“Not this time,” says Conor. “We come with a message from one of your sisters, who stayed on the other side of the world when her daughter left to escape the sickness. What’s her name, Saph?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I call the whale my dear friend, but I don’t even know her name. “You know I’ve always just called her ‘the whale’…”
“Not particularly helpful, Saph,” says Conor aside to me. “Quick, say something that’ll make them recognise her.”
My mind is blank. She is huge and gentle, and she calls me “little barelegs” and she says I please her. These whales won’t want to hear any of that. “She – um – she …”
“You seem to know very little about our sister,” observes the sperm whale coldly, “even though you claim to come with a message from her.”
“She …” Light breaks on my mind. “She tells jokes! That’s what she does. She tells lots of jokes.”
“Tell me one of them.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t. They’re too – too.” I hesitate, torn between the truth and loyalty to my friend. “Too what?” demands the whale.
“Too – well, they’re too bad, really. They’re not funny at all. They’re the kind of jokes you try to forget.”
“Saph,” groans Conor. Already the whale’s body has started to move. She’s going to crush us against another whale. We won’t be able to stop her. Conor will be killed because of me.
Quivers run through the whale’s body.
“Con!” I grab hold of him. I’ve got to protect him. He’s only here because of me. The water billows. The whale’s trembling grows stronger. A rumble begins somewhere deep under her blubber. It grows stronger. Tremors ripple under the scarred, hoary cliffs of her sides. The cavern of her mouth opens and waves of sound rush into the water, deafening us as we cling together.
“Conor!” In the distance I can hear the dolphins filling the water with desperate calls to us. The water shakes and we are thrown from side to side.
“Saph! Saph!” Conor’s hands grab my shoulder. “It’s OK! It’s all right! They’re laughing.”
“Laughing!”
The thunderous belly noise swells from one whale to the next. They are moving apart a little now. There’s free water between the whales and the vast bodies with their box-shaped heads are all quivering and booming with … Yes, Conor’s right. It’s not a roar of anger. They’re laughing. All of them except the baby, and he’s swinging his head from side to side eagerly, as if he wants to find out where the joke is.
At last the whale closest to us calms down enough to speak.
“It is our sister. You describe her truly. She has not changed.”
“Were you laughing because you remembered one of her jokes?” I ask hesitantly. Relief floods me, although I can’t quite believe that we’re safe
“No, my child. You know my sister and that it is impossible to laugh at the jokes she tells. We are laughing because we are happy. Our sister is alive and has sent us news of herself. That dolphin was speaking the truth. You are a new kind of creature that we have never met before. Your shapes are human, but your hearts are whale’s hearts.”
Conor is back beside me. “Just as well they’re not really,” he murmurs in my ear. “A whale’s heart is twice as big as a man.”
“Shut up, Con, my hands are still shaking.”
“That’s nothing. Look at my knees knocking together.”
“Now, let us talk,” booms the whale magisterially. “We are all hungry for news of our sister. Her daughter is hunting in the Deep, but she will return soon to feed her baby. Imagine what happiness she will feel.”
But when the whale’s daughter does at last return, she doesn’t seem to feel quite so much happiness as the rest of the pod expects. She goes straight to her baby and we hear her mutter irritably, “I can’t think about anything else until I’ve fed him.” After the calf has fed she fusses over him for a long time. It’s as if she doesn’t want to talk to us. The other whales are obviously taken aback and disappointed that their wonderful surprise isn’t working. They keep whispering to Conor and me about how stressful life is for new mothers, and they hope we’ll understand. I mutter as if I do, and Conor just looks embarrassed.
At last the whale’s daughter finishes being busy and swims slowly towards us with her calf at her side. The other whales have already told her that we know her mother. She doesn’t even greet us (too stressed and busy for that, obviously).
“How do you know my mother?” she asks abruptly.
