No Man's Land

by A. J. Fitzwater

  She sounded like …

  … sounded like Robbie.

  Yes. Izzy was definitely in her head.

  Tea squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her fist, and flinched again at a spasm in her arm. Thank goodness the rifle pops from MacGregor and the other girls came from another field beyond a stand of pines.

  “Robbie would sound like that—”

  “—when he came back from dances. I know.”

  Izzy tilted her head the other way. “Dances?”

  “He used to get in a lot of fights. Over girls.”

  A small, sad smile hooked at the corner of Izzy’s mouth. “Oh, Tea.”

  A crack-crack. Tea jerked her head towards the sound.

  But there was no-one with rifles that way.

  Rattle-crack.

  No rifles that way either.

  Blackness seethed around the edges of Tea’s vision. She held tight to the edge of the dray to stop herself from falling. The darkness boiled like thrashing water. Water against stone. Tide rolling over. Waves sweeping away, damn whatever was in its way.

  “Tea. Izzy.”

  A voice in the here and now. Grant. He never yelled, not even at the animals. But the cut of his voice held stone in it, the heaviness of earth.

  “Tea?” Izzy’s voice had that growl, like she was right on the edge of change, too restless for her skin.

  Both voices slurred through air that had thickened around Tea’s head. She tried to shake herself free of the strange grip. The effort to breathe exhausted her.

  Two pairs of hands gripped her arms, took the rifle from her.

  “It’s here … it’s here …”

  “What is, Tea?” Izzy asked.

  “That storm,” Grant said. “Tea can feel something going on, over there. But I told you, the dust …”

  “That’s your sneezes.”

  “Be fair, Izz. I might not be as strong as Tea or you or … or Robbie, but I know when things aren’t right.”

  “My arm … Robbie’s hurt …”

  “My hand has been giving me heck all day, Izz.”

  “You shouldn’t be able to feel it at this distance.”

  “Tea can.”

  “What are you talking about? You can feel … the storm, the fight, that Robbie’s in?”

  “It’s not just the war.”

  “Grant, shush. Now isn’t the time. What do we do?”

  “Get her to the creek. I’ll meet you there. I’ll … tell Mr MacGregor the dogs spooked a wild boar and we’re going to track it. He won’t say no to the meat.”

  “Right oh. Up you go, girl. Come on.”

  “Izz. It hurts!”

  “I know, girl. Hold on, we’re almost there.”

  “The fire … can’t hold it in …”

  “Oh, shoot … Robbie, why now? Here we go. Down here. That’s a good girl, Clarissa, you old tough nut.”

  “Ow … hurry, they’re calling me!”

  “Who?”

  The hisssssth of the water wove a torrent around Tea’s head. Slippery strands like seaweed in the weave, gripping her hands and pulling her under. Heavier things called and pulled from further away and deep, cold flow hot flow, great walls of viscosity rubbing against each other, the hisssssth sensuous, angry, always moving, always alive and teeming, boundless, skin bones blood mettle all part of it.

  “There’s sand. Lots of sand. And salt. Salt in the wounds. It burns. So cold. Shooting stars. No, that can’t be right. Not that many. A river. River salt red. Blood. Oh God, the blood!”

  She came out of her daze up to her elbows in the creek, the eels nibbling reassurance and wrapping love around her wrists. Come swim come, they whispered. Her own eelskin flipped fast and black up her arms.

  Grant burst through the bushes, more energetic and precise than Tea had ever seen. He looked like a show horse ready to jump rails rather than the steady donkey he kept in check. His right hand clenched in a familiar spasm.

  “You feel it,” Tea gasped, wiping a scaled hand across her loose lips, then plunging it back in the water as soon as the sting gripped her again.

  “It’s Robbie. He’s in a fight. A battle.” He shook his head when Tea frowned. “And things are going—”

  “—wrong. Very wrong,” Tea finished.

