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CHAPTER TWO

“I wasn’t born with a duvet-washing gene just because I’m a girl,” I shout up the stairs to Conor.

Saturday. I tick off a list on my fingers. Laundry, do the vacuuming, clean the bathroom. Dig over the potato bed. Go up to the farm for eggs. There’s my maths homework, and I’m supposed to be handing in my project on climate change after half term and so far all I’ve done is download some photos of deserts.

Saturday morning. Work, work, work. I might as well be at school. And we’re coming to the end of all the food Mum stacked in the freezer before she and Roger went to Australia. Shepherd’s pie, chicken casserole, homemade soups, lemon drizzle cake (my favourite) and gingerbread with almonds (Conor’s favourite). Mum made more cake in a week than she usually makes in a year. Roger called it guilt cooking, and he put a stop to it when he came in the morning before they left and she was baking cakes and crumbles for the freezer instead of doing her packing.

“You’ve got to stop all this guilt cooking, Jen.”

“What do you mean?” Mum asked fiercely, her eyes bright as she wielded the flour sifter.

“You’ve no call to feel guilty. These kids want to stay here, surely to God you’ve heard that from them enough times. I know I have. Sapphy’s a great little cook and Conor’s no slouch. You go on upstairs and finish your packing or you’ll end up in Brisbane without a bikini, which is a crime under Australian law.”

I couldn’t help laughing, just as I couldn’t help liking Roger when Mum put down the sifter, rubbed her hand over her face (leaving an extensive trail of flour) and smiled reluctantly.

“Come and help me pack, Sapphy?” she asked.

Mum and Roger have been gone for a month now, and we’ve eaten all the dinners Mum left in the freezer, apart from some grey frozen parsnip soup.

“Conor! You need to wash your sheet and your duvet cover.”

“I’m still in bed.” Conor’s voice floats down from the loft, blurred and sleepy. “It’s Saturday morning, Saph, for God’s sake.”

“You can’t be asleep if you’re shouting at me. It’s ten o’clock, Con. I need to get the washing on or it’ll never dry.”

I am turning into Mum. I sigh and start sweeping the floor while Sadie pads round me, thumping her tail against the flagstones. She’s desperate for a real walk. I took her out for ten minutes when I first got up, but she wasn’t impressed.

“Oh, Sadie.” I throw the broom down, drop to my knees and wrap my arms around Sadie’s warm neck. She whines sympathetically, rubbing her head against me. “Shall we leave all this and go for a long, long walk?” I ask her. Sadie’s tail whacks against my legs. “Walk” is her favourite word.

Just then Conor staggers downstairs, still wrapped in his duvet, clutching a bundle of sheet and pillowcases. He drops the duvet on the floor, flops down at the table and puts his head in his hands.

“Are you OK, Con?”

“I got up too quickly.”

Got up too quickly! I have been up since eight thirty and I’ve already cleared the kitchen, done the washing-up and scraped a layer of grease off the stove.

“You could at least take the duvet cover off the duvet.”

Conor looks up in surprise at my tone. “I’m going to, I’m going to. Relax, Saph, it’s Saturday.”

“It doesn’t feel like Saturday to me. It feels like Monday morning.” A wave of self-pity sweeps over me. School all week, cooking every evening, chopping wood for the stove, homework, taking Sadie out, washing, cleaning, digging the garden… It all takes so long and there’s never any free time. I have to admit that usually Conor does half of everything, but this morning I’ve had enough.

“I’m going down to the cove.”

Conor looks up. “What about my duvet cover?”

“You can mop the floor with it for all I care.”

Conor leans back, tilting his chair. “Rainbow’s coming up later, maybe Patrick too. I’ll cook dinner.”

“We mustn’t forget about Mum this time.”

Last time Rainbow and Patrick were round for the evening, we lit a fire outside and sat round it for hours, talking, working out chords for a new song and trying to tell each other’s fortunes. We didn’t hear Mum call. At the weekends she usually calls late in our evenings, which is early in her mornings. She calls from an Internet café about ten kilometres from where she and Roger are staying, and then we call her back. I can’t believe how early that café opens, but Mum says it’s the way things happen there, because the middle of the days get so hot.

