Water (14 page)

I eyed my plate suspiciously.

“What is it?” I whispered to Merrick.

“Snake, sweet yams and mountain greens,” he informed me around a mouthful of food.

“S-snake?” I squeaked, staring at the circle of whitish meat on my plate. I gingerly lifted a piece and inhaled. The scent was mouth-watering, the tiniest bite matched the delicious fragrance.

“Mmm, it tastes like chicken.”

He shook his head. “No it doesn’t taste like bird, more like crocodile.”

I giggled, relieved to be able to have such an abnormal conversation about such a normal topic. “OK, if you say so.”

Despite the incredible revelations I’d had in the day, and the ever-present concern that lingered about the sick Oceanids, I found myself enjoying Sabrina and Merrick’s company more than I’d have thought possible.

My stomach churned a little as the dinner plates were cleared.

“When do I have to go up there?” I asked, worrying about tripping over my skirt or not bobbing correctly.

“After the music,” Sabrina replied, looking expectantly at two Oceanids as they moved forward toward the tree, strong ebony-skinned man and a wispy woman, her hair flowing to her waist.

“We always sing and have music in the evenings,” Merrick explained. “The stories in the songs remind us of our history.”

The sound that swelled from the Oceanids was otherworldly. It started with a gentle bass melody sung by one of the males. The Oceanids sitting in the audience provided the “music”. I recognised the imitation of crickets, the wind in the trees, birds, frogs, running water and other sounds unfamiliar to me.

Each sound was at the perfect pitch to complement the singer’s voice and seemed to flow in depth, rhythm and volume to create the most beautiful natural music I’d ever heard.

Weaving through the music was a delicate soprano harmony. I was surprised to realise that the melody and harmony were in two different languages. The first I didn’t recognise but the harmony was sung in English.

“What language is he singing in?” I asked Merrick, recognising the liquid language I’d heard a few times now.

“The language of the sea,” he replied simply.

I was about to question him further when some of the words the female creature was singing caught my attention. Her song was the story of her kind’s original home.

I didn’t recognise the descriptions of the places she spoke of. Most of the references were associated with mountains and formations I’d never heard of.

“What is she singing about?” I whispered to Merrick.

“She’s describing where she comes from,” he explained.

I listened for a moment or two longer. “Which is where?” I asked.

“Well, right now she’s describing the eastern escarpment off the coast of Iceland. It is a mystical and beautiful place with the most incredible forests you have ever seen.”

I wasn’t one hundred per cent certain of my geography, but I was pretty sure that Iceland didn’t have many forests, certainly not ones that were described as “incredible”.

“I don’t think there are any forests in Iceland,” I whispered back.

“There are in the sea,” he replied. “Great coral forests so tall and solid that if you don’t have your bearings right you could get lost for days in them.”

I gulped. The reason I couldn’t identify any of the places the Oceanid was singing about was because she was describing underwater topography.

I listened eagerly, each description painting a beautiful picture in my mind of the strange and alien world below the waves. It helped to close my eyes, as her words took on a life of their own, weaving beautifully in a fabric of sound that draped itself around me and, strangely, I knew the song. Not the words, but the melody felt like it had been a part of my life, or maybe it was my dreams all my life. It was comforting and exciting.

It felt like – I struggled to put the feeling into words – like Friday afternoon when you come home and know that you belong, and you have the whole weekend stretching out in front of you full of exciting possibility. It reminded me of family, good memories, not the shards of family that had been left after Brent’s death, but the family we’d had before then. I sighed, content for the first time I could remember in a very very long time.

The music in the circle whispered to a close, and in the silence that followed, the echo of the tune drifted up from the caves where all of the sick and dying Oceanids had joined in.

Their voices weren’t as pure, the harmonies slightly distorted as their damaged throats cracked on the highest and lowest notes, but the sweet sadness of their singing had tears streaming down my cheeks.

These people were in a desperate situation, many of them in excruciating pain, and yet somehow they found the energy to sing, to remember their home, and to connect through song with each other.

The beauty of the unity was interrupted by a premature stirring among the healthy Oceanids as Talita stepped into the centre of the circle.

I found their excited conversation exceptionally rude as it cut the sick Oceanids’ song off, stopping it mid-phrase. Their behaviour was intensly disrespectful to the suffering Oceanids and I was surprised at how angry this made me.

Talita lifted her hands and the Oceanids quietened.

