"Nessa?" I said softly. I got up and checked the ensuite, but she wasn't in there. I went downstairs, but there were no lights on in the house at all. The storm was louder down here.
I headed to the kitchen for a drink. The front door was wide open to the storm. Horrified, I rushed to close it, but I saw movement outside.
"Nessa?" I called again, loud enough to be heard over the storm.
"I'm here," came the response from the deluge outside.
"Are you okay?" I asked, worried, rushing outside with my shirt over my head to keep the rain off.
She stood in the front yard, her face turned up to the downpour. She gave a big sniffle. "I don't know," she said, her voice cracking. She turned her face to me, crumpled with tears that blended with the rain streaming down her face. She looks like she's taking a shower with her clothes on. Her satin nightdress was soaked, clinging to her body like a second skin.
"What's wrong?" I asked immediately. "What can I do?" What did I do this time, more like.
"It just feels so hopeless," she said sadly, her arms out as if she was asking for something. "Week after week of work and I'm useless. How can I influence your people when I can't stop them from killing the sea cucumbers? Do they deserve to die? I can't…I can't make that call. Your people are too many for one of me. It feels like I have nothing left, and to save them will take more than I can give."
Oh God, please, no. She's going to go back to the mermaid city and leave me. "Even at home, with me? Is there anything I can do to help?" Please, please let me help. I'll do anything.
She smiled sadly. "Not tonight. I want to swim." She turned away from me to face the river at the bottom of the hill. Storm-tossed waves broke over the road.
"No, it's too dangerous," I blurted out, striding towards her.
She didn't turn to look at me. Instead, she ran down the hill and into the flooded road. I watched her dive over a wave and into the water. I waited and waited, but I didn't see her come up.
A big gust of wind caught my wet clothes and I shivered. Crossing my arms over my chest, I retreated to the house.
I grabbed some old towels from the laundry and took them to the lounge room. Huddled in a towel on the couch, I waited for Vanessa to return or exhaustion to claim me. Whatever came first.
36. Sirena
The water felt cool and familiar on my skin. The stormy waves were a faint reminder of the strong swells I enjoyed so much in the ocean. The only human comparison I had was standing under the trickling stream from a water-saving showerhead, closing my eyes and remembering the pounding sensation of a waterfall.
It didn't matter. Even in this light current it felt good to swim again as Sirena and not the human Vanessa. At this early hour of the morning in such a storm, I took a risk I would not normally have done.
I removed my chemise and tied it around the base of a mooring rope. The current caressed my skin as I focussed on it, feeling the shift of my skin as it covered my legs and feet to form my tail.
I flexed my tail flukes, following the river bottom to the deepest part of the river channel. The remains of river and fishing boats littered the mud in the murky water. I wondered how many humans had died here, over time.
How many more would die here, if I failed?
Does it matter?
I pushed on, upstream instead of down. Though it was the taste of the salt water of the sea that I craved most, my curiosity drove me to follow the current to the waters nearer the city.
I swam carefully under the Narrows Bridge, keeping as close to the riverbed as I could until I was far from its lights.
In the middle of Perth Water, between the city and the high rise apartments in South Perth, I surfaced. I looked up at the tall buildings, glowing hazily in the driving rain.
I am here as an infiltrator, to be part of the human society in order to glean their knowledge and influence their actions, but I feel more like a traitor. Am I a traitor to my people, staying with Joe where I am happy, whilst my task goes unfinished? Am I a traitor to his people, if I fail to save any of them? Would this world be better, without humans?
The rain fell faster, almost hiding the buildings completely. Is this what the world should be? The humans and their edifices gone?
Something bumped against me in the water. The bump was hard, but the object was soft.
I ducked beneath the surface, searching.
I was bumped again, from the other side. This time I saw the small bull shark before he darted away in the murky water. There was a small group of them in the water, swimming around me. I was reminded of obnoxious human children, crowding around the touch pool, killing the sea cucumbers with their lack of consideration. I itched to slap one of them. Perhaps all of them.
One shark darted in closer, ready to bump me.
This one is but a child, younger than the humans. He is no bigger than Marina and he understands far less. He does not deserve violence. Particularly where violence is not necessary.
I raised my voice, not in anger but in song. The little sharks approached me. I began to swim slowly, so that they could keep up. They surrounded me like a school and swam with me. I changed direction without warning. Some of them stayed with me, whilst others overshot and swam hard to return to me. Once the school surrounded me, I continued, taking darting turns until they all learned to keep pace with me.
For the first time in my life, I played with sharks. More surprising still, I enjoyed it. As a token of my thanks, I guided them to a small school of fish before I departed.
As I headed back downstream against the waves and currents, I wished that the human children were as easy to control. How much easier my task would be if humans were as susceptible to song as sharks!
Like Fleur had been. I felt stupid to have missed such an obvious solution. I swam home as fast as I could.
37. Joe
I heard dripping on the wooden floor and jerked awake. It was still dark, but the storm had died down a little. The lightning and thunder were more distant and the wind didn't sound like it was going to blow the second storey away. The rain still drummed on the metal roof, but it was the water raining inside that had me worried. Is the roof leaking?
