Ingo

by Helen Dunmore

  “Sit down.”

  There’s a sticky-topped honey cake on a blue plate. There are three mugs, ready for tea, and a blue pitcher of water with three glasses. One for her, one for Conor, one for me. Did she really make that honey cake because we were coming? Did she put out those three glasses before we arrived? She can’t have known. We only just decided to come this morning. Maybe she saw us climbing up the hill, from a long way off? But no, if she was tending the bees, she couldn’t have been here in the cottage at the same time, making cake and setting the table.

  “My kettle takes a while to boil,” says Granny Carne. “But it’s a hot day, and you’ll be thirsty from walking up. Drink some water.”

  Conor pours, and I lift my glass. The water smells pure. But it’s Earth water, sweet, not salt. It belongs to the Earth. I lift it to my lips, then put it down. I want salt. I want the taste of the sea. The green-and-turquoise sea with its deep cool caverns underwater where you can dive and play. I want to plunge through the waves and roll over and jackknife deep into the surging water that is full of bubbles and currents and tides. But Granny Carne’s cottage is more than two miles from the sea. It’s buried in the side of the hill, locked into the land.

  I feel trapped. I want to get out. Mum and Dad took us to London once, and we went in a lift in an Underground station. I thought it was already packed as full as it could be, but people still kept shoving in and squashing up until my face was crushed against a fat man’s suit and I could hardly breathe. I could smell the man’s sweat. Everyone kept pushing until I was so squashed I couldn’t see Mum or Dad or Conor. I felt as if the lift was closing in on me. I feel like that now. The cottage walls press in around me. My chest hurts. I can hardly breathe.

  I want the space of the sea. I want to taste salt water and open my mouth and know that I can breathe without breathing. Down, down, down into Ingo…

  I push back my chair, and it clatters on the flagstone floor. Instantly, Granny Carne is beside me, tall and strong as an oak.

  “Sapphire. Sapphire! Drink this.”

  She’s holding the glass of water to my lips. I try to twist my head away, but she insists. “Sapphire. I know you’re thirsty. Drink your water.”

  The glass presses against my lips. Earth water, sweet, not what I want. I want salt. But I’m thirsty, so thirsty. I need to drink. I open my lips, just a little. The water touches them, then it rushes into my mouth. It covers my tongue, and it tastes good. I swallow deeply, and then I drink more and more, gulping it down. The more I drink, the more I know how thirsty I am. I feel like a plant that’s almost died from lack of water. Granny Carne refills my glass from the jug, and I drink again.

  The cottage walls aren’t pressing in on me now. They’re just ordinary cottage walls again, white and clean. I don’t know why I was so frightened.

  “Good,” says Granny Carne. “Remember, my girl, you mustn’t ever drink salt water. Even if you crave it, you mustn’t drink it. It makes a thirst that nothing can satisfy.”

  “What does crave mean?”

  “When you crave for something, you want it so much you’ll stop at nothing to get it,” says Granny Carne. “But salt water’s poison to humans.”

  “Sapphire’s been ill,” says Conor.

  “No wonder, if she goes drinking salt water,” answers Granny Carne. “Now, tell me what you’re here for.”

  “She’s started speaking another language,” Conor says.

  “What’s that then? French or German?” asks Granny Carne, watching us keenly.

  “No, she knows it without learning it. Tell her, Saph. Tell her the words you spoke this morning.”

  “I can’t speak to her in that language. She belongs to N—” I manage to stop myself, but Granny Carne has noticed.

  “What do I belong to?”

  “To Earth.”

  “Yes, but that wasn’t what you were going to say. You were going to say that I belonged to Norvys, weren’t you?”

  I stare at her, astonished. “You can say it too! But you’re not part of Ingo.”

  “Earth and Ingo share some words. But that’s not the question, is it? The question is, How do you know about Norvys?”

  I am silent for a long time, while Granny Carne’s question presses in on me. Her eyes light on mine. They are amber, piercing—

  “It was you,” I say. “Wasn’t it?”

