The Crossing of Ingo. Helen Dunmore
yesterday evening Conor remained lit up with excitement. I was sure that Rainbow and Patrick would sense the Call thrumming through him, even though they don’t know about Ingo. Maybe Rainbow did, in a way. She was very quiet, and she kept glancing at Conor when he wasn’t looking, and then away. Rainbow likes Conor; really likes him. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if Conor had never seen Elvira. Conor almost never talks to me about Elvira, but I know he thinks of her. He keeps her talisman around his neck. But whenever we’re with a group of friends it seems that Rainbow and Conor will end up sitting together talking. Conor’s face is full of warmth and life when he’s with Rainbow. They laugh a lot, but it’s not as if the rest of the world has vanished into nothing, as it is when Conor’s with Elvira. Rainbow isn’t dreamy like Elvira. She’s always aware of other people.
It was a good evening, but because of the Call it felt as if Conor and I were on one side of a sheet of glass, and Patrick and Rainbow on the other. I think they felt it too. We chatted about music for a while, and then everyone lapsed into silence. Patrick had brought his guitar, but he didn’t play. We built up the fire because it gets cold when evening comes down, and sat around it watching the flames. You know how it is with watching a fire: you don’t have to talk. The flames twist and pucker round the logs, never making the same shape twice. It made me think of the fire I saw once, when Granny Carne showed me the passage that runs to the centre of the Earth, from the standing stones. A log hissed and crackled. I suddenly thought, There’s never any fire in Ingo. It sounds so obvious, but I’d never realised it before. Faro had never sat by a fire and watched the flames and dreamed, and he never would. Faro watches baby fish flicker in rock crevices and dark red sea anemones quivering. He would scorn the idea of fire. Humans are very strange. Why should anyone want to change the temperature of their world? Why not live in it as it is? It would be impossible to explain to Faro about shivering with cold on a winter’s night. He’s never felt anything like that. He’s in his element, slipping through it, part of it. Faro would hate this fire.
Conor’s eyes were shining with dreams. I saw that Rainbow was watching Conor, not the fire. I couldn’t work out her expression. Rainbow is someone who understands much more about you than you ever tell them. Conor felt Rainbow’s eyes on his face and he looked up and smiled. Rainbow smiled back. They are so similar, even though Conor is dark and Rainbow has hair the colour of sunlight. They have the same warm-coloured skins. They are responsible in the same way.
“Conor,” said Rainbow, “Patrick thinks he can get you a Saturday job at The Green Room, don’t you, Pat?”
The Green Room is the surf shop where Patrick works. Everybody wants to work there because they pay over the minimum wage and you have an amazing reduction off all the stuff. Conor leaned forward eagerly. “D’you think you really can, Patrick?”
Patrick nodded. He is a person of few words. Then I saw Conor remember, and the eagerness faded from his face. The sound of the conch thrummed in my head and I knew that Conor heard it too. It drowned out everything.
“I’ll call in one day,” said Conor awkwardly, and I saw the surprise and disappointment on Rainbow’s face. She’d expected him to seize the chance of the job. But I couldn’t think about Rainbow too much, because my mind was full of Ingo. The flames of the fire made shapes like waves. I listened and I could hear the swell beating against the base of the cliffs. The tide was high, almost at the turn. Ingo was coming close. I saw Rainbow shiver.
“The sea’s loud tonight,” she said.
“You always hear it like that up here,” said Conor quickly. “It must be the way the wind blows.”
“It never sounds as loud as this in our cottage,” said Rainbow.
“And we’re closer to the water than you are,” said Patrick. “The tide comes almost to the door. Or through the door sometimes.” He was thinking of the flood and the way their cottage filled with sea.
“It won’t come like that again,” said Conor. He threw another log on the fire and the sparks shot upward. Rainbow leaned forward, holding out her hands to the flames.
“I love fires,” she said.
I know, I thought. You love fires and horses and dogs, and everything that belongs to Earth. You’ve never heard Ingo calling and you never will. You’re not half one thing and half another. You’re all Earth, like Granny Carne. You don’t have to choose because the choice has already been made in you.
The sea boomed against the cliff. I felt it ebb, then surge forward and smash on the rocks. Rainbow was right. Ingo was very close tonight. Faro was there somewhere in that deep wild water, and my father, and my baby half-brother, little Mordowrgi, and all the others. Soon I would be there too, and Conor. Excitement raced through me like an incoming tide.
But this morning everything is flat and gloomy. The rain is coming down in a thin, steady drizzle. The hilltops are hidden in mist. The only thing that is sharp and clear is the impossibility of our dreams.
How can I leave Sadie? She trusts me and believes that I’ll always be here to take care of her. I think of Sadie padding up and down, whining, sniffing the air, scratching at the door, waiting for me. I can’t abandon Sadie. Besides, there’s Mum. She’ll call us, as she does every day, and we won’t be here. She’ll call again and again, and still we won’t answer. How much human time does it take to make the Crossing of Ingo? Mum will panic and get on the next plane back from Australia.
We have to think about school as well. They’ll notice our absence, and Mum has given them contact details for everyone who is supposed to be responsible for us while she’s away. In practice that means they will contact Mary Thomas, because Granny Carne has no phone. Mary will come over and find an empty house. In less than an hour the entire village will be searching for us. They’ll remember Dad’s disappearance. They’ll whisper, “God forbid it’s another Trewhella lost to the sea.” They’ll scour the cliffs and coves and all the deserted places where we might have fallen or become trapped. In my mind I see the searchers moving steadily forward, beating at the furze on the cliff tops. I see divers with waterproof torches scanning the backs of caves. They’ll risk their lives to find us. We can’t let them do that.
Even if we managed to fix school, it’s impossible to fix the whole neighbourhood. If you cough at one end of the churchtown, someone the other end will ask if you have a cold.
But we must go. We have no choice. I can’t hear the Call any more but the memory of it is twined into every fibre of me. It won’t let me alone. You only hear that Call once in your life; if you ignore it, it won’t come again. Faro will turn his back on me. He’ll rip off the bracelet he made from our hair, and he’ll never call me “little sister” again. Dad will be at the Assembly. It’s our chance to see him again.
Ingo needs us to make the Crossing. We are mixed in our blood, Mer and human. Ervys hates us for it: he wants nothing human in Ingo. I used to hate it too because I wanted to be one thing only, instead of being torn two ways. But now I’m beginning to understand that to be double adds things to you as well as taking them away. I’ve been to Ingo so many times and there’s still so much I don’t know. I will never know Ingo truly unless I make the Crossing. Saldowr believes that the Mer world and the human world can come together, and stop fearing each other and trying to destroy each other. If human blood can make the Crossing of Ingo then maybe there is hope for a different future, where we’re not all battling for what we want and trying to destroy what is different from us.
Ervys will do anything to stop us. He wants Mer and human to remain apart. Fear and distrust is what drives his followers, and gives him his power.
I’ve got to go, but I can’t…I must go, but how can I…?
By ten o’clock this morning my head felt like a hive of swarming bees, full of thoughts that couldn’t live together. I was so desperate for distraction that I even dug one of my school set books out of my bag. Now I’m sitting at the kitchen table, trying to read Pride and Prejudice. The words dance and dive. If only Jane and Lizzie realised how lucky they were. All they had to worry about