Water and Fire by Demelza Carlton Page B

eagerness.
    I roused myself from my
memories. I didn't often think of Aidan, for five years had passed
since I had last seen him, but I tried to keep the memory
fresh.
    "Almost, sweetheart," I
replied. "Give me a moment."
    I closed my
eyes and wished the young doctor a healthy and happy life, the
least he deserved for kindling a fire that would never go out. When
fire and water mix, they create something extraordinary and new,
but they cannot survive together. I'm
sorry. Sirens do not stay with humans, especially not
when…
    "Come on, Mummy! I see one!"
Zerafina squealed, as a thick, curly lock of red hair blew into her
mouth in the strong winds. She spat it out again before darting off
in front of me, toward the approaching whales. Her fiery tail
glinted in the morning sun as she flicked it furiously to increase
her speed.
    I sighed and dove through the
water after her, my golden tail rippling in a more leisurely
fashion, with far more power than my daughter's. I resolved to
venture on land in the near future, to drink a glass of whiskey and
toast the health of her father, whose fire could never survive
beneath the ocean's surface as my people did.
    After all, Aidan couldn't swim.

Author's Note
     
    This novella
is a prequel to Ocean's Gift and Ocean's
Infiltrator , both books in the Ocean's Gift series.
Belinda is one of the main characters in Ocean's Gift.
    My books tend to be set in
Western Australia in the present day, which means my characters are
likely to appear in stories which are not their own.
    For example,
Aidan is a minor character in Nightmares
of Caitlin Lockyer.
    Where else Aidan may appear in
future books…I can't say, for I have a strict no-spoiler policy.
Yet I can promise he will.
    What follows
is a bonus sample section from Ocean's
Gift , available in ebook and
paperback.

Ocean's Gift Sample – 1:
Sirena
     
    The ocean gave him to me.
    I was angry, as any girl of
sixteen would be. I'd been ordered by my elders to go and find a
strong man, one I could join with to produce a healthy child. My
hopes, my dreams and my plans were of no consequence. My destiny
was to entice a man to choose me as his plaything – to be a piece
of flesh to bait a shark. Or to be a baby seal, tempting a killer
whale? The example did not matter. The end would be the same – the
end of my control over what had been my life.
    I swam in the storm, revelling
in the power of the waves, which pushed a little wooden sailing
boat through the maelstrom on the surface over my head. Two men
struggled to control the small craft with two wooden oars, the
vessel's only means of propulsion once the sail was torn away in
the wind. One man dived from the boat, slicing into the water like
a knife surrounded by bubbles. There was a line of twisted fibre in
his hand as he swam with difficulty for shore.
    The little boat rocked in
reaction to the diver's spring. The wind caught the remnants of the
sail, a big wave washed over the side and the vessel tipped under
the surface, sinking slowly. I dodged through the debris as it
drifted in the current away from the little boat.
    The surface above me churned
where the second man had been thrown into the water. He thrashed
around and it was clear he could not swim. The waves pushed us
together and he clung to me, his arms warm as he wrapped them
around me. I gave him my breath and took him to the surface. As we
drifted between the waves, still he would not let me go.
    He called me his Lady of the
Sea, his angel. I gave him my breath again, before I dove under the
waves with him.
    We surfaced near a small island
of sand, washed by the waves. Here he would be safe.
    He shivered, in wet clothes on
wet sand. He called me Santa Maria, his Lady of the Sea who had
answered his prayer.
    If I was to save him, I had to
keep him warm. Yet I had no human accoutrements, nothing warm or
dry with which to assist him. Only me.
    I concentrated on my form,
letting my tail part, my skin pale and my gills fade. To save