“We live between the worlds.We make things change.Will youcome?”
It was amatter of trust.If Priddy asked any more questions now, Merouwould vanish.Priddy knew enough about folklore and fairytales tobe sure of that.“Yes.I will.”
“Don’t you have any questions, you feckless boy?”
“I thought maybe I wasn’t meant to ask.”
“You should always ask, when a strange man’s proposing to drownyou.”
Priddy’spulse leapt.Was that what it meant, to have the pain and thecravings taken away?“No,” he whispered.“I don’t have anyquestions.”
Merou’sembrace tightened, and it felt less like the grasp of asupernatural sea-creature than a hug from a friend who’d found himsitting desolate at home, and somehow knew everything and wanted tofix it.“It was bad, wasn’t it?Worse than you ever tell anyone,even yourself—life with Vigo, then life on your own.I’m glad youdidn’t die.”
“So am I.I’m glad I waited for you to come along and drownme.”
“Not quite that bad.Have you ever scuba-dived?”
“No.”
“Good, because it’s nothing like that, and you’d just haveexpectations.I need compression—lots of it—to trigger thesaturation of oxygen in my lungs.We’ll have to dive deep and fast,and you won’t have time to equalise.So, to stop your inner earfrom exploding—trust me, lovely landling—I just needto...”
Priddyyelled and tried to jerk away.Something cold had stung his neckjust below the earlobe.He writhed in Merou’s grasp.A chillyneedle slid beneath his tendon, up and indescribably up towards thedelicate mechanics of his hearing, where surely it would piercesomething crucial, puncture and destroy him...
The painstopped.Something deep in his skull popped and eased, a profoundpressure vanishing, as if he’d had a head cold all his life withoutknowing it and his sinuses had finally cleared.He sneezed noisilyand clapped one hand to the exit wound as Merou withdrew.“What thebloody hell did you do?”
“I put a little hole in you with this creepy spike on my hand.It’ll heal within a few hours, or...”
“Orwhat?”
“Never mind.Do you want to see the spike?”
“Shit, no.Yes.”Priddy grabbed Merou’s wrist and gave a wailof fright.“Oh, my God, man.Whatareyou?”
“Why is that more scary than the tail?It’s just a carpalextension for humanely dispatching fish, and dealing with theoccasional odd job like you.It retracts—look.”Priddy stared inhorror as the thin, barbed spine withdrew.“There you go.You canhold my hand in safety now, and believe me, you’d better hold ontight.It’s time to go.”
Chapter Nine
Priddyhad fallen off a cliff once.He’d ridden the Death Drop rollercoaster at Newquay once, too, and been dragged to the bottom ofRosewarne harbour when one of Vigo’s stolen boats hadcapsized.
This wasworse.This was impossible: he would die.Merou had bound theirhands with the weird blue-green filament—delicate as seaweed, toughas steel—that grew from his wrists.His arm around Priddy’s waistwas a cable.They were going down.
So fast,so hard.The great tail propelled them, surge after surge from thefluke.Darkness extinguished the starlight.Priddy’s last visionbefore absolute green-black night was the whip of bubbles backtowards the surface—his last breath, the one he’d instinctivelysnatched as Merou dived.Blind panic ate him whole.His lungs wouldburst.His skull must surely already have exploded, but for thehole in his neck, somehow allowing passage of pressure from hispounding brain to the water.He struggled in Merou’s grip, a finalfight-or-flight seizure even though without him he’d be lost,tumbling forever in the lightless abyss.A howl built up in him,the scream in whose aftermath he’d be forced to suck in water.Downagain, so fast, so hard...
Merouspun him round.The tail ceased its propulsion and coiled aroundhim, holding him still.They helixed downward together on momentumfor five heartbeats more, and then they stopped—Merou stopped them,gently, absolutely, and Priddy must have been already dead becausethe water was full of lights, blue-gold orbs like a hundred aquaticsuns.They hung in the dazzling drift of them, suspended, and Meroudrew Priddy’s fringe out of his eyes, cupped his face firmlybetween his hands and kissed him.
Breathed into him.Priddy took the sweet, clean inrush likeparched ground soaking up rain.He stiffened with the joy andrelief of it, clutching Merou’s shoulders, arching his spine.Meroudrew back.His eyes were wide, clear of their protective membraneand full of the reflected suns—questioning, bright with amusementand hope.Yes?Yes?
Priddy nodded.Oh, God, yes.Tentatively he reached for Merou again, and thistime the kiss was different, raw need rising from the near-deathfear.Priddy could give something back.
Meroushivered in astonishment.Sound couldn’t carry this deep but Priddyheard his laughter anyway, felt it in the back of his throat.Theydrew apart lingeringly, Priddy still clinging to hishand.
He didn’t need to breathe.The one compulsion that had shapedhis existence from the moment of his birth was gone, switched off,erased.His heart had slowed from its syncopating gallop and wasbeating easily, his limbs warm and loose in the water, as if everytissue in his body had been flooded with oxygen, enough to hold himforever.Merou surveyed him in wonder, dark hair floating in acorona against the lights.He stretched out the hand Priddy wasn’tholding and gestured down again.Come withme?
Oh yes.Yes.
Therewas a city down here.That was what Priddy’s eyes tried to conveyto him, in the glimmer of a thousand drifting stars.He wasdrifting himself, flying, lightly tethered to Merou’s hand.Elationwas blazing through him still.Released from gravity and thedemands of his lungs, the unceasing in-out that brought humans downhere with a tank on their back and a wedge of rubber thrust intotheir mouths, he was insanely, dizzyingly free.Hallucinating too,no doubt of it, but that was all part of the matrix, and he let thebarriers fall.That rock was a gold-plated dome.Beneath it droppeda sheer cliff of basalt, too polished and perfect to be real, so heallowed the dome to be part of a cathedral, perched on itsblack-mirror cliff above other rocks that morphed as he looked atthem into towers, spires, a vast branching fractal of opalescentroads.Beautiful archways sprang out of nowhere, bridges thatconnected nothing to nowhere and served no purpose except the graceof their architecture.Kelp groves became forests, dancing in thecurrent, the floating suns catching in their branches...
Toomuch.He turned to grin at Merou, who smiled back at him andreleased his hand.He turned a somersault in the water and took afirst strong swimming stroke of his own.The power of his own kickastonished him.Tail or no tail, he could keep up with Merou here.To prove it he thrust ahead, then whipped round in fright at thethought of losing him.Oh, and he hadn’t seen him yet, not properlyin his merman form, not as he was seeing now!He was beautiful,tapered from the waist into that majestic sheath of muscle and fin,the scales—like scallops or shingling, seal-blue and bright coppergreen—overlapping and shifting as he moved.Priddy swam back tohim, arms outstretched.Together they tumbled off the edge of thebasalt cliff, spiralling down towards the swaying seaweedgroves.