“She helped me in the Deep the first time I went there – when I was lost. And then she took all of us back to the Deep to defeat the Kraken. We’d have died if she hadn’t rescued us. She carried us to safety inside her mouth. She was amazing …” Words pour out of me eagerly. I want her daughter to know just how amazing her mother has been.
“Inside her mouth,” repeats the whale’s daughter. The other whales’ tails start to swing. I’m afraid they’ll begin lobtailing, but luckily they subside.
“We have heard that the Kraken woke.”
“News came to us.”
“We did not know of our sister’s action.”
“My mother should never have gone anywhere near that Kraken,” snaps the whale’s daughter. “It was a terrible risk for her to take.”
“She wanted to help us.”
“Help humans? I wish humans would help us.”
“I mean, help Ingo.”
“Hmm. From what you say my mother put herself in danger quite unnecessarily. She’s a grandmother now. She should be thinking about her family. I don’t know why she’s getting mixed up with humans.”
“Sister,” remonstrates one of the other whales.
“Why pretend?” demands the whale’s daughter angrily. “When have humans ever brought us anything but death and misery?”
I am seething at the way the whale’s daughter speaks of her mother. What right has she got to be so critical? But I’ve got to be careful. Conor and I are still surrounded by the whales, and I don’t want them getting angry again.
“Your mother will be glad to have news of you. She misses you very much,” I say, trying to change the subject away from humans.
“I know how my mother feels, thank you very much.” The calf has been edging out to take a good close look at us, but the whale’s daughter nudges him back into place protectively. “As if I need humans to tell me about my own mother,” she goes on in one of those mutters that is meant to be heard.
She is jealous. I realise it in a flash that makes everything clear. The whale sent her daughter away to the other side of the world so she’d be safe, but still it must have felt terrible. She lost her mother. My dear friend doesn’t even know that she’s a grandmother yet. And I come here saying to her daughter how kind the whale has been, and how she’s helped us and looked after us and even rescued us. Of course she is jealous. I can’t really blame her.
“Your calf is beautiful,” I say.
“I don’t know about that. He’s certainly hard work,” says the whale’s daughter with proud grumpiness. The calf butts against her, looking up, and she looks down into his eyes. It’s obvious that she thinks he is the most beautiful creature in the world.
“Can I tell your mother about him?”
“I suppose so. Tell her …”
I wait. At last the whale’s daughter says in a quite different voice, “Tell my mother I was thinking of her when he was born.”
It’s a long time before the whales will let us leave. Each of them has a message for our whale, and I have to keep repeating them to be sure I’ve got them clear. After that they start giving us advice about the best route home. One whale thinks it’s best for us to take the Deep Current, then another argues that our bodies will never be able to stand the pressure. A third suggests we go due south, then we will be able to catch a current that will sweep us past the Southern Land – which I suppose means the Antarctic. More and more voices break in, all making sugge
stions and all contradicting one another. My head feels as if it’s about to burst with advice.
“Which route do you use?” Conor asks.
Silence. Maybe they don’t want to tell us. At last one of them says, “We are happy here. The hunting is good.”
I hide a smile. The whales remind me of people who watch loads of travel programmes and can tell you everything about foreign places, but never go there themselves. Dad used to call them sofa travellers. The whale’s daughter has travelled, though – she came all the way from the other side of the world. She’s feeding the baby again, and it’s clear she doesn’t want to take part in the discussion. She never wanted to travel after all. She was forced to leave her mother, and her home.
At last the whales seem ready to let us go. Each of them says farewell to us in turn, formally. Just as we are about to swim off, the first whale we spoke to swings her head in our direction again. “You have friends among humans,” she says.
“Yes,” I reply.
The whale pauses, as if it’s hard to put into words what she wants to say.
“Do you know the humans who power the ships that hunt us?”
“No! No, I told you, we’ve got nothing to do with them!” The whale sighs.
“We thought perhaps you might speak for us. Remember us, when you are back among humans.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Faro’s lips are tight and his face stormy. He blames himself bitterly for pearl diving with Elvira while I was in danger.
