The Crossing of Ingo (21 page)

“We’ll see them soon,” says Faro. Even though he’s been telling me to be calm and patient, his tail lashes with tension as he strains forward, peering into the green depths.

I start to count, but when I get into the high hundreds the numbers blur and dazzle in my head. “Seven hundred and seventy-seven … seven hundred and seventy-nine …”

Faro’s face is drawn with concentration. “She is coming … they are coming slowly, Sapphire, they are very tired … they are closer now …”

At long last, a speck appears and then another. A few seconds later, the specks have grown into moving, wavering shapes that might be …

“It’s them!”

We shoot forward. An explosion of bubbles hits my face as
Faro powers his way through the water faster than I could ever swim. I plunge after him. Faro swerves sideways, and I see them at last. Conor lifts a hand on greeting, slowly and wearily. He and Elvira are hardly swimming at all now as we rush towards them, and then with one last stroke I’m in my brother’s arms. The force of my stroke pushes him backwards.

“Whoa, Saph, don’t knock me over—”

He sounds just the same as ever. He feels just the same as ever, real and solid. I pull back and put my arms on his shoulders so I can see him properly. He’s pale and there’s a bruise on his forehead, but he’s smiling. And there’s Elvira, smiling too.

Something completely unexpected happens inside me. Instead of joy and relief, I feel overwhelming anger. It’s the sight of my brother and Elvira together, looking so … so
normal.
So composed. How can they look like that when I’ve been desperate, thinking they were dead, fearing that I’d never see Conor again?

“Where have you been?” I demand furiously. “We thought you were dead. Why didn’t you stay close like we said?”

The smile vanishes from Conor’s face. “Calm down, Saph,” he says coolly. This is the last straw. I pummel his chest with my fists.

“I thought – I thought you were –
dead!”
I gasp out. “And you’re just –
grinning!”

Conor’s expression changes. “Hey, Saph, I’m all right. Come on, you eejit, take it easy.”

“You’re
the bloody eejits, you and Elvira, scaring everybody to death, making us think you were dead.”

Conor frowns, as if he’s just woken up and is trying to remember a dream. “Did you really think we were dead?”

“What else were we supposed to think?”

“Anyway, it’s great to see you, sis, even if you do beat me up the minute I get close enough.”

The storm inside me dies away. Conor’s back, my own brother. Alive, solid, real. Nothing else matters. I become aware of Faro and Elvira clasping hands and looking at us.

“You will be able to take on Ervys and Talek and Mortarow all at once if they catch up with us, little sister,” says Faro with a wicked grin.

“I’d put my money on Saph,” agrees Conor. Elvira, however, seems slightly shocked by my violence. I decide to ignore both her reaction and Faro’s.

“So what happened to you?” I ask Conor eagerly. His smile fades. Suddenly his face is weary, and there’s a look of pain and bewilderment in his eyes. He glances quickly at Elvira and then back to me. At once I know something’s gone wrong. Something important. Faro catches the glance too, and cuts in quickly.

“We must move on. We have lost days already, and these two look exhausted. We must save our strength for swimming, until we find safe shelter where Conor and Elvira can rest. The four of us are together again; that is all that matters. We can tell all our stories as we travel north.”

W
e’re sheltering deep inside a cave in the flank of an iceberg. The iceberg is drifting very slowly south, which isn’t the right direction for us, but we had to hide because of the killer whales. Faro was the first to hear them. A few minutes later we all picked up the eerie clicking and whistling. I knew it was whales but didn’t know which kind; Faro did, though. He said, “Orcas! A big pod, and they are hunting. They sound hungry.”

“Can’t we talk to them?” I asked.

Faro frowned. “We can’t risk it. Listen to how hungry they are. They are still distant, but they are coming closer.” I listened. The clicks and whistlings meant nothing; it was just a forest of sound.

“Listen harder,” said Faro. “Remember you are Mer, little sister.” That was when I realised I was trying to pick out words, instead of letting the waves of meaning vibrate against my ears until they became sense. How many times did I have to remember to let go of the Air, let go of my human way of seeing and listening? The water was suddenly flooded with the whales’
conversation. Faro was right. The orcas were hungry and desperate.

Ferromir is starving … I have no more milk for him

Hold on, sister, we will find food for you and then you will have milk

My belly hurts, mama, my belly hurts

The whales’ voices were full of anguish, love and concern for one another. I remembered what I’d learned from Faro long ago: orcas may stay in the same pod for more than forty years. They will do anything to nurture and protect the members of their pod. Their voices swelled in my ears.

Soon we will find food …

Soon … soon …

Do you feel that vibration, my brother?

Seals! Fur seals!

Follow me, there is food! This way!

“Quick!” said Faro. “Into the ice mountain!”

We all turned as one and dived for shelter. The first cave was too big, and Faro thought the whales could get into it. The second was hard to enter, even for us. We had to squeeze through the narrow gap between pillars of ice that guarded the cave entrance. We huddled in the back. The light was so dim we could see almost nothing, but we could hear the whales questing up and down. Their echolocation had spotted us and then we had vanished and now they were savage with hunger and frustration.

“They will not hear that we are Mer,” whispered Faro.

“Or human,” I whispered back.

