Water

by Hardy, Natasha

  Chapter 16

  Fragile

  The sickening crack of his head hitting the ground and the light fading from his eyes was followed by the blinding speed with which Merrick scooped me from the ground and ran with me back up the passageway, cradled me in his arms.

  “I don’t understand,” I sobbed into Merrick’s chest as he ran, “they either think I’m going to change all of this or they want to kill me.” He made comforting noises, pausing slightly at the fissure before the air whistled around us as he jumped across.

  He went through the entrance to another mini-cave, strode quickly across the floor and lay me in a soft hammock before pulling a light covering over me.

  Sabrina hovered in the doorwary momentarily, her face crumpled in worry. Merrick whispered something to her, at which she darted out of sight.

  “Where am I?” I asked half sitting and clutching the sides of the hammock as it swayed gently with my movement.

  “This is my aven,” he replied.

  “Your what?”

  “Sorry. Aven is sort of an offshoot from the main cave,” he replied. “That’s what we call them.”

  I nodded absently, as Merrick continued to watch me. I feigned interest in my surroundings in an attempt to distract him from the panic I knew must be displayed on my face.

  I was in a perfectly round room with the silhouette of the tree from the centre of the cave visible from the doorway. A ring of soft bluish light encapsulated the room. On closer inspection, I realised that the light was coming from tiny, umbrella-shaped mushrooms that grew haphazardly in a fringe on the rock face.

  I leaned out of the hammock and touched one. It immediately glowed a brighter yellowy green, slowly fading to the soft blue light of the rest of them after a little while.

  “These are different to the lights in Sabrina’s room.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, “I prefer these little things, they give off more light and are less finicky to keep alive. Sabrina’s cave fur is always dying or losing its light.”

  Sabrina walked back into the cave, with Talita in tow carrying a small wooden cup of liquid. Talita settled beside my hammock, handing me the cup and indicating that I should drink, while Merrick and Sabrina stood beside the doorway.

  I took a deep shuddery breath, knowing that the conversation I was about to start would change my life forever. I couldn’t deny the pain I’d just seen any more than I could deny the deep empathy I felt for these people.

  “I’m ready,” I told her calmly. “Tell me what they want from me.”

  “You are not completely human, Alexa,” Talita began, her voice very gentle. “You are what we call a Halfling, one half Oceanid and one half human. Your father is an Oceanid, a man I owe my life to and the greatest love of my life.”

  I gulped some of the liquid, surprised by its energising sweetness as I processed what she was telling me.

  “I’m sorry we’ve had to expose you to this species’ greatest pain so quickly. I would have preferred the last three years to prepare you for the role you must take, if any of them are to survive, but your father has denied us that, and so we need to get you up to speed very quickly.”

  “Why would he do that?” I asked in a whisper.

  “To protect you,” she replied simply, before nodding to Merrick.

  “There is a group of Oceanids called Gurrers whose talents are war,” he told me. “Whenever necessary they’ve protected our people from danger, for thousands of years.”

  I didn’t respond, I just concentrated on the melody of his voice as he spoke, concentrated on breathing in and out.

  “Throughout our history we’ve been threatened by stronger and more pre-dominant species. We’ve fought for survival and clung to a legend that has promised us equality.”

  He fell silent and I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t I glanced up at his face. He was staring at me, his eyes anxious.

  “Tell me the legend, Merrick,” I demanded, my eyes flickering back to Talita and Sabrina; legends were proving themselves frustratingly real on this camping trip.

  “The hope our people have clung to is that the fortieth generation Gurrer of each Gurrer pod will form the leadership of the Oceanids that will change the course of our history. It claims that the leader of this army will be different from all the rest – a mixture of our greatest Gurrer and the enemy – and that she” – he said the word in hushed awe – “will save our people at a time when all hope is lost.”

  I hadn’t realised I was holding my breath until it whooshed out of my lungs as with his last words he pinned me with the fear I’d been dodging.

  “Your Dad is one of the thirty-ninth generation Gurrer, and as far as we know you are the only female Halfling to be born.”

  “He was once a great warrior, who fought for peace and lost,” Talita continued. “He was forced to flee the ocean and to cut a long story short, that’s how we met.” She smiled, her beautiful face lighting up at some long-ago memory.

  “I was being abused by my father,” she continued matter of factly. “Tom rescued me by introducing me to the Oceanids and arranging for me to stay with them. I have come to love this people for their kindness, their tenacity and their incredible ability to survive. When I arrived, Sabine’s niece taught me how to help them, she showed me some of the horrors you witnessed today. When I was old enough I went to medical school, realising that the hunger of our kind” – she touched my hand lightly – “for more, would increase the danger to the Oceanids. I have been helping them to contact and nurse the sick since then.”

  “So why do you need me then?” I asked, bewildered by the shattering of the normal world I’d thought I lived in.

  “Not all Oceanids are content to leave the ocean and integrate into human society,” she replied quietly. “Many despise the way we treat each other and the resources we so blatantly abuse. There is the added problem that any immature Oceanid cannot leave, and so must suffer whatever poison is in the water.”

