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“Come farther in, Sapphire!” he calls.
Now I see what you have to do. You have to swim until you’re where the current’s fastest, where you can feel the muscle of it all around you. And then lie there inside it like an arrow, as Faro’s lying. The pull is so strong that it doesn’t feel like pull at all. I only know how fast I’m going when I look down and see the ridged floor of the sand fall away as we rush into the deep.
“Yeee – hiiiii!” It’s Faro yelling, and then it’s me too, riding the back of the current as if it’s a wild horse, letting it twist me and turn me and spin me until I don’t know where we are or where we’re going. And I don’t care. All that matters is the ride. Faro’s standing upright on the current, balanced on the curve of his tail. I try to copy him but my legs won’t do what his tail does. I’ll try again—
“Rocks coming up! HOLD ON,” shouts Faro, and he swipes us sideways with his tail, and out of the current just before it rushes on to the underwater rocks and splits into a million threads of white.
“You didn’t look ahead,” Faro points out, as we hang suspended in the calm, gasping.
“Can’t look – not when going so fast—”
“Hmm. Slow human reactions. Better not get into any currents without me for the time being. They like to play rough.”
“I think I’ll keep out of currents altogether.”
“Don’t be stupid, Sapphire, how’re you going to travel without surfing currents? You need to know them, that’s all. They follow their own patterns, but you can learn them. Every current has its own path, but sometimes they come close and you can hop from one to another. That’s how you make the longest journeys. Once you’ve learned to current-hop, we can really travel. Elvira’s taking Conor to the Lost Islands next—”
He breaks off, as if he’s said something he didn’t mean to say.
“Who’s Elvira?”
“I told you. My sister. She’s around here somewhere.”
“Can I see her?”
“Maybe. She’s talking to the sunfish with Conor. We keep telling the sunfish they can go farther north now that the water’s grown warmer, but they won’t believe it. They think this isn’t their territory. Sunfish are stubborn, and they have long memories. They still remember when it was the Age of Ice here.”
“You mean the Ice Age? Faro, they can’t possibly remember that. The Ice Age was thousands and thousands of years ago,” I say confidently. It’s good to know something that Faro doesn’t, for once.
“Fish don’t keep their memories in their heads like you do.”
“Where do they keep them?”
“In the shoal. Obviously the shoal keeps changing as the sunfish get born and die, but the memory stays in the shoal and every sunfish can access it.”
Then I catch up with something else that Faro’s just said.
“Did you say that Conor was talking to the sunfish? It wasn’t just Elvira talking to them? You mean that Conor’s learned their language?”
“I wouldn’t say he’s exactly speaking it yet. Elvira’s trying to teach him.”
“Faro, how many times has my brother been here? With… with Elvira?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Faro carelessly. ‘A few. You do ask a lot of questions, Sapphire. Conor’s just the same. It must be a human thing. Come on, let’s find another current to surf.”
And we do. Current after current after current. Riding and rising and skimming and swooping and falling and starting again. Little playful currents that whisk you in circles. Powerful ones that pull you for miles. And far, far out, way beyond where we are, there are the Great Currents. Faro says he’ll take me there one day. But not yet. I need a lot more practice before I can surf the Great Currents. They are too strong and wild for me yet.
“Has Conor surfed them?”
“No.”
The strange thing is that I’m no longer anxious about Conor. I’ve nearly forgotten that the whole reason I’m here is that I had to find him and bring him home. I haven’t quite forgotten; it’s there somewhere in the back of my mind, like the daytime world when you’re in the middle of a dream. But it doesn’t seem to matter all that much. Conor’s fine. He’s safe with Elvira, talking to the sunfish. All that really matters is the rush of the currents, the tingle of flying water – again, again, again. I don’t want it ever to stop.
But just as we slide off a tricky little current that Faro says goes too near the Great Currents for safety, I look up. Between me and the skin of the surface a huge shape hangs. A shape that I’ve known all my life, although this is the first time I’ve ever seen one.
Wide jaw, gaping. Body as long as a helicopter. Fins, tail—“Faro!” I whisper, afraid it might pick up the vibration of my voice through the water. “Faro, there’s a shark!”
Faro flips on his back, stares up. The shark hangs above us. Its jaws are spread wide, waiting for something. Or someone.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_a9dba67b-92ab-51e1-89c3-9e0f601ad643)
“I know,” says Faro. He lies on his back, sculling with his hands, watching the shark. “She’s been here a lot this season. This is a good feeding ground for her.”
I’m still shivering with shock. How can he be so relaxed? “But Faro, it’s a shark.”
“You don’t need to be scared of her. She’s a little-feeder.”
As if she’s heard him, the shark slowly turns her great head. She’s seen us.
