I stay beneath the skin, tossed by the waves of her rising. Slowly, the pounding of my heart eases. I swim backwards a little, away from the whale’s shadow. A few minutes pass, and then she sinks down beneath the surface again.
“I had to do that,” she explains. Her voice bubbles with emotion. “My daughter has a child! I am a grandmother.”
“It’s a boy – a male.”
“Aaah,” sighs the whale, as if there is still some air left in her, “and I was not there to help my daughter during the birth.”
“She wasn’t alone. Her sisters in the pod were there,” I say quickly, and then wonder if the whale will want to hear that.
“Good. Good,” booms the whale heartily, but I’m sure I detect a note of wistfulness in her voice. Of course she’d have liked to be there. It seems so wrong – unfair – that I’ve seen the whale’s grandson and she has not. But she can go and visit him, of course she can.
“No, little one. It is too far. I am too old. One day, when he is old enough and strong enough, he will travel the world and then perhaps he will come in search of his old grandmother and I shall see him.”
“Oh.” It sounds bleak to me, not even meeting your grandchild until he’s grown up. “That’ll be good,” I add quickly, in case the whale guesses what I’m thinking.
I tell the whale every single thing I can remember about her daughter. Every word she said, how she looked, exactly what the little one looked like. I give her all the messages from the other whales. She keeps getting me to repeat things, especially the message about how her daughter thought of her when the calf was born. It’s quite boring, but I don’t mind. I don’t say anything about how the whales were hostile to us and might even have killed us.
“I don’t suppose they’ve named the calf yet,” says the whale.
“No, I don’t think so.”
The whale is silent for a while, obviously lost in her own thoughts. I understand why she’s so absorbed, but at the same time I’m slightly hurt. I’ve come halfway across the world with her message – I’ve crossed Ingo and nearly been killed and met polar bears and Atkas and those strange Mer of the kelp forest – and all my whale wants to hear about is one little calf.
And then I realise something. I’m exactly the same as the whale’s daughter. I’m jealous. I want to be first in my whale’s heart. You idiot, Sapphire Trewhella. “He’s really beautiful,” I say.
The whale rumbles contentedly, but then she says, “You have changed, little one. You have grown older. I see marks of suffering in your face. Everyone who makes the Crossing is changed by it.”
“It’s not really the Crossing.” I pause. I’m not sure I can talk about Dad without starting to cry, but the whale’s attentive silence is so sympathetic that soon I’m telling her everything She is the easiest person to talk to that I’ve ever met. She never seems to misunderstand, or criticise. I even tell her about not being able to see Dad’s face any more, and how bad that makes me feel.
“I was the same when my daughter left for the bottom of the world,” she says. “I felt as if I had betrayed her. But after a long time it all came back. I could see every detail of her. I could remember everything we used to do together.”
“Dad said that once,” I say slowly. “He said he hadn’t forgotten a single thing from our childhood.”
“I’m sure that he hadn’t. When you have a child you can’t ever stop thinking of her.”
“Whale?”
“Yes?”
“You know I have a little half-brother? He’s Mer. His name is Mordowrgi.”
“I believe you told me once.”
“He won’t even remember Dad. It’ll be as if he never had a father.”
“You could remind him, little barelegs.”
“I suppose I could.”
I lean against the whale’s rough, corrugated skin that always reminds me of a giant, wrinkled prune. She is so comforting. I’m glad the others went back to the cave once they’d greeted the whale. Talek and Pledyer and all the Mer have gone too. I saw them out of the corner of my eye, swimming strongly away from the cave mouth into the glass-green distance. I was glad to see them go. Even though they’ve accepted us and we’ve accepted them, it still hurts me to look at them. Their faces make me think of the spears they made that killed Byblos and theyn Dad. I rub my face against the whale’s skin.
“Careful, little one,” she booms. “You will hurt yourself. We whales are not dolphins.”
“I know.”
“We do not have their quickness or their grace or the brilliance of their minds.”
“You always say that. I like you as you are, dear whale. I wouldn’t want you to be a dolphin.”
The whale rumbles again. It’s a bit like the sound Sadie
makes when she’s drowsing by the fire and I’m massaging her head with my fingers, in just the place she likes—
“My brother wants us to go back to the Air,” I say abruptly. “You know, back home to Mum and her boyfriend, and our house and everything.”
