Submerging (Swans Landing) (2 page)

Josh pointed up, but I shook my head. We couldn’t surface. The boat would have drawn closer now, since it was moving toward us and we were swimming toward it. But the dark shape still loomed ahead, growing larger with each second.

“We’re finfolk,” I tried to speak even though I knew speaking underwater was useless. A fountain of bubbles escaped from my lips, drowning out my words.

Josh gave me a puzzled look and I made elaborate hand gestures, trying to indicate that we should keep swimming. We were as much a part of the sea as anything else here was, and we had the advantage of being fast. Both of us were in good shape and finfolk could swim nearly as fast as dolphins when they needed to.

But Josh didn’t look convinced. He gestured toward the surface again.

Sometimes I couldn’t believe the two of us shared the same father. He could be cautious and timid, while I wasn’t the kind of person who sat around waiting for things to pass. I took action. I’d led us out here on this trip across the Atlantic and I wasn’t going to let anything stand in my way.

Turning an expert flip, I spun around and darted ahead, leaving Josh still gesturing toward the surface. I didn’t look back to see if he was following, but I knew he would. Josh was one of those guys, the kind who felt like he had to look after the people he cared about. He would never let me go off toward some unknown danger all on my own.

So I wasn’t surprised a moment later when I felt him at my side. He tried to grab my arm, but I dove deeper into the water, my arm slipping from his fingers. I’d had a lot more swimming experience than Josh had and the water was a part of me. I could move with little effort, slicing ahead through the darkness.

A startled eel slithered out of my way as I passed and I watched over my shoulder as it twisted in half-circles behind me. Josh barely noticed the eel as he swam after me, his silvery tail flashing as it caught sunlight that broke through the water.

Josh stopped suddenly, his eyes widening. I twisted around to see what had him so panicked.

A wall of wriggling, silvery fish swept toward me, moving through the water so fast I didn’t have time to respond. I became swept up in the wave of bodies around me, fish bumping and biting against my flesh as they panicked, trying to get away.

I swam down, fighting against the mass, pushing through scales and sharp teeth. Just as I could see the edge of the mass, I crashed hard into something rough that refused to give way.

A net. The boat we’d seen above hadn’t been a freighter, it was a fishing boat.

Chapter Two

Josh grabbed my arm, trying to pull me through the mass of fish as the net closed in, darkening the water around me. I tried to fight my way through, but I didn’t get far before I was snatched back.

I twisted around, trying to peer through the mass of wriggling fish to see what had me trapped. A loose rope from the net had wrapped itself around my tail fin. I pulled at the water-logged rope while slapping fish away from my face.

Josh grabbed onto the rope and pulled to try to break it free from the net, but the rope was too thick. He swam back to me and grabbed my arm.

For a moment, I thought maybe everything would be okay. The rope would come loose or the weight of the fish would break through the net.

But my arm was wrenched from Josh’s as the net lurched toward the surface. The fish around me struggled harder, bumping and bruising my body all over. Josh swam after us, looking up at me with wide, helpless eyes.

We had come so far, so long and so close, and now I was doomed to being caught in a net like a fish.

I opened my mouth, bubbles erupting into vicious streams as I tried to call out to Josh. The net broke the surface of the water, sending the weight of the thousands of fish down onto me. I gasped as the air was pushed out of me and I wriggled to free myself from the crushing mass on my back.

There was always a moment between being finfolk and being human when I felt not fully whole. As if my body was torn between two different forms and couldn’t decide which it wanted to be.

Usually, the change back into human form after being finfolk was pretty easy. It was a lot less painful than changing from human to finfolk, since the scales along my legs were sliding back into my skin rather than slicing through on their way out. My bones still popped and distorted as my tail fin divided itself back into legs once again, but it was easier somehow.

But this time, the process felt agonizingly slow as the net moved on a giant crank toward the boat’s deck. “Come on, come on,” I chanted to myself. Whether it was the mass of wriggling, panicked fish all around me or my own palpitating heartbeat, the change took a lot longer than it should have and I began to worry that the men on the boat would soon discover a mermaid in their net.

“Whoa!” a voice shouted. “What’s that in the net there?”

“Come on!” I chanted again as my thighs split apart.

A group of men gathered on the deck, leaning over the rail look at me as the net hung suspended over the water.

“Is that a person?” someone asked. “A body?”

“Get her out of there! Call the doctor!”

The last of my red and silver scales slipped under my skin, leaving only faint pink marks where they had disappeared and I was once again human. Half-naked, but human.

I had seen fishing boats back home bring in their catch and I knew they usually didn’t take much care in being gentle with the fish. They’d let a whole load of fish dump onto the deck into a huge, sliding mass. But this time, the net was carefully lowered toward the deck inch by inch, until finally my back pressed against the wood of the ship and the net around me slackened, releasing the fish in a slithering wave.

I laid for a minute on the deck, my body still and my eyes facing up toward the sky. The rope still lay twisted around my feet.

“Is she dead?” someone asked.

I could feel the men all around me, peering down at my limp form, half-covered in fish that gasped for breath outside of the water. I felt a pitying kinship with these fish, having been snatched unwillingly from the ocean in the same net and for a moment, I imagined myself scooping them up and throwing them overboard to freedom.

“Aye, likely dead,” said another voice. “Why else would she be out this far?”

I blinked away the salt water in my eyes and then sat up, causing a few of the men to jump and gasp.

“Um,” I said, looking at the grizzled faces that stared back at me. “Hi.”

The men stood in stunned silence for a long moment, gaping at me.

“What were you doing in the ocean, wee hen?” asked one of the older men, his beard gray and thick, Grandpa-like.

