Free The Crossing of Ingo by Helen Dunmore Page A

snakes hiss.
    I come back to myself. Rainbow is watching me curiously.
    “Granny Carne hasn’t tried to stop us,” Conor confirms. “She’s the only one who knows where we’re going, though. You won’t tell anyone else, will you, Rainbow? Not even Patrick?”
    “Not if you don’t want me to.”
    Rainbow unhitches Treacle’s reins from the post and leads him away from the wall. He stops, placid and foursquare as ever. She puts her foot into the stirrup, and springs on to Treacle’s broad back. Her legs are way too long for him, but Rainbow is light and no burden.
    “That animal’s more like an armchair than a horse,” Conor says, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Rainbow remains serious.
    “You said it might be dangerous.”
    “Yes,” says Conor.
    “You will—” Rainbow clears her throat. “You will come back, won’t you?” The light is behind her, shining through the bright rim of hair beneath the hard hat. Conor puts his hand on Treacle’s neck. He is serious, too, as he gazes up at Rainbow.
    “I’ll come back,” he says. “I promise you that.”

CHAPTER SIX
    F aro was right. When the time comes, we can no more resist the force that is pulling us towards that Assembly chamber than we could stop the blood flowing through our veins. The Call isn’t just one note blown on a conch: it’s a summons. Ingo wants us, needs us, and demands that we come
now.
    It’s a clear, still night, thick with stars. The moon will rise soon after nine o’clock, Conor says. It’s coming up to high tide. The salt tide of Ingo rises in me, growing stronger every minute.
    We turn out the lights and lock the cottage door. A gull mews like a cat out of the darkness above our heads. Another answers, and then I think I hear wings. Conor stares up, trying to see what the gulls are doing. “Are they still there?”
    “I think one flew off.”
    “Do you think they’ve guessed where we’re going?”
    “I don’t know.”
    We are both whispering. Now that my eyes are getting used to the dark I can see the pale shapes of the gulls standing on the roof, silhouetted against the moonlit sky. There are six of them.They make no more sound. Their silence seems more sinister than a flurry of angry squawking. “Come on,” says Conor.
    We cross the garden, open the gate and set off down the track. Our feet crunch more loudly on the hard surface than they ever do by day. I glance back. I can still see our home by starlight, although the moon hasn’t risen yet. The gulls are there, watching and waiting.
They can wait there as long as they like,
I think,
but they’ll never be able to enter. The rowan will keep our home safe.
I can just see the rowan tree’s shape against our door.
No evil can cross a threshold which the rowan guards.
    Lights glow through curtains from the scattered cottages where our neighbours live. In the morning they’ll see that no lights are on in our cottage. They’ll think we’ve left early to catch the train up to Plymouth. Granny Carne has told our neighbour Mary Thomas about Mum’s cousin, and the news will be around the village by now.
    Down the track, down the path. The dew has already fallen and it’s cold. The air smells of autumn, of mushrooms, bracken and the sea. We don’t talk. The power that is taking us into Ingo now is too strong for words.
    We’re almost at the place where the little hidden path curves away off this one, to the lip of the cliff where we’ll scramble down to our cove. Faro will be waiting–
    Conor stops dead. I almost fall on top of him. “What’s wrong?”
    “Listen.”
    I listen, expecting to hear the sound of the sea or maybe the Call again, or maybe my own name carried on the wind from the sea, as I heard it once before:
    Ssssapphiiire … Ssssapphiiire …
    But there’s nothing.
    “Conor, come on, we’ve got to hurry.”
    “No. Listen, Saph. I’m sure I heard something.”
    The night breeze lifts my hair. Prickles of fear run up my neck. Ervys can’t