Chapter 7
Nerida
The wind, which has been hammering against the walls of this wooden box for hours, simply ceases. It does not fade; it is severed. The sudden quiet rings in my ears, heavier than the storm. The house groans, the timbers settling into the mud, creaking like the bones of a dying whale.
I open my eyes.
The room is gray, washed in the weak light of a sun smothered by clouds. The air is still thick, heavy with moisture, but the chaotic energy is gone, replaced by an eerie, stagnant stillness.
I am lying on the floor. Jack is slumped in the armchair above me, his head lolling to the side, his mouth slightly open. He looks thoroughly broken.
My body feels different. Sated. The hunger that usually gnaws at my belly is quieted by what he gave me, but there is a new heaviness to my limbs. The air in this room lacks the oxygen-rich circulation of the current. I take a breath, and it rattles slightly in my chest.
I sit up. My hair hangs in tangled, drying ropes around my shoulders. I look at Jack. He is asleep, dark shadows bruised beneath his eyes. I remember the taste of him—salt and iron. I remember the way he screamed.
I stand. My legs are steady, though the skin feels uncomfortably tight, and I walk to the window.
Outside, the world has stopped. The trees that were thrashing last night are now statues, some bent double, others snapped like twigs. The water has risen into a brown, churning soup that laps at the edges of the veranda.
But above…
I look up. The sky is a circle of impossible blue. A perfect cylinder of clarity carved through the gray tumult. The eye. We are in the belly of the storm, and it is watching us.
Behind me, a shift of fabric. A sharp intake of breath.
I turn.
Jack is awake. He looks at my nakedness, at the pale flesh of my stomach, and his face floods with color. I find his shame fascinating. Last night, he was a willing participant. This morning, he is a penitent.
“Nerida,” he croaks. His voice is wrecked, stripped raw by the sounds he made in the dark.
“The wind has stopped,” I say. My voice is lower, raspier.
He rubs a hand over his face, scrubbing at his eyes as if trying to erase the memory of the last few hours. “It’s the eye,” he mutters. “It won’t last long. Maybe an hour. Maybe less.” He stands up, his movements stiff. He winces as he shifts his hips, and a flicker of satisfaction curls in my gut.
I did that.
I marked him.
He avoids looking directly at me now. He moves to a pile of laundry on a side table, rummaging through it with frantic, clumsy hands. He pulls out a bundle of gray cotton and tosses it toward me.
“Here,” he says, staring studiously at the floorboards. “Put this on.”
I catch the garment. It is soft, worn thin by time. I hold it up. A T-shirt.
“Why?” I ask. “I do not require insulation.”
“It’s not for insulation,” he snaps, then softens. “It’s… just put it on. Please.”
I pull the shirt over my head, inhaling the intense smell of him on the fabric. It hangs loosely on my frame, the hem hitting my mid-thigh, dry and scratchy against my sensitive skin. A constant, irritating friction.
“Better?” I ask, stepping closer.
He flinches, then nods. “Yeah. Better.”
He walks past me, keeping a wide berth, and heads for the sliding glass door. He unlocks it, and the sound is a gunshot in the silence. He slides it open and steps out onto the veranda.
I follow.
The air outside is strange. It is warm, humid, with the smell of crushed leaves and wet earth, and the pressure is incredibly low. It pulls at my eardrums, a sensation not unlike rising too quickly from the deep.
Jack grips the railing and looks out at the devastation. The yard is gone. In its place is a lake of debris. A corrugated iron roof from a shed sits in the middle of where the lawn used to be. A massive gum tree has been uprooted, its roots clawing at the sky like the fingers of a drowning giant.
“Jesus,” he whispers. “It’s all gone.”
I move to stand beside him. I do not see tragedy but power, and the ocean reclaiming what was stolen.
“It is merely rearranged,” I say. “The water moves things. It cleanses.”
He laughs, a bitter, sharp sound. “Cleanses? Look at this, Nerida. It’s ruined. Everything I built… everything I tried to fix…” He gestures to the waterline, which is creeping dangerously close to the veranda’s floorboards. “It takes everything.”
I look at the water. It is brown and ugly, choked with silt, not the clear, crushing black of my home. But it is still water. It calls to me.
“Why are you here, Jack?” I ask. “You fear the water. Yet you live on its edge.”
His eyes searching my face. The blue sky above casts a strange, heavenly light on his features, softening the lines of worry.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “Maybe I’m waiting for it to finish the job.” He turns back to the flood. “What about you? You said you were… hunting. But you were hurt. You were running.”
I hesitate. The truth is a dangerous thing to share. Information is leverage, but he has fed and sheltered me. And last night… last night he gave me more than just shelter.
“There is a war,” I say softly.
He frowns. “A war? In the ocean?”
“Not your ocean,” I correct him. “Deeper. In the trenches, where the pressure would crush your submarines like aluminum cans. There are… factions. My people. We are not all the same.”
I look at my hands, the webbing between my fingers translucent in the sunlight. “I was a soldier,” I continue. “A specialized unit. We were bred for stealth. For assassination. We strike in the dark, where no light reaches.”
“And?” Jack prompts.
“And I was good at it.” Old pride, cold and sharp rises within me. “I was the best, but my commander… he grew ambitious. He wanted to expand our territory into the thermal vents. Forbidden, sacred ground.”
I pause, the memory of the betrayal tasting like ash in my mouth. “He sent my unit in as a distraction,” I say, my voice hardening. “He knew the guardians of the vents would wake. He knew they would slaughter us. He used us as bait so he could flank them.”
Jack is silent, watching me.
“My sisters died,” I say. “Torn apart. Eaten. I was the only one fast enough to escape the thermal blast. I deserted. I swam up, past the crush depth, past the twilight zone… until the pressure headache nearly blinded me. I swam until I hit the storm.”
