“You have a great and terrible destiny ahead of you,” she whispered again.
A series of strange images flashed in front of me.
My arm thrown skyward in a clenched fist, my mouth open in a shout as a thrill of energy and triumph buzzed through me.
Dad’s limp form, heavy and unyielding in my arms as my heart ached and hot tears streaked down my face.
And then the strangest sensation of moving easily through water, much like Merrick had, but on my own and with a fury so focused and intense burning through me, that the strangeness and beauty of my environment was barely a glimmer in my consciousness.
I shook my head, trying to clear the images.
Her grip on my shoulders tightened again, her fingers digging into my throat, cutting off my air.
“You will never fulfil your destiny if you keep denying it,” she hissed.
I gulped at the air that suddenly rushed into my lungs as she released me.
“I’m sorry,” I rasped
A sharp sting at the base of my neck was the last memory I have, as the misty light was quickly overtaken by darkness.
Chapter 19
Romance
I woke a few moments before I hit the floor. I lay there for a few seconds trying to make sense of the odd light and musty smells. A low chuckle had me scraping my cheek across the floor as I turned to see who was watching my inelegant start to the day.
Merrick lounged in the doorway, one leg bent, head to one side, watching me.
I flushed, struggling to disentangle my limbs from the hammock he must have placed me in the night before.
Cheeks flaming and eventually upright, I couldn’t think of anything to say that would restore my dignity so I stalked past him to the bathrooms in need of some privacy before the day began.
The little clay fire pots were still in place, only smokily empty, as I walked across the opening to the wash section of the bathrooms Sabrina had shown me the day before. A great slab of stone separated the male and female areas effectively dissecting the underground waterfall in two.
Only one or two others were awake, and I relished the solitude and privacy and the cold water stinging my scalp as my senses exploded awake.
As I rubbed the harsh soap over my skin, my hand brushed the back of my neck, and I winced. I gingerly fingered an area the size of coin that sent urgent messages to my brain. A tiny bubble-shaped bump at the centre of the area sent excruciating fiery fingers of angry pain up the side of my neck.
I yelped in surprise, and stepped quickly under the icy water again in an attempt to ease the heat that now radiated from my neck into my head.
A few moments under the water and the pain dissipated.
I stepped out of the waterfall shower, hastily drying myself with a tiny scrap of surprisingly water absorbent fabric Sabrina had given me along with the soap and sponge.
The day before lingered in my thoughts as I tried to recreate the clothing masterpiece Sabrina had managed to create for me.
So much had happened in such a short amount of time. The most important had been the haunting visit to the sick Oceanids. In all my days I didn’t think I would ever forget the pain and suffering and most of all the courage of the few I’d met. I decided I wanted to meet more of them; sometime today I would be going back to those caves.
I draped the robe Sabrina had given me as best I could but couldn’t get it to stay up properly. Eventually, I gave up trying to make it behave and wound it around my body and legs creating a sort of one-piece short ensemble.
Merrick was waiting for me beneath the tree. He grinned when he saw me.
“I like what you’ve done with Sabrina’s robe. Very… modern, maybe it’ll catch on here.”
“I doubt it,” I said, pulling self-consciously at the robe where it clung to my body occasionally revealing slivers of skin.
“I want to spend some time with the sick Oceanids today,” I told him firmly.
He looked a bit taken aback. “Um sure, I guess that can be arranged,” he replied. “When do you want to start?”
“Now is good.”
He grinned at me, his face lighting up as he did so.
“Well, let’s go then.”
I nodded and followed him down the pathway to the fissure that led to the “hospital”.
He explained my intentions to Marinus, who grinned toothily at me.
“Follow me,” he instructed, leading us down several levels of caves until we stood outside a dimly lit one.
“Nanami?” he called softly at the cave entrance. A raspy voice answered him jovially. “Nanami, you have a visitor.”
A stooped Oceanid shuffled to the cave entrance. Her skin was a patchwork of scarring. Her face had dropped on one side, the wasted muscles pulling her eyelid down to reveal the red rim beneath. The other side of her face was exquisitely beautiful, perfectly proportioned, with a sparkle in her azure blue eyes.
“Ahh, Merrick,” she rasped. “I am so glad you have come, child.” She stepped backwards, indicating we should come into her aven.
Merrick settled in the doorway, leaning against the doorpost and offering me one of the chairs.
“Who is this beautiful baby you’ve brought to see me?” she asked him huskily while patting my arm.
“This is Alexandra, Nani,” Merrick replied, grinning at her maternal mannerisms.
“Ah, the great Alexandra, who is set to save us all.” She smiled at me sympathetically. “That is rather a large responsibility you carry there, my girl.”
I smiled at her, liking her instantly. “Could you tell me what happened to you?” I asked her.
“My story isn’t nearly as interesting as many of the others, my dear,” she replied, “but if you must know, then of course I’ll tell you.”
She settled herself in the other chair in the room, moving it closer to me and taking my hand as she spoke.
