The Crossing of Ingo

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.”