Chapter Thirteen #2
mer-children, who’d gathered in a bright-eyed half circle to watch.
One last push, and he’d become like they were, like Merou, his
topside existence forgotten. Only one part of it mattered to him
now. “Merou,” he said desperately. “Help Kit, for God’s sake. That
bastard pushed him overboard.”
“Seriously? How long ago?”
“I don’t know. Ten minutes. Too long.”
Merou
pointed at the children, who followed the movement of his hand like
a bunch of baby piranha. “Listen up, you hatchlings! Human in the
water! Not the old one—leave that piece of shit for the sharks. A
boy, like this boy. Fetch!”
They
shimmered away. And Priddy, who had done everything he could do,
fell back into Merou’s embrace. A wave the height of Hagerawl
lighthouse rose over them, a wave from Lyonesse, with opals and
fire in its heart. Merou seized him by the armpits: lifted him
joyously to meet it.
Priddy unfolded. Everything in him that had ever been small,
tight, crushed or afraid turned outwards. He dived with the wave,
Merou still guiding him, holding him fast. He kicked, and the
movement came from the base of his spine, a dip and then a thrust,
and the place where his feet had been spread out like wings. An
explosive rush shot through him, sweeter than orgasm, wilder than
his wildest high. My fluke!
he cried to Merou through their wordless,
effortless link. My tail, my beautiful
tail...
Merou spiralled down with him, down and down, until the
turmoil of the upperworld was left far behind. Down here, the storm
was nothing but vast shifts of the water, the ocean flexing her
muscles, rubbing herself like a giant cat for the pleasure of it
all around the coast. Gently he turned Priddy to face him. Held him
by the shoulders so that they hung together in the silver-grey
light, face to face. Yes. Look at the
beauty of yourself. Look what you’ve become.
Priddy
lifted his tail. It rose at his command, a single entity,
infinitely flexible, rippling with power. He was clad from waist to
fluke in green-gold scales, his skin merging seamlessly into their
neat, scalloped rows. They were big as cup-rims across his belly
and hips, diminishing as his body tapered to overlapping disks no
bigger than a fingernail. He raised his great fin for Merou’s
inspection, and Merou took hold of it reverently, spreading out the
flukes, showing Priddy the fine-made fan-like bones of their
construction. Everything was finished now, finished and complete. A
second gap had opened painlessly in Priddy’s neck, and he was
breathing water over the blue-green fronds of his gills. He touched
the gap, touched his chest, held up one hand to see the perfect
living web between his fingers. Ran both those new-webbed hands
down his stomach, then lower.
Oh Christ. Where’s it gone?
Laughter like an underwater earthquake. Such laughter could
cause tsunamis. Priddy flipped his tail away, coiled it round
Merou’s in a deliciously scratchy clench. It’s not funny. Where’s my cock?
Tucked away behind your muscle walls, just where it should
be.
Show me.
Ah, you’ll learn to control it, like you’ll learn to keep
your gill-covers closed when you’re on land. You’ll learn how to
swim faster than dolphins, so fast it feels like flying. You’ll
learn to sing so loud and fine that whales in the Pacific will sing
back to you, and tell you when the whalers are coming, and we’ll
gather up all the mermen and maids from here to Wakayama and go and
smash holes in their boats. But I still didn’t mean to change you,
my landling! I never meant to change Francis. I didn’t
know.
You didn’t change me. I was more than halfway there. I chose
this for myself, and I bet Francis did, too. Anything to be with
you.
Oh, God, I hope so.
Yes, anything. Apart from not having a cock. Show
me!
Merou shook his head. Tenderly he reached down, made his hands
into fists and rubbed the knuckles up and down Priddy’s belly, just
inside the hipbones. These muscles here.
Pull them back, like curtains.
The sensation was awkward, a finesse of control like opening
his middle and ring fingers. Then it worked, and he grabbed for
Merou’s shoulders in elation. Yes!
Yes. There you are. Here we are.