“I must apologise, dear friends, for interrupting the usual routine that marks the evening’s entertainment,” she began, her voice echoing around the cave. “But before Taika begins I would like to formally introduce you to our honoured guest Alexandra.”

She extended her hand to me as I stood awkwardly, trying to smooth my dress as I hurried towards her, Merrick and Sabrina at my side the whole way.

“Stop fidgeting,” Sabrina muttered at me as we took our places beside Talita.

The Oceanids made a strange humming noise as I stepped up beside Talita.

“They are welcoming you,” Merrick whispered beside me. “Now would be a good time to bob.”

I did so, if a little hurriedly.

“Already Alexandra’s presence has resulted in some interesting changes in the pod,” Talita continued. “While she must still be properly trained, just her presence here is already helpful, and we are seeing an interesting unity developing as has never happened before.”

Talita nodded briefly at Merrick and Sabrina.

Sabrina stepped forward and spoke in the language I couldn’t understand, Merrick translating for me as she did so.

“She’s explaining what her talents and my talents are,” he paraphrased.

Sabrina stepped back to where I was standing, took my hand and winked at me as she did so. A shiver ran up the inside of my arm, and then Merrick opened his palm and blew a dusting of snow into the air.

The crowd gasped in awe, murmuring among themselves as Sabrina stepped forward again and described, in the foreign language, something she could see a great distance away.

The whole time this was happening I’d maintained a fixed smile on my face, feeling very much like a magician’s bunny rabbit – the star of the show but completely powerless in its own right.

Talita stepped forward again. “As Alexandra is able to help unify us more, we will reveal more of her abilities,” she told the excited crowd. “For tonight though, let us resume our normal routine,” she said before bobbing to the excited Oceanids and pausing to whisper in my ear, “Well done!”

We returned to the edge of the circle, the Oceanids around us smiling at me encouragingly and complimenting me on my abilities.

I was infinitely relieved when the crowd’s attention turned from me as they all waited expectantly for what was to come next.

“You did really well,” Merrick murmured, leaning in to me as he spoke.

I shook my head slightly. “I didn’t do anything except be a glorified conduit.”

He chuckled quietly. “Well, no one else here can do that so well done anyway.”

I shrugged, trying to push away the gnawing anxiety that I was merely being used for their purposes. I decided as we waited for the “show” to begin that I was not going to be submitted to another embarrassing “show and tell” tomorrow night, that I would have asked all the right questions of the right people by then so that I knew exactly what I was supposed to do to help them.

“Taika is about to perform!” Sabrina whispered to me excitedly.

I looked at Merrick, raising my eyebrows in question.

“She is a particularly talented Oceanid,” he replied quietly.

“Particularly talented at what?” I asked. He hesitated, looking worried.

“Magic,” replied Sabrina.

“Magic?” I repeated, looking between them. Sabrina was leaning forward and staring at the centre of the cave, her face alight with anticipation.

Merrick refused to meet my questioning gaze for longer than a few seconds, his eyes fixed on the centre of the cave too. His face, however, was creased in worry, his mouth turned down at the corners as he waited.

A brilliant flash of light and ear-splitting shriek that reverberated and echoed through the mountain for what felt like an age, had me jumping and clutching at Merrick’s arm.

He patted my hand absently, his expression tense as a thick mist filled the space. It twisted and roiled around us growing denser and denser until the only point of reference I had to reality was Merrick’s hand over mine. I could see nothing but the shifting whiteness in front of me.

I jumped as Sabrina squealed next to me and then giggled, rattling off a string of phrases in the language of the ocean. Other voices expressed delight, wonder and excitement, most of it mixed with laughter.

“Oh wow, that’s so cool!” I heard Josh exclaim, but still I could see nothing but the shifting mist.

Fear prickled my hands and feet and a terrible cloying claustrophobia settled over me as I tried to make out what was going on.

Then Merrick laughed and let go of my hand. I immediately groped around where he’d been trying to find him, but he must have shifted because my desperate fingers couldn’t find him.

I peered through the mist, trying to make out any familiar shapes and forms, and to my relief my searching eyes settled on a slight thinning of the thick white cloud, a little more transparency where there had been opaque nothingness a few moments before. I could just make out the cheerful flickering of fire from within one of the clay pots. Relief washed over me.

