When Conor and I are awake, we talk about little things that happened on our journey, not about Dad. Dad never leaves my mind, and I know it’s the same for Conor. I can’t believe that I will never see him again. The worst thing is that there’s some kind of block in my memory. I can’t remember what Dad’s voice sounded like. Even when I try my hardest, I can’t see his face clearly. You wouldn’t think that could happen, would you, with your own father whose face is probably one of the first things you ever saw in your life? But when I try to picture him, everything is blurred, like the time I tried on Charlie Pascoe’s glasses in junior school. I haven’t asked Conor if he can remember what Dad looks like. It would sound too weird, and besides it makes me feel guilty that I can’t see Dad’s face, as if I didn’t love him enough.
Last night Conor told me that he still wanted to kill Ervys.
“But you have killed him,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, I know that, what I’m saying is I still want to, even though he’s dead. Crazy, isn’t it?”
“It’s not crazy at all. He killed Dad.”
“Mortarow killed Dad.”
“You know what I mean, Conor. Mortarow held the spear but it was Ervys who killed him.”
“God, I hate feeling like this. I just want to go home.”
Conor feels so guilty too, even though I keep telling him that he had no choice. If he hadn’t killed Ervys, Ervys would have killed him, and then probably the rest of us as well.
“I know all that, Saph. But I keep on thinking about what it felt like when I stabbed Ervys with the trident. It’s so hard to do it, Saph, even when you hate someone. He’s there in front of you, and he’s flesh and blood. It’s not like those films where the knife just slides in and someone’s dead and you walk away.”
“I know. Well, I don’t know, obviously, but …”
“I’m glad you didn’t have to kill anyone, Saph.”
“But I would have done if I’d had to, so it’s just as much my responsibility as yours.”
Conor shook his head. “It’s not. You know something, Saph – those guys who walk around thinking it’s so cool to carry a knife, I wish they could feel what I’m feeling now.”
“You’re not a criminal, Conor! You were incredibly brave. You had to do it. You didn’t fight Ervys for yourself, you did it for all of us.”
Conor shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Not maybe. Definitely.”
Conor wants us to go home as soon as we can, but I can’t face it yet. The thought of bursting through the skin of the water and taking a first breath of dry, harsh air feels like drowning in reverse. We’ve been so long in Ingo. It feels natural to be here.
The cuts and grazes that I got from the shark attack are starting to heal. Conor has bruises all over his arms and shoulders from the shaft of Ervys’s spear. Elvira said that the best thing was rest and sleep. Faro found us this hollow to rest in, protected by rocks on both sides, and sheltered by a swaying curtain of angel weed. The sand is fine and soft, and Faro has made us pillows of sea grass. He must have slipped mine under my head when I was asleep.
On the third morning, Faro comes to fetch us. We’re both awake. Conor is idly watching a starfish curling and uncurling its fingers. I’m lying still, feeling the water rock me gently.
“Saldowr asks you to come to his cave. He needs to talk to you.”
Conor groans. “Can’t we sleep a bit longer?” He rolls over and closes his eyes again.
“It’s only a short distance,” says Faro patiently. Normally he’d be angry if we didn’t rush to do Saldowr’s bidding. “Take my wrist, little sister, and I’ll swim for both of us.”
I shake my head. It’s not the effort of moving that bothers me. I just don’t want life to start up again yet. “I’m fine, Faro. I can swim.”
“At least the shark attack did not rip off your deublek.”
“No.” I look down at my wrist. It seems amazing that it is still there, and safe. It seems so long since we each cut a lock of our hair with the sharp edge of a shell. The strands seem to have grown into one another. I can’t tell which is my hair and which is Faro’s. They were pretty much the same colour to begin with. Faro said it would protect us. Well, it did; we’re both still alive.
“Don’t cry, Sapphire.”
“It’s all right, Faro, I’m not really crying. I’m so glad we’re still together. What if one of the four of us had been killed too …”
“But Conor says you will go back to the Air soon and rejoin the human world. We will no longer be together.”
A pang of alarm shoots through me. The thought of leaving Faro is like abandoning a part of myself.
