Falling in Deep Collection Box Set

by Pauline Creeden

  There’s no way I could do it.

  I dart toward the open sea.

  A Mer is faster than a shark, but what a shark lacks in speed he makes up in endurance. Although adrenaline pumps through my veins and my fear drives me faster, I force myself to slow. I need to conserve energy until I actually see one of the sharp-toothed beasts. If I continue to the open sea and sink deep enough, I can avoid the Great Whites and the breeds that do the most harm. The bottom-feeding sharks aren’t likely to bother me, even if I am bleeding. How many miles would it be until I reach the deep? Can I make it?

  My ear pulls back at a buzz in the current. The gentle hum of electro-magnetic pulses from the snout of a shark is approaching. No. Three sharks. A panicked chirp escapes my lips. I need help. But what Mer will help me now?

  A thought pops into my head so suddenly that I stop swimming. Maybe I could find a pod of dolphins. I follow my chirp with a long squeal and veer away from the electro-magnetic pulses in the current.

  I strain my ear. No answer.

  I repeat the chirp and long squeal.

  Nothing.

  In my panic, I swim away from the magnetic current with all the strength I have. Black spots crowd my vision. Have I lost so much blood? This can’t be happening. Fainting would not help. My muscles ache from lack of oxygen, so I slow down and try to catch my breath.

  Please heal faster, I tell my body. At least stop bleeding.

  I force my panicked heart to slow so that the sharks won’t see me as prey.

  I scan the area for anything to use as a weapon, but the sea floor produces nothing to use as a spear, nothing that would stab at a shark and keep it away from me. Even a sharp shell would work. I could cut one of the sharks and the other two would commence their frenzy on the victim of my attack. Sharks don’t care what they eat, as long as it is bleeding and panicking.

  A vicious cycle.

  Sunlight glints off a white body near the surface. It dives deeper and darts back and forth, scenting the current.

  Stay still. It’s too late to run.

  I close my eyes.

  Salt water in; salt water out. I breathe slowly and deeply.

  They will ignore me if I calm myself. If I don’t act like prey, there’s a chance they might leave me alone. A nudge bounces against my shoulder, and my breaths quicken. They are testing me. First a nudge, then a test bite. If I can resist the panic, they might still ignore me even after taking the bite. I’m not their first choice for a meal. I have a chance.

  Unspoken prayers burst from my heart and mind. There has to be some way to survive this. My heartbeat pounds in my ears and take over my every thought, my every sense. Every nerve ending on my body stands alert, waiting, wondering where they will bite me. Where will the pain come from? My arm? My fin?

  Please…

  Please…

  Please…

  I wait… and wait. But after a long time, nothing happens.

  Slowly, I open my eyes. No more than twenty arm-lengths away, the three sharks have begun a frenzy on the remnants of a marlin. I blink.

  How?

  Then a face appears in front of me. Bailey. Long blond curls surround his golden face and his blue eyes twinkle. He’s holding a spear. “Hurry—before they finish.”

  I’m shocked stiff and barely manage to nod.

  He grabs my arm and yanks me away.

  I can’t help but stare. The veins on his muscular forearm strain as he grips my wrist. The water envelops us as we swim. I hardly have time to think. Why is he helping me? None of the Mer are supposed to help. I’ve never been more than an outlier to him. He’s hardly ever spoken to me.

  Because I am the bottom feeder, it is my job to survive the Reckoning and prove that I am worthy to stay with the clan. If they find out that he helped me, they’ll send him out on the Reckoning, too.

  Suddenly I stop and yank my arm from his grasp. “You can’t do this. You can’t help me.”

  He sneers. “A Mer with half a brain would say thank you.”

  He snatches my wrist again and drags me along with him.

  I follow reluctantly. “Where are we going?”

  “Shut up and swim faster. We need to get salve on your wounds so they will clot. I’ve got some hidden this way.”

  We swim in silence toward the shallows until we find another reef, round and in hues of purple and orange in the bright sunlight. A buzz on the current signals that the sharks are finished with the marlin and are following again, or perhaps it’s another set of sharks…there are only two.

  Bailey finally releases my arm and ducks closer to the reef. He presses his cheek against it and digs in the sand below. After a moment, he pulls out a clam shell and brings it over. He scowls at me. “Turn around.”

  Obediently, I expose my back to him.

  With rough hands, he rubs in the salve. I clench my jaw against the pain and do my best not to flinch under his forceful touch. The rubbing continues longer than the time it took to inflict the wounds in the first place, but when he finally removes his hands from my back, my muscles relax into jelly. The cool waters lick gently against the salve, and the feverish heat that had engulfed my back with pain finally chills.

  “Thank you,” I whisper and sigh.

  He replaces the clam shell under the reef. “I’ll come back and apply the salve again tomorrow. Meet me here when the sun reaches its zenith.”

  After shoving the spear in my hands, he points to the west. “If you go that way a bit, you’ll find an island only inhabited by wildlife—there are horses there, which will give you warning of wolves. If you decide to go ashore, you’ll have to swim farther to the next island, where the Land Walkers are.”

  I shake my head. “I…I won’t.”