We’ve got a webcam and Internet calling, which Roger installed on his state-of-the-art computer before they left. There will be no escape from communication! This is both good and bad. It’s lovely to talk to Mum, but when I’m tired or not in a great mood it’s hard to hide it from her. Conor reckons that Mum calls when it’s late in the evenings here to check that we’re both safely back at home.

People say how amazing communications are these days, because you can feel as if you’re in the same room as someone in Australia. But you don’t really feel that way. You keep telling each other news about your lives, but it feels false. Conor is better at it than me. Sometimes I find myself wishing the call was over. At home we never sit down face to face for fifteen minutes with Mum and talk about everything we’ve done that day. We might wander into the kitchen and chat a bit. Often I prefer just being quiet with people.

Seeing Mum’s face on the flat, cold screen of a computer makes it seem as if she has already gone far, far away from us, much farther than the thousands of miles she has travelled physically. She looks different. Her skin is deep brown from being out in the open all day long instead of working in the pub as she does here, and her hair has light streaks in it. It’s late spring in Queensland, and Mum says it’s much warmer than a Cornish summer. Mum looks more relaxed than I’ve ever seen her. She and Roger are staying in a little beach house, which someone has lent to them. It’s very remote. Mum gets up with the sun and pretty much goes to bed when the sun goes down, except when they light a fire and sit round it. The stars are enormous, she says.

It makes me feel as if Mum isn’t the same as the Mum I know. She is meeting a lot of people out there. She knows all Roger’s colleagues in the diving project, and their friends. She says Australians are amazingly friendly, and they are always getting asked to parties and barbies. Mum and Roger have already got a whole new Australian life together. It feels very, very weird, as if she might suddenly announce that she likes it so much out there, she’s decided to stay for ever.

Get a grip, Sapphire. You chose to stay here. You could have gone with her.

“Don’t swim outside the cove,” says Conor.

“You sound just like Mum.”

“You know what I mean.”

I know what Conor really means. Stay where it’s safe. Don’t go to Ingo without me.

I sit back on my heels. Sadie’s warm, questioning brown eyes gaze into mine, wondering what I am planning. A long walk over the Downs, maybe? A rough scramble along the cliff path? Her mind buzzes with a map of a thousand smells – farmyards, rabbit holes, flat stone boulders where adders come out to sun themselves on the warmest autumn afternoons…

“Do snakes have a smell, Sadie?” Sadie barks.

“You can’t not take her out now, Saph. Look how excited she is,” says Conor.

“All right, Sadie, this is the deal. You and I will walk for one hour max, then you promise not to whine and scrabble at the door and look pathetic when I go to the cove and you can’t come.”

The way down to the cove is too steep for Sadie. Besides, she would hate it there. Our cove is a gateway. Most human beings wouldn’t guess it but dogs can sense what’s really going on. Sadie would know straightaway that the smell in her nostrils was the smell of Ingo.

Sadie gives me a wise, impenetrable look. I decide to believe that she’s agreeing with me. “Walk, then be good at home,” I repeat firmly.

I open the door, cross the garden, lift the latch of the gate and kick it where it sticks. Sadie bounds through. “Wait, girl.”

I look up at the sky. It’s a perfect October day. You would think it was still summer, except that the sun is lower in the sky and there’s a clear, tingling taste in the breeze. A few bronze leaves stir on the rowan tree by our door. I’ll swim without my wetsuit today. The sea still has most of the summer’s warmth in it.

At that moment there’s a slash in the air above my head. Something hurtles past me, raking my hair with its claws. I flinch and throw my hands up to protect my face. The gull squawks loudly as it soars back into the sky.

“Conor! One of those gulls went for me again.”

Conor comes to the door and squints up at the roof. A second gull sits squat by the chimney, watching us with its hard yellow eye. The first gull wheels round from its attack, glides back to the cottage roof with one powerful stroke and alights, folding its wings. I brace myself in case it dives again. It gives a mocking screech, but stays up on the roof.

“Every time we go out of the house, they’re waiting.”

“I know,” says Conor.

“I’m worried about Sadie. Mary Thomas’s cat had to have ten stitches in its back. It was the worst gash from a gull the vet had ever seen. Do you think a gull would attack a dog as big as Sadie?”

“They’re territorial,” says Conor.

“Only when they’re nesting. They can’t be still nesting at this time of year. It’s too late.”

The gulls shriek, as if they’re laughing at us. A third gull circles way above the roof, like a police helicopter over the scene of a crime.