“We have to go home,” says Conor. He stretches sleepily. “Just resting my eyes a minute,” he adds drowsily.
I can see that Faro’s about to snap that Saldowr needs us now.
“Yes, I need a minute too. I feel a bit weird,” I add hastily. With an impatient flick of his tail, Faro comes to my side. Conor’s eyes are already closing.
“Are you ill, Sapphire?” Faro demands.
“No. Just thinking about – you know – going home.” Home. I test the word in my mind. I don’t know how much time will have passed in the human world. It feels like years and years since we left, but it’s quite possible that half term is still going on and everybody still believes we are upcountry with our imaginary cousins.
But life will go back to normal. Mum and Roger will return from Australia. Sadie will come home from Granny Carne’s. (I can’t think about Sadie now. It makes me want to kneel down and put my arms around the soft, warm folds of her neck and never, ever let go.) I’ll go back to school. I’ll be with Conor, and then there are my friends – Rainbow – our cottage – everything …
Everything? That’s never going to be true. Even with Sadie in my arms, I’m going to feel empty in the human world. There’ll be no Faro. No whale. No dolphins. No Saldowr. No wild racing currents that you can catch whenever you want to. No freedom to journey across the whole world. My future here is just waiting for me to discover it. In Ingo, I’m at home. I belong. I am Saldowr’s myrgh kerenza. I’m my dear whale’s little barelegs. The Mer have a place for me – they respect me. Now that Ervys is dead, they dare to speak out. Faro has brought me message after message from Mer who were just waiting for him to be overthrown. They offer their sympathy, and thank us for what we’ve done. They say, “Now you are truly one of us, myrgh kerenza.”
It’s not that there aren’t dangers and difficulties here. It’s just that I feel part of everything. I’m not tormented by the longing to be elsewhere that comes over me so often when I’m “home” in the human world.
“I’m not sure about anything any more,” I say to Faro.
His face softens. “Shall I let you into my thoughts, Sapphire?”
“All right. No, Faro, maybe you’d better not,” I add hastily.
“Then I’ll tell you what’s in my mind. I don’t think I should call you ‘little sister’ any longer. You are not so little. And besides, you are not my sister!” Faro’s face sparkles. For a moment all the sadness and heaviness of our memories falls away. “And I think you never will be. Elvira and Conor are apart now.”
“I know.”
“But we are joined, Sapphire. I knew it the first time I saw you, and now I know it more than ever.” He smiles with a touch of mischief and a touch of triumph, but he’s not quite the old teasing Faro. He looks not exactly more serious, but more … purposeful. With a shock, I realise that soon he won’t be a boy any more, but a man.
“We belong to each other, Sapphire,” says Faro with such confidence that I can’t help smiling.
“Call me it one last time, Faro.”
“All right, little sister. And now it’s time to wake Conor, before Saldowr sends those guardian sharks to fetch us.”
“I heard Saldowr was re-educating them.”
“They certainly needed it.”
We’re in Saldowr’s cave. It
seems for ever since we were last here. Everything looks the same: the walls, the white sand, the soft filtered light from the entrance and the green glow of the sea worms which cling to the walls. Only Saldowr has changed. He swims to greet us, his body strong and youthful, his tail gleaming and seal-powerful. The wound he took when the Tide Knot broke has completely healed at last. Even his hair seems to be darkening as the grey loses its hold. Saldowr stretches his arms wide and his cloak flows back from his shoulders in an iridescent swirl. For a second he folds his arms around me, and I feel as if I’m held safe in a circle of power. He releases me, puts his hands on Conor’s shoulders and looks into his face.
“So you have completed the Crossing of Ingo,” he says, as if this were the first time he’d seen us since our return. No one has talked about the Crossing much these past few days. So much else has happened to crowd it out of our minds. It seems a hundred years since we swam under the ice.
Saldowr lets go of Conor’s shoulders, swims back a couple of strokes and studies our faces thoughtfully. This reunion with him is so different from everything I imagined when I looked forward to the end of the Crossing. No grand return cheered by thousands of Mer. No sudden, dramatic transformation. The battle overshadows everything. We can’t think about success or happiness when we see Ervys’s spear every time we shut our eyes.