She stepped into the space, a wisp of a woman, shrouded in the mist which seemed to flow from her, swirling around and out from her in ever-changing sinuous shapes and forms. She moved towards me like a cat stalking a mouse, slowly, carefully and with the intensity of the immensely powerful.

I stared at her unblinking, afraid she would disappear into the mist and even more afraid that she wouldn’t. I tried to assemble an impression of her and strained my newly discovered instincts to try to discern whether she was a friend or an enemy. There was something unsettling about her, something odd that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

She took another careful step towards me, the mist around her thinning a little. In that moment I got a proper glimpse of what she looked like. Her hair was silver-grey and swirled around her face like the mist, her clothing was a patchwork of pale, hanging off bony shoulders and pooling around her hidden feet. She was the only Oceanid I’d encountered who showed any signs of age and, although she was still strikingly beautiful, there was an air of the ancient about her.

The mist pooled in front of her again, and I breathed a little easier, sure that she would divert her attention to someone else, someone more important.

“Alexandra,” a breathy voice whispered in my ear. Every hair on my body stood on end as a ripple of fear tensed my muscles.

Cold bony fingers traced up my spine and settled menacingly on my shoulders, splayed across my throat. I gulped and tried to twist to see her, but as I did so her grip on my shoulders tightened.

“You have a great and terrible destiny ahead of you,” she whispered again.

A series of strange images flashed in front of me.

My arm thrown skyward in a clenched fist, my mouth open in a shout as a thrill of energy and triumph buzzed through me.

Dad’s limp form, heavy and unyielding in my arms as my heart ached and hot tears streaked down my face.

And then the strangest sensation of moving easily through water, much like Merrick had, but on my own and with a fury so focused and intense burning through me, that the strangeness and beauty of my environment was barely a glimmer in my consciousness.

I shook my head, trying to clear the images.

Her grip on my shoulders tightened again, her fingers digging into my throat, cutting off my air.

“You will never fulfil your destiny if you keep denying it,” she hissed.

I gulped at the air that suddenly rushed into my lungs as she released me.

“I’m sorry,” I rasped

A sharp sting at the base of my neck was the last memory I have, as the misty light was quickly overtaken by darkness.

I woke a few moments before I hit the floor. I lay there for a few seconds trying to make sense of the odd light and musty smells. A low chuckle had me scraping my cheek across the floor as I turned to see who was watching my inelegant start to the day.

Merrick lounged in the doorway, one leg bent, head to one side, watching me.

I flushed, struggling to disentangle my limbs from the hammock he must have placed me in the night before.

Cheeks flaming and eventually upright, I couldn’t think of anything to say that would restore my dignity so I stalked past him to the bathrooms in need of some privacy before the day began.

The little clay fire pots were still in place, only smokily empty, as I walked across the opening to the wash section of the bathrooms Sabrina had shown me the day before. A great slab of stone separated the male and female areas effectively dissecting the underground waterfall in two.

Only one or two others were awake, and I relished the solitude and privacy and the cold water stinging my scalp as my senses exploded awake.

As I rubbed the harsh soap over my skin, my hand brushed the back of my neck, and I winced. I gingerly fingered an area the size of coin that sent urgent messages to my brain. A tiny bubble-shaped bump at the centre of the area sent excruciating fiery fingers of angry pain up the side of my neck.

I yelped in surprise, and stepped quickly under the icy water again in an attempt to ease the heat that now radiated from my neck into my head.

A few moments under the water and the pain dissipated.

I stepped out of the waterfall shower, hastily drying myself with a tiny scrap of surprisingly water absorbent fabric Sabrina had given me along with the soap and sponge.

The day before lingered in my thoughts as I tried to recreate the clothing masterpiece Sabrina had managed to create for me.

So much had happened in such a short amount of time. The most important had been the haunting visit to the sick Oceanids. In all my days I didn’t think I would ever forget the pain and suffering and most of all the courage of the few I’d met. I decided I wanted to meet more of them; sometime today I would be going back to those caves.

I draped the robe Sabrina had given me as best I could but couldn’t get it to stay up properly. Eventually, I gave up trying to make it behave and wound it around my body and legs creating a sort of one-piece short ensemble.

Merrick was waiting for me beneath the tree. He grinned when he saw me.

“I like what you’ve done with Sabrina’s robe. Very… modern, maybe it’ll catch on here.”

“I doubt it,” I said, pulling self-consciously at the robe where it clung to my body occasionally revealing slivers of skin.