“Back to the human world …” muses the whale. “Well, it’s a long time since you saw your mother.”
“Not all that long.” I tell the whale the story of my journey through the reef to Mum. I remember every detail, but the strange thing is that the more I describe it, the more unreal and dreamlike it sounds. When I finish the story, there’s silence.
“Don’t you believe me?” I ask after a while.
“Oh yes. Your spirit met your mother’s spirit,” answers the whale confidently, as if she’s quite used to such things.
“But what does that mean? Do you think I didn’t really meet Mum – not in real life?”
The whale chuckles. “I did not say that, little one. You met your mother truly. No dolphin would lead you on a false journey.”
But I want the truth. Did I meet Mum or didn’t I? Did she really call me lovely girl and tell me what happened to her in the sea when she was a little girl of two? And then suddenly I remember something that I ought to have thought of long before. Why would Mum be in a wooden bungalow with a verandah anyway? She told us that Roger’s friend was taking them on a trip way up north into wild country where they wouldn’t even be in phone contact. They were going
somewhere out in the bush. Would there be proper bungalows with verandahs?
My mind whirls. The more I try to sift out what’s real, the more the layers of reality melt into one another. But I can hear Mum’s voice, and it rings with truth.
“And will you go back with your brother into the human world?” asks the whale in a voice which sounds as if she’s carefully keeping her own opinions out of it.
“Yes,” I say.
“Ah.” A sigh of disappointment – or even of grief – ripples through the vastness of the whale.
“Not in the way you think, dear whale,” I say quickly. “Not for ever.”
“You will come back to us?”
“Yes, I’ll come back. I belong to Ingo now.”
T
here’s the entrance to our cove, up ahead of us. Conor and I swim together, not far below the surface. We’ve already parted from Faro. He wanted us to say goodbye out in open water: free water, he calls it.
I hated saying goodbye to him. I just wanted to get it over quickly. Now I’m worried that he’ll think I didn’t care, because all I said was, “See you, Faro,” instead of all the things I could have said. It didn’t seem real that we were going back to separate worlds after so long together. Faro was going to Saldowr’s cave. Conor and I were going back to our cottage, where the washing-up would probably be piled in the sink where we’d left it.
The water is calm. Conor swims with the speed we’ve learned from the Mer. I swim a little way behind him. When I was little I was always trying to keep up with Conor, but not now. Once we’re through the entrance to the cove, it’ll be almost time to rise and break through the surface. I dread the thought of it after so long in Ingo. Conor’s full of anticipation He can’t wait to be there.
Slow down, Conor. The rocky entrance is so close now.
As if he hears
my thoughts, Conor turns. He looks a bit anxious. He hasn’t said anything, but he’s been watching me closely since last night. I think he’s afraid I’ll make a break back to Ingo at the last minute. “Come on, Saph!”
“I’m coming.”
I’m not going to desert Conor; he doesn’t need to worry about that. It’s bad enough for him to leave Ingo knowing that Dad will never follow us home. I couldn’t bear to see Conor with that blank, shocked look Faro had when Elvira told him she was leaving for the North.
“You’re so
slow,
Saph.”
“I’m swimming as fast as I can.”
It’s true. I’m swimming against a strong tide that wants to keep me in Ingo. It presses against my arms and legs. It wants to pull me back into the deep water. I’m not scared, because it isn’t like a rip tide that wants to drown me. It’s a tide that pulls my blood in the same way that the moon pulls the sea.
“It’s not because I don’t want to come with you,” I whisper. “But not now. Not yet.”
The tide relaxes its hold as if it understands. The rocks loom closer. Weed clings to them, below the tide line. The tide is rising now, and we’re going home on it.
Soon I’ll be able to wrap my arms around Sadie. Soon I’ll be in our cottage again – picking duvet covers off the floor, doing the washing up, getting everything shipshape for when Mum and Roger come home. Mum won’t be back yet – at least, I don’t think she will. I have to trust that not too much time has passed
in the human world while we’ve been away in Ingo.
The Call will make its own way through your lives.
I have to trust that the Call can still do that, and that Mum will know nothing about our absence. Maybe she’ll remember a strange dream she had, which was so vivid it seemed just as real as the waking world.
