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I turn away. I don’t want Faro to see how I feel. I don’t even know how I feel. Faro says that Conor doesn’t know anything, but I don’t believe it. If Conor’s gone this deep, if he can swim with seals and plans to surf to the Lost Islands with Elvira, then he’s gone far away from me already. He’s learned too much that I don’t know. And the worst part is that he’s done it all secretly, without telling me or wanting to share it with me.
Conor and I have always been together. We’ve always done the same things. Conor’s a better diver than me, and he can swim faster, but he waits for me. He used to get impatient sometimes when I was little and I couldn’t keep up with him. Sometimes I’d cry and yell after him, Conor, Conor! Wait for me!
And he’d come back and find me all covered in tears and he’d take my hand and we’d be friends again.
But that was a long time ago. Dad’s gone, and Mum’s working all the time. If she works a late shift, we sometimes don’t see her from after breakfast to the next morning. Conor and me have only got each other. That’s why we always look after each other.
But he hasn’t waited for me this time.
No, Conor wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t go away without even speaking to me. Faro’s lying.
But Conor didn’t tell me about meeting the Mer, did he? He kept it secret until I saw him with Elvira. And what about Elvira? Where’s she taking him? Conor’s going in too deep – I’m frightened—
“Conor!” I call, with all my strength, and all the voice I can find. “Conor!” Suddenly, the pain is there again, beginning to burn around my ribs. I feel the heavy water on top of me, pressing me down. I can’t breathe.
“No, Sapphire!” says Faro urgently. “Don’t do it! Don’t try to call him! You’ll get hurt.” He seizes hold of my hand and puts it around his wrist. The burning pain eases, like the tide going out.
“Think like us,” says Faro. “Look at me.”
I look at his strong, curved seal tail, his human face.
“Think like us. Look at the seals.”
The seals come close, touching me with their sleek sides. Their big eyes seem to be telling me something. Seal language is flowing towards me, not made out of words but made out of something else that I’m just on the edge of understanding. I reach out my hand and the seals let me touch them as they play. They want me to go with them. They want us all to roll and play in the deep water.
There’s no pain around my ribs now. I’m safe with Faro. Safe with the Mer.
“It’s dangerous to think of Air when you’re here,” says Faro. His face is serious, his voice urgent. “You must never do it. Promise me.”
“How can I promise that? I belong to the air. I’m human. I can’t just forget about it.”
Faro nods, slowly, as if he’s weighing things up. “Yes, but—” and then he stops.
“Yes but what?”
“Nothing.” Whatever he was going to tell me, he’s changed his mind. “It’s time to leave now, Sapphire. Can’t you feel the tide?”
CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_6d8b7d73-f9b2-5cdc-8afa-4968e73de072)
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.”
“But did you see me? Did you and Elvira see me, and hear me calling, and then hide from me?”
It feels like the most important question I’ve ever asked Conor. I want him to kill the picture in my mind that shows him and Elvira slipping away together, maybe laughing, not wanting me to see them—
“You came to me,” says Conor slowly. “You came into my mind, Saph, but I didn’t see you. I was with the seals, and suddenly you were there in my mind. I thought something bad had happened to you. I told Elvira I had to go back and find you.”
“What do you mean, I was ‘in your mind’?”
“You know how it is in Ingo,” says Conor reluctantly. “Everything you usually think about – everything that’s up in the Air – it floats away and fades. It doesn’t seem real. Even people fade. Even you and Mum started to feel like dreams, when I was in Ingo. But suddenly all that changed. You were really there, in my mind, solid. I stopped feeling easy and dreamy. I was scared. I thought you were in trouble, Saph, and I might not get to you in time.”
“But I was there, in Ingo, all the time. Close to you.”
“Yes.” Conor’s face closes in a frown. “But it didn’t feel like that. It felt as if you were far away – calling to me – and I was losing you. Like when a mobile breaks up and you keep losing someone’s voice. Elvira said—” He breaks off and frowns even more deeply.