  How did Grant feel Robbie’s pain this strongly? He wasn’t connected by blood like her. She glanced around the muddy bank and bushes as if searching for an answer. Her gaze skittered over Grant; anger and fear made an uncomfortable mix in the usually steady boy. Izzy stood as solid as the rock she had always been, only her fingers twitching. Dogs danced with agitation, and Clarissa shifted from hoof to hoof. Maybe the whaiwhaiā was so powerful something was leaking off her. If the animals were picking it up, why not another human?

  The words fell out of Tea’s mouth before the thought formed fully in her head. “I have to go to him.”

  “Go where? How?”

  Tea’s fingers caught in the laces of her boots. Undressing; another involuntary response. And in front of a boy, no less! “I’m … I’m going to swim there.”

  “I’m coming, too.” Izzy bent to undo her own boots, as if this idea made perfect sense.

  Grant flushed – fury or embarrassment, or both. “Tea, maybe. She’s a taniwha.” His pronunciation was terrible: ‘tanny-farr’. “But you’re canine, and I’m … well, I can’t ride across oceans!”

  He spoke as if he believed Tea could make it.

  Ssssswim come ssssshow you.

  Being this close to the creek’s agitation, its depth and breadth, pulled the breath from Tea’s lungs. Its song itched at her until she wanted to tear all her flesh off to reveal her eelskin beneath.

  “Wait here.”

  Something in the tone of her voice made Izzy and Grant pause.

  Tea waded out in the creek. She thought it would only come up to hip or chest height. She went under spluttering when within three steps the bottom of the creek dropped away to nothing.

  With a swirl of kissing black skin, the eels roiled around her, holding her up, pushing her forward.

  Swim.

  Tea thrashed for the surface, all stars and knives of light. She’d never been the strongest swimmer and her lungs ached for breath.

  Come.

  An especially large and tenacious eel circled her chest and squeezed.

  Bubbles from her terrified screech shot up but the water did not rush in to kill her. The eels demanded something of her bones, her muscles, her breath until it all creaked and cracked and she felt as long as all the rivers combined and as wide as the oceans.

  She was not Tea anymore. She was a hiss of a beast, lengthened out into something finer and truer. The age-old water song promised her a might her human flesh could never imagine.

  Her eelskin tasted, sinuous eeltongue smelled, and eelsight heard in a series of rumbles and shifts, a gargle-rattle of a thousand throats all singing different hymns but the same song, the water song. And within that song, disharmony; water shed, breath shed, bloodshed.

  A border approached, where the green loam of the creek met sharp mineral. Creek to the ocean to the currents that swirled and touched and loved and mixed and broke apart again, delivering song sweetness savour surrender to the other side. Tea touched this border with wispy protrusions; she had to cross over to get there.

  Beyond there was Robbie, caught in the tornado of danger battle blood death.

  What remained of her human mind cried out I can’t do this! I’m not a fighter! I’m only a girl.

  Sssswim come eelgirl squirmed the water and eels. Ssshow you like we ssshow all.

  Show all? Show who?

  No time.

  I have to do this. I must. For Robbie. Even if it hurts. Even if it kills me.

  Tea gave herself over to t
he current. The water gave itself over to her. Fight, pull back, move around, hold. A merging, as water and water should.

  The wisps around her resolved into long, thick whiskers, extensions of her eel flesh. Anything would be safe wrapped in their embrace.

  She rose to the surface.

  Gasps from Izzy and Grant.

  “Is it that bad?” Tea found her words coming out round and deep from an elongated mouth and long chest. “Am I a hideous beast?”

  Grant’s large Adam’s apple bobbed in his scrawny neck.

  Izzy stared, eyes as soft as a moonless night. “No,” she said. “You are beautiful.”

  7.

  “Dragon,” Izzy argued, fists on hips.

  “Mermaid!” was Grant’s rebuttal.

  “But the whiskery things, and scales!”

  “No wings, though. No fangs and claws, either. And look at that tail!”

  “Do fairy tales ever talk about a black mermaid? No. And that’s just what they are. Tales. Tea is very much real. I think she’s more dragon.”

  “And I say mermaid!”

