by Lari Don
She pushed through a swinging door into a tiny kitchen, where a sudden movement made her jerk sideways. A large and angry octopus sprang out of a dark corner. Rona swerved up to the ceiling then dived for the door, getting out of its lair.
She had come up enough floors now. She needed to push forward. She found another corridor and sprinted up it, fins lashing from side to side. She pushed open another door, and was hit by two floppy black rubber suits and a metal tube. Divers’ gear, she thought, as she let them float out of her way. She tried the next door along. Then she was aware, as she always had to be, of water movement behind her. Was it the octopus from the kitchen coming after her?
No, it was Tangaroa, swimming out of a doorway, joining the corridor halfway up. As she turned another corner, Rona could see the sharp edges of a jagged hole ahead, ripped in the ship by a human bomb, or a rock, or another boat. She didn’t care what had made the hole, she only cared that it was her way out of this nasty rusty box. She glanced round. Serena was behind her too, looking irritated at falling for Rona’s trick earlier on. They had all found the way out.
But Rona was in the lead. She accelerated, as if she was about to snap her jaws on a mackerel, and she shot out of the gap.
As soon as her head and shoulders were in the clear sweet water of the open sea, she saw an unmistakable pattern.
Black and white. Clear black background. Sharp white oval. The markings of ...
Rona twisted in the water and dived straight back into the wreck.
Those were the markings of a killer whale. The only thing every selkie feared more than a fisherman with a gun. Because killer whales hunt and catch and play with seals before ripping them to bloody shreds and eating them.
“Killer whale!” she warned Tangaroa and Serena.
Could a killer whale get through the hole? No, she decided, not a fully grown one. So she didn’t flee far. Just a body length away from the open sea.
Tangaroa pushed gently past her and peered out, then turned back to her. He couldn’t speak to her. Human voices don’t carry underwater, and anyway he’d lose too much air. He must be almost at the limit of his ability to hold his breath.
Rona was about to ask if that air bottle she’d dodged would be any use to him, but the blue loon grinned, raised his eyebrows in amusement, then swam out of the hole and straight towards the killer whale.
Then Serena pushed past her too.
Were they trusting that their human shapes would keep them safe? Rona hoped not, because she’d heard tales of selkies attacked by killers when they were changing from seal to human.
Rona looked out nervously, and saw Serena’s tail flick upwards. Safe. Heading for the next obstacle.
Rona also saw a black and white flag, marking the exit point, waving in the water. Looking nothing like a killer whale, except to very nervous selkies.
She heard mermaid laughter in the clean open sea.
Laughing at her? Because she was scared of a flag? Or because she was now in last place?
Chapter 16
Left alone in the sunken ship, Rona wanted to go straight back home. She couldn’t win now. She’d never find the courage to face the other hazards.
She thought about her friends waiting on the ridge, her family waiting on the shore, and realised she was more nervous about going home early, and admitting she’d been frightened of a flag, than she was about the rest of the obstacles. So she swam out of the wreck and followed the mermaid towards the rock run.
She let the rhythm of swimming clear her mind. After a few minutes, she surfaced for another breath. Breathing at a sprint was getting easier with practice.
Rona felt the mood of the sea as she swam. She felt the stillness of the sea, the weight of slack water just hanging there. The tide was about to turn, about to rise. That was the worst time to cross the next obstacle.
The rock run was an oval shelf of rocks: like a small island, but only above the water at low tide. When the tide turned, the water rushed to cover the rocks, so crossing in the next few minutes meant the fast water could drag her off, or crash her into the rocks. But once the tide was high, the rocks would be completely underwater, and quite safe to swim over.
Rona swam at ferocious hunting speed after Tangaroa and Serena, hoping if she proved herself in open water, her mistake in the wreck might be forgotten.
As she finally caught sight of them ahead of her, she felt the tide turn.