“Oh...” I said, drawing out the word as I tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t cause any alarm. A shipwreck wouldn’t work, they’d call the Scottish equivalent of the Coast Guard to report it. No wrecks of any kind. Which left one answer I could give.

“I was, you know, going for a swim,” I said, smiling wide at my rescuers.

The six men exchanged looks, raising their eyebrows. For a moment, the only sound was the slapping of the fish as they flopped on the deck and the water lapping at the sides of the boat.

“Do you...eh...” The gray haired Grandpa-like man gestured toward me, his cheeks reddening. “...usually swim half-clothed? So far from shore?”

The one inconvenience to being finfolk was that I couldn’t wear clothing on my lower body. If a finfolk changed form while wearing jeans, they would be ripped to tatters, unusable once he or she had changed back into human form. Sure, I could have worn a skirt and been okay, but they had a habit of twisting and bunching up around my waist while I was swimming. They were too annoying for long periods in the water.

“Oh, right,” I said, looking down at my legs, which were bronzed from a lifetime outdoors. “The current pulled my clothes off.”

“The current?” the man asked.

The boat rocked and I reached out to steady myself on a large wooden crate. “It’s pretty rough out there. I don’t recommend going swimming today.” I pulled the waterproof bag off my back and unzipped the biggest pocket. “I have some more clothes with me.”

The men were decent enough to turn away while I dressed. I wasn’t exactly shy, but I appreciated their gesture. Finfolk quickly got used to being half-naked in front of other people.

Once I had pulled on a slightly damp pair of jeans—the waterproof bag wasn’t as waterproof as it claimed to be—someone draped a thick woolen blanket over my shoulders for warmth. It was early May, but the air here was much colder than the warm May days I was used to. The water that dripped from my hair and soaked through my shirt was icy.

I scanned the water’s surface quickly. I hoped Josh wouldn’t try to board the boat to save me. It was hard enough to explain my presence. It would be impossible to explain why
two
of us were wandering around the ocean half-naked.

“Care for a cuppa?” the gray haired man asked. “It isn’t good, but it’s hot.”

I shook my head. “No, thank you. Actually, I should be getting back.” I made a movement toward the side of the boat, but the man lurched forward, grabbing my wrist. He stared at me with wide eyes above round cheeks pink from the cold air.

“Are you mad?” he asked. “That water is freezing. You can’t possibly think of swimming back to shore.”

I couldn’t explain to him that finfolk could handle colder water temperatures than humans could. And I couldn’t explain that my half-brother was waiting in the water for me to return.

“Maybe she’s a mermaid, Malloy,” one of the other men said, laughing. “She has to get back to her own people, you know.”

The men laughed and I forced myself to laugh with them.
Don’t look nervous,
I told myself. These men obviously didn’t believe in stories about mermaids. They had no reason to believe I was anything other than an insane girl who took frigid swims too far offshore.

But still, the gray-haired man called Malloy eyed me with a curious look. “Why don’t you have a seat in the cabin,” he said, smiling kindly. “Get out of this wind. We’ll take you back to the harbor.”

My gaze darted toward the water. All that stood between me and freedom was a deck covered with glistening, flopping fish, gasping their last breaths. What would the men do if I suddenly ran for the side and jumped overboard? Would they call the police? Would they send divers after me?

“Don’t attract attention,” Grandma had always told me. Tourists visited Swans Landing during the summer and the way we kept ourselves safe was to keep our secret and remain invisible in front of outsiders.

Sorry, Josh,
I said silently as I squeezed my eyes shut and let out a long breath. Then I opened them and smiled at Malloy.

“Thank you,” I said through clenched teeth. “That would be nice.”

I let Malloy lead me into the small cabin of the boat, hoping Josh would be smart enough to stay out of sight until we reached land.

Chapter Three

The fishing boat pulled into the harbor as the sun sank in the west behind us. I’d had to stay on the boat while the men took in their catch for the day. They were polite and courteous, and I didn’t feel too out of place aboard a fishing boat. I’d spent my life growing up near, on, and in the water. My best friend Dylan Waverly and I had helped Lake Westray reel in crab pots and rake for oysters in the Pamlico Sound. The water was my life.

I kept watch at the bow of the boat, my hands gripping the rails as the land approached. The day had never warmed up much and I shivered in the strong breeze that swirled around me. My eyes scanned the water constantly for signs of Josh, but he was nowhere near the surface, which left me both relieved and worried.

Malloy, the captain of the ship, had warned me several times that I might get seasick, being so close to the front of the boat. But I never got seasick. It wasn’t something that happened to finfolk.

“Where are we?” I asked as the other men rushed around, tossing ropes and climbing overboard to the creaky dock below. A city lay clustered around the shores of the harbor, sloping among the hills that stretched out behind it.

Malloy eyed me, raising one bushy gray eyebrow. “You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” He’d kept his eye on me ever since I’d arrived on the boat. Goosebumps prickled along my spine whenever I caught him staring at me with a look like he knew I was more than what I seemed to be.

When I didn’t respond, he said, “We’re in Stromness. On the Mainland. Orkney.”

Orkney! So we had at least made it to the right area.

“I’m here visiting family and got a little lost while swimming,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Maybe you can help me. Do you know of anyone by the name of Mooring?”

Malloy scratched his head. “Mooring? No, can’t say as I do. I know many families here in Stromness, but no Moorings.”

Finding the finfolk and my mother wouldn’t be easy. There had to be a clue, something I could go on that would lead me to the next step from here. Josh’s last name wouldn’t be much help. Canavan was purely a human name. His finfolk genes came from his great-grandmother.