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The Tide Knot
Helen Dunmore
The dramatic and spellbinding sequel to Helen Dunmore's critically acclaimed ‘Ingo’.“I can’t go back in the house. I’m restless, prickling all over. The wind hits me like slaps from huge invisible hands. But it’s not the wind that worries me. It’s something else, beyond the storm…”Sapphire and Conor can’t forget their adventures in Ingo, the mysterious world beneath the sea. They long to see their Mer friends Faro and Elvira, and swim with the dolphins once more.But a crisis is brewing far below the ocean’s surface, where the wisest of the Mer guards the Tide Knot. And soon both Sapphire and Conor will be drawn into Ingo’s troubled waters…
The TIDE KNOT
by
Helen Dunmore
Copyright (#ulink_32d8f072-ddd8-5765-8104-77e7d37dccc8)
HarperCollins Children’s Books An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
First published in hardback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2006 First published in paperback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2007
Copyright © Helen Dunmore 2006
Helen Dunmore asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007464111
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 9780007369294
Version: 2017-03-28
Dedication (#u31e358d8-d954-5a76-a762-d3c19e0eb0cf)
FOR ISSY CHEUNG
Contents
Cover (#uf0578e63-efa0-5301-b37f-07108cbbf490)
Title Page (#u0d68f74f-d731-51af-b13a-c49ccd1f6eda)
Copyright (#uc17da9fa-9c11-5f13-8dab-401b216de9de)
Dedication (#u57c34aa2-5a64-5e05-b48b-ae3add0cc6f2)
Chapter One (#u1c4c16d5-a33d-59ff-b8d3-a749321083ef)
Chapter Two (#u9093482a-3941-51af-a75d-285f39f29166)
Chapter Three (#u74045e5c-dcbf-50b3-aa9f-5d9307f05740)
Chapter Four (#u86dc4b0b-7cc1-52f9-96cd-a4a31a5e894b)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
Beyond the Book (#litres_trial_promo)
Spotlight on Helen Dunmore (#litres_trial_promo)
Dolphins Whistling (#litres_trial_promo)
Tides (#litres_trial_promo)
Dolphins (#litres_trial_promo)
Sperm Whales (#litres_trial_promo)
Travelling Fish (#litres_trial_promo)
Drowned Villages (#litres_trial_promo)
Have you Ever Wondered? (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
In this Series (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b97072a3-91f8-5443-a3a6-3773e0e42b95)
Ingo at night. It’s not completely dark, though. The moon is riding high, and there’s enough light to turn the water a rich, mysterious blue.
I am deep in Ingo, swimming through the moonlit water. Faro’s here somewhere, I’m sure he is. I can’t see him, but I’m not scared. There’s just enough light to see by. There’s a glimmer of rock – and a green and silver school of mackerel—
Imagine being lost underwater in total blackness. I’d panic. But it’s dangerous to panic in Ingo. You mustn’t think of the Air. You must forget that human beings can’t live underwater, and then you’ll find that you can.
Faro was here a moment ago, I’m sure of it. He’s keeping himself hidden, but I don’t know why. Even if it was totally dark, I expect he’d still be able to see me through the water. Faro is Mer, and he belongs here. Ingo is his home. And I’m human, and I don’t belong.
But it isn’t as simple as that. There’s something else in me: the Mer blood that came to me and my brother Conor from our ancestors. It’s my Mer blood that draws me to Ingo, beneath the surface of the water. I’d probably drown without my Mer blood – but it’s best not to think of that—
“Faro?” Nobody answers. All the same I know he is close. But I won’t call again. I’m not going to give Faro the satisfaction of thinking that I’m scared, or that I need him. I can survive in Ingo without him. I don’t need to hold on to him any more, the way I did last year when I first came to Ingo. The water is rich with oxygen. It knows how to keep me alive.
I swim on. This light is very strange. Just for a moment, that underwater reef didn’t look as if it was made from rock. It looked like the ruins of a great building, carved from stone thousands of years ago. I blink. No, it’s a reef, that’s all.
Why am I here in Ingo tonight? I can’t remember clearly. Maybe I woke up in the dead of night and heard a voice calling from the sea. Did I climb down the path, down the rocks to our cove, and then slip into the water secretly?
Don’t be so stupid, Sapphire. You don’t live in the cottage any more, remember? You’ve left Senara. You’re living in St Pirans, with Mum and Conor and Sadie. And Roger is never far away. How could you have forgotten all that?
So how did I get here? I must have come down to Polquidden Beach, and dived into Ingo from there. Yes, that was it. I remember now. I was in bed, drifting off to sleep, and then I felt Ingo calling me. That call which is so powerful that every cell of my body has to answer it. Ingo was waiting for me. I would be able to dive down and down and down, beneath the skin of the water, into Ingo. I would swim with the currents through the underwater world that is so strange and mysterious and yet also feels like home.
