Water (9 page)

“But my Dad doesn’t even like the water,” I replied, “I’ve never seen him swim.”

Merrick shrugged. “Well, there’s a good reason for that. If you had seen him swim you would have known that he wasn’t human.”

Abruptly he sat up straighter and stared more intently into the pool, his mouth snapping shut and a low groan escaping from him.

I was starting to freak out as again, the thought crossed my mind that I was being particularly stupid hanging out with a guy I didn’t know, who to all intents and purposes had almost killed me earlier and who was now behaving as if a variety of personalities were having a boxing match in his head.

I stood and began to edge my way towards the side of the boulder, wondering how I was going to get across the chasm and then down to earth again without breaking my leg.

“I think I’d better be getting back to the cave,” I said, interrupting whatever strange exchange was taking place in Merrick’s head. “The boys will be getting back soon, and I don’t want them to worry.”

I leapt across the fissure, scrabbling as I landed to maintain my balance, my palms prickling at the thought of what lay far beneath me, before making my way to the side of the rock. I sat down in preparation to slither on my bottom to the ground below, mentally saying goodbye to the shorts I was wearing as they would probably be ruined.

Merrick’s voice drifted over me, freezing me in place. “They won’t be back tonight.” His voice was quiet and there was an edge of anxiety to it.

“What do you mean?” I asked, twisting so that I could see his face.

“They’ve been taken by some of the less understanding Oceanids,” he said matter of factly, “and we had better get going or we’ll be too late to have any sort of say in their fate.”

Several frightening scenarios flicked through my head.

Slave trade, I’d been told, was still alive and horribly well, as were several frightening member-killing cults, not to mention murderers and even possibly vampires.

Fear made me far bolder than I felt, my muscles bunching involuntarily as I crouched at the edge of the boulder, prepared to run or fight him.

“Leave me alone,” I yelled, followed by a string of useless threats about our parents finding us.

He shook his head, smiling at me. “No one knows where any of you are, Alexa. So shall we go? Luke and Josh really need you and from what I can tell, time is running out for them.”

I was horrified, all my fascination with Merrick evaporating as I realised how vulnerable I really was. I had no way of knowing if he was telling the truth about Luke and Josh. I sized him up. He was strong and agile and obviously very comfortable in his mountain surroundings, far more so than I was.

“You make it sound like I have a choice,” I said bleakly.

His face softened as he realised my hesitation had been driven by fear.

“You have nothing to fear from
me
, Alexandra. I’ve already gone to great lengths to ensure you are safe. I will protect you.”

He walked around the perimeter of the pool, leaping easily over the fissure, and held out his hand.

I hadn’t missed the inflection on “me” and ultimately, it was the unsaid threat that convinced me that Luke and Josh were in some sort of trouble.

I nodded once and, ignoring his offer for help, leapt inelegantly over the fissure and, for the first time in three years, jumped voluntarily into the pool of water, my previous fears replaced with much greater and more imminently real ones.

He met me in the middle, wrapping his arms around me as I allowed myself to sink deeper and deeper into the pool, accepting, if a little unwillingly, the breath he breathed into my lungs.

I was no longer panicking about dying, because clearly he wanted me alive. The fear of being submerged that had plagued me was strangely absent once I was wrapped in his arms. I waited cautiously for the pain that had incapacitated me to shoot up the sides of my head. It too was no longer an issue. As much as I was relieved not to feel the fear of the pain, its absence unsettled me.

I turned my attention to my surroundings, the strangest of which was the difference in temperature between two halves of my body. The front of me was pressed tight against Merrick’s body and was very warm, my back, however, was freezing in the icy water.

I was distracted from my discomfort though when I managed to focus on the sides of the pool, which seemed to be made of a brilliant blue transparent rock.

After a minute of slow descent, Merrick turned us away from the receding light, head-first into the inky depths of the pool. As I stared at the disorienting darkness, the fear reappeared, settling into a heavy ball in my stomach.

There was no going back now.

