Jake came to in eerie green light, propped against a rocky wall. His head ached. His nose and mouth were full of water.
I'm dead. This is what it feels like to be drowned. For a while this overwhelming thought obliterated many other. He struggled to think more clearly. He couldn't have died. He was young, he hadn't done anything yet. Jake shouted his eye and fought the waves of nausea that clouded his mind. With tremendous effort, he started to remember - a wild storm and the boat smashing around him; the spinning water sucking him down..
He open his eyes. There was a low roof above his head and a patch of brightness beyond it. His ankle was sore and his leg stiff with cramp. "You don't hurt when you're dead," he told himself, hoping sense might order itself around this one sure fact. "But if I'm not dead why aren't I chocking?" He couldn't understand why he didn't feel the need to take a breath; it was as if the breath inside his lungs was sufficient. "I'm not drowned... But I'm not breathing..."
A dark shape moved at the cave mouth. At once Jake recognized the silhouette of the girl. He started, cracked his head on the ledge of rock and cried out. The pain was real, aa right. The girl twisted round. "What's that?" she said, as if startled to hear his voice. "Where am I?" Jake groaned. "What happened?" Cal moved out from behind a rock. In an instant Jake saw her tail. From the waist down she had the body of a dolphin, smooth and silver grey.
"I am dead!"
"No," said Cal, "you're not dead." Her musical voice was clearer through the water than it had been beside his boat. "If you were dead you wouldn't be talking to me." With a beat of her tail she glided towards him, arms at her side. Her strong, supple body moved sinuously, tiny fishes trailing behind her. Once more Jake recognized her green willow eyes, but as she came close he was startled by her fingers - between each was a film of transparent skin. She had webbed hands.
"How can you talk to me?" Cal asked slowly. She studied him, as puzzled by Jake as he was by her. "How can you speak my language?"
"I - I can't - I don't know," he stuttered. You spoke to me first - up there."
Cal frowned but didn't answer. It was true. She had watched Creepers like him several times, close enough to hear their voices - but those shrill, sharp sounds had never maid any sense to her before. Cal didn't understand what was happening. At first she hadn't doubted he was dead. But as she'd pushed the broken timber from his body, to look closer, to touch his strange limbs, the Creeper's eyelids had flickered. All her treasures were lost except the pendent, which had been caught up in her hair but luckily remained fastened around her neck.
As soon as her back was turned, a conger eel slipped out of the shadows and snaked across the sandy cave floor towards Jake. He shuddered. He had seen monsters like these, prize catches on the quay - seen their vicious teeth. He drew back against the wall. The eel swam closer. It slide up and down the length of his body, pausing to press its repulsive flesh against his shoulder. Cut deep into it's cheek was a pink v-shaped scar.
Seeing his destress Cal turned. In a flask she picked up a rock and threw it. The eel jackknifed angrily. It fled to the mouth of the cave, turned to bare its teeth and slithered away.
"Never trust eel," she said.
Jake's ankle was throbbing. He reached down and flinched as his fingers found a splinter of wood jammed above the bone. Gritting his teeth, he tried to grip the stub end. It took a couple of goes to pull it out and made him retch. Cal returned to his side but suddenly something mad her swing around.
"Ssh!" She froze, listening hard. "I can hear someone coming. No - there are two of them - three." Cal curled herself against the wall beside Jake. "Don't move." Jake peered into the water. Sure enough, moments later, three shapes speared from the soupy distance and seemed to be coming towards the cave. Cal pulled herself closet to the rock and as she did her fluke knocked against Jake's ankle. He shoved his fist into his mouth to stop himself from crying out.
The shapes become distinct. To his horror Jake saw that one was a huge blue marlin, with a vicious-looking snout over half the length of its muscular body. The other two were creatures like Cal herself - at least their lower bodies had the dolphin tail but there the likeness ended. These were two young mails. heir skin was the blue-black color of mussel shell and their flanks were notched with identical patterns of chevron scars. Unlike Cal, they had fins on their backs, tipped with a splash of scarlet. Both had jet hair plaited into long, thin rat-tails and each carried a spear. They scowled as they swam, with the marlin between them. "Bloodfin!" Cal gasped. Was this what her father had tried to warn her about?
