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“I have seen a kettle before,” says Roger mildly. He is watching me. He’s going to say something – ask me something. I must get away—
But I only get as far as the fridge before he asks casually, “Sapphire, how far can you swim?”
“I don’t know, quite a long way, I mean, not all that far, depends how flat the sea is—”
“Your mother tells me that you and Conor aren’t allowed to swim outside the cove.”
“No, because of the rip. Only if we’re out in a boat with… with someone. Sometimes we swim off the boat.”
“Have you been out in a boat with… someone… lately? In the last day or two?”
“No,” I say firmly, and I look Roger in the face because I can prove this isn’t a lie. “I haven’t been out in a boat since… since…” But I can’t say it. Not to Roger.
“Since what?” he insists. Anger springs up in me. Roger’s trying to act like my father, as if he has a right to question me.
“Since Dad took me out in Peggy Gordon,” I say. I feel my face burning, but I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to let Roger see me crying.
“Oh. I see.” Roger is quiet for a while, then he says, quite formally as if I’m an adult like him. “I’m sorry, Sapphire. I didn’t mean to distress you.”
His face is troubled. For a moment I can’t help believing that he really is sorry. But I don’t want to believe it, or I might start having to – well, to tolerate Roger.
“S’OK,” I say grudgingly.
“No, it’s not OK,” says Roger slowly. “None of this is OK, I know that. Your dad dies, a year later I come along… It’s not easy for anyone. Have you thought about how hard it is for your mother?”
“Dad is not dead,” I flash out furiously. Roger stares at me.
“He is not dead,” I repeat, more quietly, but with all the force I can find. If only Roger would believe me, how much trouble it would save.
“You’re a complicated young lady,” he says slowly. ‘And I wish – I wish I could see inside that head of yours.”
“Well, you can’t. We’re human. We don’t share our thoughts. The kettle’s boiling. I’ll wash the mugs while you make the tea.”
I’m not sure if I’ll get away with this, but I do. Roger and I finish making the tea in silence. But just before we take it in to Mum, Roger asks, “Sadie. The dog you were walking. She’s one of the neighbour’s dogs, right?”
“Yes.”
“What breed is she?”
“Golden Labrador.”
“Nice breed.”
“Yes, she’s—” Suddenly Sadie is so clear in my mind that I can almost feel her warm golden body, her soft tongue licking my hand, her quivering excitement when she knows she’s going for a walk.
“You like her. You ever had a dog of your own, Sapphire?”
“No. Mum says it’s too much work.”
“Well, that’s true, a dog is a lot of work. I had one as a boy myself, and I found out the hard way that my dad meant what he said when he told me: If you get a dog, then it’s you that’s got that dog as long as it lives. But Rufie was the best thing in my life, after we came back from Australia and I found myself stuck in Dagenham. You and Conor could take care of a dog between you, I reckon.”
“Except when we’re at school.”
“There’s no one in the neighbourhood who’d keep an eye?”
I have never thought of this. Never thought beyond pushing against Mum’s prohibition by telling her over and over again that me and Conor will do everything.
“I don’t know…”
“Worth thinking about, it seems to me,” says Roger. “Your mother would feel easier that way.”
“What kind of dog was Rufie?”
“Black Labrador. Beautiful breed. They get problems with their hips as they grow older, that’s the only thing.”
I nod. I already know that, and that Labradors don’t live as long as some other dogs.
“But for good temper and loyalty there isn’t a breed to touch them. Beautiful breed,” says Roger thoughtfully, and he opens the door for us to carry in the tea.
It’s late at night now. I’m in bed, and everyone else is asleep. Roger’s gone back to St Pirans, and Mum went to bed early because she’s doing the breakfast shift at the restaurant tomorrow. There’s no sound from Conor’s loft. I heard his light click out a long time ago.
I feel like the last person left awake in the world. If I had my own house, I’d let my dog sleep in my bedroom. Dogs wake up the instant you stir. If Sadie was here she’d know I was awake and I could talk to her.