“She can smell us,” says Faro. He’s watching the shark carefully, but he still doesn’t seem worried.
“What do you mean, Faro? What’s a little-feeder?”
“Watch her.”
I watch as the shark points her head forward again, jaw wide, and advances very slowly, swinging her whole body from side to side in the way an elephant swings its trunk. With her mouth open like that, she looks as if she’s hoovering the sea.
“She’s feeding,” says Faro. “Everything goes into her mouth. Her throat acts as a sieve. Most of the stuff she eats is so small you can’t see it.”
“You mean, like plankton?”
“Plankton. Whatever. You Air People have a word for everything, don’t you? Especially for things you don’t know much about. It takes a long time to get to know a shark. Keep still, Sapphire! Sharks don’t like being disturbed. And don’t stare too hard. She can sense when she’s being watched. Lucky for you she’s not a seal-feeder.”
“But Faro, sharks that eat seals don’t come here. There aren’t any dangerous sharks in Cornish waters.”
But as I say it, a shiver of memory runs over my skin. There was something about sharks on TV a while ago. A fisherman thought he’d seen a Great White, two miles off Newquay. He claimed that he’d found a half-eaten seal in his net. No other creature but a shark could have torn into a seal like that, he said, and the camera showed how the seal’s belly had been ripped away. I’d wished that Dad was there, so I could ask him whether it really could have been a Great White. Dad would have known.
I had forgotten about the Great White shark off Newquay.
Until now.
“When you say ‘seal-feeder’,” I ask Faro, “does that mean the same as a Great White?”
“How should I know all your Air names? Seal-feeders eat seals. Sometimes they’ll hear you and sometimes they won’t, so it’s best to keep away from them.”
“Do they ever hurt you?”
“I told you. You can’t predict what a seal-feeder’s going to do. They do what they want, so you have to keep out of their way. Sometimes they can’t hear that we’re Mer. They want to hear that we’re seals, because they’re hungry or because they feel that way. And they’re very fast, not like her up there.”
The shark above us swings her head again. The gape of her mouth shines wide. Even though Faro says she’s a little-feeder, she’s still a shark—
“She heard us,” says Faro sharply. “She doesn’t like us talking about her. Let’s go.”
Faro jackknifes into a dive. When we’re a long way from the shark, we slow down and I ask him, “Why do we have to be so careful? You said she wouldn’t hurt us. You said she only eats little sea creatures like plankton.”
“I don’t know how you humans ever get anything done, you ask so many questions.” Faro does two perfect somersaults, head over tail, head over tail. “She’s got cousins all over the place,” he says casually, flicking back his hair. “You don’t want to offend a shark, Sapphire, not even a little-feeder like her. Sharks may not be very clever, but they’ve got long, long memories, and they stick together. They’re terrible for holding a grudge. You’ve got to remember that sharks are fish. I told you, fish share their memories. They never forget a place where they can find food, and they never forget an insult.”
“I thought she looked very intelligent,” I say loudly, and Faro laughs.
“If we meet any more sharks, I’ll let you do the talking,” he says sarcastically.
“Well, at least I noticed the shark.” I feel triumphant. I may have ‘slow human reactions’, but I saw the shark first. “You didn’t see her until I pointed her out, even though she was right above us.”
“Oh, didn’t I?” asks Faro. He rolls lazily in the water. “Of course, we Mer aren’t very observant, compared to Air people like you. You even put air on your backs and come down and peer around.”
“Do you mean divers?”
Faro shrugs. “Air people dressed in black, with air on their backs. It’s bad to bring Air into Ingo. They shouldn’t do it.”
“Ingo?” My heart thuds. I have the strangest feeling, as if I know that word better than I know anything else in the world. But it’s hazy, distant. There’s a part of my mind I can’t reach while I’m underwater. “Faro, what is Ingo?”
“Don’t you know that? I thought you knew so much. Ingo is where we are. Ingo is everything that doesn’t belong to the Air.”
“So am I – am I away in Ingo now?”
“Not all that far away,” says Faro in a voice that sounds as if he’s secretly laughing at me inside himself. “Just on the edge of it, maybe.”
“Ingo,” I repeat, tasting the sound of it in my mouth. “I’m in Ingo.”
“Those – those divers – they bring Air with them, so they can go down where they shouldn’t come. They poke around where they shouldn’t be,” goes on Faro. “Exploring, they call it. Spying, we call it. Trying to get into Ingo without going through the skin. Luckily they don’t see much. They don’t enter Ingo at all.”
“But they dive down here, don’t they? How can you say they don’t enter Ingo?”
