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“Up on the moor,” she says. “I’ll take my things off in the shed and then we’ll go in.”
People say strange things about Granny Carne’s home, but they don’t say them aloud and they don’t say them in front of children. But we know it all anyway. Nobody says they believe in witches these days, but whether you say you believe or not, it doesn’t alter what’s there. It’s probably dark and a bit creepy in the cottage. I’m glad Conor’s here with me.
Granny Carne emerges from the shed in her usual shabby old clothes that make her look like part of the moor.
“I made a honey cake, seeing as you were coming,” she goes on, taking us in. Inside, it’s not at all as I’d imagined. The downstairs is all one room, clean and white and bare, like a cave. It is cool and calm, with all the things in it you need and none that you don’t. A strong wooden table that looks as if you could dance on it without breaking it, wooden chairs with red cushions, a smooth dark floor.
“Sit down.”
There’s a sticky-topped honey cake on a blue plate. There are three mugs, ready for tea, and a blue pitcher of water with three glasses. One for her, one for Conor, one for me. Did she really make that honey cake because we were coming? Did she put out those three glasses before we arrived? She can’t have known. We only just decided to come this morning. Maybe she saw us climbing up the hill, from a long way off? But no, if she was tending the bees, she couldn’t have been here in the cottage at the same time, making cake and setting the table.
“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.”
“No, he wasn’t married, but he had a girl,” says Granny Carne. “He was in love with Annie, before the mermaid called to him. She was carrying Mathew’s baby when he disappeared. Annie gave the baby Mathew’s name, even though he’d left her and people were saying he’d betrayed her. It’s that little baby Mathew who carried the Mer blood down and gave you the inheritance.
“Poor Annie, how she loved Mathew Trewhella,” goes on Granny Carne, as if she can see it all before her, clear and real as the honey cake on the table in front of us. “She would have fought the Zennor mermaid tooth and nail, and won Mathew back, if they’d met as equals. But she wasn’t just fighting the Zennor mermaid. She was fighting the old Mer blood in Mathew, that wanted to be away in Ingo.”
I stare at Granny Carne. The way she talks about all these long-ago people makes me shiver.
“So you’re saying that the story’s true? That Annie’s baby is our ancestor?” asks Conor.
“Of course he is. How could it be otherwise?” asks Granny Carne harshly. “No more now. No more. I’m tired.”
She looks tired. Not strong and tall any more, but empty and grey, as if the colour of life has poured out of her. She huddles back in her chair, shuts her eyes and takes a few deep breaths, then with her eyes still closed, she says in a low monotone that is almost like a chant: “But you’ve got a choice too. No inheritance can force you to accept it. You are the ones who choose. Salt water or sweet water.”
“But we need to know—” I’m burning with impatience. Granny Carne has got to tell us more. Away in Ingo – why did she use those exact words?
“Granny Carne, you’ve got to tell us more—”
“Got to? Got to, my girl?” Granny Carne’s eyes flash amber. She fixes me with a gaze so stern that I flush red and drop my eyes. Her eyes blaze amber, like an owl’s eyes when it sees its prey. “Never throw a gift back to the giver, don’t you know that? Cut the cake now. Conor, open the damper on my stove. That kettle’s slow to boil.”
And we know she won’t say one more word about Mathew Trewhella or the mermaid or Ingo or any of it. I pick up the knife to cut the cake, and the scent of honey and ginger makes my mouth water.
Granny Carne won’t talk, but she can’t stop me thinking. The olden-days Mathew Trewhella, the one in the story, he never came home. Is that what he really wanted? Or did he decide in a split second to follow the mermaid, without realising that he could swim down that stream with her, but he’d never be able to swim back up it again? How did he feel when he knew there was no going back, ever?
How hard it must be to make such a choice. You’d be pulled from both sides, until you felt you were going to be torn apart. Choose Annie, or choose the Zennor mermaid. Choose home and family, or the love he wanted to follow. Maybe it was Annie who slashed the wooden belly of the carved mermaid. Maybe she hated her that much.
Have I got to choose too? The question beats in my head like the sound the waves make when they rush up on to the sand, and drain away. Swash and backwash, that’s what it’s called. Dad told me. He said, Isn’t it wonderful to think, Saph, that all the time we’re alive those waves are beating on the shore, just as our hearts are beating in our bodies. It never stops. And when our hearts stop beating, the waves will still be coming in and out, the same as ever, until the world ends.
“I think you’ve cut enough of that cake now,” says Granny Carne. I look down in surprise at the slices lapping over the white plate, beautifully neat and even. I didn’t realise I’d cut so many. The honey cake is sticky and golden, studded with pieces of crystallised ginger. Granny Carne makes tea, and we all sit round the table. Conor and I talk to Granny Carne about Sadie, and how Jack’s mum had said we could have her a year ago, and Jack didn’t mind because they already had Poppy and Jasper. But Mum thought it would make too much work, with her having to get a job in St Pirans.
“But it’s you that really wants Sadie, Saph,” Conor says, to my surprise.
“You do too.”
“Not as much as you. I like her, but she’d be your dog, if she came.”
“Would you mind?”
“No. It’d be good. I wouldn’t have to worry about you when you were at home on your own.”
“I wouldn’t ever be on my own, if I had Sadie.”
Granny Carne says nothing much, just fills cups and plates. Later she tells us about a bull terrier with one eye that she had once, years ago, and how she’s never had a dog since he died, because she didn’t want to replace him. I wonder how many centuries ago that was? I think.
“What’s so funny, Saph?”
“Nothing. Granny Carne, can I have a bit more cake?”
Conor has three slices, and I have two. It’s one of the best cakes I’ve ever tasted, moist and light and meltingly sweet. My stomach is warm and full and I feel drowsy. I could sit here for hours, chatting over tea. You could almost believe that Granny Carne is just like any other old lady who lives alone and remembers you when you were a baby, and knows everything about everyone in the village, and keeps a delicious cake ready in a tin, in case someone comes.
A bee knocks against the window, buzzing. Granny Carne goes to the window, opens it a crack and tells the bee to go away, she’ll be up later. The bee flies off at once, up into the blue, as if it understands.
“They like to know what’s going on,” Granny Carne explains. “You always have to tell the bees. If there’s a birth or a death, you tell them before you give the news to anyone else, and then they’re satisfied.”
Yes, you could almost believe that Granny Carne is just like any other old lady who lives alone. But not quite.
“Could I visit the bees?” asks Conor abruptly. I stare at him in surprise.
“You want to talk to my bees?” says Granny Carne.
“Yes. If that’s OK.”
Granny Carne gets up, and stands tall as a queen, considering Conor. She says nothing more, but after a long moment she turns and walks out of the cottage door.
“I think she’s angry,” I say nervously. “I wish you hadn’t asked. They’re her bees.”
“She’s not angry,” says Conor calmly. “She’ll be back in a minute.”
He’s right. Granny Carne comes back in with her beekeeping clothes over her arm.
“I keep them out in the shed,” she says. “Bees don’t like the smell of houses. Now then, Conor.”
She hands him a pair of baggy white trousers and a beekeeper’s smock. Conor pulls them on over his jeans and T-shirt.
“My boots will be too small for you, but you’ll be all right with your trainers. Tuck the trousers in so the bees can’t crawl on to your skin. They don’t want to sting, since it’s death to them, but if they find themselves trapped in your clothes they’ll panic. Now the hat.”