“I want to spend some time with the sick Oceanids today,” I told him firmly.

He looked a bit taken aback. “Um sure, I guess that can be arranged,” he replied. “When do you want to start?”

“Now is good.”

He grinned at me, his face lighting up as he did so.

“Well, let’s go then.”

I nodded and followed him down the pathway to the fissure that led to the “hospital”.

He explained my intentions to Marinus, who grinned toothily at me.

“Follow me,” he instructed, leading us down several levels of caves until we stood outside a dimly lit one.

“Nanami?” he called softly at the cave entrance. A raspy voice answered him jovially. “Nanami, you have a visitor.”

A stooped Oceanid shuffled to the cave entrance. Her skin was a patchwork of scarring. Her face had dropped on one side, the wasted muscles pulling her eyelid down to reveal the red rim beneath. The other side of her face was exquisitely beautiful, perfectly proportioned, with a sparkle in her azure blue eyes.

“Ahh, Merrick,” she rasped. “I am so glad you have come, child.” She stepped backwards, indicating we should come into her aven.

Merrick settled in the doorway, leaning against the doorpost and offering me one of the chairs.

“Who is this beautiful baby you’ve brought to see me?” she asked him huskily while patting my arm.

“This is Alexandra, Nani,” Merrick replied, grinning at her maternal mannerisms.

“Ah, the great Alexandra, who is set to save us all.” She smiled at me sympathetically. “That is rather a large responsibility you carry there, my girl.”

I smiled at her, liking her instantly. “Could you tell me what happened to you?” I asked her.

“My story isn’t nearly as interesting as many of the others, my dear,” she replied, “but if you must know, then of course I’ll tell you.”

She settled herself in the other chair in the room, moving it closer to me and taking my hand as she spoke.

“I lived in the most beautiful part of the ocean.” She smiled, her eyes distant. “In a home of coral, so brilliant with colour and life it made even the ocean blue look dull. Oh we had such a lovely life back then. Every tide we would have the most wonderful parties, with banquets of food and dancing and love.” Her rasping voice drifted to a close. “Then one day we woke to a dark cloud covering our home. It was thick and evil smelling and it drew all of the oxygen out of the sea.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Almost immediately our skin began to react to it, bubbling up in terribly painful blisters.” She absently ran her hand over her forearm, her fingers gently tracing the scar lines there.

“Some of the others in our pod fled as soon as they woke up, having heard of other Oceanids who had suffered from such a dark cloud. We were unwilling to believe that our wonderful home was destroyed, unwilling to leave the ocean creatures that were our companions to their fate of a slow and horrible death. We tried to help them, to get them to leave, but there is no food in the blue wastelands and they can’t leave very easily. The wait proved too much for our systems. Even when we got to cleaner water the damage had been done.”

She reached over and patted my hand absently again. “Many of our pod died after a few days, the poison having eaten through too much of their bodies. We met up with some other Oceanids also fleeing another part of the ocean. They told us about this pod, and its facilities, and so we came.”

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Just short of twenty years,” she replied, laughing wispily at my expression.

“And you’re not better yet?” I asked.

She sighed. “Once that poison gets into an Oceanids’ system it is very difficult to flush out. It’s like tiny deposits of it get left in our cells and only the cleanest and purest water can get it out. Not much of that left around is there?” She cackled at her own joke.

I smiled and chatted with her briefly before extracting myself from her charming company only by promising to come and visit her again.

Many of the other thirty Oceanids I visited that day had similar stories. The location varied a little, but the details of their disease were often the same.

“Are you OK?” Merrick whispered, as I left yet another reeking aven. I shrugged as the tears I’d been holding back clawed their way up my throat, making my breath ragged with the effort of holding all of the tragedy and emotion inside. He held a quiet, whispered conversation with Marinus, who nodded and smiled sympathetically at me.

“We’re about to start our morning cleansing routine,” Marinus’s voice boomed into the unnatural quiet. “You’re welcome to come back again this afternoon, my dear. Each person you have visited is doing much better today, and the rest are looking forward to meeting you.”

I nodded, unable to speak without bursting into tears.

Merrick took my hand and led me back to the central area with the tree in silence, while my mind roiled with the haunting images each story left with me.

He paused beneath the dappled sunlight, the spongy moss underfoot making me stumble a little towards him.

