“When you first breathed underwater, we expected your father to tell you who you really were,” Talita explained.
“But I… I’ve never breathed underwater.”
She smiled at me. “You were underwater for five minutes, Alexandra, humans, and especially untrained fourteen-year-old humans, can’t stay underwater that long without drowning.”
“You’re talking about the day Brent…” My voice trailed off as the nightmare pushed its way rudely into my waking hours again. This time though the focus was different. Brent was there but more as a backdrop to my experience. Just before he floated above me spread-eagled and wide-eyed in death, I remembered breathing in and out and in again.
I blinked, staring at Undine’s delicate hand as it rested on my arm.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to get through to you all of these years,” she whispered, her oval, golden face full of compassion. “I am so sorry your dreams have been so awful for such a long time, but I couldn’t just introduce weird and wonderful dreams of you swimming with mermaids.”
“Why not?” I asked, still feeling bewildered.
“The mind doesn’t work like that,” she replied. “If I’d given you those types of dreams, you would never have remembered them. They are too surreal and your mind immediately dismisses them as pure fantasy.”
“We needed you to discover your true identity,” Talita continued, “and at that point the best way to do that was through the dreams. Undine latched onto the event where you breathed and tried,” she smiled at the little Oceanid, “to get you to remember that part of the dream.”
“Unfortunately, because it was linked to Brent’s death, that was all you remembered.”
“So you mean to tell me, you’ve been sending me nightmares for three years?” I asked, my voice rising a bit at the end as the anguish I’d had to endure soured into rage.
Merrick squeezed my hand again. I wrenched it away from him, balling my hands into fists at my sides.
“I lived every nightmare with you,” Undine whispered, reaching out slowly and grasping one of my hands with both of hers, her eyes filling with tears as she looked into mine. “I was there through all of it, trying with all my might to focus your mind on what was important. You are incredibly strong, Alexandra, and even the beautiful dream I gave you at Sabine’s pool, your mind twisted into a nightmare.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You don’t like being intruded on,” she said, smiling and dropping my hand. “Even in your dreams your mind fought for privacy, refusing to let me influence you for long. I was only able to introduce the dream to you for a few short moments, and then it was snatched from me, and there was no way I could get it back.” She shook her head and smiled at me, admiration shining in her eyes. “No one will ever be able to direct and control you, and that is a great advantage for one with such an important role to play.”
“That, I think is enough for one evening,” Talita said quietly into the incredulous silence that followed Undine’s revelation.
Sabrina stepped forward, whispering into Talita’s ear. Talita pulled away from her and looked at me, her face a picture of almost comical astonishment.
“Have you tested it on anyone else?” she asked Sabrina.
Sabrina shook her head, leaning in to explain further.
“Let’s eat first and then we will make the formal introductions and reveal this information to the group.,” Talita decided, and moved away to the centre of the circle that was forming, greeting Oceanids as she went.
Undine drifted off as well, joining a group of Oceanids with the same impish features as she had.
When we were alone again, Merrick pulled me closer to his side and murmured, “Talita will introduce you after dinner tonight. She wants to show the ability Sabrina thinks you have.”
I gulped at the idea of being the centre of attention.
He traced little circles into the palm of my hand with his thumb as he reassured me. “Don’t worry, I’ll be right there with you all of the time, you’ll do fine.”
I was distracted from the prospect of my upcoming public introduction by Luke’s familiar laugh as it drifted up from the centre of a knot of creatures Sabrina had just come from. He seemed completely at ease as one particular girl flirted and laughed with him, bantering with some of the other Oceanids around him.
Merrick led me to the edge of the moss and sat cross-legged on the lichen-covered floor. Josh appeared, talking animatedly to the female creature with auburn curls I’d seen earlier. She moved like the grass in the breeze, constantly touching Josh’s arm, shoulder or elbow. He had eyes only for her as they sat a few paces from us.
Luke separated himself from the group of Oceanids he’d been ensconced with and drifted toward Merrick and me, his fingers entwined in his girl’s grasp.
I examined her critically as they moved across the clearing. Her huge blue eyes, alight with dark mischief, were the dominant feature in her exquisitely proportioned face, which was framed by perfect silky locks that tumbled over bare shoulders.
She was dressed in a dark purple outfit that clung to every perfect curve but only very briefly, before ending abruptly mid-thigh. Her deific beauty was, however, veiled by the unease I felt emanating from her, so that she seemed to grow more unattractive with time.
A full circle of Oceanids formed around the tree. Their furtive glances and in some cases, open stares left made me uncomfortable.
“Have I done something to offend them?” I muttered to Merrick, tilting my head in the direction of the clearly gossiping creatures.
He shook his head. “No, but they are very curious about you.”
Merrick leaned back on an elbow, shielding me from those next to him with his body. Sabrina had come to sit on the other side of me, her knee brushing mine as we sat cross-legged.
I was surprised and pleased by the determined friendship she had struck up with me, making what seemed like a genuine effort to get to know me. It was the first time in my life that I’d found another girl I could really talk to.