Yes, I remember putting on my jeans and hooded top, and creeping downstairs in the moonlight from the landing window. Stealthily unlocking the front door, and then running down to Polquidden Beach, where the water shone in the moonlight and the voice of Ingo was so strong that I couldn’t hear anything else.
And now I’m in Ingo again. Ever since we moved to St Pirans I’ve been trying to get back here, but it’s never worked before tonight. There’s too much noise in St Pirans, too many people, shops, cafés and car parks. But at night, maybe it’s different. Maybe the dark is like a key that turns the lock, and opens Ingo.
“Greetings, little sister.”
“Faro!”
I turn in a swirl of water and there he is.
“Faro! Where’ve you been? Why haven’t I seen you for so long?”
His hand grasps mine. Even in the moonlight, his teasing smile is the same as ever.
“We’re here now, aren’t we? Nothing else matters. Sapphire, I’ve got so much to show you.”
He lets go of my hand and backflips into a somersault, and then another and another until the water’s churning so fast I can’t see him at all. At last he stops in a seethe of bubbles, and grabs my hand again.
“Come on, Sapphire. Time to go. Night is the best time of all.”
“Why is it the best time of all, Faro?”
“Because at night you see things you can’t see by day.”
“What things?”
“You’ll see.”
We join hands. There’s a current racing ahead, the colour of the darkest blue velvet. We plunge forward. The current is so strong that it crushes me. I’m jolting, juddering, struggling in its grip, but I can’t break away. It’s got me, like a cat with a bird in its claws. It’s much too powerful for me, and it knows its own strength.
This is like the moment when you get on to the most terrifying ride of all at a theme park and you’re strapped in, helpless to escape. The ride begins to move and you see a mocking smile on the face of the attendants and you realise that they don’t care at all. But Ingo is no theme park where people lose their jobs if they kill the customers. Anything can happen here. If I die now, no one will ever know. They’ll only say that I drowned, like they said Dad drowned.
Don’t panic, Sapphire. Let the current take you where it wants. Wherever you go, you’ll be safe. Reassuring thoughts echo in my head and I’m not sure for a moment if they are my thoughts or Faro’s. Are we sharing our thoughts again, the way we did last summer? Relax, let the current take you. Don’t resist it, or you’ll get hurt. Jolts of force shake me. I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I can’t breathe—
Don’t ever think of breathing or not breathing. Air is another country and it means nothing here. Think of now. Think of Ingo. Here. Now.
The words beat in my head like a pulse. Here. Now. Let go of everything and see what comes to you. I’ve done it before, but it’s never been as hard as this. Ingo at night is so dark, so vast. Not a safe playground but a wild kingdom. You could so easily lose yourself here. A tingle of pure fear runs through my body. No, no, Sapphire, that’s not the way. Panic is making you deaf and blind.
I stop fighting. It feels like coming out of a cage. I am free and safe in the heart of the current. There’s Faro, a little way ahead of me. His tail gleams blue in the moonlight. I can’t see his face, or his hands, or any of him that seems human. Only the strong tail, like a seal’s tail, driving Faro through the water. We are travelling faster than I’ve ever dreamed of swimming, flying through Ingo in darkness.
By the time the current swerves away from us, throwing us off into calmer water, we must be miles and miles from land. I’m exhausted. It seems that even Faro’s tired, because he pulls my hand and we swim down and down to the sea bed. Here the sand is deeply ridged, and we sink into one of its sheltered hollows to rest. It is almost totally dark down here.
“Where are we, Faro?” My voice echoes strangely.
“Close to the Lost Islands.”
“Why are they lost?”
“They’re not all lost. Some of them still rise above the surface. There are still humans living there. But the largest islands came to us hundreds of years ago, in a single night.”
“Came to you? What do you mean? Was there a battle?”
“Yes, there was a battle, but not with guns or swords. The water rose and the islands fell to Ingo.”
“But, Faro, what happened to the people who were living there?”
“Some were lost,” says Faro with cool indifference. “Some took to their boats and made for the nearest islands that were still above water.”
“Why did the sea rise?”
“It was time for it to rise, I suppose,” says Faro. I can’t see his face clearly in the gloom, but his voice is maddeningly calm.
“Faro, please don’t talk like that. As if everything is – well – fate. We should be able to make things better. Change the future. Those islanders could have built a sea wall, couldn’t they, to keep the sea out? That’s what people do in Holland. They build dykes and ditches. They don’t drown. They’re brilliant engineers.”
“So I’ve heard,” says Faro thoughtfully. “They’re very obstinate, those people in Holland.”
