Water by Natasha Hardy Page B

have just as easily been downwards I was so disoriented.
    The water lightened to a soft greeny blue, still crystal clear, as he slowed down to almost a complete stop. My eyes felt as though they would pop out of their sockets as I stretched them to take in the alien beauty that surrounded us.
    We were in a water-filled underground cave. I glanced upward as Merrick pointed to the ceiling, relieved to see sunlight filtering through some cracks in the rock above us.
    “We are beneath the fissure you leapt across earlier,” he explained, the perfect clarity of his voice still startling me.
    I nodded to show I understood, and accepted another breath from him as he released me and showed me how to float, suspended in the water above an exquisitely delicate world of ancient stalagmites that must have grown from the cave floor thousands of years ago. They glowed softly in pastel shades of green, blue, lilac, yellow and pink, each one delicately unique as it reached longingly for its partners which stretched from sections of the cave roof. Some of them had met each other in the middle all those years ago, before the cave became flooded with water, and Merrick wove gracefully between the columns they created circling back to me every couple of seconds to give me another breath.
    On one of his trips back to me I grabbed his arm before he could swim away and tried to speak. It came out as a muffled hurrrgmpf, but he smiled and replied easily.
    “It
is
beautiful.”
    Despite the exquisite beauty of the cave, I was still wary and painfully aware of how utterly dependent I was on Merrick for my next breath. The crisp mountain water had chilled me to the bone and the nagging worry about how I was going to get back to the surface, and most importantly the sun, clouded the beauty that surrounded me.
    Merrick seemed to read my mind, because on his next round back to me he pointed to the surface.
    I nodded as he wrapped his arms around me and swam quickly back through the passageway in the same disorientating swirling spiral before shooting to the surface, the speed of the water stinging my face.
    The warmth and light of the midday sun blinded me as we burst out of the pool in a wave of water.
    Despite the incredible beauty he’d shown me, I disentangled myself from him and swam quickly to the side, slipping on the smooth rocks in my hurry to get out of the water and away from him, dragging great gulps of air into my lungs.
    “What was that?” I rasped at Merrick, terror of the implications of what he’d just done and shown me making me breathless as I pulled myself out of the water onto the rock.
    He was laughing as he sprang nimbly onto a boulder opposite me.
    “The speed is awesome isn’t it?” he asked, grinning like I should have enjoyed the experience. “That cave is pretty average but the speed…” He laughed.
    “I’m not talking about the swimming,” I whispered, clenching my teeth angrily.
    He cocked his head to the side looking at me quizzically, surprise and amusement playing across his features.
    “How did you breathe for both of us?”
    I whispered, because I was afraid that if I didn’t whisper I’d be screaming at him, crazed and uncontrollable.
    He just ginned at me, looking a bit confused. “I already told you, I’m an Oceanid.”
    “No,” I told him emphatically, “you didn’t tell me that.”
    He cocked his head to the side, thinking. “Well, not in so many words I guess,” he replied.
    Even though we’d come looking for them, even though Josh’s story had sparked a deep longing in me for them to be real, I realised in that moment that I’d never actually expected to find any fish-people, or Oceanids or whatever they were called.
    It had been a strange alluring idea that they existed, but faced with the very obvious evidence that Merrick was decidedly more than human, I found myself scrambling to accept the reality of what he was saying.
    “What does that even mean?” I asked, exasperated by his