Water and Fire

by Demelza Carlton

  "And if you cannot conceive a child?"

  A tear slid down my cheek, but I remained resolute. "Then I will make my choice. And I might not choose to return home with you, Mother."

  She gave a solemn nod and I knew she understood.

  "The men I loved both died. It's a hard decision to make."

  I remembered the moment the aching started – when I left Aidan's bedroom. It hadn't ceased since. My lips longed for his, my fingers itched to stroke him and my breasts ached to be held in his hands once more. My tongue burned for the fire on his.

  Oh, Aidan…what I'd give to be back in your arms tomorrow. Destiny be damned.

  The timer trilled and Mother graciously left me alone. My time was up.

  I picked up the plastic test, pressing my lips together as I peered down to see what it said.

  Epilogue

  "Is it time to go to the whales yet?" Zerafina asked, almost bouncing in her eagerness.

  I roused myself from my memories. I didn't often think of Aidan, for five years had passed since I had last seen him, but I tried to keep the memory fresh.

  "Almost, sweetheart," I replied. "Give me a moment."

  I closed my eyes and wished the young doctor a healthy and happy life, the least he deserved for kindling a fire that would never go out. When fire and water mix, they create something extraordinary and new, but they cannot survive together. I'm sorry. Sirens do not stay with humans, especially not when…

  "Come on, Mummy! I see one!" Zerafina squealed, as a thick, curly lock of red hair blew into her mouth in the strong winds. She spat it out again before darting off in front of me, toward the approaching whales. Her fiery tail glinted in the morning sun as she flicked it furiously to increase her speed.

  I sighed and dove through the water after her, my golden tail rippling in a more leisurely fashion, with far more power than my daughter's. I resolved to venture on land in the near future, to drink a glass of whiskey and toast the health of her father, whose fire could never survive beneath the ocean's surface as my people did.

  After all, Aidan couldn't swim.

  Author's Note

  This novella is a prequel to Ocean's Gift and Ocean's Infiltrator, both books in the Ocean's Gift series. Belinda is one of the main characters in Ocean's Gift.

  My books tend to be set in Western Australia in the present day, which means my characters are likely to appear in stories which are not their own.

  For example, Aidan is a minor character in Nightmares of Caitlin Lockyer.

  Where else Aidan may appear in future books…I can't say, for I have a strict no-spoiler policy. Yet I can promise he will.

  What follows is a bonus sample section from Ocean's Gift, available in ebook and paperback.

  Ocean's Gift Sample – 1: Sirena

  The ocean gave him to me.

  I was angry, as any girl of sixteen would be. I'd been ordered by my elders to go and find a strong man, one I could join with to produce a healthy child. My hopes, my dreams and my plans were of no consequence. My destiny was to entice a man to choose me as his plaything – to be a piece of flesh to bait a shark. Or to be a baby seal, tempting a killer whale? The example did not matter. The end would be the same – the end of my control over what had been my life.

  I swam in the storm, revelling in the power of the waves, which pushed a little wooden sailing boat through the maelstrom on the surface over my head. Two men struggled to control the small craft with two wooden oars, the vessel's only means of propulsion once the sail was torn away in the wind. One man dived from the boat, slicing into the water like a knife surrounded by bubbles. There was a line of twisted fibre in his hand as he swam with difficulty for shore.

  The little boat rocked in reaction to the diver's spring. The wind caught the remnants of the sail, a big wave washed over the side and the vessel tipped under the surface, sinking slowly. I dodged through the debris as it drifted in the current away from the little boat.

  The surface above me churned where the second man had been thrown into the water. He thrashed around and it was clear he could not swim. The waves pushed us together and he clung to me, his arms warm as he wrapped them around me. I gave him my breath and took him to the surface. As we drifted between the waves, still he would not let me go.

  He called me his Lady of the Sea, his angel. I gave him my breath again, before I dove under the waves with him.

  We surfaced near a small island of sand, washed by the waves. Here he would be safe.

  He shivered, in wet clothes on wet sand. He called me Santa Maria, his Lady of the Sea who had answered his prayer.

  If I was to save him, I had to keep him warm. Yet I had no human accoutrements, nothing warm or dry with which to assist him. Only me.

  I concentrated on my form, letting my tail part, my skin pale and my gills fade. To save this man, I needed to be human.

  Or as close as I could be.

  He kissed and clung to the naked human girl by his side, who could think of only one way to warm him. He kissed my lips and my blood responded with a wave of heat, akin in power to the waves of the storm on my body.

  We warmed one another, as the storm and the waves raged around us. He clung to me even when exhaustion claimed us.

  When I awoke, the storm had dissipated. I could return this man to his people and he would live.

  Whilst he still slept, I carried him through the water to the island where his kind lived. Yet in the deep water there were sharks, attracted by the man's blood.

  Mine.

  Leaving him floating on the surface, I charged the sharks, shouting my claim to drive them off. It came to blows to drive the last one away, before I could return for my human.

  Yet he was not on the surface when I returned. The water in his clothing had dragged him down, into the deep where he could not breathe. I gave him my breath, over and over, in a poor, cold imitation of his ardent kisses, yet I could breathe no life into his body.