  Bailey’s blue eyes flash anger and annoyance. He lifts his chin. “I didn’t expect you to. Cowardice is another symptom of a simple mind.”

  He’s right. I am too stupid to survive on land. Just like my father. Even on an island where witches cannot tread, and where the horses give warning of the wolves, I won’t make it.

  The Atlantic is a little cooler here, but the fish that swim past bode as plentiful. I can do this and survive on my own. My options are limited in the reckoning. Gain the mark of the LandWalker and return, find a Mer willing to be my life-mate, or live the rest of my life in exile.

  My gaze flutters back to Bailey. The tall, strong Mer has a chiseled square jaw, strong wide shoulders, and piercing blue eyes. His gold curls surround his face. I swallow. “Why are you helping me?”

  His gaze narrows, and his sneer returns. “Pity.”

  My heart sinks, and I blink quickly to keep my eyes from stinging. What answer had I been expecting? Bailey and I aren’t friends. No one is friends with the bottom feeder—the unteachable. I spent my entire childhood alone, or worse, the object of my peers’ ridicule.

  I gulp down my feelings as always.

  Bailey shakes his head and starts toward the east without another word.

  “You’ll be back?” I call after him.

  He calls back without turning again toward me. “Thick headed. I already said I would.”

  Clutching the spear against my chest, as if it would offer comfort, I sink slowly toward the sand and let out a breath of seawater. He did say he’d return. And I’ve never known Bailey to be a liar.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ORANGE SUNLIGHT TRICKLES THROUGH the surface of the water and illuminates the ocean floor. Sunset. The water closer to the uninhabited island grows thicker and greener, losing the crystal clear blue of the Atlantic closer to Bermuda. But it is always easier to catch a fish in the shallows, and so far, I have failed in getting one in the deep. Shallow living may not be ideal for a Mer, but deep living is too hard for a bottom feeder like me.

  I can see just fine. My senses are keen, even among the particulates caused by the number of human boats within a small portion of sea. But still I find it too hard to catch a meal. My stomach growls. I haven’t eaten a bit
e all day.

  As the day draws to an end, the smaller vessels disperse and become less frequent. The larger boats either go closer to the shore or farther out to sea. Will it be safe to break the surface?

  Before I can think about things too hard, I do as I always do, and jump into action before I can talk myself out of it. This behavior has gotten me in trouble with my teachers who demand that I think before speaking or acting. But my father has always loved my impulsive nature, so I refuse to rein it in.

  But when I reach the film that separates the sea and the air above, I hesitate. Once when I was young, my father had taken me to the surface to breathe air for the first time. He plunged me above the surface, and I gasped over and over, coughing the liquid from my lungs. It burned. I thought I’d die. But when I was done wailing and lamenting my pain, I opened my eyes and saw a foreign world that left an impression on me so extraordinary it laced my dreams with color and alien life. Once. That was the only time my father had gotten away with it. My mother kept a close eye on him and threatened to leave him if he ever attempted it again.

  For all the warnings and negative things that my father said about his time on land, there was something about being in the air that enamored him. Something had captivated him and made him return to the air again and again on his own. It became an addiction for him. If I break the surface and deal with the pain in my lungs again, will it become an addiction for me? Will I live with the need to return again and again to the air and experience the alien world above?

  I take a deep breath and hold the water in my lungs. After closing my eyes, I take the plunge. Air kisses my cheeks and saltwater droplets race in runners down my face. My chestnut hair sticks to my face in streamers. I push them back and tuck them behind my ears. The last bit of light entices my eyes open. The air stings them, and I blink until they clear. Finally the world above comes into focus.

  A seagull swims through the air with the grace of a skate. The sun shines brighter above the surface and paints the sky in pink and purple hues. In the distance a horn sounds from an unseen ship and the sound is sharper and clearer than any I’ve heard before. I gasp, forcing air into my lungs, and the burning begins. It stings the back of my eyes as I cough. Water spouts from my nose and dribbles over my lip. The pain in the muscles of my back causes me to double over. I nearly slip back under, but force myself to remain. My father did this all the time. I can do it too.

  My throat rattles as the last remains of water cling to my tonsils. The coughs come less frequently and with less vigor. Soon I’m able to just breathe and rest. Relief washes over me, and the sore muscles in my back relax.

  That isn’t so bad. I can do this.

  The sky darkens in the east and the first pinpoints of stars appear close to the still-full moon. The clear sky, unobstructed by the refracted light from the surface of the water, stretches as far as I can see. Is it really as large as my sea? Is it deeper? Are the stars farther than the bottom of a trench?

  A giggle bubbles up at the thought and surprises me. My voice sounds different in the air. I squeak and chirp. Ugh. I wince at the harsh sounds. Although I’ve never spoken the language of the Land Walkers, we were taught several languages in school. English was always one of my best subjects. After clearing my throat, I attempt a few words from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 90.

  “Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;

  Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross,

  Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, and do not drop in for an after-loss;

  Ah! Do not, when my heart hath ’scaped this sorrow,

  Come in the rearward of a conquered woe;

  Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, to linger out a purposed overthrow.”