“I lived in the most beautiful part of the ocean.” She smiled, her eyes distant. “In a home of coral, so brilliant with colour and life it made even the ocean blue look dull. Oh we had such a lovely life back then. Every tide we would have the most wonderful parties, with banquets of food and dancing and love.” Her rasping voice drifted to a close. “Then one day we woke to a dark cloud covering our home. It was thick and evil smelling and it drew all of the oxygen out of the sea.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Almost immediately our skin began to react to it, bubbling up in terribly painful blisters.” She absently ran her hand over her forearm, her fingers gently tracing the scar lines there.
“Some of the others in our pod fled as soon as they woke up, having heard of other Oceanids who had suffered from such a dark cloud. We were unwilling to believe that our wonderful home was destroyed, unwilling to leave the ocean creatures that were our companions to their fate of a slow and horrible death. We tried to help them, to get them to leave, but there is no food in the blue wastelands and they can’t leave very easily. The wait proved too much for our systems. Even when we got to cleaner water the damage had been done.”
She reached over and patted my hand absently again. “Many of our pod died after a few days, the poison having eaten through too much of their bodies. We met up with some other Oceanids also fleeing another part of the ocean. They told us about this pod, and its facilities, and so we came.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Just short of twenty years,” she replied, laughing wispily at my expression.
“And you’re not better yet?” I asked.
She sighed. “Once that poison gets into an Oceanids’ system it is very difficult to flush out. It’s like tiny deposits of it get left in our cells and only the cleanest and purest water can get it out. Not much of that left around is there?” She cackled at her own joke.
I smiled and chatted with her briefly before extracting myself from her charming company only by promising to come and visit her again.
Many of the other thirty Oceanids I visited that day had sim
ilar stories. The location varied a little, but the details of their disease were often the same.
“Are you OK?” Merrick whispered, as I left yet another reeking aven. I shrugged as the tears I’d been holding back clawed their way up my throat, making my breath ragged with the effort of holding all of the tragedy and emotion inside. He held a quiet, whispered conversation with Marinus, who nodded and smiled sympathetically at me.
“We’re about to start our morning cleansing routine,” Marinus’s voice boomed into the unnatural quiet. “You’re welcome to come back again this afternoon, my dear. Each person you have visited is doing much better today, and the rest are looking forward to meeting you.”
I nodded, unable to speak without bursting into tears.
Merrick took my hand and led me back to the central area with the tree in silence, while my mind roiled with the haunting images each story left with me.
He paused beneath the dappled sunlight, the spongy moss underfoot making me stumble a little towards him.
He caught me before I fell, drawing me into a hug, patting my back as the tears I’d held back streamed down my cheeks. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. He’d stood at the entrance of each aven I’d been in and listened to each story. He knew the horror and the tragedy and the complete helplessness of each situation.
“Let’s get out of here for a while,” he suggested, pressing me away from where I’d been cocooned in his arms and smiling at me kindly. “It looks like you could really use a break.”
I nodded, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes and taking a shuddering breath.
He led me past the wash space to the wall of stone with the erratic fist-sized extrusions all the way up it which I’d seen the Merrow use the day before, and leapt lightly at the wall placing a foot and hand expertly on the extrusions before climbing, spiderlike, straight up the rock face.
I was so shocked that only when his torso began to disappear above the roof did I realise that he probably meant for me to follow.
“Pssst,” I hissed.
He paused and looked back at me.
I lifted both my hands up and shrugged whispering, “I can’t do that.” He frowned at me as if he were frustrated that I wasn’t even trying. I gazed up at him, my expression defiant. If he thought I would be able to follow him, he was sadly mistaken. Not only was I terrified of heights, I was pretty sure I didn’t have the upper-body strength to haul myself up a sheer rock face.
“Be patient,” his whispered voice floated down to me.
I stood at the bottom of the wall watching as he disappeared high above me, feeling like a fool as I stood staring at the roof.
I had turned to look around me self-consciously when a pile of ropes glanced off my shoulder and landed on the floor. Looking up I saw Merrick grinning down at me.
The pile of ropes turned out to be a harness, similar to the makeshift one Josh and Luke had made for me when they hauled me out of the pool I’d fallen into when I’d first met Merrick, or rather when he’d saved me from drowning.
I fitted the harness around me legs and was whisked into the air.
Crawling over the top of the cliff, I found Merrick bent double in a passageway of rough red rock. I followed his shuffling form until my back ached, the air thick with dust, my eyes running.
“Er, Merrick… this isn’t such fun,” I said, trying to keep the whine out of my voice.
A low chuckle was his only answer.
A few minutes later he straightened, and we stepped into an enormous cavern, created by two towering slabs of rock as they leant against each other forming the walls and ceiling of the cave. Pale light streamed in at the opening which was framed by a frizz of vegetation, as tree roots trailed between crevices in the rock on their never-ending search for water.
Merrick walked into the middle of the cave and stopped arching his back so that he could look straight up.