Faro shrugs. “A stone drops into the water. That doesn’t mean that the stone is swimming. Divers come into the water, but that doesn’t mean they’re in Ingo. So, you saw the shark first, did you? Look around, Sapphire, and tell me what else you’ve noticed,” he challenges.
I peer through the water.
“Well, rocks – over there, look, sharp ones. I wouldn’t want to go near them. And there’s a fish! Just going out of sight, look, it’s a really big one.”
“Huge,” Faro agrees. “It must be at least as big as this,” and he puts his hands a few centimetres apart. “What else have you noticed?”
“Um – is that a current over there? And I think I saw something scuttling down on the sea bed just now – but it’s so far down, it’s hard to tell—”
“Anything else?”
“I noticed that shark, anyway. And you didn’t.”
“All right. My turn.” A rush of sound pours out of Faro’s mouth.
“Faro, I can’t understand—”
“I know you can’t. I’m not talking to you. I’m asking everyone who is here to come out where you can see them.”
The sea around us begins to thicken. Two grey seals slide by, twisting as they go. They turn to circle us, almost touching us. They have big eyes like retriever dogs, and they look as if they’re laughing. Their nostrils are closed tight and their whiskers are flattened against their muzzles. But how strong they are, how powerful. Their muscles ripple under their skin as they go by. A dazzling cloud of silver fish flickers in and out of my fingers. I shut my hand but they vanish between my · fingers like droplets of mercury.
I look to my left and there’s a huge flatfish, as big as our kitchen table, with one popeye goggling at me. One after another a raft of purple jellyfish floats past, tentacles drifting, their jelly skirts bellying in and out, in and out…
“So that’s how they move,” I whisper. Their tentacles are thick and snaky and have suckers all the way down – what if one of them whipped across my leg? They look as if they would sting. I scull backwards, out of range. The jellyfish sail on in a line, like battleships now, making for war.
“Look down there,” says Faro, and a giant spider crab appears out of a whirl of sand, and then another. Conor hates spider crabs. I can always frighten him by picking up a dead one on the shore and chasing after him with it, flapping its claws. But I wouldn’t touch one of these.
The sand settles and shows an angler fish, almost buried but for the shine of her lure. Dad caught one once when he was deep-sea fishing, and showed it to me. “It lives far out, on the sea bottom. They’re adapted to the dark. Just as well, poor creature, it’s ugly as sin. It wouldn’t want to see itself in the light.”
“Look up,” says Faro, and I see a soup of plankton shimmering in the light from the surface. And right above us there’s another shark, much smaller but the same shape as the other little-feeder. A shoal of tiny grey fish darts to the side, away from the sieving jaws. And that rock there – it’s covered with dog whelks, thickly striped. More fish flick past – and here’s a herd of sea horses riding the curve of Faro’s tail—
“It’s not fair. You made them come. All these creatures weren’t here when I was looking.”
“Not fair,” echoes Faro mockingly. “This isn’t a game we’re playing, Sapphire. All these creatures were here all the time. You weren’t looking, that’s all.” More of the liquid language pours from his mouth. Pure Mer, it must be. I wish I could speak that language. The seals nuzzle him and I think they’re speaking it too, but I can’t understand a word. Tail to tail, Faro and the seals look the same, sleek and shining and strong, with the herd of sea horses dancing around them…
I have a sudden fear that Faro’s going to disappear with them, leaving me alone, way out in the ocean, not knowing my way back—
“Faro, I think we should go back now.”
“Go back?”
“I’ve got to go home. It’s late.”
“Without Conor?”
Faro’s face is teasing. Suddenly I have the feeling that he knows something else I don’t. That Conor is close, like the seals and the jellyfish and the spider crabs. That if I looked in the right place, I would see him. Now.
I turn. Something flickers, nearly out of sight. I turn again, trying to catch whatever’s hiding. Come out, come out, wherever you are! Faro turns too, as if he knows exactly where to look. He stares deep into the water. He’s watching for something I can’t see. I think he’s going to call again, and I can’t guess what or who might come this time. But he doesn’t call.
“What a pity,” he says softly, after a while. “We’ve just missed them.”
“Who?”
“Conor and Elvira, of course. They were here, but they’ve gone.”
“Did Conor see me?” I feel as if Faro’s punched me. Conor was here. He was so close that Faro saw him, and he disappeared again, without me. Conor didn’t let me see him. Conor didn’t try to find me. He didn’t even call to me. But Conor’s my brother.
“He was with the seals. He missed you,” says Faro.
Conor was with the seals. Maybe Conor understands the language that was just sound to me.
“Does Conor speak pure Mer?”
Faro shakes his head.” No. Not yet. Nowhere near to it. He’s only just beginning. He’s like you, Sapphire, he doesn’t know anything.”