  Slowly, a smile fills her face. “Ah,” she says, “you were wide-awake in the middle of the night, weren’t you? And why should you think that Norvys can’t go into the Air, if you can go to Ingo?”

  Conor looks from one to another of us, bewildered.

  “Granny Carne was the owl who came to me last night,” I explain.

  “No,” says Granny Carne. “It’s not as simple as that. I’m not the owl, but the owl is maybe one of my…shadowings.”

  “But your eyes are exactly the same.”

  “Yes.”

  “We came because of what happened last night,” Conor says. “Tell her, Saph. Tell her about the voice.”

  “It wanted me to come to it. It called me like this: Ssssssapphire…Ssssssapphire…”

  “But that’s not your name!” interrupts Conor. “It doesn’t sound anything like your name. They must have been calling someone else.”

  “But in another language, Conor,” Granny Carne points out. “And who was calling? Do you know that?”

  “I think it was the seas of all the world,” I whisper, as if someone might overhear us.

  “Moryow,” says Granny Carne.

  “Yes.”

  “But she didn’t go,” says Conor, as if that’s the most important thing of all.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I think it was because of Sadie barking. And the—the owl.”

  “Sadie,” says Granny Carne thoughtfully. “Wasn’t Sadie that dog who came to you when I met you in the track below your house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Granny Carne,” says Conor abruptly, “my dad came to see you here not long before he left. I was with him that day. Did he say anything—did he tell you anything? Anything that we don’t know? Did he know then he was going to leave us?”

  “The things that people say here are between them and these walls,” says Granny Carne.

  “But he’s disappeared. He might be in danger.”

  “He might,” agrees Granny Carne.

  “But if he is, we’ve got to help him!”

  “We won’t help him that way. We have to go gentle. But I will tell you this. When your father came to me, he had a mark on his face that I see on your faces now. It was a mark you don’t often see…in the Air,” she adds, watching us carefully to see if we understand. We stare at her. My hand goes up, as if to cover my face. Granny Carne half smiles.

  “You won’t hide such a mark that way,” she says. “Not from me. We talked about it before, you remember, the last time I met you. Ingo puts that mark on a face. You know it, Sapphire. You’ve been there, in Ingo. You feel it pulling you, sometimes soft, sometimes strong.”

  I don’t say anything. I am frightened. How is it that Granny Carne knows so much?

  “Conor’s got the same inheritance,” Granny Carne goes on, “but it’s not so powerful in him. That’s the way things come out. Even brother and sister don’t inherit things from their parents equally.”

  Conor nods as if he understands, but I know he doesn’t. He must feel as dazed as I do.

  “But Conor,” goes on Granny Carne, leaning forward and looking seriously into his face, “you have your own power that belongs to you, never doubt that. The time will come to use it. Sapphire has more of Ingo, but you have more of Earth. Both have their equal power. It’s when they become unequal that there’s danger.”

  They look at each other. I think again how alike they are. Granny Carne could be Conor’s ancestor. The same dark skin, the same shape of the eyes, the same shape around the lips when they smile.

  “There’s always been pow
erful Mer blood in the Trewhella family,” Granny Carne goes on. “The Mer blood goes way back beyond the first Mathew Trewhella.”

  “But it couldn’t have been passed down to us,” says Conor. “Mathew Trewhella went off with that mermaid, didn’t he? He didn’t have human children. He was a young man, and he wasn’t married. It says so in the story.”

  “No, he wasn’t married, but he had a girl,” says Granny Carne. “He was in love with Annie, before the mermaid called to him. She was carrying Mathew’s baby when he disappeared. Annie gave the baby Mathew’s name, even though he’d left her and people were saying he’d betrayed her. It’s that little baby Mathew who carried the Mer blood down and gave you the inheritance.

  “Poor Annie, how she loved Mathew Trewhella,” goes on Granny Carne, as if she can see it all before her, clear and real as the honey cake on the table in front of us. “She would have fought the Zennor mermaid tooth and nail and won Mathew back, if they’d met as equals. But she wasn’t just fighting the Zennor mermaid. She was fighting the old Mer blood in Mathew that wanted to be away in Ingo.”