“Don’t talk,” muttered Conor. “Keep dead still. If they sense we’re in here they could ram those pillars of ice to get at us.”

No one moved. No one spoke. My ears hurt from the battering of the whales’ noise. They were very close, maybe right outside the cave’s entrance. One of the weakest young was in trouble: two of the orcas were struggling to support him. They were all maddened by the pain of hunger. The sound surged around us, deafening us. At long last, it began to retreat. The orcas were giving up hope. Their desperate cries grew fainter. They were gone, following the faint hope of another hunting trail. I shifted position from where I’d been cramped against a wall of ice.

“I think they’re going,” I whispered.

“They’ll come back if they feel us moving.”

We hung still in the water, waiting and listening, until we were sure that the pod of killer whales had gone.

We’ve all agreed to stay in our cave until we’re quite sure that the whales won’t come back. I’m happy with that. I like the safe feeling of being surrounded by thick ribs of ice. Nothing can attack us from behind here. If any creature tried to squeeze in through the gaps, as we did, we’d be able to fight it off.

We’ve been out in the open ocean for so long, exposed and vulnerable. This is like having a little rest in camp when you are
climbing Everest. I smile to myself. The four of us are safe again, and together. Soon we’ll have to travel on, but for now I’m not going to worry about that.

“You can’t help feeling sorry for them,” says Conor thoughtfully.

“What?”

“The orcas. It’s not their fault they’ve got to eat.”

“You can think that now, because you are not between their jaws,” answers Faro. “Have you ever seen two orcas playing with a seal pup, before they kill it?”

“No.”

“They toss it high and catch it, and snap at it again, until they get tired of their game. Usually the pup is dead by then, but not always. The first thing every Mer mother teaches her child is how to convince a killer whale that he is not a plump, blubbery little seal.”

“But we can’t blame them,” says Elvira, backing Conor as always. “Hunger drives them and they must feed their young.”

“Hunger is driving me too, but I’m not about to take a bite out of Sapphire’s leg,” says Faro. Elvira takes the hint and opens the bag of tightly woven sea grass that she wears around her waist.

Oh, that bag of Elvira’s! I am sick of the sight of it. Every time she opens it I feel a faint hope that this time she’s going to bring out something different; but no. It’s always the same vile tasting compressed tablets which Elvira assures us are made of exceptionally nutritious seaweeds, and will enrich whatever
other food we find on our journey. Fortunately Elvira only expects us to swallow a couple of tablets each day.

I start thinking about food, while Faro nibbles his seaweed tablet with apparent relish. It is just as well that I don’t feel hungry as there’s rarely much to look forward to here. No more sea grapes or other delicacies: we are too far north for them now. Just what Conor calls “Elvira’s pemmican” as he makes a face and swallows it whole so as not to have to taste it too much.

The long night passes slowly after the whales have gone. I think about the Mer, and food, and war. I wonder if one reason why the Mer seem to be able to live in peace most of the time is because they aren’t always fighting for food supplies, as humans are. But then there’s Ervys. He couldn’t be any more aggressive if he were starving, so the argument doesn’t really work …

Faro is restless too. He and Conor talk for a long time, in quiet voices. Then Faro turns to me and starts talking about this current that we’ve got to find. He’s sure that there’s a very strong current not far from here. Once we’ve rested, and are completely sure there are no orcas close by, we’ve got to find it and ride it northward.

“How do you know, Faro?”

“I can feel it.”

“You can’t feel currents when you’re not in them.”

“You have a lot still to learn about Ingo, little sister. Do you remember when we smelled land from far away? It is like that.”

Faro’s self-confidence can be provoking, but when you are sheltering inside an iceberg, not even knowing which way is south and which is north, it is very comforting. I touch the
deublek
on my wrist. We must move on. We can’t hide for long inside a cave of ice. Ingo needs us.

After a while, Faro drifts into sleep. Elvira is on the other side of him, curled up around her tail, while Conor is on my other side. So he and Elvira are as far away from each other as possible … interesting. I’ve already noticed that they haven’t talked to each other much since they came back to us. No long intimate chats which mean nothing to anybody else. No significant glances. No ripples of laughter from Elvira. At last I’ve got the chance to talk to Conor privately.

“Conor?”

“What?”

“Tell me what really happened after you and Elvira got separated from us.” Conor and Elvira have already told us a bit about what happened. They were thrown against the wall of an iceberg – probably the same berg that nearly ran down Faro and me – and then Elvira had concussion, Conor thought, and she hadn’t been able to remember anything. They travelled on very slowly, fearing that we were dead. It was only because Elvira spotted Nanuq that they’d discovered we were alive and which way they should go to find us.

This is the story Conor and Elvira told us earlier. Every so often they glanced at each other as if they needed confirmation. The story didn’t sound quite right to me. There were too many gaps in it. It sounded like something they’d agreed on rather than the truth.

But Conor doesn’t seize the chance to talk openly. “What’s wrong, Conor? What really happened?” I have a sudden flash of insight. “It’s something to do with Elvira, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he says reluctantly.

“You can trust me, Con.”

“All right. You know we said Elvira was concussed?”

“Yes.”

“She wasn’t. We were both shocked and we’ve got loads of bruises, but Elvira didn’t hit her head. She just changed completely.”

“What do you mean?”