“But I’m fine, Faro. Really fine.”
“I was a fool ever to let you go. I forgot what our deubleks know. We are stronger together than apart. If the whales had hurt you, little sister, I could never have forgiven myself.”
It doesn’t matter what I say, he keeps brooding over it. I hate to see Faro so unhappy.
“Leave him,” whispers Seiliko.
“But I want to make him feel better.”
“He feels what he feels. Sapphire, I think I know your recognition pattern now.”
“Really? Do you?”
I’m intensely curious, and a bit flattered. I never thought I’d have a recognition pattern, like a dolphin. And then I remember that Seiliko told me she would know my recognition pattern by the end of our journey. “Seiliko, you aren’t going to leave us!”
“No, Sapphire. You are going to leave me.”
So often I come to love someone and then they go away. Now Seiliko’s going.
“Don’t you want to know your recognition pattern, Sapphire?” asks Seiliko.
“I suppose so. I mean, yes, of course I would,” I answer. I can’t summon up much enthusiasm now.
Seiliko doesn’t seem to notice. “Then I will tell you,” she says. In spite of myself I feel a prickle of interest. I can’t help hoping it will be something good, like Seiliko’s own recognition pattern. I would love to be first in understanding the water – or first in anything, really …
“Friend of Ingo,” says Seiliko as if I should be thrilled and impressed.
My moment of expectancy dissolves. Friend of Ingo! Is that all? It sounds so – so weak somehow. So nothing. As if all that’s recognisable about me is that I’m not an enemy. I can’t see why Seiliko thinks I’ll be pleased.
“Oh.”
“Sapphire, you do not understand,” says Seiliko severely. “The pattern honours you. We dolphins honour you for it.”
“Oh. I mean … Well, thanks, Seiliko.”
“There is no need to thank me,” says Seiliko rather haughtily. I’ve clearly ruined a moment that she’s been looking forward to. I lean forward on her neck and embrace her. “Seiliko, I’m sorry. I can’t think of anything better than being Ingo’s friend. I’ve always tried to be.”
“I forget sometimes how human you are,” says Seiliko. She sounds mollified, so I decide to ignore that fact that she’s also being rather patronising. We’ve drawn ahead of the others, as usual.
“Soon you will leave me,” she repeats.
“Are you sure you can’t come with us?”
“No. It is decided. You will travel with other dolphins. We dolphins want to help you. You have braved the ice of the North, and journeyed many thousands of miles to what you call the bottom of the world. Because you are a friend of Ingo, Sapphire, we have agreed to send you home on a flight of dolphins.”
“But Seiliko, four dolphins can’t take us halfway round the globe. It’s impossible. They’d be exhausted.”
“You are right. You do not understand a flight of dolphins, and why should you? We do not turn our speed to human use, or even for the use of the Mer. We use flight only when there is urgent news to be taken on a long journey.”
“But what do you mean, Seiliko? Dolphins don’t ever fly, surely.” I’m half prepared to believe that perhaps they do, and that this is yet another of the mysteries of Ingo. Dolphins flying! It would be awesome.
“We borrowed the word from the birds that spend weeks on the wing without ever stopping to rest. The swifts and swallows travel fast, but we travel faster – much faster. Each group of dolphins who carries you will send out a message when it begins to tire, and the strongest dolphins who hear it will rush to meet them. When they tire, the next group will come to carry you. Even if a dolphin flight dives through a shoal of sprats, we will not stop to feed. We dolphins know the currents as not even the Mer know them. No current is too strong for us to enter it. Sapphire, you will discover why it is called a flight of dolphins! You will go faster than Mer or human have ever travelled in Ingo.”