More creatures appeared, each carrying a dish of delicately fragrant food which they set in front of each person in the circle.
I eyed my plate suspiciously.
“What is it?” I whispered to Merrick.
“Snake, sweet yams and mountain greens,” he informed me around a mouthful of food.
“S-snake?” I squeaked, staring at the circle of whitish meat on my plate. I gingerly lifted a piece and inhaled. The scent was mouth-watering, the tiniest bite matched the delicious fragrance.
“Mmm, it tastes like chicken.”
He shook his head. “No it doesn’t taste like bird, more like crocodile.”
I giggled, relieved to be able to have such an abnormal conversation about such a normal topic. “OK, if you say so.”
Despite the incredible revelations I’d had in the day, and the ever-present concern that lingered about the sick Oceanids, I found myself enjoying Sabrina and Merrick’s company more than I’d have thought possible.
My stomach churned a little as the dinner plates were cleared.
“When do I have to go up there?” I asked, worrying about tripping over my skirt or not bobbing correctly.
“After the music,” Sabrina replied, looking expectantly at two Oceanids as they moved forward toward the tree, strong ebony-skinned man and a wispy woman, her hair flowing to her waist.
“We always sing and have music in the evenings,” Merrick explained. “The stories in the songs remind us of our history.”
The sound that swelled from the Oceanids was otherworldly. It started with a gentle bass melody sung by one of the males. The Oceanids sitting in the audience provided the “music”. I recognised the imitation of crickets, the wind in the trees, birds, frogs, running water and other sounds unfamiliar to me.
Each sound was at the perfect pitch to complement the singer’s voice and seemed to flow in depth, rhythm and volume to create the most beautiful natural m
usic I’d ever heard.
Weaving through the music was a delicate soprano harmony. I was surprised to realise that the melody and harmony were in two different languages. The first I didn’t recognise but the harmony was sung in English.
“What language is he singing in?” I asked Merrick, recognising the liquid language I’d heard a few times now.
“The language of the sea,” he replied simply.
I was about to question him further when some of the words the female creature was singing caught my attention. Her song was the story of her kind’s original home.
I didn’t recognise the descriptions of the places she spoke of. Most of the references were associated with mountains and formations I’d never heard of.
“What is she singing about?” I whispered to Merrick.
“She’s describing where she comes from,” he explained.
I listened for a moment or two longer. “Which is where?” I asked.
“Well, right now she’s describing the eastern escarpment off the coast of Iceland. It is a mystical and beautiful place with the most incredible forests you have ever seen.”
I wasn’t one hundred per cent certain of my geography, but I was pretty sure that Iceland didn’t have many forests, certainly not ones that were described as “incredible”.
“I don’t think there are any forests in Iceland,” I whispered back.
“There are in the sea,” he replied. “Great coral forests so tall and solid that if you don’t have your bearings right you could get lost for days in them.”
I gulped. The reason I couldn’t identify any of the places the Oceanid was singing about was because she was describing underwater topography.
I listened eagerly, each description painting a beautiful picture in my mind of the strange and alien world below the waves. It helped to close my eyes, as her words took on a life of their own, weaving beautifully in a fabric of sound that draped itself around me and, strangely, I knew the song. Not the words, but the melody felt like it had been a part of my life, or maybe it was my dreams all my life. It was comforting and exciting.
It felt like – I struggled to put the feeling into words – like Friday afternoon when you come home and know that you belong, and you have the whole weekend stretching out in front of you full of exciting possibility. It reminded me of family, good memories, not the shards of family that had been left after Brent’s death, but the family we’d had before then. I sighed, content for the first time I could remember in a very very long time.
Chapter 18
Magic
The music in the circle whispered to a close, and in the silence that followed, the echo of the tune drifted up from the caves where all of the sick and dying Oceanids had joined in.
Their voices weren’t as pure, the harmonies slightly distorted as their damaged throats cracked on the highest and lowest notes, but the sweet sadness of their singing had tears streaming down my cheeks.
These people were in a desperate situation, many of them in excruciating pain, and yet somehow they found the energy to sing, to remember their home, and to connect through song with each other.
The beauty of the unity was interrupted by a premature stirring among the healthy Oceanids as Talita stepped into the centre of the circle.
I found their excited conversation exceptionally rude as it cut the sick Oceanids’ song off, stopping it mid-phrase. Their behaviour was intensly disrespectful to the suffering Oceanids and I was surprised at how angry this made me.
Talita lifted her hands and the Oceanids quietened.
“I must apologise, dear friends, for interrupting the usual routine that marks the evening’s entertainment,” she began, her voice echoing around the cave. “But before Taika begins I would like to formally introduce you to our honoured guest Alexandra.”
She extended her hand to me as I stood awkwardly, trying to smooth my dress as I hurried towards her, Merrick and Sabrina at my side the whole way.
“Stop fidgeting,” Sabrina muttered at me as we took our places beside Talita.
The Oceanids made a strange humming noise as I stepped up beside Talita.