One of the Bloodfin slowed before the cave. He swayed, staring at the base of a rock, and gestured to the other to keep a distance. Then, suddenly, he stabbed with his spear, raising a cloud of sand. When the sand settled there was a small squid on the end of the blade. He offered the squid to the marlin, who devoured in a gulp. The other Bloodfin joined him. They scouted about, seeming to search for something in the water.
"they didn't come this way," said the oldest-looking Bloodfin. "But there's Silvertail close, I can smell them." He swiped at the marlin with his spear. The big fish reared back, then edged closer again and prodded the Bloodfin's tail with the tip of his snout.
The Bloodfin cursed and twisted round. "One cut and you're shark-meat!" He grabbed the hilt of a dagger hanging at his knotted belt. "Why did you have to go off? We'll never find the rest. If we mess the raid we all miss the pickings..."
"Give him the stuff, Leaper," said the young Bloodfin. "Keep him sweet. We need him."
Leaper produced a pouch studded with shark fangs. He pulled a handful of something and flung his fist into the water, releasing hundreds of small red beads.
"Wreek eggs," whispered Cal. "All the Lin go mad for them." Sure enough the marlin had chased every last egg in the water it returned to its masters and tried to nuzzle up to the pouch.
"Get off!" snarled Leaper. "You've got to earn this." The marlin moved away, but didn't take its eyes off the pouch.
"Bait thinks the Lin are going to give us trouble," said the younger Bloodfin, "but Reefer says they're just spear with muscle!"
Leaper grabbed him by the hair and yanked him close. "Muscle and brain," he whispered fiercely. "Never forget that, Barb. Muscle and brain." He let him go. "Come on. Let's find the others."
In an instant all three were gone. "Where were they?" stuttered Jake. "Bloodfin," replied Cal, looking after them, "from the Melt - cold water far away. I've never seen any before. They're hunters, not farmers like us. Something's wrong. They shouldn't be here."
"So who are you?" asked Jake. "What are you? Ouch!" A spasm of pain gripped his ankle. He reached down to it. Cal gently pushed his fingers aside and examined the wound. Then she took his other ankle in her broad, webbed hands and studied his foot, pinching his toes and heel, prodding his knee. Jake was amazed at her boldness. He wanted to touch her tail but he didn't dare. Close up she looked younger than he was. He noticed her strong, muscular shoulders and arms and the pearly-grey sheet of her fluke.
"Can you swim with those - those..."
"Feet!" he said, not sure whether to to feel proud or ashamed of them. Cal looked at him blankly. "Never mind about my ankle. I can make it out of here." Jake grabbed the rock, but didn't have the strenght to lift himself to his feet. what a groan he collapsed against the wall once more. "What if those Bloodfin come back? What would they do to us?" Cal didn't answer. She wasn't prepared for this. She had to think fast. When she'd left home that morning she'd given herself up to the sea, allowed the current to take her where it pleased. To Cal's astonishment it had carried her into the bay, to his boy - this very boy she had secretly watched before. She knew it was more than coincidence. Then the storm had brought them both below, and now, here he was, alive, speaking in her tongue. She had an uneasy feeling that her visits to this Over-breath had breached a threshold, between his world and hers, somehow. That she was responsible.
Cal sighed. She'd wanted so long to be free, to search for knowledge of her mother. But she couldn't just abandoned this Creeper boy and go on alone. And now there were Bloodfin in her home-waters. Everything was suddenly so strange. "What happens if they come back?" replied to Jake, weary from the deep ache rising up his leg.
Cal drummed her fist against her side. It was not good. She had no choice now. "We'll get away," she said. I'll have to take you to my father." Her plan had been ruined. She must go back and warn the Elders about the Bloodfin.
Cal looked Jake's face, grey with pain. She tried to sound confident. "If they do come back I'll draw them away so you can escape."