At first, the dark was so complete that I could see nothing. The only points of reference I had were Merrick’s arms around me and the rhythmic pattern of our breathing. Claustrophobia clawed at my chest as I stretched my eyes wide, trying to get some sense of the size of the pool and how fast we were going.

Tiny pale blue and green orbs began to flash past us. I was convinced I was either fainting or seeing things. I closed my eyes tight but on opening them, the star wars effect continued.

I squeezed Merrick’s arm, trying to communicate without letting go of the precious oxygen in my lungs. He slowed down a little and asked me if there was any problem. I pointed at the water, hoping he’d be able to understand my unspoken question.

He slowed down further so that I could see the spots better. They were fish, tiny but prolific. As they moved they sent off little sparks of blue, green or yellow light, reminding me of the fireflies that floated above the willow-lined lake at Luke’s house.

Merrick reached out one of his hands and trailed his fingers across the side of the rock closest to us. Four streaks of colour trailed behind him as if the rock itself was responding to him.

I accepted his next breath and then risked speaking, my voice muffled in my own ears. “What is it?”

He pulled me closer and stopped moving.

“Close your eyes very tightly for a few seconds,” he said.

Curious, I obeyed. When I opened them my eyes adjusted more quickly to the dim light.

The dark was alive.

The water was a strange pale shimmery turquoise with tiny pinpoints of light throughout, which seemed to dance to an unheard tune, swaying in unison back and forth in the current.

Merrick grinned at my expression and moved us closer to the rock which I discovered was covered in splotches of whitish lichen. I reached out a tentative hand and gently stroked the rock. The texture was almost slimy, and I snatched my hand back. My revulsion changed to awe as the lichen began to glow a pale whitish green.

I let out a muffled giggle of bubbles feeling as light and happy as I could remember.

The schools of brilliant fish I’d glimpsed earlier darted in the current, occasionally pecking at the rock face and lighting up the lichen.

I let go of my stranglehold on Merrick and trailed my fingers through the water, my fingers leaving a wave of pale light. I had the strangest feeling of vertigo. There was no concept of up or down, forward or backwards. There was just… space, beautiful shimmery turquoise space.

Some cracks in the rock provided a foothold for delicate aquatic life in the form of spongy-looking, brightly coloured invertebrates which spread out, tendril-like, into the blue shimmer, waving along with the rest of the luminescent specks that made this place so magical.

Tiny spiderlike shrimps darted out of similar crevices in the rock, waving web-fine feelers in their search for food.

It was alien and at the same time distantly familiar, like a long-forgotten memory.

I looked at Merrick, a huge grin on my face. He grinned back, his eyes glowing blue fire. His expression flickered suddenly to concern as a wave of whispered words spun around us so quickly I couldn’t catch their meaning.

“We had better get going,” he said against my neck, his tone resigned.

We continued in our strange embrace flying through the water. After a while Merrick slowed, and I noticed that the light in the water had almost disappeared.

He took my arms from around his neck and, holding onto my wrists, reached out with me until I felt rock in front of me. He moved my hand to the left, up and down, and my fingers found rough rock that went straight up in an unrelenting wall. We’d come to a cliff face, and my heart began to hammer in fear. It was so dark that I knew we were nowhere near an exit. He curled my fingers around the rim of a darker shade of black and traced the outline of an impossibly small opening.

“We have to go through a tunnel here, Alexandra. I’m going to give you a breath and then go through first. I’ll meet you on the other side.”

Terror flipped through me, and I grabbed his arm desperate not to be left alone. Very gently but with surprising strength he prized my hands loose and placed both of them on the lip of the tunnel.

“You will be OK,” he promised. “Trust me.”

And then he was gone, and I was alone in the dark with no way out except to go forward into my worst nightmare.

I hate small dark places. Now I’d managed to get myself into the terrible situation, where both of my greatest fears had converged, and my only hope of another breath had just slipped into the darkest, smallest, watery opening possible.

I held onto his promise with every ounce of mental strength and felt my way along the rim again, painfully aware of the burning starting in my lungs as my oxygen began to run out.