  My father loved Shakespeare, even naming me after the town where Romeo and Juliet once lived. He must have loved it more in the air. So amazing. The tones of language ring clear instead of being muted out of the water. The chirps and squeaks below the surface are necessary for communication, but here, in the air, the tone of language is smoother and easier on the ear.

  And the sonnet lifts my feelings to the air with me. If things are going to get any worse than they are now, it’d be better if it went ahead and did it before I recover from my injuries. Let all the bad come at once. A sigh escapes my lips. A new feeling—to sigh without the water rushing from my cheeks and dancing about my face. The air that escaped me did just that, escaped.

  A flash of white and brown catches my attention on the shore of the island Bailey told me was uninhabited. The movement of the large object seems serpentine in nature, like an eel. I swim closer to the shore with my head above the water, gulping in air and trying to get used to the feeling. After a short time, I finally realize that the object is not one thing, but several. Several brown and black and white spotted horses move together as one unit along the shoreline of the beach, several of them standing chest deep in the coolness of the water.

  Curiosity draws me closer to them. I duck under the water once more, the cool salt soothing my parched throat. White legs stand like several posts under the water, but they move in a rush and scatter as I draw near.

  I break the surface once more to watch them escape the foam and rush back to shore, snorting and staring in my direction. With a smile, I realize my presence spooked them. I release the water from my lungs and suck in the air, horrified to find myself in yet another fit of painful coughing. When I finally get control of my faculties, I search the empty beach to find that the horses have left me.

  The loss hits like a small tragedy, one that leaves my chest just a little emptier of hope than it had been a moment ago. If I had not had such a fit of coughs, perhaps I could have coaxed one horse into the water and touched a land mammal for the first time. It would have been so appropriate. No land animal has a closer connection with the sea than horses. Certainly Mer-kind would have a rapport with them similar to the one we have with an aquatic mammalian? Dolphins, seals, and whales are cherished by Mer-kind and often kept as pets. Couldn’t a horse be similar in nature? Why couldn’t I make friends with a few in my exile?

  But the island of Assateague is uninhabited. I don’t want to make the mistake of going ashore, stuck without any ability to interact with the Land Walkers. That would be just as bad as exile in the sea. At least in the water I can endure the solitude in a familiar environment.

  With another sigh, I grip my spear and continue closer to the shore. Bailey said there are other islands, farther west, that have humans on them. I swallow, my eyes searching the horizon for a sign of another island. I can’t see one but decide to go exploring as twilight takes full hold. Only this time, I’ll avoid going back under the surface and will keep the air I held. I don’t want to endure another of the aching fits if I can avoid it.

  Bailey was right. Just past the barrier island, the channel houses many more boats than out in the Atlantic. But to my relief, most of the boats are moored to docks along the shoreline of Chincoteague. Lights dance on the land. Humans. My heart races. Maybe I should have stayed away.

  But like a moth to a flame, I find myself inexplicably drawn to the dancing light. It’s not long before I’m offshore and clinging to a pole again, this time, of my own volition. Not far from the beach, a wall of windows allows me to see all within a woman’s home. The woman sits alone on a couch with the glass door open to the world and a thin screen separating her from the insects outside.

  Within her home, a large flat-screen television introduces a whole new world for me. Mesmerized, I watch as the stories of people’s lives unfold. I’m startled when her phone rings.

  The older woman picks up the phone. “Hello… yes, this is Betty Babcock.”

  Betty. That’s her name.

  She strokes a cat, while three others roam about the room. I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to touch them the way Betty does. After a short conversation that ends in “no I’m not interested,” she hangs up the phone. Then for the rest of the eveni
ng, Betty, the cats, and I are lost in the world the soap opera channel exposes us to.

  I hardly notice how late the hour grows or how high the moon has settled in the sky until Betty turns off her television and lights and heads off to a room not visible to me. As I turn back toward the open waters of the channel, I realize that I’d been so caught up in the world of life that unfolded on the large screen that I’d found an escape from my own. I forgot about my exile, forgot the wounds on my back, and forgot the danger of being so near to a Mer’s greatest threat, humans. I pick up the spear I’d set to the side.

  With a quick swallow, I dive beneath the surface and swim quickly away. My underwater night vision is clear, and I suck in the first breath of water I’ve had in hours. It scratches my throat going down and feels heavy in my lungs. It’s so very different than the ethereal feel of the air that it takes a while to lose awareness of the water pressing against my insides as it makes its way in and out of my nose.

  My stomach growls. I had forgotten my hunger, too. The people on the television had eaten a great variety of colorful and delicious looking foods, but those things did not ignite my hunger like the sound I hear now. A cluster of crabs struggle on the floor of the channel. I dive down to find the most curious contraption I’d ever seen on the sea floor. A wire mesh cage is tied to a string that leads to the surface where a large, oval floatation device keeps mark of its location. After setting my spear to the side, I turn the crab trap in my hands for several minutes and figure out how it works. Once a crab goes in for the bait, it loses its way and can’t easily find the way out. The entrance for the crabs is smooth, but the exit is full of jagged spikes. A clever maze. I smile when I notice that at the top of the container, a trap door makes the crabs accessible to the humans. Simple, but clever.