Everyone in Senara will ask us if we’ve had a good time up in Plymouth with our cousins. Everyone except Granny Carne, that is. Her fierce amber owl-eyes will sweep my face, and then Conor’s, searching for traces of what’s happened to us. “You came back to us, my girl,” she’ll say, and then she’ll scan my face again and she’ll add so quietly that no one else can hear, “For now,” Sometimes it can be frightening how much Granny Carne knows without ever being told. And then she’ll smile at Conor and say, “I must tell my bees you’re back.”
Conor said last night, “It’ll be so good to feel solid ground under our feet again.” His view is that Ingo gave us a task and we’ve completed it. We’ve made the Crossing of Ingo, we’ve done what Saldowr hoped we would do, and we’ve defeated Ervys. Logically, our place isn’t in Ingo any more, but in the human world.
Maybe that’s true for Conor. I wish I could see into the future, like Saldowr and Granny Carne. I’m almost sure that Conor’s future lies in the human world. Maybe Ingo will fade from his mind. He’ll never forget it, but the gateway between Air and Ingo will close in him, like a scar growing paler and paler until it disappears. Last night he said, “You think I can’t wait to leave Ingo, don’t you, Saph?”
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
Conor frowned. “No. It’s more complicated now that Dad … It’s like part of us always being here.”
“I know.”
“You remember those whales, the ones who nearly attacked us?”
“Quite hard to forget really.”
“You know what they said when we were saying goodbye? I’ve been thinking about it.”
“You mean about the hunters?”
“Yeah. They wanted us to help them. They must have thought we’d have influence just because we’re human.”
“But we don’t.”
“No. They don’t know about politicians and profits and stuff like that. But all the same they might have a point.” Conor paused, then quoted:
“Remember us, when you are back among humans.”
“No one would listen to us, Conor,” I said quickly. “Humans don’t care about Ingo.”
“You
do.
I
do. You can’t be so – so fatalistic, Saph! You sound like the Mer.”
“I can’t help it, Conor. I am Mer.”
There. I’d said it without even meaning to. But Conor didn’t react as I expected. He put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a tight, big-brother hug. “Poor old Saph,” he said. “It’s tough, isn’t it?”
Suddenly I knew that Conor understood everything that we had never talked about. “I’m not saying I’m going to start
ramming whaling ships,” he went on, “but as far as I can see it’s a battle, just like the one with Ervys. If we destroy the oceans, everything’s gone. We can’t give up without a struggle. People
can
change, you know they can.”
I wondered if he was thinking about Elvira. Maybe he was, because he squeezed my shoulder so tight it almost hurt. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter what you are or what I am,” he said. “We’ll always be together.”
“Will we?”
Conor smiled. “Of course we will. You’re not like Elvira.”
“I know. It’s quite scary when someone’s as …” I was going to say “obsessed” but out of respect for Conor’s feelings I change it to “as … er … as single-minded as that. Do you think she’ll really go to the North and leave Faro?”
“A hundred per cent.”
“Conor … Are you – I mean, about Elvira, do you …”
“No. I’m all right about it now, Saph.”
“Good. I’d have hated her if you weren’t.”
“It’s OK for you to hate her a bit if you want. Be my guest.” We both laughed. Conor always seems to find a clear way through things that are as dark and tangled as a kelp forest.
We’ll always be together….
Darling Sadie. Dogs don’t live in the past or the future; they’ve got more sense. They live in the present. There’ll be hundreds of long walks over fields which smell so intoxicatingly of rabbits that Sadie won’t know which way to run first. We’ll have hundreds of nights by the fire, with me doing homework
and Sadie curled against my legs, thumping her tail on the floor.
People have to leave home when they grow up. They get jobs, or they go away to uni. They’re never coming home for good, even if their mums keep their bedrooms just the same, waiting for them.
Mum has always wanted me to go away to uni. She dreams of me becoming a doctor.
You could do it, Sapphy! You mustn’t throw away your opportunities.
Oh, Mum. You make me want to cry sometimes, like when you blame yourself for the way things are and I want to tell you that none of it is your fault. You wouldn’t ever have let Roger into our lives unless you’d believed Dad was dead.