  The ocean gave me this man, his life to save, then stole his breath even as I tried to save him. The man who called me an angel, Maria, as he loved me for a storm.

  I cursed the islands, for they were cursed already. I would not go ashore on these wretched rocks, to conceive a child to take back to my sisters in the deep. No child conceived in such bitterness would survive inside me to be birthed at the Nursery Grounds. So I resolved to tell my elders, when I returned to them.

  I cannot carry a child for you. Even the ocean is against it.

  In a sea of rebelliousness, the girl he called Maria was lost, as I turned tail and dove deep.

  Ocean's Gift Sample – 2: Joe

  I like setting up remote mining camps. Inland Western Australia is one of the few places in the world where you can drive out of civilisation in the morning and know you're in the middle of nowhere when you stop at the end of the day.

  I'd arrive at a cleared site, where the carpenters were just putting together the construction camp buildings we called dongas, and when I left it was almost ready for the mining crew to live in. We were creating civilisation where there had been nothing, just plants, animals and red dust. And when the mining crew left, we'd pull the camps apart like Lego and pack them up to be shifted somewhere else on the back of a truck. The plants and animals would move back in around and under the buildings while we were there and they'd reclaim it completely when we left. The red dust was ever-present. You never got rid of it, because it got everywhere and into everything.

  The bad part was that the camps weren't inhabitable until we finished. So, while we worked, we lived rough. We were the last people who actually camped there. We slept in swags and cooked outside, in the beam of the spotlights on the top of the car, which was a ute. There was one ute to two men, and I shared mine with Dean the plumber. Dean was full of shit, so it seemed natural that he was a plumber. Still, he was a better cook than me and a good mate, too.

  Our supplies were packed into the tray on the back of the ute and the trailer behind
it. We had enough for the job and a bit over, but never enough water for much more than drinking and cooking. After a week, we were all dreaming about hot showers.

  Like all the other mine construction crews, we had to go back to town eventually and we got to stay in a hotel for the night, before they flew us all home. It was a ritual by now. I checked into the hotel with all the other blokes who were covered in red dust. I got my room and I got to shut the door to everyone else. Then I took a shower.

  After endless weeks of basic camps, where sometimes the best wash you got was a swim in the river, the hotel shower was heaven. I used up all the hot water and all the liquid soap, just to get the gritty feeling of red dust off every bit of my skin. Shit, it felt good. Almost better than sex.

  Which I haven't had for longer than I've been without a hot shower. I tried not to think about it. Now I was going to have some holidays in civilisation, who knew what would happen?

  I slept in silence and darkness. When I opened my eyes, the sun was up.

  I got dressed quickly, my legs feeling bare in shorts after so long in site pants that kept out the sun and the snakes. Even a short-sleeved t-shirt felt weird. My feet felt like they'd been freed from prison in my rubber thongs, after weeks of thick socks and work boots.

  I crossed the car park from my room to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. I wasn't the only one dressed this casual. Most of the guys were the same, toes wiggling in relief under every table. Anywhere else, this might be strange. In a mining town, it was normal.

  "Hey, morning, Joe!" Dean the plumber called from a table by the window. After working on the same crew so long, I should have been sick of him, but I was in such a good mood I'd put up with him one more morning over breakfast.

  "Morning," I responded. I went up to the breakfast buffet and grabbed a plate, loading it up with as much as I could. I dumped it on the table, in front of the seat across from Dean, and sat down.

  "Coffee, sir?" A waitress came up behind me with an electronic order pad.

  My mouth watered. I'm not sure if it was her or the thought of real coffee that did it. Probably the coffee, I decided. The waitress looked like she was sixteen and fresh off the farm, dark roots showing through her bleach-blonde hair. Too young for me – I'm more than ten years older than she is. Besides, she looks like my sister.

  "I want a proper expresso, so thick the spoon almost stands up by itself, and after that, I want a latte," I told her.

  "Two coffees, sir?" The little waitress looked confused, which made her slightly cross-eyed.

  "Ohhh, yes," I replied. Definitely the coffee. Her boobs are too small. I like bigger boobs than that.

  I started shovelling breakfast into my mouth, barely tasting it. What I did taste was good, though.

  I'd finished my first plate and filled up a second by the time my expresso arrived, in a tiny cup. I savoured every sip until it was gone.

  Dean was just as focused on his own breakfast, so it's not like I was being rude. Besides, what else did we have to say, after months of having no one else to talk to?

  He laughed at my expression as I enjoyed the expresso. "So, now you've had your coffee, what do you plan to do with your two months off?"

  "I'm not sure," I said slowly. I shoved the last half a croissant in my mouth.

  "I'm going to go home, get drunk every night in a different pub and see how many hot chicks I can pull, before we're back in the middle of nowhere again." He looked dreamy. "How about you?"

  He'll be lucky if he manages to talk even one of them into sleeping with him, I thought. And I'll be hearing about how hot she was for the whole of the next shift, and how she did everything in every porn movie he's ever watched, which she won't. When he gets sick of that, he'll tell me the plot of every porn film he's ever watched, in his own words. There's nothing worse than a badly told story with no plot and nothing but descriptions of imaginary sex no one could ever have.

