by Joss Ware
He vomited, but not water from his lungs as one who nearly drowned would have done; it was the full contents of his belly that came up. And the violent trembling and shuddering of such a massive, powerful body . . . it was almost as if he’d had some terrible reaction to something.
A low cough from Tanya caused Ana to turn, checking on the girl. She’d spewed up a good lungful or two of water, and her eyes were red from the effort—but she seemed fine now. “Hi, honey,” she said, gathering her best friend’s daughter back into her arms again, giving her a tight squeeze. “How are you doing?”
She rested her cheek on top of Tanya’s cool, damp head and closed her eyes for a minute, holding the precious little body close against hers and trying not to think about what had almost happened. Tanya was the closest thing to a daughter Ana had—and would ever have. The memory of her small white hand slowly sinking under the water still made her cold and sick. If Fence hadn’t gotten here first . . .
She glanced over. His hand was over his face, his thumb and forefinger rubbing his eyes. Even from where she stood she could see his fingers trembling.
The little body squirmed in her embrace, and Ana gave a soft laugh as she released the slippery, twisting girl. Obviously, she was feeling better. “Are you okay now?” she asked.
“I fell off that log,” Tanya said, pointing to a large tree trunk over the water. “It was really scary.”
“I’m sure it was. But that man tried to save you,” Ana said, glancing from Fence to the girl and declining to mention that he hadn’t done a very good job of it. If she hadn’t arrived, Tanya wouldn’t have made it out, and it was unclear whether he would have either.
Maybe Fence couldn’t swim and he’d jumped in anyway. She’d heard his shouts for help, which was how she came to be there. Her horse stood placidly, his reins looped around a sapling, as he nibbled on a bit of grass. If it weren’t for Bruiser, she would never have made it down that steep incline.
“He ’stracted me and made me fall in,” Tanya told her, folding her arms mutinously over her little chest.
“How did he do that?” Ana asked as Fence dragged himself to his feet with the help of a tree. She watched him stumble to his shirt and shoes, taking care not to look in her direction. Whatever.
“He told me I was going to fall, and I did!” she said with all the logic of an eight-year-old.
Just then, they heard the shouts of Tanya’s parents at the top of the ridge. Ana watched the tearful reunion of the little girl with Pete and Yvonne, all the while trying to keep her own emotions at bay.
The sight was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. The emptiness billowing inside her mingled with affection and love for Yvonne, and the quiet knowledge that she’d always be an observer rather than a member of a close-knit family. She’d always be a surrogate mother instead of one herself. She’d always have to be on her guard about letting anyone too close to her.
She’d always have to remain a little . . . apart from the people who lived on land.
By the time the family left together and Ana went over to get Bruiser, she realized Fence had disappeared.
With a mental shrug, she used a tree trunk to climb onto the horse—something she preferred to do without an audience because it was as difficult as it looked—and started back home. Today or tomorrow, Dad was expecting someone to arrive from Envy to take a load of—
Oh.
Ana gave a little tsk of understanding. It could be no coincidence that Fence, a man from Envy, had appeared around here on the very day someone from Envy was expected to take some of Dad’s medicine back to the doctor there. She could picture George in his bright little laboratory, peering into plastic and glass containers. He grew medicines like penicillin from moldy bread and was working on growing other possible curatives from sea algae.
At least, he did when he wasn’t lecturing her with those big, sober eyes about all the time she spent in the ocean.
Ana took her time riding back through the woods toward the house she shared with her father, unsure whether she wanted to see Fence again—and certainly wondering whether he’d want to see her. The fact that he’d disappeared without a word spoke volumes.
So when she felt the beckoning of the sea and tasted salt on the wind, it wasn’t a difficult decision to blow off meeting up with Fence in favor of a dive, or at least sticking her feet in the water.