“They never used to settle on the roof like this,” Conor says.

“No. It’s only since Mum and Roger left.” As soon as I’ve said the words, I want to call them back. The gulls frighten me. They watch the human world, and report back to Ingo. I remember how one of them slashed my hand down by the cove. I thought then that it was one of Ervys’s spies.

Conor flaps his arms and shouts at the gulls. “Go on, get out of it!” They squawk back in derision. Sadie barks furiously, but the gulls take no notice of her.

“I’ll get the ladder,” says Conor. “I’m going to check if there is a nest up there.”

“No, don’t, Conor!” If he’s up the ladder and the gulls attack him, he’ll have no chance. He’ll have to put up his hands to shield his face, and then the gulls will get him off balance. In my head I see Conor slowly toppling backwards. “Mum’ll kill me if you fall off the ladder.”

The gulls screech again, as if they’re imitating me. Slowly, in their own time, they take off from the roof. They wheel above us, mocking our Earth-bound anger with them, and then they take aim at the horizon and fly straight out to sea. They are as sleek as rockets homing in on a target.

“Imagine being able to do that,” I say, shading my eyes and squinting after them. “They can go from one world to another whenever they want.”

But Conor’s not listening. “Saph, look. They are building a nest. Look up there, by the chimney.”

“But it’s the wrong time of year.”

“They’re building it, all the same. I wonder why.”

“I don’t like them. They patrol that roof like prison guards. Every time we come out or go in, they’re watching.”

“That’s crazy, Saph. They’re just birds.”

“Sadie! Sadie!” I shout. She’s gone into the ditch again. It’s always full of rich, smelly mud, even when there hasn’t been rain for weeks. She’s definitely going to need a bath now. “Sadie, you bad girl.”

But I’m glad really. Bathing Sadie will stop me thinking about the gulls. I fetch her zinc bath and lay it on the gravel. I fill saucepans with water and put them on the stove to warm while Conor unwinds the hose. Sadie stands watching, quivering with excitement. Sometimes she hates her bath, sometimes she loves it.

Today she’s decided to hate it. She keeps trying to escape and she sloshes water all over us. Conor helps to hold her while I wash her with special dog shampoo. She whines piteously, as if we’re torturing her.

“Sadie, if you keep on jumping into ditches you’ll keep on having to have baths.”

“Cause and effect, Sadie girl,” says Conor, passing her towel. I rub her hard all over. She likes this part. By the time she emerges from the towel, golden and gleaming, Sadie looks extremely pleased with herself.

“You know you’re beautiful, don’t you?” I ask her.

“Of course she does,” replies Conor.

“She’s the most beautiful dog in Cornwall… Hey, Con, we could take Sadie to a dog show! She’d be sure to win a prize.”

Conor raises his eyebrows. “She’d hate it, Saph. Think about it.”

I think about it. Lots of poodles with pink ribbons around their necks, mincing past the judges – and Sadie bounding around the ring, chasing imaginary rabbits. Maybe not…

“I am going to get that ladder,” says Conor. “While the gulls are out of the way it’s a good chance.”

“Don’t, Conor. What if they come back?”

“I don’t like the way there are more and more of them all the time,” says Conor quietly.

He is right. It was just one gull to begin with, and then two, but sometimes there’s a whole row of them standing motionless on the spine of our roof now. They watch everything. They know that Conor and I are alone in our cottage.

“I counted eight yesterday evening,” says Conor.

We’re not really alone, I tell myself quickly. Granny Carne told Mum she’d watch out for us. Our neighbour Mary Thomas and everyone else in the village “keeps an eye”, which can be quite annoying at times. We go to school as normal. But at night we’re alone in the cottage.

Don’t be so pathetic, Sapphire. You can manage fine. Look at how Rainbow and Patrick cope when their parents are away in Denmark for weeks on end. They just get on with it.

The trouble is that I spent so much time and energy convincing Mum it was safe to leave us, that I forgot about how I might feel once she was gone. As soon as Mum and Roger’s taxi had bumped away down the track and I saw one gull watching from the roof, I began to feel uneasy. If Mum had known about Ingo, or the forces that were gathering there, or the battle between Ervys and Saldowr, or any of a hundred things that Conor and I know and have kept from her so carefully, then she would never have left the cottage.