  She sighed, glancing behind her and checking with Merrick who gave her a small nod before continuing quietly.

  “I have managed to placate them for a while by helping them to get better, but it is a short-term strategy. They cannot continue to survive in the ocean for much longer, and even the fresh water subterranean waterways are becoming too poisoned to survive in. Some of them feel that the only way to stop humanity is to cull them…”

  “You mean war?” I asked, horrified.

  She nodded.

  “If you are the fortieth generation Gurrer, as we believe you are, then you will be able to implement a peaceful strategy to help the Oceanids survive and in doing so convince the others that war is not the answer. Our peaceful strategy is two-fold: a complete exodus from the ocean to land, and the parallel cleansing of the ocean to enable those Oceanids who have to remain and who wish to return, to be able to do so.”

  “How am I meant to do that?” I squeaked in horror.

  “You will introduce the Oceanids to the humans,” she replied, smiling, “and influence them to take on our cause.”

  I was shaking my head before she’d finished her sentence.

  “You are very talented, Alexandra.” She patted my hand gently before rising, ignoring my protests. “Merrick is here to help you develop your talents. You are already far more powerful than you know.” She turned to Merrick. “We start tomorrow. You know what needs to be done?”

  He nodded, keeping his eyes to the ground.

  “Sabrina, make sure she is adequately dressed for tonight please,” Talita continued, “I’d like you to introduce her to some of the Oceanids.”

  Sabrina bobbed obediently as Talita left.

  When she’d gone, I buried my head in my hands and burst into tears. “What am I going to do?” I wailed pathetically. “I don’t have any of the powers any of you think I have, and there’s so much pressure on me, and I don’t know what to do!”

  Merrick and Sabrina stared at me for a few moments bef
ore Sabrina marched across the small space to my side and shook my arm.

  “That’s quite enough,” she told me firmly. “I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, Alexandra. You are going to pull yourself together and start living up to the blood that runs through your veins. You don’t have to believe in yourself for now, but you do have to respect your heritage. You are an Oceanid, or at least half of one, and we do not give in to useless self-battery, and besides,” she said pulling me to my feet, “I’ve already seen amazing things happen in your presence here today. Things we’ve only speculated about, only hoped for.”

  “What do you mean?” Merrick interrupted her.

  “I don’t know what it was exactly,” Sabrina said, staring at the palms of her hands. “The Merrow were able to produce water on their hands and Laine ice.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how it happened though. I could feel my power being accessed, but I had no control over it…”

  “And you didn’t think you should tell me about this?” Merrick snapped angrily.

  Sabrina dropped her palms and glared at him. “I needed some time to figure it out a little first.”

  “And?”

  She turned back to me and took my hand. “I think it has something to do with her,” she replied, smiling at me. “I was able to see her spiritus better when the Merrow were around me, something I wasn’t able to do before.”

  “I don’t completely understand what you mean,” I replied meekly.

  “Each Oceanid has only one talent,” Merrick replied,

  “It seems that when you are with Oceanids with different talents, they are able to share them with other Oceanids,”Sabrina continued before grinning at me. “So you see, Alexandra, already your presence among us has helped us to develop something new.”

  “That has massive implications,” Merrick cut in thoughtfully. “I wonder if it works across the whole pod?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Sabrina grinned, turning to me. “Let’s go and get you ready to meet the rest of the Oceanids and test my theory.” She bounced on her toes excitedly.

  Chapter 17

  Connection

  Sabrina led me to the waterfall that spilled timelessly from the pool above, down the side of the cave, disappearing into the inky darkness below.

  “These are the bathrooms,” she explained above the roll of the water as it fell down the inside of the mountain.

  I gazed at the icy water, shivering as a fine spray drifted from the waterfall and settled in tiny droplets on my skin.

  I was still staring at the waterfall when the chill mist became perceptively warmer, even pleasant.

  I frowned, trying to work out why the mountain water had so suddenly turned from ice-cold to pleasantly warm. As I turned to ask Sabrina, she giggled.

  “The warmth?” I started asking.

  “Yeah, that would be me again.”

  “How…” I began.

  She shrugged. “I can’t explain how, it just is something I can, and always have been able to do.”

  She showed me where the women bathed and the makeshift toilet which turned out to be nothing but a type of platform over the stream.

  “There isn’t much privacy,” I gulped.

  Sabrina shook her head. “It’s not that bad,” she said, pulling me to the entrance of the bathroom area. From that angle it was obvious that there was no way anyone entering the bathroom could see anything.

  “We have a complicated signal system.” She pointed at the cave wall. “When you require some privacy…” She ran her hands over the wall, giggling at my expression as it glowed.

  “OK, so it is quite private,” I replied, smiling at her. She waited while I showered in the water, warming it enough to take the sting away.

  As the water beat an uneven tattoo on my tired shoulders, I closed my eyes and faced each living nightmare I’d visited in the caves. Their suffering made me feel so terribly helpless. I’d asked Marinus and the various nurses I’d seen, what could be done for them. Their answers had been uniformly unhelpful.

  The only thing that seemed to heal their wounds was the cleanest water available. Their problem was that clean water was becoming more and more scarce.