I’m not going to think about Roger any more. It’s all been going over and over in my head for hours. Mum, Roger, Dad. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a child, and then I could be like them and make my own decisions and my family would just have to live with them.
I’m going to think about Ingo. Dolphin language and sunwater, basking sharks and grey seals, sea anemones, shrimps and cowries and shoals of jellyfish, wrecks and reefs and the Great Currents taking you halfway around the world. Ingo. Ingo. Once you’re through the skin of the water, it doesn’t hurt any more. You dive down and there’s a whole world waiting for you. Blue whales and Right whales and Minke whales, schools of porpoises leaping in perfect formation as if each one knows what the others are thinking. Maybe they do.
Thong weed and cut weed and sugar kelp, all the names Dad taught me and all the creatures we’ve ever seen. By-the-wind sailors, shore crabs and hermit crabs, bass and wrasse and dogfish and squat lobsters, rips and currents and tides. I wish I was away in Ingo, I wish I was away in Ingo… and as I’m saying these words, I fall into sleep.
I wake with a start out of deep dreams. Something’s woken me. I push the duvet off me and sit up, listening, but now everything’s quiet. I’m certain I heard something. My skin prickles with fear as I climb out of bed, cross to the window, pull back my curtain and see the moon, strong and riding high.
“Ssssssapphire!”
I open the window to hear better. The voice is as soft as a breath, as if it’s travelled a long way to get to me. As soon as I hear it, I know it’s the voice that woke me. It’s not Conor’s voice, or Mum’s. It’s eerie and full of mystery. My skin prickles again and I shiver all over. I don’t think it’s a human voice at all. It’s like the voice the sea would have, if the sea could talk.
How I wish I could speak full Mer. Can the sea really talk? Can it tell you all its secrets? I’m sure the sea is trying to tell me something now.
No sound comes from Mum’s room, or from upstairs where Conor’s sleeping. Nobody else has woken.
“Ssssapphire!” The voice is urgent now. It wants to get close to me but it can’t. The sea can’t reach you on land. It can only come as far as the high-water mark. Granny Carne said that Ingo is strong, but I’m sure it isn’t strong enough for the sea to come to me, washing up the cliff and across the fields and flooding our garden so that waves break below my window.
“SSSapphire… SSSSapphire…”
It sounds like waves breaking. All at once I’m completely sure that I’m hearing the sea’s own voice. I can hear salt in it, and surging water, and the roll of the tide. It’s sea magic, talking to me.
Granny Carne stopped me going to Ingo, but that was in daytime. Sea magic might be stronger than earth magic, when the time’s ripe. I stand still, bracing my feet on the floorboards. What’s the time in Ingo? My watch shines on my wrist. The hands point to five past seven, the time I first walked into the water.
From the other side of the room my dressing-table mirror gleams back at me. Moonlight picks out the pattern of a starfish in the mirror’s shattered glass. Even though the mirror is broken I can still see my reflection. It looks like me, and yet not like me. My hair is tangled like weed, my face shines like water.
“Sssssssapphire!”
I can’t keep silent. I have got to answer. But just as I turn back to the window and open my mouth to speak, two things happen.
An owl swoops past my window. Its wings are spread wide, and as it passes the owl turns and stares straight into my room. Its fierce amber gaze burns into my mind, and then is gone. At the same moment a volley of barks bursts across the night. It’s Sadie! I know it’s her. I’d recognise her voice anywhere. It’s Sadie, barking wildly, as if she’s heard an intruder and is desperate to wake the whole house. Oh Sadie, I wish you weren’t so far away! I wish I was where you are, then I’d know what’s wrong.
Sadie barks even more wildly, as if she’s answering me. I have the strangest feeling that Sadie is barking because of me. She wants me to hear her. She wants to warn me – protect me…
“It’s all right, Sadie girl,” I say, even though my voice can’t possibly reach her. “It’s all right, there’s nothing wrong, nobody’s hurting me.”
