I try to reach the surface with my eyes, but it’s gone. The sunlight is a smear somewhere above me, too far to matter.
Then, a second hand latches onto my wrist and pins it to my side. I buck, try to punch, but I can’t even feel my arm.
We keep going down. The pressure is a fist on my skull, squeezing. My ears pop. My chest burns. The water is thicker here, almost milkier, with threads of green slime floating in it, tangling in my hair. I start to see spots, orange and gold and sickly.
I claw at the thing holding me, dig my nails into its forearm, but it’s like clutching a wet rock. Nothing gives.
Then I see its face.
It’s a face with a mouth that’s too big, and there are too many eyes, set in a ring around its head, all rimmed with too much white like it’s permanently shocked to see you, and there’s gills on the sides of its face. It grins at me, tongue split down the middle and flickering.
I think it’s smiling. Maybe it’s just hungry.
My body wants to breathe. Every cell is screaming for it.
I try to reach for my dagger, the one awkwardly still at my hip, even in my undergarments, but the creature squeezes my arm so tight the bone flexes. I yank and twist, desperate, and the sheath shifts just enough for my hand to fumble at the hilt, but the merman’s hand is already there, curling its claws around my wrist and squeezing until I release the blade.
A ring of bubbles explodes from my mouth. My last air.
I’m going to die.It’s not going to be a story or a lesson or anything but me with my arms pinned, legs burning, vision full of teeth and eyes and the blue-black dark, and then nothing.
Unable to stop myself from trying to breathe, I open my mouth and water floods in. I want to cough, but that only makes it worse.
It burns. But not like fire. It’s something colder, sharper, filling me where nothing should be. My chest convulses, trying to force it out, but there’s nowhere for it to go. My lungs seize,then drag in more, desperate and wrong, and the pain spikes so hard my vision flashes white.
I choke. Or try to. My body doesn’t know what to do with this. My throat locks, then spasms, pulling in more water, more cold, more pressure until it feels like I’m splitting open from the inside.
My chest aches. No—screams.
My limbs start to weaken, the frantic strength draining out of them all at once. My kicks slow. My hands lose their grip on him, fingers slipping uselessly against his skin. The world narrows, the edges going dark, everything dimming like a candle guttering in the wind.
Sound disappears first.
Then the panic starts to fade, not because I’m calmer, but because I can’t hold onto it anymore. My thoughts stutter, slow, break apart. The fight leaks out of me with the last of my air.
This is it.
A strange heaviness settles over me, almost peaceful in the most terrifying way. My body stops fighting. My chest still jerks, still tries to breathe, but it feels far away now, like it belongs to someone else.
The creature’s face blurs in front of me, all those eyes watching, that too-wide mouth still curved in something that might be hunger.
Everything is going dark.
I can’t feel my fingers anymore.
I can’t?—
The merman jerks me closer, so fast I nearly bite through my tongue. His lips cover my mouth, and I try to fight, but he’s so strong. His mouth is colder than the water, and for a second I think he’s going to bite, to take my tongue or my face, but instead he just forces his lips onto mine, and something rushes into me.
Not water. Air. Actual air. Or at least the water feels like air now.
I choke on it, gag, but then my chest works again, and I’m not dying, not yet. He holds me there, mouth to mouth, until the burn in my lungs fades. Then he pulls away, lips and tongue smeared with blood that isn’t his.
I gulp. The next breath is easy. The water goes in and out of my lungs like it’s just air that got a little wet on the way.
I can breathe. Somehow, I can breathe down here.
My heart sprints in place, but my brain starts to work again.