Sure, the guy was rock hard and solid—those shoulders!—and he was so good-looking with those luscious lips and square jaw it made her mouth want to water, but she could already tell he’d be too much trouble. He had an ego, that was one thing. You had to be on your toes when sparring with him, not to mention he seemed more than a bit prickly. She didn’t have time for anything that complicated . . . and she couldn’t let it get into anything past a flirtation anyway.
Ana’s heart squeezed and she felt that familiar dull, empty feeling. Yvonne was so lucky to have Peter and Tanya. A normal life. A family, a child. Someone to share her deepest self with.
A partner.
She’d thought at one time that she, too, might be able to have a normal life—especially when she met Darian. He, at least, was someone from whom she hadn’t had to hide her past. Too bad he’d had other plans.
That was an unpleasant memory, to say the least, and Ana put all thoughts of Darian and Fence out of her mind as she tied Bruiser to a tree. Fortunately, she had an apple and a pear tucked into her pockets—both of which he liked, even though they were dried and brown—and she offered them to him before kicking off her shoes.
Despite her off-balance hips and curled foot, she shimmied easily out of her shorts and let them fall to the ground in a wad. Around her waist she wore a small belt that held her knife, and she checked automatically to make certain it was there, in its slot. Then, dressed only in her panties, a tank top, and bra, she waded into the water.
Ana would have been more than happy to swim naked, or even in her underwear, but if someone should see her, they’d surely notice the crystals. Even now, as she smelled the tangy brine and felt the familiar surge of water around her calves, those very gems began to grow warm in her skin. They vibrated with energy as they always did in or near water; a soft, tactile buzz that told her they were alive.
The eight small blue crystals, four in the front and four in back, studded the left side of her torso between the bones of her ribs. Their placement was random, and each was no larger than a child’s fingernail, but because of them she could spend hours underwater, and at the greatest of depths.
And it was because of these tiny crystals that the ocean called to her, that her heritage must be kept secret—and it was because of them that her leg had been destroyed.
Ana dove into the surf and was immediately immersed in a world of wonder and comfort. The crystals helped her breathe, using their ancient energy to enable her left lung to pull the oxygen from water while her other lung worked like that of a normal human being. She didn’t fully understand how the Atlanteans had managed it, and her father had never tried very hard to explain it—but after all, those living in the depths of the ocean had thousands of years to figure out the powers of the deep-sea crystals.
Thanks to her mother’s heritage and her ability to spend hours beneath the surface, Ana knew every ripple of sand beneath the water, every rock formation, every spire, chimney, or rooftop from every ancient and waterlogged building near her home. She even followed long-submerged roads and streets, using them for direction just as she did on land. Now, she was twenty feet below the surface. The sun’s rays still filtered down and the plants and animals were still in full, vibrant hues.
As she swam along the edge of a deep, dark crevice, she could make out a group of automobiles another twenty feet below. When the road had cracked and split, they tumbled into the depths. She knew from past dives that coral and sea grass had begun to grow tenaciously in the dirt and sand caught in the edges and dents in the metal. It gave the vehicles a scruffy, overgrown look.
Her hair streamed behind her as she darted about, her injured leg as smooth and agile in the water as her other one. This was the place where she felt whole and uninhibited, and fully at home. Was it any wonder it was the sea that had brought her and Darian together?
They’d swum together, sleek and cool, their bodies entwined, lips and mouths fused . . . Ana felt a rush of longing, of loneliness.
She hadn’t had to hide her crystals from Darian, of course, because he had his own . . . but he’d wanted more than she was willing to give. And now she was alone.
Being alone is better than going back.
At least, that was what she told herself. She could never be part of that world, accept that race. So she put the impossible out of her mind and enjoyed the beautiful, comforting embrace of the sea.
As she slipped and ducked and dove above and through the remnants of a world left behind, she absorbed the essence of the sea into her consciousness: its scent, its sounds, the pattern of its movement, the changes in the sand and grit and positions of regular landmarks—even the taste of the briny water. And, again, as she’d known for weeks now, there was something different. Something was changing.