Saldowr said we would see Dad again, when the Mer assembled to choose who would make the Crossing of Ingo. Dad will have his own free choice too, one day – to decide whether to stay in Ingo or return to Air. He’ll be able to decide his own future. What if Mum knew that?

It’s strange how different it feels now that Mum isn’t here. Even Roger’s absence changes things. It’s as if we are boats which were held safe by an anchor, and we never realised it. Now the anchor has been pulled up and we might drift anywhere. When it gets dark the wind roars around our cottage so loudly that it feels like being in a boat at sea. You can easily believe that you have already left the Earth and are halfway to Ingo. Winter is coming. The dark is growing stronger every day.

“I’m going to see if I can reach that nest. Help me get the ladder out of the shed, Saph.”

“You can’t destroy their nest, Con! What if there are babies in it?”

“I won’t do anything to them. And why would gulls try to lay eggs at this time of year anyway? The chicks wouldn’t have a chance of survival.”

“What if they come back and attack you?”

What if the gulls are spying for Ervys? is what I want to say, but I keep quiet. Conor will think I’m imagining things as usual. But to my surprise he says what I’m thinking.

“I don’t want them spying on us.”

“Do you think they are spies, Con?” I ask, lowering my voice to a whisper.

“Whatever they are, I don’t want them there.”

“Don’t get the ladder, Con. Please.” I’ve lost Dad – or as good as lost him. Mum’s gone to Australia. My brother’s got to stay safe.

Conor’s expression changes. “Don’t panic, Saph. I’m not planning to fall off the roof and break my neck. You hold the bottom of the ladder and it’ll be fine.”

The ladder is heavy. We drag it across the garden and hoist it against the wall. It’s the one Dad used when he painted the outside of our cottage. I remember the last time he did that. The fresh white against the storm-battered old paint.

“Hold it like that, Saph. Lean all your weight against it.”

“Be careful, Conor.”

He goes up the ladder quickly. Con’s used to ladders because his bedroom is up in the loft.

“Can you see anything?” I ask.

There’s a pause. Conor is at the top. He hasn’t got anything to hold on to now. He braces his feet on the top rung and leans forward, then carefully stretches to his right, towards the chimney.

What if they come back? If they strike at him now, when he’s off balance, he’ll fall. I turn and scan the horizon. No black dots of gulls. I turn back to Conor. “Is it a nest?” I shout up.

“Yes.” His voice sounds strange. He’s leaning right across to the chimney. His hand is almost in the dark mass of the nest. He’s taking something out of it. Now he’s looking at what’s in his hand.

Conor freezes. Sadie and I stare upwards in suspense. Slowly Conor’s hand closes around whatever he’s found. He teeters as if he’s forgotten he’s at the top of a ladder. For a second I think he’s going to lose his balance. At my side, Sadie lets out a volley of warning barks. I turn around and see dark specks on the horizon, growing bigger as I watch. The gulls.

“Conor! Get down quick! The gulls are coming.”

Conor scrambles down the ladder one handed. As he jumps to the ground, Sadie leaps around him, barking protectively. The sky is suddenly full of gulls. A cloud of beating wings hides the chimney as they circle the nest, screeching out their anger.

Conor’s holding a handful of seaweed. “Is that what the nest is made of?” I ask.

He nods. “It’s all woven together.”

“But gulls don’t make nests like that.”

Conor shrugs. He is very pale. He pushes apart the strands of weed and I see a pale, glistening oval, about the size of a fingernail.

“That’s not a gull’s egg.”

“Look at it, Saph.”

I look at the egg. It is translucent green. Inside it there is a tiny creature, moving. A creature with fins and a tail. A fish. I shudder.

“The nest was crammed with them,” says Conor.

“But if they hatched, they wouldn’t be able to breathe in the air.”

“I don’t know what they are,” says Conor. “Touch the shell, Saph.”

I put out a finger reluctantly, and prod the egg. It is rubbery. There’s liquid inside in which the little fish can swim. I snatch my hand away. There is a ringing sound in my ears. My mouth turns dry.

“Why have they put the eggs on our house?” I whisper to Conor.

“They’re just trying to scare us.”

“Do you think he’s behind it? Ervys?”

“Probably.”

“What are we going to do with this horrible egg thing?”

“Feed it to Mary Thomas’s cat.”