“They are welcoming you,” Merrick whispered beside me. “Now would be a good time to bob.”
I did so, if a little hurriedly.
“Already Alexandra’s presence has resulted in some interesting changes in the pod,” Talita continued. “While she must still be properly trained, just her presence here is already helpful, and we are seeing an interesting unity developing as has never happened before.”
Talita nodded briefly at Merrick and Sabrina.
Sabrina stepped forward and spoke in the language I couldn’t understand, Merrick translating for me as she did so.
“She’s explaining what her talents and my talents are,” he paraphrased.
Sabrina stepped back to where I was standing, took my hand and winked at me as she did so. A shiver ran up the inside of my arm, and then Merrick opened his palm and blew a dusting of snow into the air.
The crowd gasped in awe, murmuring among themselves as Sabrina stepped forward again and described, in the foreign language, something she could see a great distance away.
The whole time this was happening I’d maintained a fixed smile on my face, feeling very much like a magician’s bunny rabbit – the star of the show but completely powerless in its own right.
Talita stepped forward again. “As Alexandra is able to help unify us more, we will reveal more of her abilities,” she told the excited crowd. “For tonight though, let us resume our normal routine,” she said before bobbing to the excited Oceanids and pausing to whisper in my ear, “Well done!”
We returned to the edge of the circle, the Oceanids around us smiling at me encouragingly and complimenting me on my abilities.
I was infinitely relieved when the crowd’s attention turned from me as they all waited expectantly for what was to come next.
“You did really well,” Merrick murmured, leaning in to me as he spoke.
I shook my head slightly. “I didn’t do anything except be a glorified conduit.”
He chuckled quietly. “Well, no one else here can do that so well done anyway.”
I shrugged, trying to push away the gnawing anxiety that I was merely being used for their purposes. I decided as we waited for the “show” to begin that I was not going to be submitted to another embarrassing “show and tell” tomorrow night, that I would have asked all the right questions of the right people by then so that I knew exactly what I was supposed to do to help them.
“Taika is about to perform!” Sabrina whispered to me excitedly.
I looked at Merrick, raising my eyebrows in question.
“She is a particularly talented Oceanid,” he replied quietly.
“Particularly talented at what?” I asked. He hesitated, looking worried.
“Magic,” replied Sabrina.
“Magic?” I repeated, looking between them. Sabrina was leaning forward and staring at the centre of the cave, her face alight with anticipation.
Merrick refused to meet my questioning gaze for longer than a few seconds, his eyes fixed on the centre of the cave too. His face, however, was creased in worry, his mouth turned down at the corners as he waited.
A brilliant flash of light and ear-splitting shriek that reverberated and echoed through the mountain for what felt like an age, had me jumping and clutching at Merrick’s arm.
He patted my hand absently, his expression tense as a thick mist filled the space. It twisted and roiled around us growing denser and denser until the only point of reference I had to reality was Merrick’s hand over mine. I could see nothing but the shifting whiteness in front of me.
I jumped as Sabrina squealed next to me and then giggled, rattling off a string of phrases in the language of the ocean. Other voices expressed delight, wonder and excitement, most of it mixed with laughter.
“Oh wow, that’s so cool!” I heard Josh exclaim, but still I could see nothing but
the shifting mist.
Fear prickled my hands and feet and a terrible cloying claustrophobia settled over me as I tried to make out what was going on.
Then Merrick laughed and let go of my hand. I immediately groped around where he’d been trying to find him, but he must have shifted because my desperate fingers couldn’t find him.
I peered through the mist, trying to make out any familiar shapes and forms, and to my relief my searching eyes settled on a slight thinning of the thick white cloud, a little more transparency where there had been opaque nothingness a few moments before. I could just make out the cheerful flickering of fire from within one of the clay pots. Relief washed over me.
She stepped into the space, a wisp of a woman, shrouded in the mist which seemed to flow from her, swirling around and out from her in ever-changing sinuous shapes and forms. She moved towards me like a cat stalking a mouse, slowly, carefully and with the intensity of the immensely powerful.
I stared at her unblinking, afraid she would disappear into the mist and even more afraid that she wouldn’t. I tried to assemble an impression of her and strained my newly discovered instincts to try to discern whether she was a friend or an enemy. There was something unsettling about her, something odd that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
She took another careful step towards me, the mist around her thinning a little. In that moment I got a proper glimpse of what she looked like. Her hair was silver-grey and swirled around her face like the mist, her clothing was a patchwork of pale, hanging off bony shoulders and pooling around her hidden feet. She was the only Oceanid I’d encountered who showed any signs of age and, although she was still strikingly beautiful, there was an air of the ancient about her.
The mist pooled in front of her again, and I breathed a little easier, sure that she would divert her attention to someone else, someone more important.
“Alexandra,” a breathy voice whispered in my ear. Every hair on my body stood on end as a ripple of fear tensed my muscles.
Cold bony fingers traced up my spine and settled menacingly on my shoulders, splayed across my throat. I gulped and tried to twist to see her, but as I did so her grip on my shoulders tightened.
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