“What did she say?”
“She told me not to call you. She said it could be dangerous. She wanted us to go on surfing the currents. There’s a group of islands she’s going to take me to – but I said I couldn’t go with her. I had to come back and find you. She wasn’t very…”
He shakes his head, as if trying to shake away the troubled feeling.
“Wasn’t very what?”
“She wasn’t very happy about it.”
Your precious Elvira didn’t care what happened to me, did she? I think, but I don’t say it.
“I don’t understand how it all works,” says Conor.
“Me neither.”
Conor was there, in Ingo, and so was I, but we never met. Faro and Elvira kept us separate.
But they didn’t stop us when we said we wanted to come back.
No, I’m sure Faro doesn’t want to hurt me. He looked after me and made sure I was safe in Ingo.
“You look terrible,” says Conor. “Lucky Mum’s not back. She’d know straight away something had happened.”
The KitKat wrapper glints in the sun. My mouth waters.
“Is there any of that KitKat left?”
“No, I ate it. It was a long night.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m so hungry. Starving. Hungry for food and hungry for sleep. “Can I sleep in your sleeping bag, Con?”
My legs feel like jelly. I can’t walk another step. All I want is to dive into Conor’s sleeping bag and sleep until tomorrow – or even the next day—
“No, Saph,” says Conor urgently, as my legs begin to fold. “We’ve got to get home. You can sleep in your own bed once we’re there.”
“Can’t I even rest for a bit?”
“No, Saph, not here. It’s not—” Conor breaks off what he’s saying, and glances around again. A black-headed gull sits quietly on a rock nearby, his head cocked. If he wasn’t a gull, you’d think he was listening to us. Conor whispers, “It’s too close here.”
“Close to what?”
“To Ingo. The tide will be high again soon.”
I remember what happens at high tide. The waves come right in, under the cliffs. There are gullies that the sea has been carving for centuries, and blowholes where the water spouts up with a hiss of foam. When it’s rough you can hear the sea roaring like a lion beneath you, and feel the thump of the waves through the granite.
Conor’s right. Air and Ingo are close, here. This shore is where they touch. Conor and I are standing on the border, between the two countries. I look out to the shining water and think of Ingo. All the colour and creatures and life of Ingo are there, so close I could still touch them – if I just reached out—
Before I know it, I’ve moved forward, closer to the edge of the cliff.
“Saph!”
The gull opens his beak in a hideous squawk as Conor grabs my arm again and pulls me back.
“Come on, Saph! We’ve got to go home!”
CHAPTER TEN (#ulink_57ff72f0-58e1-5f16-866a-83ad71de003d)
I wake up slowly. I’m in my own room, lying in bed. Sleep doesn’t want to let go of me, and my head is fuzzy with dreams. Strange dreams, that seem more real than the daylight. I dreamed of a huge cavern deep, deep under the cliffs where I slept in a bed of silky sea-moss while a warm current fanned my face. The dream was so real that I can still feel the touch of moss, like feathers against my skin.
But I’m lying under my old blue duvet cover. From the look of the light, it’s late morning. I can hear Mum downstairs, talking. I prop myself up on my elbow to listen, but I can’t hear another voice answering her. She must be on the phone. I can’t hear what she’s saying, either, but suddenly I guess who she’s talking to. It’s that diver, Roger. The man who’s coming here on Sunday. Mum’s voice murmurs on and on, as if she’s already known Roger for years and has a million things to tell him. Sometimes she laughs.
Roger the diver. Mum likes him, you can tell that from her voice. But Faro hates divers. What did he say about them? Air People with air on their backs, bringing Air into Ingo, spying on Ingo. That’s what he thinks they are: spies.
I’m glad Faro hates them. Now that Mum’s told me about Roger the diver coming on Sunday, I don’t like divers either. I think they should keep out of the way and not come where they aren’t wanted.
