He triedto focus, but his vision was dark now, the nictitating membraneopaque and sticky over his eyes.And the lower sphere was full ofmusic too, if he could only stop his panicked, air-drowned gaspsand listen...
Voiceupon voice.Some of them were piercing, like seagulls in a choir.Some cascaded down through countless scales to a vibrant silencethat meant ultrasound, the call of the great whales across thedeep.Others swept and whooped, and one—suddenly, weirdly close athand—broke up into childish giggles.Something wet slapped Priddy’sface.
Histhird eyelid flew back.His vision cleared absolutely, granting himan acuity of colour and form he’d never experienced in his life.Not that it was much use to him now, with his brain too far gone tomake any sense of what he was seeing...A creature was clinging tothe side of Geoff Blades’ boat.It looked vaguely human—like ahuman child, a girl, seven or eight years old—until you saw theeyes.They were huge, upswept at the corners, and a uniform cloudyteal-blue.A mop of dark hair was slicked to the creature’s skull.It shot out a skinny arm and slapped Priddy again.Took a handfulof his curls and tugged at them experimentally, as if they mightcome off.
Something rattled at the far end of the boat, and the creaturevanished, webbed hands slithering back over the rail.When itreappeared, it was accompanied by a carbon copy: a twin, to thelast detail.Then a third, and a fourth, and one more on top ofthat, a row of starlings along the line of a roof.The last threehad a different cast of feature, though all five were fey asfawns.Mer-children, Priddy thought, as if that was the sanest, easiestconclusion in the world.He liked kids, even if they were mythicaland he was almost dead.Two girls andthree boys.Hello.
Thefirst girl lit up with delight.The monochrome eyes could convey agreat deal, but the smile was the killer: vast, almost ear-to-ear,lined at top and bottom with a single gleaming blade instead ofteeth.She couldn’t speak.Priddy experienced her flash offrustration as if it had been his own: not a language barrier but adifference of concepts, a division in the deepest roots ofcommunication and what it was for.The child made a kind of O withher lips.She reached out one weird webbed paw again, and this timetook Priddy’s hand.Very deliberately, frowning with concentration,she began to sing.
Metal crashed onto the deck, as if someone had dropped a bagof cymbals.Four of the five mer-child heads ducked away, but notPriddy’s girl: she hung on, the long, low note of her song morphingup into defiance.Priddy tried to pull his hand away.Go, he told her fiercely,projecting into her mind every image he could conjure of danger,badness, fear.Fishing nets, sharks, harpoons...Go!Get away!
Geoff Blades stepping over his body, arms outstretched.Not animage but a foul reality.“Ah, look atyou,” Geoff said, and his voice waslike marshmallows, a promise of sweets and treats any little kid,Mer or mortal, was sure to fall for.“Easy, my sweetheart.Juststay still.Oh, my God, I don’t believe it—justlookat you...”
TheMiragerocked.One huge lurch, out of phase with the heave of thestorm, sudden and big enough to kick Geoff’s feet out from underhim.He landed hard on his backside: skidded right down thegunwales in a flail of limbs.Priddy followed helplessly.Anavalanche of metal tubes went with him, aluminium bars and bits offramework.A wave exploded off the hull, drenching them both.Geoffbegan to cough and spit, but to Priddy the shower of saltwater foamwas sweeter than ice on a burn.“Hoi,” a familiar voice said, andthe mer-child’s grip disappeared from his hair.“You’re a goodgirl, Hatchling Four, but we don’t touch those till we know howthey work.”
Merouac.Merou, my Merou.Priddy wastoo far gone to lift his head or speak.It didn’t matter now.Theboat tipped again, and a hand five times the size of the infant’sstarfish one clenched hard on the rail.Merou.
Yes.Here.“Strike me cold, Geoffbloody Blades.Itisyou.”
Geofftried to scrabble away.“What are you doing?Let go of the rail oryou’ll capsize her.”
“You think so?How about if I do this?”The big hand clampedtight, and another blessed rush went through Priddy’s bones,washing out the pain.“I’m here for my lover, Blades, just like Icame for my poor Francis all those years ago.Tell me what you didwith him.I have to know.”
“He died.He went light and flimsy, like a paper doll, andhe...I didn’t mean it!How was I to know what would happen when hechanged?”