Priddy raised his mouth to meet his kiss. Merou gave him a
breath, even though his blood was sparking with oxygen from his
pulsating gills, and Priddy gave one back, understanding in that
moment the ceremonial intimacy of the exchange, the ritual.
I give you my body’s life. Merou drew them hip to hip, his belly opening, blossoming as
Priddy’s had done. He wrapped a big, warm grip around Priddy’s
backside.
They
spun through the shifting light, slow rotations about a shared
centre, orbiting their own galactic heart. Priddy’s eyes were
closed, his hair floating. His whole world was here and now, in the
press and push of Merou’s shaft against his own, his topside life
drifting away. He was perfect and pure, and the sounds of a noisy
planet—an enormous splash, then a percussion, frantic, like a big
dog dropped in water and desperately trying to swim—meant nothing
to him.
Should
have meant nothing. The throbbing sound faltered and stopped.
Priddy drew Merou to a halt in the water, unaware of his own grace,
how he balanced them both and held them motionless in the current
with strong, sweeping beats of his tail. He opened his eyes. Above
them, so small from this distance he could raise his hand and blot
out the sight, a silver shape had breached the water. Colour worked
differently down here: it was hard to make out the crimson of her
cabin and nose. Nearer to hand, flashing closer every second,
spinning with the leftover force of its momentum, a ripped-off
rotor blade.
Landling in the water! Priddy could
make out five of them, five orange-clad tadpoles way above. The Sea
King’s complement for a rescue like this—full-size vessel, crew
unknown, not minor crises and social calls to Priddy in his
lighthouse—was five plus the pilot. He waited, but couldn’t count
six. The rotor blade whirled past him, close enough to touch, and
the helicopter started to dive.
Merou seized his shoulders. Priddy!
Yes. What do I do?
Remember what I said—some lives and deaths are fixed points
in time. You can’t save everyone.
How will I know?
Those ones will live or die in spite of you. And we’re not
immortal, or if we are, none of us has lived long enough to find
out. We can drown in air. We’re not harpoon-proof. We get caught in
tuna nets and ships’ propellers, and it’s a rare landling who’ll
have the courage and wit to carry us to water when we’re caught in
a dry-land change. He cupped Priddy’s
skull, drew him in and up for a kiss. His eyes were full of
promises, all the ways he’d find to mend this broken moment over
time. Remember.
I will. You remember too.
***
Trewin,
that good man, had gone down with his ship. He was still strapped
into the cockpit, his hand clenched round the joystick. Priddy knew
nothing about how the Sea Kings worked, but he was willing to bet
that hauled-back position was the best chance for a decent crash
landing—good enough, anyway, to keep the chopper wallowing until
the crew escaped. His face was serene beneath his helmet, and he
was out cold. Priddy hung onto the framework of the torn-out
copilot’s door, then wriggled boldly inside.
Now that
the craft had taken her plunge, she was heading down fast. That
scared Priddy half to death, but he welcomed it too. The pressure
on his lungs was altering something inside them, creating something
he needed, a kind of bright readiness, stars dancing round in his
chest. He unfastened Trewin’s safety belt, pushed his strange,
too-strong hands into his armpits, careful not to crush the fragile
human bones. The front of the cabin was intact. Trewin’s legs
weren’t caught. Priddy lifted him free, and the crippled aircraft
dropped away beneath them, a toy and then a speck and then a memory
only, gone.
Trewin was a family man, and not the kind who sprayed seed
over an egg-clutch and left it at that. Priddy cradled him. If
there was life in the jumpsuit-clad body, it was guttering,
flickering out. No, Priddy decided, and the stars in his chest danced faster. He
had to get him to surface, but that wouldn’t be enough, no matter
how hard he flicked his magnificent tail. God, it was good, though,
to slam down his fluke against the current! Priddy unleashed all
his power and shot towards topside, holding Trewin close. He pushed
back Trewin’s helmet, which was in the way, and he pressed his
mouth to the poor cold one. Priddy breathed.