“What if we go and look for evidence,” I suggested, trying to placate both of them.
“Where?” Luke asked, sounding incredulous.
“Well, for one we could try the internet,” I suggested. “Surely if the fish-people have actually been around for hundreds of years there would be some reports or sightings of them. If there’s nothing on the net, they probably don’t exist.”
“Not a bad idea,” he replied thoughtfully, “but I’m going for a swim first.”
“Me too,” said Josh, leaping up and packing his fishing gear away.
I trailed behind the boys, my mind spinning with the intriguing legend Josh had related.
I didn’t doubt that the possibility existed for such creatures to inhabit the planet with us. The few times my family had gone to the beach, I’d been utterly fascinated with the sea, spending ages staring at the ever-changing blue and wondering what secrets it held. From a tiny child I’d had dozens of books on ocean life, and as many documentaries, each new piece of information sparking more and more questions about the creatures that inhabited the alien world that covered most of the planet.
It was, in my mind at least, entirely possible that humans weren’t the only sentient life on earth, and that there were creatures equally as intelligent as humans that lived in the ocean. After all, we know so little about that world, only able to spend, at most, an hour or so under the water.
The question I couldn’t answer was what on earth they were doing four hundred kilometres from the sea?
Luke and Josh were already cannonballing into the pool when I got back to the house. I changed quickly into my pale yellow bikini, shuffling to the pool wrapped in a towel before stepping cautiously into the water.
I blushed as Josh whistled at me.
‘Looking good there, Ally Cat.”
I didn’t jump into water any more, mainly because that’s how I’d got into trouble that day with Brent but, more recently, because I preferred my bikini to stay on the newly developed curves of my body.
Before Brent’s accident, swimming had been a sort of refuge for me. I’d competed nationally in swimming competitions and, when I wasn’t training or doing homework, I was in the pool, floating on my back, or diving underwater, the thick silence a relaxing haven from the world above.
I remembered games I’d played as a kid, pretending to be a dolphin, or a ray, or some other oceanic creature, longing to be able to stay submerged for longer than the short time I could hold my breath.
As a child I’d had vivid dreams of swimming in the ocean, completely submerged, twirling and spiralling in the currents, drifting in the great kelp forests that looked, to me at least, as comforting as a lullaby as they swayed in the tide.
Now, though, I was wary of water. It held a dark fascination for me, one I was too afraid to entertain.
Josh and Luke had pulled lilos into the pool, Luke pushing a spare one towards me. We climbed, laughing, onto them, slipping and splashing each other as we did so.
The boys had been sidetracked from the legend of the fish-people by a local rugby game that was on that afternoon. They spent a good ten minutes discussing tactics and team strategy before the conversation lapsed enough for me to change the subject back to the legend.
“Josh,” I started, swishing my hand in the water so that my lilo faced him better, “what are the fish-people supposed to look like?”
Luke laughed. “You really believe there might be some half-fish half-human thing in the mountains?” he asked incredulously.
“It’s not impossible,” I replied with as much dignity as I could muster. “Anyway, while you guys watch rugby, I’m going to do some internet research, and it would help if I had an idea of what they’re supposed to look like.”
He laughed again, before tipping out of his lilo and swimming to the edge of the pool. “I’m going to make lunch while you two dreamers make up stories.” He pulled himself out of the pool.
I turned back to Josh.
“Sorry about that.” He waved his hand in Luke’s direction. “He’s been a bit grumpy the last few days hasn’t he?”
I grinned and nodded.
“Yeah, it’s just ‘cause he can’t go on this youth camp because…”
“I’m here?” I guessed.
Josh blushed, looking sheepish. “Yeah, there’s this girl he’s interested in… anyway, he shouldn’t take it out on you.”
“So the fish-people?” I asked, wanting desperately to change the subject.
“Well, I’ve never actually seen one myself,” he admitted, “but they’re apparently very humanlike, except that they can breathe underwater.”
I hadn’t expected that. My mental picture of them had been a typical mermaid picture – a human torso and head, and fishlike tail.
“You mean they have legs?”
He nodded, grinning. “Yup, apparently you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from normal humans, except that they’re supposedly really beautiful, unless of course you find yourself underwater with one of them.”
“What happens underwater?” I asked, feeling breathlessly frightened and strangely excited at the same time.
“Well, apart from their ability to breathe underwater –” he dropped his voice to a whisper, looking furtively around him “– legend has it that they are carnivorous.”
“As in they eat fish?” I asked, trying to dispel the underlying menace that sparked a bubble of excited nervousness in the pit of my stomach.
He shook his head, leaning towards me across the shimmering strip of water that separated our lilos. I leaned toward him, almost holding my breath in anticipation.
“When they are in the water,” he whispered, “another side of them takes over… a predatory side.”
I nodded leaning towards him. “So if you were anywhere near them, you would become…”
“PREY”
The sudden volume of his voice, combined with him launching himself onto me and tipping me into the water, paled next to the fear that engulfed me as the water closed over my head.
Josh had wrapped his arms and legs around me and was pulling me towards the bottom of the pool, a big stupid grin all over his face.
Panic ripped through me as everything seemed to move in slow motion, the bubbles of air rising from Josh’s mouth as he laughed at me, expanding outward in ever widening, glistening rings, the ineffective thrashing of my arms and legs as I struggled to reach the surface a backdrop to the pain that was arcing up my neck.
We surfaced, what must have been only a few seconds later, Josh still giggling as I turned on him.
“Are you insane?” I gasped, most of the volume I’d intended to be in my voice fading as my whole body began to shake.
He laughed. “Come on, Alex, you were taking it all so seriously, I thought you’d appreciate a bit of humour.”
I turned and waded out of the water, trying to contain the unexpected fury that burnt red hot at my centre. I knew this feeling, even though I tried to deny it: it was the same feeling I’d had that day in the pool with Brent. An illogical and violent reaction to being unable to move in the water.
I stood with my towel clutched around my body, sucking great lungfuls of air in as I desperately willed my pounding heart to slow and the panic that tunnelled my vision to ebb.
Josh didn’t seem to notice and was still chortling as he walked through the wide-flung