The Crossing of Ingo Read Online Free PDF

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 hasstitched 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