It was a subtle difference—not as noticeable as the pull of the moon as it changed the tides. Not as if a storm were brewing, ready to lash out into the sea and stir up towering waves. Just . . . an uneasiness, as if She—the Sea—knew something was about to change.
Ana would have dismissed this sense of wrongness weeks ago if not for the sparkling gray gloppiness that washed ashore in Envy. She managed to sneak a little sample of it, which was the reason she’d rushed back here to Dad, hoping he could help her identify it. After all, she was only thirteen when they escaped from Atlantis, and her memory was understandably faulty.
Now, she paused near an algae-covered column of brick she suspected had once been a chimney and smacked her palm against the top of her fist three times in rapid succession. The sharp sound carried through the water. She followed it with a clicking sound deep in her throat. It echoed through the water just as other occasional clicks and whistles did.
But other than those occasional noises, the world was silent.
Ana skirted the brick column and swam through the glassless window of another building, where furniture rotted and strands of sea hair swayed with every ripple of movement. A school of red and black fish appeared and swarmed like large flies around her head. When she shooed them away, they darted into the next room of the house.
She noticed the sand-strewn concrete driveway with the mailbox that still stood at the end. Cracked and uneven, the drive sported a few bunches of seaweed springing up from the dirt, swaying in a water breeze. The door on the mailbox was long gone, but out of habit—more compulsive than anything—Ana couldn’t resist a peek inside. Of course there was nothing there, other than a lot of sand and grit, and a disgruntled crab, but it was compulsive: she always had to check, even though it reminded her of Darian. They used to leave little gifts for one another in old mailboxes, as Ana imagined other lovers might have done long ago on land.
If it was empty, that meant he hadn’t found her, and she could relax
Just then, a long, dark shadow eased through the water above her. Ana made the clicking sound in her throat again and shot up from the rusty, waterlogged mailbox with a powerful thrust.
The long shadow was joined by another, and she made a slightly different clicking sound of greeting as she slipped between them, sliding her hand along the smooth, warm skin of a dolphin. Jag, the female, turned her sleek body belly-side toward Ana in greeting as they swam together.
The other dolphin, one of the two males who visited Ana regularly, was on her other side. Marco was a bit less subtle than Jag, and he bumped insistently against Ana until she patted him on the dorsal fin in what he considered an appropriate greeting. She grinned in the water at his maleness, for he reminded her of Fence with his need to be recognized by a member of the opposite sex. As she smiled, Ana felt the cool ocean against her teeth and in her mouth, and she used the energy of the crystals to push out from her working lung and spew the water from her mouth and nose.
The flush created a wake of bubbles in front of them, and the dolphins opened their own mouths in an attempt to capture the luminescence. They each had neat rows of small, sharp teeth that had long ago ceased to concern Ana. She’d had those teeth around her arms and legs more than once. Her mammalian companions seemed to simply like to run them over her skin, as if they wanted to learn the texture of her outer covering, just as she’d wanted to learn theirs. It was a dolphin thing, she decided.
And so was the distraction of a school of fish.
Jag and Marco, the latter of whom had spotted a group of fish, darted off after them.
Ana made the slapping sound of hand on fist in farewell and swam off on her own. Despite her own niggling worry that something was wrong in the water, Jag and Marco didn’t seem to be acting any differently, and that comforted her.
When the sea had rushed in during the Change, covering cities and villages for hundreds of square miles over what had been California, Nevada, and parts of Washington and Oregon, many of the buildings were intact, and remained so, despite being waterlogged and algae-laden a half century later. But there were also tsunamis and earthquakes and storms that destroyed some of twenty-first century western America, sending houses, stores, and highways toppling into each other or down into deep valleys before the Sea had Her way.
Despite the hours and days Ana spent in the ocean, it was so vast and there was simply so much that had been swamped that she had only diligently explored a small part of the remains of the pre-Change world within five miles of where she now made her home. Today she wanted to return to what seemed to be a whole cache of fascinating things.