But Sadie just carries on barking, telling the whole night to watch out. I bet Jack’s dad has already stumbled downstairs in his pyjamas to see if there’s a burglar, or a fox after the chickens. Sadie keeps on barking out her message, and I find myself smiling. It’s almost as if she were in my room, thumping her tail on the floor, telling me she’s here, it’s all right, she’s not going to let anything hurt me.
Suddenly I’m very tired. What’s my window doing open? I close it, fasten the catch, and tumble into bed.
“Goodnight, Sadie,” I say. “It’s all right now, I’m safe in bed, you can stop barking. But thank you anyway…” As if Sadie really can hear me, the barking dies away. I snuggle deep under the duvet, and fall into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#ulink_78f3663e-c144-51e3-9acd-15c6478bd859)
Wake up, Sapphire. Wake up. It’s important. You’ve got to remember.
Who said that?
White wall, bedroom wall. I’m awake, or I think I am. It’s early. Mum hasn’t gone to work yet, I can hear her downstairs.
Inside my head everything slides into place. Yes, something happened last night. The sea was talking to me but then Sadie started barking and the sea’s voice went away. And an owl flew past too. It came so close that if I’d leaned out of the window I could have touched its feathers. And it turned and looked at me. Its eyes reminded me of something… but I can’t remember what, now.
I’m sitting rigid, upright in bed. It wasn’t a dream, it was real and it was important, even though I don’t understand what it meant. I’ve got to tell Conor.
It’s hard work waking Conor. He keeps fighting his way back under the duvet.
“Go WAY, Saph. Nogonnagerrup—”
But I’m brutal. I drag the duvet right off him and when he rolls over to the wall I haul him back.
“WhassMAAERSaph?”
“Conor, something really important’s happened. You’ve got to wake up.”
At last words penetrate the fog of Conor’s sleep. He says clearly, “Go away. I’m asleep.”
“How can you be asleep when you’re talking to me?”
Conor groans. “Go AWAY, Saph. Just cause you want to get up at dawn—”
“The sea was calling to me last night. It was saying my name. The sea’s got a voice, Conor! I think it was saying my name in Mer, and guess what, I understood!”
Conor’s eyes fly open. “What?”
“Moryow were calling me.”
“What? What did you say? Who are Moryow?”
“Did I say that?”
“Don’t you even know what you said?”
Suddenly the meaning of the word opens up in my mind.
“Moryow are the seas of the world,” I tell Conor.
“You’re making this up, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not, I swear and promise. Moryow came close last night, as close as they can. But Sadie wouldn’t let me hear the voice any more… and I think the owl stopped it too.”
Conor props himself up on his elbows. He looks rumpled and worried.
“It was a dream, Saph. It must have been.”
“It wasn’t. I definitely heard a voice. It was as clear as yours, and it was calling me.”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was some weirdo.” He shivers. “Thank God you didn’t go.”
“But I would have done. It was only Sadie barking that stopped me.”
“Jack’s house is more than two miles away. How would Sadie barking from there have stopped anything?”
“I know, but the barking was close, as if Sadie was in my room. I could hear the lev of the Moryow, then the lev of Sadie hid it.”
Conor flops back on his bed. “This is all so crazy. Moryow – lev – I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s not crazy, Con. Listen. I think it only sounds crazy when you try to understand it all in a – well, in a human way.”
“Which other way can I look at it? I’m human. And so are you.”
“But imagine if I could speak full Mer, and talk to everything in Ingo. Maybe I’m beginning to learn the language.”
Conor suddenly stops being angry with me.
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you, Saph. It’s just that it’s really really, scary to have a sister who suddenly starts speaking a different language. It makes you seem like a stranger.”
“How could I ever be a stranger to you, Conor! We’re broder and hwoer.”
Conor clasps his head in his hands. “Saph, stop it. And whatever happens, if you hear a voice like that again in the middle of the night, don’t follow it. You mustn’t do what it tells you to do. Swear and promise.”
“I can’t—”
“You must.”
“But Conor, don’t you understand? Promises made in this world only cover this world. I can’t promise here for what I might do in Ingo.”