I laugh, but my spine crawls with horror as I imagine fish hatching out of the eggs and swarming all over our roof. I know what Ervys is telling us. You human creatures are coming into my world. I have my powers too. I can make Ingo come to you. It’s happened before. Fish swam in the streets of St Pirans after the Tide Knot broke and the sea flooded the town. Ervys thought that was a great victory for the Mer, in the battle between Ingo and the human world.

The gulls have settled on the roof again, in a long line, watching and waiting.

“What are we really going to do with the egg?” I whisper.

“I don’t know. Bury it?”

“No. That’s what they expect us to do. Let’s give them a surprise, Conor. Let’s take the egg down to the sea and release it.”

Conor looks at me, eyebrows raised. “You’re very peace loving all at once, Saph.” But he gives me the egg in its nest of weed. I am just putting it in the watering can so it won’t dry out before I can take it down to the cove when there’s an explosion of wings and silent, furious, stabbing beaks.

“Sadie!”

We both rush to her, screaming at the gulls. They fly off, climbing steeply into the sky like planes after they’ve dropped their bombs. Sadie stands silent, quivering all over. On the golden fur of her back there is a long, ugly wound. Her blood wells and spills down her coat.

“Sadie!”

She is too shocked even to bark. I rub her face, calling her name.

“Bastards,” says Conor. “Quick, Saph, help me get her into the cottage. I’ll call Jack’s and ask them to help us get her to the vet. She needs stitches.”

It’s early evening. Sadie is asleep on the hearth rug. I’ve lit a fire, and the reflection of flames dances on her coat. The vet has stitched her wound and dressed it, and given Sadie an injection against infection. Conor spent his savings to pay the vet’s bill.

Mary Thomas said we’d have to get someone up from the council to do something about those gulls. We just nodded.

Rainbow and Patrick will be here in half an hour. Rainbow is bringing some pasties from St Pirans, because we told her what had happened to Sadie and that we hadn’t had a chance to cook.

Conor reaches forward to put another log on the fire. “So are you still going to release that fish back into the sea?” he asks. His voice is harsh.

“Yes,” I say.

“You’re crazy, Saph. Mary Thomas’s cat should have it.”

“No,” I struggle to explain. “If we act like them – like Ervys – it will never end. There’ll be one revenge, and then another, and then another…”

“I get the point. There’s another solution, though, Saph. We could walk away.”

“What do you mean?”

“We get out of it. Turn our backs on Ingo completely. If you don’t feed your Mer blood by thinking of Ingo and going to Ingo, it’ll grow weaker. In a few years’ time you might not even remember that it’s there. You’ll look back and believe that Ingo was one of those things you used to be interested in before you grew up.”

“How can you say that, Conor? Ingo is real.”

“Of course it’s real. But it doesn’t have to be real for us. Look at Sadie. That happened because of us going to Ingo. Do you really want to live like this, Saph?”

“Conor, I can’t believe you—”

And at that moment it comes. A low, thrumming sound that is sweet and piercing at the same time. It seems to begin deep in the shell of my ear, as if it’s growing from inside me. But it’s not just inside me, it’s outside me too. It beats the air like a bell, but it’s not an Air sound at all. It’s salty, full of tides and currents and vast undersea distances. It sounds like the sea beating on the shores of my understanding. It’s a summons, an invitation, a command.

Conor hears it too. The log rests in his hand, forgotten. The sound grows until there is nothing else in the room, nothing else in the whole world. Every cell in our body vibrates to it, and now, suddenly, I grasp its meaning. I am hearing the Call. I am being invited to come to the Assembly chamber as a candidate for the Crossing of Ingo. It’s what Faro told me about, but I never thought it would feel like this. I glance down at the bracelet of woven hair that is always on my wrist. My hair, twined so close into Faro’s that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. My deublek bracelet. Faro’s voice comes back to me. And then, little sister, we will present ourselves to the Assembly, and say that we are ready to make the Crossing of Ingo.

The Call thunders through us. Faro will hear it too in Ingo. And Elvira. The log falls to the floor as Conor reaches out and grabs my hand. I’ve never seen Conor look like this. Lit up, like a face with a torch shining on it, except that the light is coming from inside him.

“Saph,” he says, “you hear it too, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I was wrong. Everything I said was wrong, Saph. We’ve got to answer the Call.”