I uncurled from my towel nest on the couch and stumbled across the floor to the light switch.
Nessa stood in a puddle in the middle of the floor, her eyes lit up brighter than the light above her head. Her nightie was still soaked through and clinging to her.
I stared, I swallowed and finally I spoke. "Are you okay?"
She looked surprised, then thoughtful. The faintest of smiles touched her lips. "Yes." Her smile grew clearer. "I played with some sharks and looked at the lights through the storm."
I felt my jaw drop. Sharks? She swam out to sea? So she did almost leave me and not return. Her words slowly sank in. She floated at the surface and looked at lights, where someone could have seen her? Isn't secrecy everything to her?
I pulled the towel from around my neck and held it out wide for her, like I did when Marina climbed out of the bath.
She took a tentative step closer to me. I held my arms out and she stepped right into them, so I could hold her close, wrapping the towel around her wet clothes. I started to rub her dry.
There was something rough and hard under my fingers. I reached under the towel for the lump and it came away in my hand. I held it up to the light.
"A seashell?" I asked, my heart sinking further. "You went swimming in your nightie?"
Delicately, she took the spiralled grey cone between her finger and thumb. "No, I tied it to a mooring rope and swam naked."
At first, I was consumed with the thought of Vanessa swimming naked. Somewhere in my head I knew this should scare me, not turn me on. Swimming naked with sharks in a storm isn't normal. But then, there was nothing normal about Nessa. I pressed on. "And collected seashells?"
She turned the shell in her fingers, looking closely at it. "No, I think it stowed away on my nightie. It must have been on the
mooring rope. It's a mud whelk."
Where does she come up with these things? "A what?" I blurted out, feeling stupid all over again.
Nessa smiled. "A mud whelk. A kind of sea snail."
She swam out to sea. Without me. Away from me. I swallowed, not sure how to ask her. "You swam out to sea?" I stammered.
Her eyes lifted from the snail to my face. "No, I swam to the city, under the Narrows Bridge to Perth Water. Through the storm, I could barely see the buildings from the water."
"And…the sharks?" I couldn't work out what to ask about them.
Her tone was calm. "Juvenile bull sharks, near the South Perth foreshore. They wanted to play and I found I did, too."
Somehow I wasn't reassured. "I'm trying to understand how you could swim naked in the Swan River, right outside the city, in a really fierce storm. Then, you played with a pack of dangerous sharks. What if you'd been bitten or someone had seen you?"
Nessa laughed. "I wasn't on the surface for very long, Joe. If anyone saw me in the storm, I'm sure they thought they just saw a dolphin. There are dolphins in the Swan River, too."
Oh shit. If she looked like a dolphin then she didn't swim as a human.
She looked mischievous. "There's never been a story about mermaids in the Swan River, Joe, and there isn't going to be one any time soon." She smiled. "I swim deep and the visibility is close to zero." Nessa held out her hand. "Come on, the sun will be up soon and Marina with it. I'd like to get a little sleep before she wakes."
Maybe I was imagining things, but she seemed more exhilarated than tired. Maybe that means I'll get some sex, I thought hopefully, as I followed her up to bed.
38. Laila
We boarded a vessel in the middle of the night, when the surface seemed as dark as the depths. This vessel had large metal boxes on board, stacked up high on the deck. I heard the scratch of claws on metal and saw a crab scuttle between two of the boxes. I looked more closely, to find the boxes were alive with crabs, like some human-made artificial reef.
I pointed them out to one of the Atlantic sisters. "How do they survive, so far from the water?"
She smiled in the dark as the spray of a stormy wave splashed over us both on the deck, wetting our bare skin and the metal boxes. "Not so far from the water," she replied.
I followed her deeper inside the ship, to where the humans lay, sleeping and unsuspecting.
All but two were asleep in their beds, each to a separate room. There were only eight humans on board the vessel, but there were four of us. We chose the sleeping humans first, for their isolation worked to our advantage.
My human had hair on his face and breathed noisily as he slept. I lifted the covers from the man and he did not wake. He slept with no clothing, so it was plain to see that the man was already aroused. My heart sank as I realised my plan would not work. I would have to let this human inside me.
Filled with dread, I crept onto the bed, astride the human. With my eyes tightly shut, I began to lower myself onto the engorged appendage. I felt a sting of pain and cried out. I lowered myself further, only to find the pain increased. I heard my voice cry out, longer and louder this time.
I cannot do this, I told myself. I felt a trickle of water track down my cheek.
I tried to lift myself off the sleeping human, but there were suddenly hands on my hips, holding me down. I opened my eyes, to find the human looking up at me. My voice died in my throat, all the songs I knew unsung.
His expression was not hostile, just wondering. He sat up and pressed his open lips to mine, so I could feel his hot breath in my mouth. He put his arms across my back. In one swift movement, he rolled with me. I found my head resting on the pillow. The human was still between my legs, but now he was on top of me instead of I on him.