“Come and have a look, Alexandra.”
Soft sand encompassed my moccasin-clad feet as I joined him. He shifted over slightly as I craned my head backwards.
“Do you see them?” he asked. I shook my head struggling to work out what he wanted me to look at.
He bent so that he was looking at the ceiling of the cave at the same level I was, his hair falling in a silken tumble across my neck. I breathed in his exotic scent, and was momentarily disorientated, his quite chuckle only adding to my embarrassment as he pulled to the left slightly and then pointed again.
I stared in fascination at the top-most point of the cave. The giant slabs of rock that made up the cave tapered to an impossibly small width and at the weakest point, seemed to entwine.
Pressing my eyes tightly together against the glare of the sunlight as it backlit the rock, and then re-opening them to stare upward again, my eyes traced the familiar shapes of arms and legs in the entwined rock.
“Is that what I think it is?” I asked.
He smiled, his teeth bright in the gloom. “What do you think it is?” “Well… people…er, hugging?”
“You could call it hugging if you like, I guess.” His tone was playful. “There are other words for what they’re up to, but hugging is definitely involved.”
I blushed.
“How did they get there?” I asked, turning my gaze back to the fascinating carving.
“No one knows, but some speculate that Sabine’s King, Pelagius, had it carved in memory of her when she died.”
“It must have been very difficult to carve that up there.”
“Yes, Pelaguis loved her very much.”
I nodded, fascinated by the love story etched into the rock above me.
“When did he die?” I asked.
Merrick shrugged. “No one knows. He stayed King of the pod until this monument to Sabine was complete, and then one morning the pod awoke, and he was gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of speculation as to what happened to him actually, some think he went back to the ocean, others think he killed himself, and others believe he still lives, alone, in the mountains.”
“Well, the last part is at least impossible,” I stated.
Merrick shook his head. “Unlikely but not impossible,” he replied quietly.
My eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Oceanids have been known to live a lot longer than humans,” he said simply.
“Yeah, but you’re talking about, what, over a hundred years…” I scoffed.
He nodded his head, smiling at my obviously incredulous expression.
“You have a lot to learn today,” he replied as he guided me back into the cavern and up the side of the cave.
Chapter 20
Discovery
He finally pulled himself out of the cave and helped me over a jagged piece of rock.
We emerged into brilliant sunlight. The sky, a perfect blue dome above us, was contrasted by a thick woolly carpet of mist that evened out the landscape below. Only the ragged broken-tooth tops of the mountains could be seen as they waited agelessly for the sun and rain to erode them away.
I turned from the spectacular view to find him sitting on a slab of rock that protruded out into the mist, dangling his legs over the edge, leaning back on his elbows, eyes closed with a smile of sheer contentment on his face.
Gingerly picking my way across the roughly grooved rock, from which sparse, determined grass grew, I carefully clambered onto the boulder he was sitting on. Edging my way forwards I sat cross-legged, watching as the mist rolled and twisted below us, changing shape as the morning’s heat intensified.
It was so perfectly quiet and peaceful up there, I almost didn’t want to ask him, but the calm of the outside contrasted with the roiling confusion of my brain, and so I shattered the illusion of peace.
“Merrick, I need some answers.”
He nodded ever so slightly, his eyes still closed, face upturned to the morning sunlight. It was difficult to decide which question to ask first and even unvoiced in
my head the question I most wanted answered seemed crude, so I started with a different one.
“How is it that I’ve never heard of Oceanids before?” I asked.
“Oh you have,” he replied simply.
I shook my head. “Only legends though.”
“Most legends have at least an element of truth to them.”
“But if the legends of mermaids are true, then your kind has been around for…” I tried to remember my art history dates on a piece we’d studied, which depicted a sinking ship in a storm surrounded by gleeful mermaids. “A long time?” I finished, unable to dredge up the facts I wanted from my confused brain.
He nodded. “As long as humans have been on land we have been in the water,” he replied.
“That’s impossible,”
He smiled. “Why?”
The certainty of a myth-free world felt suddenly, horribly fragile as I scrambled to find a logical argument to discount him with.
“Well, with modern technology we’d have found evidence of your species before or… or seen you.”
“There are plenty of sightings of our kind, Alexandra, but humans only believe what they have been taught to believe. Anything that doesn’t quite fit into their version of reality is discarded as imaginations or unscientific. Science has been very useful in assisting us in living our lives uninterrupted by prying humans. Humans believe that you know all there is to know about everything, human anatomy, the earth we share, the weather, and the creatures that surround you, because science has an explanation for it all.”
His tone turned sarcastic. “The mystery and wonder of the life that blankets this planet is completely lost on them, because once they have what they believe to be a scientific answer to something, they close the book on any further learning on the subject.”
He shook his head, his tone derisive. “What is most interesting is how easily led humankind is. Take the notion that the sun revolved around the earth. That particular theory was upheld to the point of murder for a very long time because the ‘scientists’ of the day believed it to be true.”
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