Her excitement makes my blood tingle. It’ll be like a relay race, and we’ll be the batons that are handed from one group of dolphins to the next. Imagine a race like that, on dolphins, riding on currents so strong and fast that the water blurs. Faster than anyone has ever travelled in Ingo. Wait until I tell the others …
A disturbing thought crosses my mind. I must not tell it to Seiliko: it would be throwing her generosity in her face. “I’m so grateful, Seiliko,” I say quickly. I look round and there’s Faro, his body sealed against the dolphin he rides on, his long hair streaming through the water. I’ll talk to the others. They’ll understand.
Faro and Elvira can’t understand what I’m worried about. Seiliko has left us now, with the other dolphins who have brought us this far. She’s promised that the first relay of dolphins will be with us at dawn. Faro seized on the idea of the dolphins helping us straightaway, and so did Elvira. Conor was like me. He was afraid that when we returned, Saldowr might ask us, “Did you truly complete the Crossing?”
“And I wouldn’t know how to answer,” Conor said. Faro became impatient. He said that the only thing that mattered was to cross Ingo, and prove to Ervys that he hadn’t defeated us. Elvira backed Faro. We seemed to be arguing for hours. At last, when we were all exhausted, Conor challenged Faro.
“You’re Mer. The Crossing of Ingo is a Mer thing, not a human one. We have to trust you. Can you swear to us that it’s right to travel with the dolphin flight?”
Faro threw back his head proudly. “You do not understand how greatly the dolphins have honoured your sister. I will swear,” he said. “I know that we must defeat Ervys, or his following will grow until it splits Ingo like an earthquake under the sea bed. We must seize every chance of help that we’re offered. Do you think I would agree to it if it were laziness or cowardice? No. The dolphins’ offer brings hope for Ingo.”
I was so impressed by this that it surprised me when Conor probed further. “What will you swear on, Faro?”
Faro’s gaze moved to me. He smiled, swam to my side and took my hand. He lifted our joined hands high, and deublek touched deublek.
“I swear by this,” he said. “The deublek that binds me to your sister and makes each of us stronger than if we were alone.”
Conor nodded. “Then I accept what you say. But Saph’s decision is what counts. Seiliko chose her. What do you say, Saph?”
“I accept it. We’ll go with the dolphins.”
&nb
sp; It seems a long time until the arrival of dawn, and the first dolphins. No one sleeps much. I want to tell Conor about Mum but I don’t, because I’m sure that he’ll say it was a dream. I’m beginning to believe it was a dream myself. And yet what Mum told me had the feel of truth. It made sense of so many things. And I keep thinking of the tenderness in her voice when she called me “lovely girl”.
How huge the stars are down here at the bottom of the world! We’re resting just a few metres below the surface and it’s so calm I can see the constellations clearly. I try to remember how long the stars have been there. To them, all our generations must look like less than a day.
It’s comforting to think of the stars. I’m not really afraid of being dead, but I’m afraid of dying. It must hurt so much to die. I’m afraid that Ervys has set the sharks to watch out for us again and more and more of the Mer will have gone over to Ervys’s side. The last thing they want is for us to return. They’ll be hoping that we’ve been trapped in the ice or caught in a net like that dolphin. What will they do when we come back and they realise that in spite of our human blood, we’ve completed the Crossing of Ingo?
To calm myself I watch a shoal of tiny fish, like electric blue needles, shimmering about a thumb’s length from the surface. I don’t know what they’re doing – probably feeding. Most creatures in the world seem to be either hunting or being hunted, most of the time …
I must have fallen asleep. I wake to Conor gently shaking my shoulder. “Saph! Wake up! The dolphins have come.”
The water around us is ghost grey with dawn. Even the dolphins, solid and powerful as they are, don’t look quite real. Elvira is already mounted, and Faro too. Faro smiles across at me.
“Time to go, little sister.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I’m in the heart of Ingo. The dolphins are taking us somewhere human beings have never dreamed about. I’m sure that even Faro could never survive here, if he weren’t riding with the dolphins. The world outside the current goes by in a blur. We can’t see or hear or feel anything except the pressure of the current sweeping us along with it, and the strong, supple backs of the dolphins that carry us.