She’d tried to explain the turn of the tide to Yann once, saying it was as if all the blood in her veins shifted like a magnet to point the other way, as if twice a day the north pole moved to the other side of the world. It was hard to explain to a land-bound centaur that she always knew, without thinking about it, where the tide was. Now she felt it change.
Suddenly in the space of one heartbeat, the tide was going in. The sea was no longer hanging there, waiting. It was rising. Rushing and racing and chasing inland.
They were nearly at the rock run. Rona had almost caught up. She really was faster than the other two in clear water.
Would she be faster over the rocks? Tangaroa, with feet and hands, could run across, and hold on when the waves hit him. Serena also had hands, and if she wanted to waste time and pain changing to human legs she could walk too.
Rona wondered if she should change. Which would be more useful, her human hands to hold herself on, or her seal’s body to protect herself if she was swept off?
She thought about it. There wouldn’t be enough water on the rocks to swim over. As a seal she’d have to haul out and pull herself over sharp stone. Even if she lost a minute at either end changing shape, she’d still be faster on feet than fins.
As she made that decision, all three of them were on the surface, swimming in a tight line towards the rocks.
They could see wild splashes climbing up the rocks, in the sea’s desperate urge to get higher and higher. They saw a selkie judge clinging to the green and yellow flag showing the starting point on the western side. Rona caught a glimpse of the black and white finishing flag on the east side of the obstacle, which looked nothing like the markings of a killer whale out in the open air.
They reached the rocks together. Rona dived underwater, dived out of her sealskin, and surfaced again as a girl. She used her strong bendy fingers to pull herself onto the rocks, then spent a minute folding her skin and tying the flippers into straps so she could wear it on her back.
Rona stood up. Tangaroa was well ahead, running steadily, but as she took her first few steps, ankle-deep in surging water, she saw him being knocked off his feet by a strong wave.
Serena was trying to swim over, flopping from one shallow dip to another. Tangaroa was up again, powering his way forward. But Rona didn’t think he’d chosen the best way. He’d just charged straight across, taking the shortest route.
Instead Rona ran round the southern edge of the rocks. The water was battering into the northern seaward side, but by the time it reached the landward side, the waves had been slowed by the uneven rocks, and were slightly less violent.
This way was longer, though, and it still wasn’t easy. She staggered round the slippery rocks, using her hands to grab the jutting points, gasping as the waves battered into her.
She reached for the next rock, but a wave hit her first. She thrust her hands out and felt the stone graze her thin human skin. She clung on tight, as the water crushed her against the rock. Once the wave had passed, she looked to her left. The mermaid was behind her and the blue loon was ahead, but she didn’t really care any more, she just wanted to be a seal, not a girl on this horrible smashing together of land and sea.
She flung herself forward again.
Then she was knocked over by something more solid than a wave. And she was in the water, sinking as she always did when she had legs. She expected her human body to welcome the sea, to roll and float, but it never did.
She grabbed the water with her awkward hands and kicked with her flimsy legs and dragged herself back t
o those awful rocks.
What or who had knocked her off? As she pulled herself up, long hair in her eyes, her pathetic human lungs coughing, she saw the answer. Tangaroa was pulling himself up beside her.
“Do you need a hand?” he asked as he stood up.
“No, thanks, I’ve got two of my own at the moment. And legs too.” She grinned at him, leapt up into the knee-high water, and began to run. He was behind her now, following her route round the edge.
She had the hang of it at last. Waiting for the gaps in the surging water. Using the rocks to pull herself along.
She could hear Tangaroa splashing and grunting behind her. Where was the mermaid? Rona glanced back. Serena had changed at last, and was halfway across, long legs shivering in the cold water.
With one last lunge Rona reached the flag, and nodded to the blue man judge, who was indicating the direction of the next obstacle.
Rona could go back in the water now. But not as a girl. She had to waste time changing again. Tangaroa dived in past her, while she stopped to pull the folded skin from her shoulders. She’d tied the knots well. One tug, and the skin opened up. She whirled it round in the spray, and pulled it over her as she dived into the water.