  In Tea’s new peripheral vision, her scales shimmered black. Twisting about she could glimpse a tail curving into two feathery moulded fins tipped with creamy gold. More surprising as she tasted the length of herself – her menses flow had stopped. Not stoppered up, or her insides twisted, it was simply gone.

  “What about … both?” she suggested.

  “Both.” Grant nodded.

  “Both is good.” Izzy nodded back at Grant. “Taniwha.”

  “Tanny-wharr.”

  “You two finished?”

  “Alright, alright. Hold your horses. Grant, turn around, I’m taking my shirt off.”

  “Izz, what does it matter he sees you? You’re naked whenever you’re a dog! And he’s naked when he’s a donkey! Come on!” The eelskin had sloughed away the well-trained barriers of her inhibition.

  She itched to be off. Robbie’s need pulled, and it grew fainter with every passing minute. Like something vital was passing out of him.

  Grant blushed bright as sunburn. He left his pants on when he slipped into the water. His shoulders and ribs poked against his skin, bones too big for his flesh.

  “What’s happening?” His teeth chattered.

  “I think if you hold on tight to these … tendril things, I’ll be able to pull you through.”

  “To where?” Izzy sloshed into the water, still in her undergarments. The taste of her slid over Tea’s eelskin and she fought to ignore such a delicious taunt. She was still human, deep down inside. None of this animal nonsense, not when she had a job to do!

  “I’m not entirely sure. Africa, though I know it’s a big continent. This water joins up to that water.”

  For the first time since the whole bally-hoo began, scepticism held Izzy taut. “That’s a long way. Can you hold your breath that long?”

  “Not something you need to ask me, I think.” With barely a thought Tea elongated her feather-scale tail to match the undulation of the creek.

  “I think … we can …” Grant closed his eyes, took a deep breath, shook his head. “Come on, let’s do this.”

  Tea tried to taste him like she could Izzy, but he was stronger in his reserved donkey ways.

  How would these two land animal-people breathe? Though the journey must be thousands of miles, Tea knew it wouldn’t take them thousands of miles of time to get there, but still enough time that dozens of breaths would be needed.

  Sssswim ssssing.

  The water wanted her to sing at them? Sing what? She only knew hymns and a few radio tunes by heart. And singing took breath away from breathing …

  … but singing also expelled air.

  Oh, dear lord. Tea’s giggle burbled up.

  “What’s so funny?” Izzy glared into one of Tea’s shining black-green eyes as she wrapped tendrils around both wrists. She shuddered at the rubbery texture.

  “Don’t worry, you won’t hurt me, and they won’t break off,” Tea said. “And what’s funny is how I figured out you’re going to breathe underwater. I’ll do it for you.”

  Grant’s mouth went almost as round as Tea’s. “Oh.”

  For some reason, Tea didn’t care about kissing Grant. Izzy, on the other hand …

  “Let’s go,” Tea burble-barked.

  Grant found his grip on her tendrils and then as one they took deep breaths and dived under.

  Yesssssss.

  Fists of water yanked them down, flinging them forward into a darkness spotted with pin pricks like stars. The fresh, cold-as-a-mountain limestone-tinted water became salted, heavy, abundant. The current pulled them along so fast she had no time to make sense of the creatures great and small, the scintillating layers, the depth and age of water. This water had passed through the cycle of the world countless times, touched everything. It held incredible knowledge. The enormous wealth filled and emptied Tea at the same time.

  A tug on her right tendrils. Izzy, needing to breathe. Tea had been letting her own air just be. If she thought about it too hard – the slits in her neck, the slithering through her eel body – she might start choking. She took in a great whisk-hum of air and manipulated her tendrils. Izzy’s face was right there.

  No time to hesitate or think. She placed her mouth over Izzy’s.

  Not so much a kiss, but a sharing of life, of the water’s song. A tingling along her edges. Somehow it felt far more intimate than anything romantic like the movies or books or magazines told.

  She performed the ritual for Grant. Her edges did not tingle this time. She was getting used to the strange deal, she decided.

