“There now, Sadie, don’t you think Dad would be pleased if he saw how much I’ve done?”
The bees are going home after working all day in the flowers. One of them brushes past me and I wonder if it’s going home to Granny Carne’s hive. It stops, and burrows into a snapdragon flower. I can hear it buzzing and bumbling around inside. Maybe it’s stuck? No, slowly it emerges.
Suddenly an idea strikes me. Maybe, if Conor could talk to the hive, I could talk to one single bee?
“Um – listen, can you hear me?”
But as soon as I start talking to the bee, I know it’s not going to work. I haven’t any of the feeling in me that Conor described. To be honest I don’t believe that I have any earth magic at all. Sure enough, the bee takes no notice of me, and flies off with its load of pollen.
At that moment, a shadow falls over me. I look up quickly. There’s no one there, but Sadie is on her feet, bristling, a growl starting in the back of her throat. And the evening sun’s not so bright. No, the light’s changing. It’s going a strange colour, greenish blue, like the colour of underwater. But the sea can’t come here! Ingo is not allowed to break its bounds, I know that.
“Sadie!”
Sadie backs against me, growling loudly now, pressing herself against my body. She’s terrified, although for some strange reason I’m not afraid. But something’s about to happen, I know it is.
“Myrgh kerenza,” says a voice. It is so close, so familiar, that I can’t believe there is no one else in the garden. “Myrgh kerenza…”
My mind stretches, and discovers the meaning of the words. Dear daughter. Only two people in the world can call me by that name. “Dad!” I whisper. “Is it really you?” Dad here, in his own garden, at home…
But no one answers. Slowly, the light begins to change. The green-blue tinge of the light fades to the warm gold of evening. Sadie moves away from me, shakes herself all over as if she’s coming out of the water, and barks and barks and barks.
“Quiet, Sadie!”
I listen hard, but all that I can hear are the normal sounds of a summer evening. But I feel warm. It’s a good feeling. I am Dad’s myrgh kerenza. His dear daughter. Somewhere he knows it, and I know it too. After Conor talked to the bees, he knew that Dad was alive. I believed Conor, but I still didn’t really know it.
But now I do.
FOR ISSY CHEUNG
CONTENTS
Ingo at night. It’s not completely dark, though. The moon is riding high, and there’s enough light to turn the water a rich, mysterious blue.
I am deep in Ingo, swimming through the moonlit water. Faro’s here somewhere, I’m sure he is. I can’t see him, but I’m not scared. There’s just enough light to see by. There’s a glimmer of rock – and a green and silver school of mackerel—
Imagine being lost underwater in total blackness. I’d panic. But it’s dangerous to panic in Ingo. You mustn’t think of the Air. You must forget that human beings can’t live underwater, and then you’ll find that you can.
Faro was here a moment ago, I’m sure of it. He’s keeping himself hidden, but I don’t know why. Even if it was totally dark, I expect he’d still be able to see me through the water. Faro is Mer, and he belongs here. Ingo is his home. And I’m human, and I don’t belong.
But it isn’t as simple as that. There’s something else in me: the Mer blood that