“So, you’ve completed the Crossing of Ingo, my daughter,” says Saldowr. I jump, partly because I was miles away in my thoughts, and partly because of the word “daughter”.
“Human blood and Mer blood have crossed Ingo together, not divided, not separated, not fighting one another. You have brought great healing to Ingo.”
“Have we, Saldowr?” I ask dubiously.
“It looks as if we’ve brought war, not healing,” says Conor.
Faro’s eyes flash. “Saldowr sees farther than we can see! His understanding is as far beyond ours as the Deep is beyond the sunwater.”
“You need not defend me, Faro,” says Saldowr mildly. “Those are good questions and they require answers. Blood has been shed. Children have been left fatherless.”
I look away. I can only cope with Dad’s death if I think of it a little bit at a time, and not for long.
“I can’t console you for that,” goes on Saldowr. “All I can say is that you are children of Ingo too, and as much my son and daughter as Faro is my scolhyk and my holyer. No part of Ingo is closed to you now. Did you notice, when you were on your journey, that the human world remained sharp in your minds, as it has never done before while you were in Ingo?”
He is right. I’ve been able to relate one to the other, with both worlds alive and active in my mind. From Conor’s expression, I think he’s felt the same.
“Your Mer and human blood are no longer fighting within you,” says Saldowr. “You’re released from all that, as I hope Ingo and the world of Air will be one day. I told you long ago that Ingo needs you, and those like you, because you belong neither to one world nor to the other. You are the future; you are part of a change that has to come, although it is painful. Ervys scorned and hated your mixed blood, and wanted to destroy you because you were a threat to him. He made pure Mer blood his rallying call, and some of the Mer answered it. But never as many as he hoped.
“You have the freedom of these two worlds which you have joined together. That’s not to say there will be peace,” he adds quickly. “Nor is it to say that the work of reconciling Air and Ingo is finished. No.” He pauses, and an expression that I can’t read settles on his face. “The work has barely begun. But it has begun. It may be as small as the moment of conception in the belly of a whale, but it will grow.”
He smiles. A vision of my friend the whale flashes across my mind. I must find her. I must tell her about her daughter.
“But what about Faro?” asks Conor abruptly. “And Elvira? Are you saying they can move between two worlds as well as us?”
“You will have to ask them,” says Saldowr.
“I have no wish to explore the world of Air,” says Elvira. Her voice is as sweet and calm as ever, but now that I know her better I can hear the steely determination that’s in it too. “I want to go to the North, Saldowr.” I see Faro flinch, but Elvira carries straight on, “That is my destiny. My Atka has touched me and shown me my future. I can be truly myself, and I can become a great healer among the Mer of the North. I am sure that the North will welcome me.”
Well, no one could fault Elvira for lack of ambition. I steal a glance at Conor to see how he’s taking this. His hands are joined, with the thumbs pressed together, and his expression is faraway. I’m quite sure he’s not thinking of the North. I think – I’m almost certain – that I know whose face is in his mind.
Saldowr regards Elvira quizzically, but he doesn’t seem very surprised. “So you have found where you belong?” he asks her.
“Yes,” she says firmly.
“You will leave your brother behind, and all who love you.”
“I will take them with me in my heart,” says Elvira, even more firmly.
How can she say that? Does she think it’s that easy? Doesn’t she even know how much she’s hurting Faro?
Apparently not. Elvira looks radiant, and whatever Faro’s feelings are, he hides them well. Maybe I’m the only one who sees the shadow of pain in his eyes. I have the strangest feeling that in spite of all her healing knowledge, in spite of making the Crossing, Elvira still hasn’t really grown up. She still thinks that you can leave people behind, and not suffer for it.
“You will all visit me,” says Elvira, smiling around at us seraphically.