  The current widened, narrowed, twisted, shoved them about. Tea slid along its imperative undertow easily, but she worried that the skin-bodies with death grips on her narrow whiskers were being battered. She brought them in closer, protecting them with her fins.

  The ocean was not silent. Enormous shapes rushed by, moaning years-long songs. Beautiful and terrifying in their age, size, and complexity. Things deadly as knives, cutting through the water. Things tiny and clustered, life giving. The grating of metal on stone, sonorous and deep as a million years.

  Water deliciously warm then urgently cold.

  The idea of land rushed at her. They were flung through a narrow gap, then progress slowed enough for Tea to understand islands and peninsulas lurked like hooks ready to catch in her skin. A great mass anchoring the world to her right.

  One more sharing of breath, and their headlong rush slowed to a more human understanding of time and space. The current threw them deep down one last time, a dry cold creaked around Tea’s eelskin, and the wide-flung ocean became a pitch-black tunnel. Salt-sting turned mineral again, but this one lush as sun on clay, moisture biding its time between the cracks of heat and stone. Muffled noises leaked down, growing more wicked as Tea wriggled towards the surface.

  As the three travellers popped up gasping for air, the noise stitched together into an abundance of pure evil. Shouts of terror, rage, and shooting stars.

  No, not stars. Shells. Bullets. Bombs. Metal threads rattling the air.

  “Oh my lord.”

  “Grant, are you alright?”

  “I’m intact. Where are we?”

  “I don’t know. It’s so dark. I need my canine nose. Tea?”

  “Give me a moment.” Tea let her scales thin towards flesh, peeling back her head to something more human. She was glad it was dark enough Grant and Izzy couldn’t see. The air slapped her with a hundred things at once as she tasted it with eel and human senses. “Sunrise is hours off. We’re in … an oasis, a few miles off the coast. I recognise the palms on the edge from my atlas. There are … buildings too, but they’re empty. Sandbags. Barbed wire. Oh, God.”

  “What?” Izzy had unwrapped herself from Tea’s tendrils and was paddl
ing towards the edge.

  “No. Don’t!”

  The stench hit Tea hard and strong. She’d got used to plucking chickens, mucky animals, and meat stripped in the cold store. But it hadn’t prepared her for this. There was no direction she could swim to get away from it. It leaked into the water, staining its perfection.

  Grant pushed alongside her, rubbing his arms, saying nothing.

  “Now what?” Izzy’s teeth chattered. For a desert place it was surprisingly cold. She’d been the toughest of the girls through frosty mornings, so it had to be more than the cold getting to her.

  “Turn around, both of you, would you? I need to figure out how to change,” Tea said. “The water … talks differently here.”

  “Righty ho,” Izzy drawled, but they obliged.

  “I forgot it would be spring here,” Tea said, pulling at the water’s song with her prickly senses. She’d become so used to the farm stream’s song, she hadn’t thought water in other parts of the world would have something different to say. “We need to find some clothes.”

  “For you, maybe. I plan to be running around in dog form. I don’t know about you, Grant.”

  Grant mumbled something too low for Tea to hear.

  Finally, Tea found the right tone in the water’s song, an echo of home, a hum that told her it had passed through that place in its cycle an aeon ago. She pulled on the strand. It went taut and sang like a lone violin string but gave her enough to shift back to her human shape. Her joints snapped back into place with a pleasurable crick and pop and she once more had fingers and toes. She didn’t dare pull too hard on the water’s good temper; the hum turned to a screech in her temples as she attempted to flip her skin. She lost her scales but her skin remained dark. Strange, but good camouflage.

  It would have to do under the circumstances, she decided.

  With her flesh settled into more familiar lines, Tea’s teeth took up a chattering she had no control over, and her heart pounded so hard her head throbbed. Without the armour of her full eelskin holding her together, old thoughts rushed back in: boys, marriage, war, death … Izzy. One upside to the mess: she remained eel enough that her menses stayed silent.

  She rubbed her arms. “It’s so cold. And loud. But quiet. Where is the fighting, exactly? Oh lord, Jerries could be all around us.”