  I’d asked them how they planned to remedy this. They had merely gazed at me expectantly, as if I held the answer to that question.

  It felt like I’d lived ten years in the last ten hours. The morning washing dishes in the stream was a distant memory. Even the trip through the subterranean river seemed distant and almost dreamlike, as if it’d happened to a different person. The water turned cold, Sabrina’s not so subtle hint that I was taking too long in the shower. Drying myself quickly and wrapping myself in a robe she’d given me, I let her lead me back to her aven.

  She chattered while she dressed me, trying to impart years’ worth of Oceanid culture and etiquette to me in the half an hour we had before I had to join them all for dinner.

  I listened as intently as I could, determined to try and be what these people expected me to be, and respect them as Sabrina had asked me to. It wasn’t just what she wanted to do, I wanted to help them, I really did.If my physical presence was helping the Oceanids then I would be as physically present as possible.

  Sabrina pulled out a pale turquoise blue cloth from the pile which she wound tightly around my torso, leaving my shoulders bare. The fabric floated softly over my hips to the floor, trailing behind me in a puddle of transparent blue.

  She wound little plaits into my hair, pulling some of it away from my face, and tucking tiny blue and purple mountain flowers into it as she went, before draping an iridescent, gossamer-fine, deep purple veil over my hair, arranging it so that it covered most of my shoulders and framed my face.

  Finally pleased with her work, she presented me with a pair of navy, moccasin-style shoes. They clung to my feet, and were as comfortable as slippers.

  As we walked across the clearing towards Merrick’s aven, I smiled and practised bobbing at the one or two Oceanids that came out of the avens and walked towards the central meeting place.

  Merrick appeared at the doorway to his aven, his long flared trousers matched with an open hooded cloak that clung to his broad shoulders and accentuated the ripple of muscle I could see through the opening. I pulled my eyes quickly from his perfectly sculpted torso to his face. He was smiling as he took my hand and led me towards a group of Oceanids that had formed near the fever tree. Sabrina slipped away from us, darting across the cave back to her aven to dress herself for dinner.

  “I’m sorry about my behaviour earlier,” I whispered as we walked, unsure of what he thought of me after such a selfish outburst.

  “Sabrina was a little hard on you earlier,” he told me as he glided across the space. “You do need to grow up,” he continued, obviously unaware of the offense his statement immediately raised in me, “but it’s unfair for her, or any of them to expect that to happen on the first day.”

  Having only known him for less than a day, I was surprised by how much I was relying on him. I felt completely comfortable in his presence and nervous whenever he was away from me.

  It was completely natural to hold his hand and I preferred it when he did, not least because I seemed to be that much more aware of the whispers and raised eyebrows of those around me, and that awareness gave me a sense of control, as if by knowing what the others were saying about me, could help me to change their minds a little, or at least react better.

  The light in the cave was much dimmer, and I realised with a shock that the sun was going down, and I was starving.

  “What time is it?” I wondered aloud as I watched some of the Oceanids placing fire-filled clay pots around the base of the tree and along the sides of the cave. A soft warm light slowly filled the cave as the blue light from the pool above faded with the setting sun.

  “Around seven o clock,” he said smiling as he waved to the group of creatures talking animatedly beneath the tree, changing our direction as he did so. Despite the friendl
y appearance, his smile didn’t quite reach his wary eyes, and every step he took seemed to be slightly measured, as if he were scanning how each movement would position us in relation to those around us.

  Sarbrina skipped across the clearing to join us, resplendent in a pearlescent robe. She took my hands in hers, briefly pulling me away from Merrick’s protective stance so that I stood beside her.

  “Doesn’t she look amazing?” she asked him.

  I blushed instantly, looking at my toes, as Sabrina skipped off to catch another Oceanid she wanted to introduce me to.

  Merrick stepped closer to me and lifted my chin with his fingers. “You do look very beautiful tonight, Alexandra,” he told me, his smile not quite cooling the fire in his eyes as they skimmed my face and then took in the rest of me. “You need to act the part I’m afraid, and that means you may not look at your toes.” He grinned again. “There are some Oceanids I think you’ll enjoy meeting,” he said, offering me his arm.

  We circled the tree as he pointed out different groupings of Oceanids. The Merrow were the easiest to spot, their diminutive size and fiery conversations, often accompanied by spontaneous dancing, both amusing and very foreign.

  Merrick next pointed out the Mami-Wata. Their skin was a deep rich copper brown marred, or perhaps it was decorated, by scarring on all of the exposed surfaces. Their hair was drawn aggressively away from their faces, which were dominated with high cheekbones and large very dark eyes. They followed my every movement as we circled the tree, their expressions blank and unreadable.

  “Alexandra,” Talita interrupted us, “I’d like you to meet Undine.”

  Undine bobbed in greeting, smiling impishly at me.

  “I thought you might like to meet the Oceanid who’s been responsible for your dreams for the past three years,” Talita quipped brightly.

  My jaw dropped at her casual statement.

  “Excuse me… what?”

  Undine smiled politely, looking uncertainly at Merrick and Talita.

  Merrick squeezed my hand gently, pulling me a little closer to his side.