I opened my mouth, desperate to salvage this situation, but the human put one finger across my lips. He pressed his lips to my cheek and pushed his appendage between my legs, so that the complete length was inside me. Pain burned, but not as bad as before. He almost pulled it out again, before pushing it back in. In, out, in, out...he continued doing this for perhaps a few minutes, before he paused for a few seconds whilst all the way in. He pulled himself out of me completely, his appendage less engorged. Then he moved off me, lay beside me and returned to sleep.
I moved off the bed, standing up. Blood and white fluid ran down the inside of my leg. I ached inside as I left the room and returned to the passage outside. My heart swelled with relief.
I have done my duty. It is over!
In the passage, an Atlantic sister waited. She pointed at a room across the passage. "We are not wasteful. We use the humans as many times as we can before we discard them. The success of a breeding event depends on as many joinings as possible."
I entered the room, to find the human also asleep. This human was not aroused, so I took his floppy appendage in my mouth until he was. When I lowered myself onto this human, there was less resistance, though there was still some pain. I moved my hips as I had been instructed to by the Atlantic sister, falling into a rhythm.
I began to find the sensation almost pleasurable, so that I did not feel pain. Instead, I felt a pleasant heat spreading from between my legs to the rest of my body, in a sudden rush that left me breathless. I kept up the rhythm until I felt a hot spurt from the human. I hoped to feel the rush of heat again, but it did not happen.
I left the sleeping human and returned to the corridor. The skin between both my legs was now considerably sticky.
The Atlantic sister was still there. She pointed to the front of the vessel now. "The sleeping humans are all taken. Next you must take one of the awake ones on watch."
I went out onto the deck of the vessel, walking around to the control room. In this room, a human sat looking at screens. He did not hear me, for there was loud noise emanating from a black box on the console in front of him and he moved his head in time with a rhythm in the noise. He looked up as I entered the room and I immediately began to sing, the sound of my voice clashing horribly with the noise from the box. I sang the human a song of control, singing until his nodding head slowly stopped moving and he sat still at the chair behind the screens, his only movement the in-and-out motion of his chest as he breathed. In and out. I swallowed, steeling myself to join with yet another human.
I moved closer to the man. This one wore clothing. I struggled to remove the clothing on his lower body, until his hands moved slowly to assist me. He removed this clothing himself. I could clearly see this man was aroused, but he was not lying down.
After a moment, I lifted one leg across his so that I sat astride him on his chair, both of my legs dangling down on either side. Awkwardly, I took his appendage in my hands to guide it inside me.
At this point, the human's hands were on my hips and he began to push as the first man had. After a few moments, he lifted me to sit on the surface where the control screens were, rising to his feet so he remained inside me. The surface vibrated beneath me with the noise from the black box, making the skin of my bottom tingle. Then he, too, continued with the in and out pattern of the first man, pumping his hips with the rhythmic music from the box. His lips moved to mouth the words I heard in the noise and once I thought I heard my name. I dismissed the thought. The human did not and could not know me.
When this human's appendage sent a hot spurt of liquid up inside me, he pulled out quickly, leaving a sticky mess on the control screens. He resumed his seat as if nothing had happened and I slid down to the floor. My hips now aching too, I walked stiffly to the door.
Please, let this be enough.
The Atlantic sister was in the corridor.
She pointed at a different room. "Now you must try the humans a second time. This time will be longer than the first."
Aching and sticky, I entered another room.
Diplomacy be damned. I turned to walk back out of the room and met Mother.
"You must do your duty." Her voice held finality.
I ret
urned to the room to do my duty.
39. Joe
"I want to see penguins, Daddy," Marina announced one morning, her mouth full of cereal. "They're birds that fly through the water."
I swallowed my coffee before I spoke. "Penguins live in Antarctica, sweetheart. It's a long way south of here."
Vanessa walked in, looking perfect in her nightie with her hair tangled like some fantasy mermaid's. She looked sexier than any fictional mermaid, though, probably because I knew what we'd been doing to get her hair so tangled. "Why are we going south?"
Marina jumped up and clapped her hands. "We're going to see penguins fly through the water!"
Vanessa pulled a tub of yoghurt out of the fridge. "Sure, we could do that today, if you like. Joe, can you pack some swim gear, towels and some bottled water into a backpack, please?" She lifted a large spoon of pink and white yoghurt into her mouth.
She kissed Marina on her way through. "I'm going in the shower, sweetheart. Eat up all your breakfast and we can go see the penguins."
When Vanessa emerged in a breathtaking bikini, I immediately held up the sunscreen with an eager offer on my lips.
She laughed. "I don't need any and nor does Marina, but you make sure you don't get burned."
My face fell, but my spirits quickly lifted when she leaned over to look at the contents of the bag on the floor in front of me. "Another towel, some more water and we can grab something for lunch on the way."
Vanessa straightened up and turned to smile at me. "If you get the extra things, I'll get some clothes on and we can go." She started down the hallway. "Marina! Are you ready?"
Marina came barrelling down the hallway, dodging past Nessa. "Yes, Mummy!" She wore her bathers already.
Nessa tied something that looked like a big, filmy scarf around her waist like a skirt. "Right, me too. Ready, Joe?"
Beautiful. I can still see everything.
Ocean's Infiltrator Page 10