Ah! A seal again.
She always closed her eyes at the moment of change; she didn’t want to see her hands turn into fins. Even with her eyes closed, she could feel her legs and arms getting shorter, her fingers and toes linking and lengthening, her back getting more flexible, her awareness of the smell and taste and feel of the water sharpening.
Now she was back in lovely deep water. But not in the lead. Rona wanted to catch up with Tangaroa, get ahead of him, because for the first time, after that exhilarating crossing of the rocks, she actually wanted to win.
So she sprinted, right up to Tangaroa.
As she overtook him, she heard the sounds of the next obstacle. A noise like claws on wet rock, magnified a thousand times. The screechy scratchy metal sounds of engines, winches, radios, sonar. The fishing boat.
Rona was going as fast as she could towards humans who might be legally entitled to shoot her if they saw her. She wanted to turn back. It would be more sensible, safer, to turn back. But she kept swimming forward until she needed to breathe again. She had breathed a lot as a girl on the rocks, but her human body didn’t store oxygen as effectively as her seal body. She should fill up again.
She swam up to the surface. Tangaroa popped up beside her. He didn’t do his leaping breath. He stopped. So did she. Two dark heads bobbing in the water, looking at the fishing boat a hundred metres ahead of them, its long red hull pointing straight at them.
“Sorry about knocking you off the rocks,” he said. “You might have been in front if I hadn’t. So you can swim along the boat first.”
“That’s very kind of you, to send me in first again!” she snorted. “Are you scared of it too? It’s only seals they shoot, not people.”
He smiled. “Five miles offshore, they’re more likely to think I’m a seal than a boy. It’s not safe for me either.”
“We could go together,” Rona suggested, suddenly feeling the ordeal would be more bearable with a companion.
He looked at her sympathetically. “Scared of doing it on your own?”
She nodded.
He smiled. “I’m not looking forward to it myself.” Then he shook his head. “But I think both of us together would be more dangerous. We’d be more likely to be spotted.”
“We could do it together, but from different ends,” suggested Rona. “One from the bow to the stern, the other from the stern to the bow, then even if they spot us, we might confuse them. Give them two targets instead of one.”
He thought for a moment. “Ok. I’ll swim underwater to the stern, you head slower to the bow. Once we’re both in position, we can swim the length of the hull towards each other.”
Rona took a deep breath. “Why are we putting our lives at risk like this?”
“Because the race isn’t just to test our speed, it’s to test our bravery. The Sea Herald needs to be brave.”
Rona muttered, “Then you’re welcome to the job,” but as Tangaroa was already diving, swimming deep and fast to the other end of the fishing boat, she didn’t think he heard her.
As she got closer, Rona could see the scarred and dirty underside of the boat, and, more dimly, its huge nets hanging low in the water behind it, half full of panicking fish. Why wasn’t it moving forward, trawling for more fish? Perhaps they were about to pull the nets up.
Rona glimpsed three judges floating in a semicircle on the surface, far enough from the boat to be safely invisible.
She was in place now, and she could see the dark shape of Tangaroa at the stern. She flicked a fin, and he waved back.
They both swam to the grey surface, and with heads just above the water, they swam towards each other.
Rona kept her eyes fixed on the boy, trying to ignore the red painted boat to her left. She was concentrating on swimming. Fast, but not so fast that her head rose up high. And she was listening. Not to the sounds of the boat, but to the sounds of the men.
“Time for a cup of tea?”
“Aye, put the kettle on before we pull that lot up.”
It was terrifying to hear the men’s voices so close, but reassuring that they were yelling about cups of tea, not seals and guns.
She was about to reach Tangaroa. He didn’t have his usual stupid grin, and the blue of his skin was almost invisible in the grey sea. She hoped her fur, dark with water, was as hard to see. They passed each other in the middle of the boat’s length, too nervous to nod, and both swam as fast as possible along the rest of the hull.