He caught me before I fell, drawing me into a hug, patting my back as the tears I’d held back streamed down my cheeks. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. He’d stood at the entrance of each aven I’d been in and listened to each story. He knew the horror and the tragedy and the complete helplessness of each situation.

“Let’s get out of here for a while,” he suggested, pressing me away from where I’d been cocooned in his arms and smiling at me kindly. “It looks like you could really use a break.”

I nodded, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes and taking a shuddering breath.

He led me past the wash space to the wall of stone with the erratic fist-sized extrusions all the way up it which I’d seen the Merrow use the day before, and leapt lightly at the wall placing a foot and hand expertly on the extrusions before climbing, spiderlike, straight up the rock face.

I was so shocked that only when his torso began to disappear above the roof did I realise that he probably meant for me to follow.

“Pssst,” I hissed.

He paused and looked back at me.

I lifted both my hands up and shrugged whispering, “I can’t do that.” He frowned at me as if he were frustrated that I wasn’t even trying. I gazed up at him, my expression defiant. If he thought I would be able to follow him, he was sadly mistaken. Not only was I terrified of heights, I was pretty sure I didn’t have the upper-body strength to haul myself up a sheer rock face.

“Be patient,” his whispered voice floated down to me.

I stood at the bottom of the wall watching as he disappeared high above me, feeling like a fool as I stood staring at the roof.

I had turned to look around me self-consciously when a pile of ropes glanced off my shoulder and landed on the floor. Looking up I saw Merrick grinning down at me.

The pile of ropes turned out to be a harness, similar to the makeshift one Josh and Luke had made for me when they hauled me out of the pool I’d fallen into when I’d first met Merrick, or rather when he’d saved me from drowning.

I fitted the harness around me legs and was whisked into the air.

Crawling over the top of the cliff, I found Merrick bent double in a passageway of rough red rock. I followed his shuffling form until my back ached, the air thick with dust, my eyes running.

“Er, Merrick… this isn’t such fun,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice.

A low chuckle was his only answer.

A few minutes later he straightened, and we stepped into an enormous cavern, created by two towering slabs of rock as they leant against each other forming the walls and ceiling of the cave. Pale light streamed in at the opening which was framed by a frizz of vegetation, as tree roots trailed between crevices in the rock on their never-ending search for water.

Merrick walked into the middle of the cave and stopped arching his back so that he could look straight up.

“Come and have a look, Alexandra.”

Soft sand encompassed my moccasin-clad feet as I joined him. He shifted over slightly as I craned my head backwards.

“Do you see them?” he asked. I shook my head struggling to work out what he wanted me to look at.

He bent so that he was looking at the ceiling of the cave at the same level I was, his hair falling in a silken tumble across my neck. I breathed in his exotic scent, and was momentarily disorientated, his quite chuckle only adding to my embarrassment as he pulled to the left slightly and then pointed again.

I stared in fascination at the top-most point of the cave. The giant slabs of rock that made up the cave tapered to an impossibly small width and at the weakest point, seemed to entwine.

Pressing my eyes tightly together against the glare of the sunlight as it backlit the rock, and then re-opening them to stare upward again, my eyes traced the familiar shapes of arms and legs in the entwined rock.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

He smiled, his teeth bright in the gloom. “What do you think it is?” “Well… people…er, hugging?”

“You could call it hugging if you like, I guess.” His tone was playful. “There are other words for what they’re up to, but hugging is definitely involved.”

I blushed.

“How did they get there?” I asked, turning my gaze back to the fascinating carving.

“No one knows, but some speculate that Sabine’s King, Pelagius, had it carved in memory of her when she died.”

“It must have been very difficult to carve that up there.”

“Yes, Pelaguis loved her very much.”

I nodded, fascinated by the love story etched into the rock above me.

“When did he die?” I asked.

Merrick shrugged. “No one knows. He stayed King of the pod until this monument to Sabine was complete, and then one morning the pod awoke, and he was gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of speculation as to what happened to him actually, some think he went back to the ocean, others think he killed himself, and others believe he still lives, alone, in the mountains.”

“Well, the last part is at least impossible,” I stated.

Merrick shook his head. “Unlikely but not impossible,” he replied quietly.

My eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“Oceanids have been known to live a lot longer than humans,” he said simply.

“Yeah, but you’re talking about, what, over a hundred years…” I scoffed.

He nodded his head, smiling at my obviously incredulous expression.

“You have a lot to learn today,” he replied as he guided me back into the cavern and up the side of the cave.