“If a thing grows gills and a tail, and it’s drowning in air,you put it...in thewater.”A third lurch of the deck,and theMiragecouldn’t right herself this time.Her starboard aft remainedsubmerged, and Priddy, submerged too, stopped drowning and began tobreathe.Merou’s voice came to him like cello music, a reverberantcaress of the deepest inner coils of his ear.“Listen, you bastard.The rescue chopper’s here.I won’t forgive you Francis, but give methis one back—give me my Priddy—and you get to live.”
Bladessobbed.He took hold of Priddy’s sodden jumper at the neck, hisgrasp hot and possessive and deranged.“Don’t you see that I can’t?This one’s my proof, my prize, my—”
“Is that a dive cage?Were you going to put him inthere?”
“To save him, Merouac!To save him!”
“Fair enough.Don’t say I didn’t try.”
TheMirageflipped.Her prow shot skyward.Geoff, the pieces of the cage,the boxes and cases on the deck—all the necessities of a mermaidhunt—went rolling and tumbling into the flooded stern, overboardand into the Atlantic.
Priddywent too, but it felt like a dive.He stretched out his arms tomeet the water.The first great wave took him like a rag in awashing machine.Sky and sea whipped over and under him, over andunder, each roll sloughing away the mess and anguish of hishalf-altered state.Over and under, and something warm went roundhis waist, and he surged up to surface, wrapped tight in Merou’sarms.
He laylaughing at the raging sky.He couldn’t stop, even though therewere so many things he had to tell Merou, so much he had to fix.His head was resting on Merou’s shoulder.He tried to speak, andhis throat produced an extraordinary peal of music instead, like anopera singer who’d swallowed a set of church bells.“It’s allright,” Merou said, and his voice was shaken with laughter too.“You’re changing, my Priddy—that’s all.Come on, let’s get thisjumper off you.You should always be naked for this.You’re nearlythere.”
Nearly there.Yes, as if every comehe’d ever had in his life was building in his groin.He arched hisback, kicking out with the place that had once been his feet.Merourocked him, lifting him so he could breathe air, plunging him downwith the trough of each wave so he could breathe water.Lungs andgills, lungs and gills in transition...“Merou, what’s happening tome?”
“You’ve been trapped in a halfway change.It’s finishing now.Just let go.”
Thegreat tail was coiling round him, curling to shield him, to soothethe spasms crushing their way down his hips.Priddy was one insanehair’s-breadth from possessing such a tail of his own.He put hishead back and called and called to the sky, and the seagulls ofHagerawl Point formed a ring and called back to him, and so did themer-children, who’d gathered in a bright-eyed half circle to watch.One last push, and he’d become like they were, like Merou, histopside existence forgotten.Only one part of it mattered to himnow.“Merou,” he said desperately.“Help Kit, for God’s sake.Thatbastard pushed him overboard.”
“Seriously?How long ago?”
“I don’t know.Ten minutes.Too long.”
Meroupointed at the children, who followed the movement of his hand likea bunch of baby piranha.“Listen up, you hatchlings!Human in thewater!Not the old one—leave that piece of shit for the sharks.Aboy, like this boy.Fetch!”
Theyshimmered away.And Priddy, who had done everything he could do,fell back into Merou’s embrace.A wave the height of Hagerawllighthouse rose over them, a wave from Lyonesse, with opals andfire in its heart.Merou seized him by the armpits: lifted himjoyously to meet it.
Priddy unfolded.Everything in him that had ever been small,tight, crushed or afraid turned outwards.He dived with the wave,Merou still guiding him, holding him fast.He kicked, and themovement came from the base of his spine, a dip and then a thrust,and the place where his feet had been spread out like wings.Anexplosive rush shot through him, sweeter than orgasm, wilder thanhis wildest high.My fluke!he cried to Merou through their wordless,effortless link.My tail, my beautifultail...
Merou spiralled down with him, down and down, until theturmoil of the upperworld was left far behind.Down here, the stormwas nothing but vast shifts of the water, the ocean flexing hermuscles, rubbing herself like a giant cat for the pleasure of itall around the coast.Gently he turned Priddy to face him.Held himby the shoulders so that they hung together in the silver-greylight, face to face.Yes.Look at thebeauty of yourself.Look what you’ve become.