  I stare at Granny Carne. The way she talks about all these long-ago people makes me shiver.

  “So you’re saying that the story’s true? That Annie’s baby is our ancestor?” asks Conor.

  “Of course he is. How could it be otherwise?” asks Granny Carne harshly. “No more now. No more. I’m tired.”

  She looks tired. Not strong and tall anymore, but empty and gray, as if the color of life has poured out of her. She huddles back in her chair, shuts her eyes, and takes a few deep breaths; then, with her eyes still closed, she says in a low monotone that is almost like a chant: “But you’ve got a choice too. No inheritance can force you to accept it. You are the ones who choose. Salt water or sweet water.”

  “But we need to know—” I’m burning with impatience. Granny Carne has got to tell us more. Away in Ingo—why did she use those exact words?

  “Granny Carne, you’ve got to tell us more—”

  “Got to? Got to, my girl?” Granny Carne’s eyes open and flash amber. She fixes me with a gaze so stern that I flush red and drop my eyes. Her eyes blaze amber, like an owl’s eyes when it sees its prey. “Never throw a gift back to the giver, don’t you know that? Cut the cake now. Conor, open the damper on my stove. That kettle’s slow to boil.”

  And we know she won’t say one more word about Mathew Trewhella or the mermaid or Ingo or any of it. I pick up the knife to cut the cake, and the scent of honey and ginger makes my mouth water.

  Granny Carne won’t talk, but she can’t stop me thinking. The olden-days Mathew Trewhella, the one in the story, he never came home. Is that what he really wanted? Or did he decide in a split second to follow the mermaid without realizing that he could swim down that stream with her but he’d never be able to swim back up it again? How did he feel when he knew there was no going back, ever?

  How hard it must be to make such a choice. You’d be pulled from both sides, until you felt you were going to be torn apart. Choose Annie, or choose the Zennor mermaid. Choose home and family or the love he wanted to follow. Maybe it was Annie who slashed the wooden belly of the carved mermaid. Maybe she hated her that much.

  Have I got to choose too? The question beats in my head like the sound the waves make when they rush up onto the sand and drain away. Swash and backwash, that’s what it’s called. Dad told me. He said, Isn’t it wonderful to think, Saph, that all the time we’re alive, those waves are beating on the shore, just as our hearts are beating in our bodies? It never stops. And when our hearts stop beating, the waves will still be coming in and out, the same as ever, until the world ends.

  “I think you’ve cut enough of that cake now,” says Granny Carne. I look down in surprise at the slices lapping over the white plate, beautifully neat and even. I didn’t realize I’d cut so many. The honey cake is sticky and golden, studded with pieces of crystallized ginger. Granny Carne makes tea, and we all sit round the table. Conor and I talk to Granny Carne about Sadie, and how Jack’s mum had said we could have her a year ago, and Jack didn’t mind because they already had Poppy and Jasper. But Mum thought it would make too much work, with her having to get a job in St. Pirans.

  “But it’s you that really wants Sadie, Saph,” Conor says, to my surprise.

  “You do too.”

  “Not as much as you. I like her, but she’d be your dog if she came.”

  “Would you mind?”

  “No. It’d be good. I wouldn’t have to worry about you when you were at home on your own.”

  “I wouldn’t ever be on my own if I had Sadie.”

  Granny Carne says nothing much, just fills cups and plates. Later she tells us about a bull terrier with one eye that she had once, years ago, and how she’s never had a dog since he died, because she didn’t want to replace him. I wonder how many centuries ago that was, I think.

  “What’s so funny, Saph?”

  “Nothing. Granny Carne, can I have a bit more cake?”

  Conor has three slices, and I have two. It’s one of the best cakes I’ve ever tasted, moist and light and meltingly sweet. My stomach is warm and full, and I feel drowsy. I could sit here for hours, chatting over tea. You could almost believe that Granny Carne is just like any other old lady who lives alone and remembers you when you were a baby, and knows everything about everyone in the village, and keeps a delicious cake ready in a tin, in case someone comes.

  A bee knocks against the window, buzzing. Granny Carne goes to the window, opens it a crack, and tells the bee to go away, she’ll be up later. The bee flies off at once, up into the blue, as if it understands.