Because no normal human could dive as deeply, or for as long as Ana could, there were treasures that had lain untouched for decades, often still wrapped in plastic that even the salt and strength of the sea couldn’t destroy. She’d recovered DVDs and clothing, along with tools and utensils and numerous other items. Today, she wanted to return to a big brown truck that had been filled with boxes and packages when it tumbled into the water. She’d only had the chance to peek inside before.
Of course, most of the cardboard packaging would have long rotted away, but not in every case. And whatever had been inside those boxes, often wrapped in plastic, now lay strewn in and around the vehicle.
Ana slipped just inside the angled crack of the truck’s door and found herself in too much darkness. She stripped off her tank top and tied it around her waist, thankful for the other benefit of her crystals. The soft glow they gave off helped to illuminate the darkness here, and in the depths where the sun couldn’t reach.
A pleasant blue glow cast around the space, which was the size of her bedroom and filled with odd-looking shapes, and as she hovered near the entrance, watching, one of the shapes rose from a far corner. It was as tall as a man, but half the size.
She reached for her knife and saw the glow of its eyes in the instant before it shot toward her, yellowish-green and blue sparks lighting the space from its anger at being disturbed.
Ana swore and ducked out of the door just as the eel crashed into the space behind where she’d been floating. The sound of its furious launch slamming against the metal wall echoed through the water in a dull clang, but she didn’t waste any more time. Over six feet long, mad as a hornet, and exuding electrical sparks, the eel was not her friend. He would come after her if she invaded his den. Her knife would hardly be enough to defend herself against the shocking pulses of energy.
Damn, damn, damn. Her heart pounded from the close call as she surged through the water away from the truck. That was too close.
Yes, she’d been cautious—but not cautious enough. Usually, she tossed something into a dark space like that before even going in, but—
Ana felt the change in the current behind her and turned just in time to dodge
the sparking eel again. She felt the tingle of electricity jolt through the water as he shot past her. Shit, he’s not giving up. Her eyes wide, her heart slamming harder, her crystals warm and burning with effort, she whipped around a bicycle fused into a rocky reef and swam off into a different direction.
But still he came after her, violent and angry, and she had to duck and dive through windows and around houses and vehicles as she fled from him. Her only advantage was her agility, for though the eel was snakelike and slithered through the water, when attacking he launched himself straight and hard like a javelin. But then he was too quick and sleek for her to get a good slice with her blade.
He shot past her again, surprising her when she thought she’d lost him, and she cried out soundlessly from the sting and burn on the right side of her body even as she stabbed at him. The electricity made her nerves shudder, and she suddenly felt heavy.
Oh no you don’t, she thought, gritting her teeth. The eel’s modus operandi was to numb and paralyze with its electrical surge, and then to attack its helpless victim. She was not about to fall prey to that trick. Though her body’s movements had become clumsy, she was able to manipulate herself toward a heavy concrete and rock formation. There, she waited, plastering her body against it as she readied her weapon, waiting for her muscles to start to work again.
Sure enough, the eel came stealing around the corner, its blue and green sparks preceding him as warning.
Ana held her breath as he shot toward her, his eyes glowing like ugly green-yellow marbles. Three, two, one, move!
She dodged at the very last moment, clumsier than usual but effective enough so the creature crashed into the stone at full force just as she slammed the knife down. He was close enough that she got another surge of electrical power, flashing over the front and side of her torso again. But while she was only slightly numb and slow, he was stunned and disoriented—although not yet dead. His blood would attract other creatures.
Ana didn’t waste any time. She replaced her knife in the belt and stumble-swam away, paddling awkwardly with her hands like a dog. Her legs tried to frog-kick, but instead fumbled all over, knocking into things. But the wounded eel wasn’t following her now—she kept looking back to see—and she made her way back to where she’d left Bruiser.