“You’re a deserter,” Jack says. It is not an accusation but a recognition.
“I am a survivor,” I hiss. “There is a difference.”
He nods slowly. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a packet of cigarettes, realizes they are soaked, and throws them into the water with a curse.
“I was SES,” he says suddenly. “State Emergency Service years ago.”
I tilt my head. “A soldier?”
“A rescuer,” he corrects. “Or… I was supposed to be.” He grips the railing tighter. “There was a flood. Not a cyclone, just… rain. Days of it. A family was trapped on a roof. We took the boat out. The current was… it was like a living thing. Angry.”
“We saved the mother and father, but the kid… he slipped.” Jack’s voice drops to a hollow whisper. “He just slipped. I had his hand...” He slowly looks down at his own hand, still clamped around the wood.
“He looked at me,” Jack says. “He didn’t scream. He just looked at me. And then the water took him. Just… snatched him away. Down into the dark.”
He shudders. “I quit the next day. Moved out here away from people. I thought if I lived near the water, I could… I don’t know… make peace with it, but I hate it. I hate it because it takes things away, and it never gives them back.”
The silence stretches between us, heavy and humid. The eye is moving. I see the wall of gray clouds approaching again, a towering fortress of wind and rain.
The reprieve is ending.
I look at this man. This broken, soft, warm thing. He carries a guilt that is not his to carry. In the ocean, death is simply part of the cycle. If you slip, you are eaten. There is no malice in the current, only hunger. But humans attach meaning to the mechanics of survival.
I reach out.
My hand covers his on the railing. My skin is cool and damp, but his is hot and dry. The contrast is no longer violent but balancing.
He looks down at my hand, then up at my eyes.
“The water takes,” I say softly. “Yes. It is greedy.” I squeeze his hand, my claws retracting, the pads of my fingers gentle against his skin. “But, Jack,” I whisper. “The water also gives things back.”
His breath hitches. He understands. I am the thing the water gave back. I am the return on his investment of grief.
For a moment, we are not predator and prey or monster and human. We are two soldiers, battered by our respective wars, standing in the ruins of the world, finding a strange, jagged comfort in the wreckage.
He turns his hand over, interlacing his fingers with mine. The webbing of my hand feels strange against his digits, but he does not pull away.
He squeezes back. “Maybe,” he whispers. “Maybe.”
Then, I cough.
It starts as a tickle in the back of my throat, a dryness that swallowing cannot fix. It erupts into a wet, rattling hack that shakes my entire frame. I double over, clutching my chest. It feels like there is sand in my lungs.
“Nerida?” Jack’s hands are on my shoulders instantly. “What’s wrong?”
I heave, trying to clear the obstruction, but there is nothing there. It is not an obstruction. It is a lack.
I straighten up, gasping. The air feels too thin. Too dry. Even with the humidity, it is not enough. I need the weight of the water and salt soaking into my pores.
“I-I…” I try to speak, but my voice cracks.
Jack looks at me, and his face goes pale. “Your skin.”
I look down at my arm where the gray T-shirt has ridden up. The skin on my forearm, which is usually sleek and iridescent blue-gray, is dulling. It looks like old slate. And there, near the wrist, a spiderweb fracture has appeared. A crack.
I rub it. Flakes of skin peel away like dried paint.
“I am drying out,” I whisper, the realization cold in my stomach.
“But… the humidity,” Jack stammers. “It’s a sauna out here.”
“It is not enough,” I rasp. “I am a creature of the deep, Jack. My biology requires high pressure. It requires salt saturation. The tap water… the rain… are too fresh. It is diluting me.” Another cough wracks me, harder this time. I taste blood. Not his blood but mine. It tastes thin and watery.
“I am dying,” I say, stating the fact as calmly as I would report a change in the current. “My cells are losing cohesion.”
Jack stares at the crack in my skin. He looks at the approaching wall of the storm. He looks at the brown, churning floodwater below.
“Salt,” he mutters. “You need salt.”
“I need the ocean,” I say. “Real ocean.”
“We can’t get to the ocean,” he says, panic rising in his voice. “The roads are gone. The storm is coming back.”
I look at the wall of clouds. The eye is passing. The wind is starting to pick up again, a low whistle that will soon turn into a scream.
“Then I will die here,” I say. “In this box.”
“No,” Jack says firmly. He grabs my arm, careful not to touch the cracked skin. “No. I didn’t pull you out of the mud to watch you turn to dust.” He looks around wildly, his eyes landing on the bathroom window. “The bathtub,” he says. “We filled it, but it’s fresh water.”
He looks at me, a desperate idea forming in his eyes. “I have salt,” he says. “In the pantry. Rock salt. Cooking salt. Bags of it. I was going to use it for… it doesn’t matter.”
He grabs my hand again. “Come inside,” he commands. “Now.”
I let him pull me back into the house. The air inside feels even drier now, suffocating. My skin itches, a thousand tiny needles pricking at my nerves. The glow in my chest, usually a steady blue pulse, is flickering. It is dim like a dying ember.
I stumble as we cross the threshold. My legs feel heavy like stone. Jack catches me, his arm going around my waist. He takes my weight without hesitation.
“I’ve got you,” he grunts. “I’ve got you.” He carries me toward the bathroom. I lean against him, my head on his shoulder. His body heat and the steady thump of his heart. It is the only anchor I have left.
The storm is returning. The wind slams into the house again, shaking the foundation. The light from the eye is gone, swallowed by the gray. But as my vision blurs and the cracks in my skin widen, I realize something.
I am afraid of leaving him.
And that terrifies me more than the dryness ever could.