  “They like to know what’s going on,” Granny Carne explains. “You always have to tell the bees. If there’s a birth or a death, you tell them before you give the news to anyone else, and then they’re satisfied.”

  Yes, you could almost believe that Granny Carne is just like any other old lady who lives alone. But not quite.

  “Could I visit the bees?” asks Conor abruptly. I stare at him in surprise.

  “You want to talk to my bees?” says Granny Carne.

  “Yes. If that’s okay.”

  Granny Carne gets up and stands tall as a queen, considering Conor. She says nothing more, but after a long moment she turns and walks out the cottage door.

  “I think she’s angry,” I say nervously. “I wish you hadn’t asked. They’re her bees.”

  “She’s not angry,” says Conor calmly. “She’ll be back in a minute.”

  He’s right. Granny Carne comes back in with her bee-keeping clothes over her arm.

  “I keep them out in the shed,” she says. “Bees don’t like the smell of houses. Now then, Conor.”

  She hands him a pair of baggy white trousers and a beekeeper’s smock. Conor pulls them on over his jeans and T-shirt.

  “My boots will be too small for you, but you’ll be all right with your shoes. Tuck the trousers in so the bees can’t crawl onto your skin. They don’t want to sting, since it’s death to them, but if they find themselves trapped in your clothes, they’ll panic. Now the hat.”

  Conor puts on the beekeeper’s hat and veil. Granny Carne adjusts it, and stands back to check he is completely protected.

  “You’ll do.”

  We walk in single file up a little path onto the highest part of the Downs. Granny Carne first, then Conor, then me. The sun blazes on us. The buttery, coconut scent of gorse fills the air, and sparrows flit out of the bushes as we go by. We tread heavily, to warn any snakes there may be. It’s the kind of day an adder would come out to bask on a stone.

  The ground dips, and there in a protected hollow ahead of us is a beehive. Even from this distance I can see a smoky blur of bees going in and out and hear the low hum of their busyness.

  “We won’t go any closer, Sapphire,” says Granny Carne, “and you keep nice and still now, and talk soft.”

  She steps forward a pace and stands there, listening. “Yes, you
can visit them,” she says to Conor after a while. “There’s no trouble in the hive. They’re happy.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Walk forward slowly. Don’t worry if some of them settle on you. They’ll want to know what you’re made of.”

  “Won’t they think Conor is you if he’s wearing your clothes?”

  “No. You can’t fool the bees. Then, when they’re used to you, go right up to the hive, and tell them what you want to tell them. Only go gentle. Bees don’t like a flurry.”

  “What if it’s a question? Is that all right?”

  “There aren’t many who can get an answer from the bees,” says Granny Carne seriously.

  “But you can,” Conor says, and she nods.

  “Me and the bees have lived together a long time. We’re like family. You go on now; show respect, and they won’t harm you.”

  Conor steps forward slowly. It seems a long journey to the beehive. A small cloud of bees comes out to meet him and circles his head. Conor doesn’t seem worried. He just keeps going until he reaches the hive, and then he settles very gently onto his knees, so that his face is level with the hole where the bees are going in and out.

  I watch. Conor stays very still. I can’t see his face, only his back. I can’t hear anything but the buzz of the bees.

  “Ask them now,” murmurs Granny Carne, as if to herself. But Conor seems to hear her. I hear the sound of his voice, but not what he’s saying. The steady hum of the bees dips into silence for a few moments. They’re listening! They’re really listening, just as Granny Carne said. And then the sound of the bees swells back again. Conor stays there a little while longer; then very slowly he rises and begins to move backward, away from the hive.

  “Go gentle,” mutters Granny Carne, but she doesn’t need to remind him. The bees don’t seem bothered by Conor at all.

  We walk back to the cottage. I’m longing to ask Conor what happened, but Granny Carne’s silence forbids questions. He takes off all the beekeeper’s gear in the garden, so she can put it directly into her shed.

  “You asked your question then,” says Granny Carne as we’re leaving.

  “Yes.”