"Don't be daft," said Jake. He hesitated, then gave her a smile. "But thanks." Whoever she was he didn't want tp be separated from her down here. Beside, it was a bit of big talk about his ankle - he wasn't really sure that he could swim at all.
"Tell me more about - about the Bloodfin," said Jake, shifting to relive the numbness of his good leg as he watched for many sign of shadows in the water beyond. "I don't know much," Cal replied. "They come from the edge of the ice Crust, where the Golden Eye only open in the warming."
"GoldenEye?" Jake was puzzled. "You mean the sun!" "My father will be able to tell you," said Cal, "although I'll be in enough trouble, going up to the Over-breath, let a lone bringing a Creeper."
"Creeper!" exclaimed Jake. "Is that what you call us? And what are you, anyway?"
"We're all Delphines," said Cal. "My people are called Silver-tails. There are lots of Silver-tail pods near here." A wave of fatigue distracted Jake. He sighed. "Look, just tell me... if I'm not dead, why aren't I drowning?" "I don't understand," said Cal, intrigued by his presence in her world. "Somehow you're like us. I know that the fathers of our race were Creeper men."
Jake thought of the mermaid tales Charley sometimes told on a winter's night. Everyone knew they were only stories. None of it was true. There again, nobody would believe what was happening to him either. "But how can I be here, talking to you?" he said.
Cal frowned and fixed him with a meaningful eye. "Unnatural things have been happening." "What sort of things?" said Jake. I've only heard rumors," said Cal. "No one speak of it much. But they say rogue currents are fouling the tides, stirring up murk-water. There are forbidden places, where unpredictable moods flow. And sudden sea furies..." "That's what broke my boat," interruptedJake. "That's just how it was - a sea fury, sudden like you say." "Yes. My father believed that the sea troubled." "Why?"
"I don't know. But he told me once about Merrows, the guardians of the ocean. Merrows had the gift of harmony - they ordered the balanced flow of the currents and kept peace between the creatures who shared the ocean." "What happened to them?" asked Jake. "They died out long ago..." Cal fell silent and twisted a look of hair between her fingers.
Jake remembered a picture made of shells set into the wall of the Anchor Inn - of a woman with a fish's tail, sitting on a rock, combing her hair. Inside the curve of her arm was a tiny, far-away sailor diving into the sea. "Singing to him, that's what she's doing," Charley had told him once with a wink. "And he would drown in her arms, he would."
"Do you think now they've gone, these Merrows, that the sea is... sort of, out of sorts," said Jake. "Unbalanced?" A sad coldness seemed to chill the water around them.
After a pause Cal turned to him.
"I don' know what is stirring up the water," she said, "but there's something about you - I think you can breath like a Delphine, like us. We take one breath for seven tides." "Is that what you were doing by my boat?Taking a breath?"
Cal nodded. Suddenly a crusty scallop shuffled in the sand beside them and she was shaken from her solemn thoughts. "Come on, there's no time to talk. We need help." The pain in Jake's ankle was making him weaker now but he followed her to the cave mouth, scrambling, half dragging his leg, and crouched low.
A shoal of small, speckled dish played for a while in a tangle of thong weed. Crabs edged around the rocks. Jake wasn't sure what they were waiting for. He was mesmerized by the creatures that scuttled and flitted past. Cal gazed, unblinking, into the distance. After a short while she felt faint, familiar vibrations in the water. Her heart leapt. "Wait here," she gasped. "I'll be back." With a beat of her tail she dashed out into the open water. Jake was gripped with alarm. "Don't leave me!" Pushing off the seabed with his good foot he struggled after her.
Cal didn't look back. Jake's whole leg burned with pain, making movement jerky and slow. He had to rely on his arms, pulling himself through water. Then ahead huge dark shape loomed towards them. Jake panicked. Bloodfin! He turned instinctively to the light and swam for his life, up and up, crying hot tears. When at least he paused to look below Cal had vanished. There was nothing in the water. He'd lost her.