  I swallowed the last of my croissant. "Nah, I want to go on a fishing charter, one of those boats that just go out and fish for a week. Then I guess I'll see if I can pick up a bit more work, rewiring people's houses and stuff to get some more money, until we head out to the next hole in the ground to set up camp."

  "You work too hard. You have no fun at all, mate. Still living at home, what are you saving your money for?"

  "When I've got enough, I'm going to buy a house outright. Then I'll look at settling down, maybe finding someone to spend the rest of my life with. Maybe even have a family." Two years and I'll have enough money to buy a house. Then I can finally move out of my parents' place and start living. I'll never have to spend another night listening to other men snoring, or share breakfast with fuckwits like Dean.

  "You need to enjoy life, brother. Have a good time." Dean winked.

  "You're not my brother." Thank God for that. "And I am going to enjoy my time off. I'm going to spend at least a week fishing, once I work out how to arrange a charter," I reminded him.

  "I got a cousin who does some charter fishing out at the Abrolhos. Best fishing of your life, off the coast of Geraldton. I'll give him a call, see if I can set you up," he promised.

  Yeah, and pigs will fly.

  "Well, you know my number, mate. Give me a call if your cousin has room for one more on a fishing charter."

  I finished off the last bite of bacon, then slurped up a big mouthful of latte. After the expresso, it tasted like a warm coffee milkshake. I should have ordered two expressos instead.

  "See you at the next site, mate," I told him, getting up. Only two more years of this and I won't have to say that. In the meantime, I had a plane to catch back home to Perth.

  Ocean's Gift Sample – 3: Sirena

  "We have sisters across the Indian Ocean. We are collecting as much information as we can beneath the surface." It was Elder Darma who'd spoken, but the members of the Elder Council looked to me.

  I replied in our language of sounds and gestures that differed so much from human languages. Even translated, the meaning lost its depth in the humans' words. "This will not be enough. We must discover what the humans know of the subsea disturbances, the changes in flows. They have technology we do not and their information is valuable."

  Elder Cantrella was abrupt as she broke in. "Elder Sirena, you are our liaison between our people and the humans. What action do you recommend with regard to gathering information from humans?"

  I drew a deep breath of cool water before I responded, for even my recommendations would hold the force of law. "I would send three parties, small groups who have experience living on land with humans. One to the western coasts, one to the northern and one to the eastern coasts. I recommend we target the countries of South Africa, Singapore and Australia, in each of these regions. Each party may be required to remain for some time on land and give the humans the impression that they are human, too. Throughout, the existence of our people must remain hidden from the humans. Each party must take care to hide the ocean's gift from humans."

  "A difficult task. Whom do you suggest we send?" Elder Darma murmured.

  My reply was immediate, for I had considered the matter carefully in the days prior to this meeting. "For South Africa, I would send Nafula. She has knowledge of the western coasts. For the northern coasts, I would send Indah. I will choose the eastern coasts and Australia for myself, for that is where I suspect the greatest information will be available and that is where I have ties to the human world. Each should choose perhaps one or two to accompany them; I recommend younger sisters who are not yet elders. I shall be accompanied by Maria and Apalala."

  Elder Darma was the facilitator of the Elder Council, though I was its undisputed leader. Custom decreed that she made the final decisions. "Then it shall be so. You must leave soon, for time is of the essence. I fear great changes are happening in our ocean and the ocean's gift alone may not ensure our survival. We need greater knowledge than we yet have. Without this knowledge, how do we prepare for the worst?"

 
The purpose of a leader is both to lead and reassure. I knew my role, for it had been mine for many years now. "Such knowledge will be obtained and then put to use. We will ensure the survival of our people and of the ocean's gift."

  Ocean's Gift Sample – 4: Joe

  As soon as people found out I was back in Perth, I was subcontracting for another electrician I'd apprenticed with, installing air conditioning units, new lights and safety switches. I thought about the fishing charter I wanted to do, but couldn't decide which one. Especially if I could get enough work in that week to get my house sooner. Fishing can wait, if it means one less shift listening to Dean's fantasies. He always claims they really happened, but if he's telling the truth, he's had more sex than a porn star.

  My phone rang. "Hello, this is Joe," I answered automatically. I pulled a notepad out of the glove box of my ute, clicking a pen in readiness.

  "Mate, it's Dean."

  Speak of the devil.

  "I finally heard from my cousin, the one with the charter boat." He sounded excited.

  Please, don't let him want to come with me.

  "One of his crew got injured, so he's a man short during the fishing season. He won't be doing charters for a few months, until he gets a new deckhand and finishes fishing up his quota." Dean didn't sound too depressed for me or his cousin.

  "Oh, that's too bad. Don't worry about it." I dismissed it. I never thought he or his cousin would come through with anything.

  "How'd you like to fish for two months and get paid for it?" Dean burst out.

  "What?" This has got to be a joke. It's Dean, after all.

  "I'm serious. My cousin's a real experienced fisherman and he needs a deckhand for the rest of the season, the next two months. The pay's good and all you have to do is fish." He sounded thrilled at the prospect.