The voices were even louder as Rona headed for the stern, where the winding gear was. She wanted to dive, to be safe in the depths of the sea. But the judges were watching her, and Tangaroa was staying on the surface. She had to stay here, in view, in danger.
She was swimming under the ship’s name now: “Sea Quine, Peterhead”. Then she was past the stern, with open sea either side.
She emptied her lungs to dive, and heard a voice yell, “Did you see that?”
But Rona was already diving deep to get down and round the poisonously bright blue nets.
She was shaking with relief, struggling to swim in a straight line, her front flippers out like wings to keep herself steady. She’d done it. She’d swum right beside a fishing boat. Surely nothing else in the Sea Herald contest could be that scary.
She turned round, to convince herself that she had done it, and glimpsed Serena’s silver tail flicking along the surface. The mermaid hadn’t stopped for a chat, and she was now only a couple of minutes behind. So Rona swam forward to keep up with Tangaroa, to try to win this race.
Then, over the screeching and creaking of the boat, she heard a scream.
Chapter 17
Rona felt the water swirl as Tangaroa turned to look back too.
But there was no shot reverberating through the water. No one had attacked the mermaid. She simply hadn’t dived deep enough after swimming along the ship, and her tail was tangled in the empty upper half of the net.
Serena had only screamed once. She was now struggling to free herself, but those useful human hands weren’t strong enough to pull her loose.
Rona glanced over at the mermaid judge. None of the judges could help, not unless Serena asked. And Serena wasn’t going to ask. She was thrashing to get free, tangling herself up more.
Rona shook her head. She didn’t really need to win this race. She’d proved she was faster than the blue loon and the mermaid. She’d proved she wasn’t a complete coward. She didn’t need to prove anything else.
So she flicked over to Tangaroa, and said, in her underwater seal voice, “Lend me a knife, please!”
He frowned at her, then reached down to his left ankle and pulled out a knife. She slid out of her sealskin, rolled it up under her arm, and reached out her human hand for the knife. He gave it to her, shrugged, and
swam away. Fine, thought Rona. He could win. He could be Sea Herald. She was a Storm Singer, she didn’t need any other titles.
She would need a breath of air in her human lungs soon though, so she’d better cut that mermaid out fast.
Rona swam back to the net, where Serena snapped, “I don’t NEED help. They might disqualify me!”
Rona couldn’t use her human voice underwater, so she ignored Serena and started hacking through the thick ropes.
“CAREFUL! Don’t cut me!” Serena’s piercing sea-voice carried through the water perfectly.
Rona just kept sawing at the ropes, one strand at a time.
“Not THAT careful! You’re not cutting FAST enough. He’s getting away.”
There was a sudden rusty whine, the net jerked upwards, and Rona’s knife slipped. The blade slid into the mermaid’s tail.
“AHHHH! You CUT me! You INJURED me! You’re trying to SABOTAGE my race!”
There was another screeching whine and another short jerk.
Rona was sawing as fast as she could, because that whine meant the winch had started. The net was about to be pulled up into the boat. Soon the mermaid would be hauled out of the water and the fishermen would see her.
Rona couldn’t cut the net fast enough. Serena had thrashed about so much, the ropes were tightly knotted round her tail. As Rona looked at the number of strands she still had to cut, the net jerked again and the mermaid rose higher. Rona didn’t think she was going to cut her free in time.
Then she felt the water shift to her left and saw the flash of another knife. Now she was cutting the net at one side of the tail, a blue hand was cutting the net at the other side, and the knives were moving towards each other.
There was a louder whine and a jerk which became a gradual upward pull. The net began to rise steadily out of the water. But the blades met in a scrape of silver and the net came apart. The mermaid swam out and all three of them sprinted away.
They surfaced a minute later. Rona took a gulp of air, and handed Tangaroa back his knife. She spun in a circle, looking for the mermaid.