“But Conor will return to the human world,” says Faro. It’s a statement, not a question. Conor doesn’t contradict him, and Saldowr’s face remains neutral. A further question hangs in the air, but Faro doesn’t ask it, and I’m glad, because I still don’t know the answer. I wonder how much Saldowr knows, when he talks about the future. I know that he experiences time differently from us. He can move back and forward, as if time were a carpet, rolling and unrolling for him to walk on. Maybe there are many rolls, and many possible futures. Only one of them can unroll for us.
Suddenly we hear voices outside the cave. Saldowr raises his hand for silence and listens intently. After a few seconds his face relaxes. “Faro,” he says, “go to the entrance and ask Talek and his friends to come in.”
Talek! He was one of Ervys’s followers. Why is Saldowr allowing him inside his sanctuary? I don’t want to see the people who are responsible for Dad’s death. But, as usual, Faro obeys Saldowr’s order without question. He reaches the cave’s entrance with one thrust from his powerful tail. I hear low voices, then Faro moves aside. Mer figures stream into the cave. I recognise Talek, and the ones whom Faro called Teweth and Morlappyer. There are six or seven others whom I don’t know. More voices murmur outside the cave. The remainder of Ervys’s army is with us. Even though we’re under Saldowr’s protection, I can’t help feeling a shiver of fear.
“Welcome,” says Saldowr. Talek bows his head. The others shift uneasily, glancing at us. “Greetings, Talek, Teweth, Morlappyer, Gwarier, Kenethel, Pledyer, Gweryn, Sketh, Hagerawl.”
Now I recognise Hagerawl too.
“Greetings,” they mumble, and then the one Saldowr named as Pledyer swims forward a little.
“Ervys is dead,” he says, not looking at Conor. The Mer gift for stating the obvious clearly hasn’t deserted them.
“And Mortarow?” asks Saldowr.
“He has fled.”
“But many of Ervys’s supporters are alive and unwounded,” remarks Saldowr calmly.
“We have thrown down our spears,” says Pledyer.
“Yes. I heard that you had done that. And the sharks did not fight for you in the end, I believe, apart from one rogue bull shark who was brave enough to attack a girl from behind.”
“The sharks deserted us,” growls Talek.
“No,” says Saldowr. His voice doesn’t grow louder, but it becomes more
stern. “The sharks did not desert you. I spoke to them and they remembered their duty, which they had abandoned to hunt these young ones. You know that to the sharks, duty is everything, unless they are crazed by the scent of blood. We spoke, and I was able to remind them of what they had forsaken.” I shiver, remembering the sharks’ cold, pitiless eyes.
“We are here to say that it is all over,” Pledyer says.
“All over?” Saldowr counters him. “Go to Mellina, who has lost the man she loved and her baby’s father, and tell her that it is all over. Tell little Mordowrgi that it is all over, when he’s old enough to understand that it has only just begun. Ask these children, whose father you killed, if it is all over.” And he looks at me and Conor as if he really expects us to answer. But we can’t do that. Dad’s dead, not only because of Ervys but because of all of them.
The burly, broad-shouldered Mer men look at us too. Suddenly I am not afraid of them any more. Their faces are so defeated, so exhausted. They look as if they have no hope left. And yet they’ve come to Saldowr, when they could easily have fled or even kept on fighting.
“Why have you come here?” asks Conor.
Anger swells inside me. Yes, why? After everything that’s happened, how dare they come to Saldowr’s cave as if they’ve got the right to negotiate? They were defeated in battle. Ervys is dead and his support is melting away. Now they come, when it’s too late and the harm has been done. If they’d come earlier and they’d been willing to talk – and to listen – there needn’t have been any bloodshed. They closed their minds to us because Ervys was so sure he was right and no one else knew anything about what was best for Ingo. And so Dad had to die. I wish Saldowr hadn’t mentioned Mordowrgi. He’s just a little baby who smiles at everyone and doesn’t even know what death is. He’ll keep expecting Dad to come home and pick him up for a cuddle.
“We have come because of the dolphins,” says Talek in answer to Conor. His voice is rough. He sounds angry but I don’t think it’s anger than makes his voice so harsh. His shoulders are bowed, as if a heavy weight oppresses him.