she adds, watching us carefully to see if we understand. We stare at her. My hand goes up, as if to cover my face. Granny Carne half smiles.

“You won’t hide such a mark that way,” she says. “Not from me. We talked about it before, you remember, the last time I met you. Ingo puts that mark on a face. You know it, Sapphire. You’ve been there, in Ingo. You feel it pulling you, sometimes soft, sometimes strong.”

I don’t say anything. I am frightened. How is it that Granny Carne knows so much?

“Conor’s got the same inheritance,” Granny Carne goes on, “but it’s not so powerful in him. That’s the way things come out. Even brother and sister don’t inherit things from their parents equally.”

Conor nods as if he understands, but I know he doesn’t. He must feel as dazed as I do.

“But, Conor,” goes on Granny Carne, leaning forward and looking seriously into his face. “You have your own power that belongs to you, never doubt that. The time will come to use it. Sapphire has more of Ingo, but you have more of Earth. Both have their equal power. It’s when they become unequal that there’s danger.”

They look at each other. I think again how alike they are. Granny Carne could be Conor’s ancestor. The same dark skin, the same shape of the eyes, the same shape around the lips when they smile.

“There’s always been powerful Mer blood in the Trewhella family,” Granny Carne goes on. “The Mer blood goes way back beyond the first Mathew Trewhella.”

“But it couldn’t have been passed down to us,” says Conor. “Mathew Trewhella went off with that mermaid, didn’t he? He didn’t have human children. He was a young man and he wasn’t married. It says so in the story.”