Steeling myself, I put both arms into the tunnel and with a kick of my legs launched myself into a tiny passageway. Halfway through, rock scraped against my stomach, and a few seconds later more rock pressed into my back.

Panic shook me as I began to thrash my legs and pull with my fingernails, wincing as they clawed at the rough rock. Inching slowly forward, my breath almost spent and red-rimmed black spots dancing in front of my eyes, I would have screamed if I hadn’t been holding onto my breath with all my might.

The rock closed more tightly around me, scraping skin off my hip bones and knees as my thrashing limbs grew less and less effective.

I was going to die, of that I was suddenly certain. He’d led me here… trapped me here to die, trapped deep below the surface. No one would ever find my body, wedged as it was in this rocky, watery grave…

And then his hands found mine. He pulled me through the rest of the tunnel, into his arms, and breathed life-giving oxygen into my lungs again.

Shaken and relieved to be out of the tunnel, it took me a few moments to realise that the dark was lightening to grey and then dark blue and finally turquoise blue, as he moved effortlessly through the water.

It was a shock when my head broke the surface of the water into twilight, Merrick released me as I sucked in the air again and again. The water got more and more shallow as we swam until Merrick helped me to stand, our splashing footsteps echoing around us.

The first sign of civilisation came in the form of flaming torches attached to the walls of the tunnel. They burnt with a strange blue-green flame, mottling the tunnel floor as the light reflected off the thin layer of water we splashed through.

As we rounded a bend in the tunnel the light intensified, throwing reflected rainbows on the water and off the walls.

Unexpectedly we stepped into a great arching cave covered in the most beautiful stark white crystal formations I’d ever seen. Every available surface apart from the floor was frosted in the lace-like crystals, light glittering and shimmering like a million diamonds off their geometrically perfect planes.

The proportions of the cave were difficult to gauge, encrusted as it was in shimmering crystal.

From the ceiling hung dazzling spiralled columns, each one a different thickness and length. The walls were honeycombed in what looked like frozen snowflakes, light bouncing off them into a thousand rainbows. The floors of the cavern were in stark contrast to the walls and ceiling, black as pitch and polished to mirror-like perfection.

It wasn’t my surroundings, however, that took my breath away. As beautiful as the cave was, it acted as a mere backdrop to the creatures that inhabited it.

“Creatures” was the only word that made sense because although they looked human – in that they had two arms and legs and walked upright – I’d never seen anyone as beautiful or as foreign as they were.

There were “creatures” of every ethnicity I could imagine, each one unique and stunning in their perfect proportions and exquisite features.

Their clothing seemed to come from within them, as if each one was wrapped in a fabric as unique and perfect as they were. My disbelieving eyes watched in amazement as a small petite creature darted away from Merrick and me, her dress flowing out behind her like a cloud of pale orange sparks which shimmered in the air around her before settling once she stopped moving.

The only similarity between them was their expression of excited anticipation which flowed from them like a physical force. My eyes bounced from one perfect face to the next and eventually settled on the only two familiar and decidedly human faces in the cave.

Josh and Luke sat in an enclave to one side, their faces drawn, staring at me as Merrick led me out of the passage and into the centre of the cavernous room.

I stood beside him, shivering in the icy air, watching those around me warily. Without any verbal communication I could hear, all the creatures turned slightly and looked toward the back of the cave.

She moved as though she were on ice, gliding with such grace and dignity as to take my breath away. She was by far the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen – it was clear she wasn’t one of them – her slight frame perfectly proportioned. Her skin seemed to glow in the eerie light and sharply contrasted a black dress that clung to her body.

“Alexandra.” Her voice was like warm honey, welcoming and kind. “We have been waiting for you for a very long time.”

I felt my jaw drop open, looking between her and Merrick, trying to work out what she was talking about.

She moved towards me and took both of my hands in hers. I looked into her beautiful almond lash-fringed eyes as she said, “Welcome, my dear, my name is Talita.”