33. ZARA
ZARA
“Focus, Zara!” I gasped as the cold seawater slapped me around the face. “You’re supposed to take control of it, not kiss it.” It was times like these that made me regret my decision to let Taryn undertake my training.
“I’m doing my best,” I gritted, catching the towel he threw me and wiping my dripping face.
“Well you need to do better. Try again. And this time—”
“I know, I know, focus.” That was a lot easier said than done.
This was our fourth lesson since I’d arrived in Fae, and I wasn’t progressing nearly as fast as I’d hoped I would.
I’d reached the point where calling the water to me was almost easy now but getting it to do what I wanted was another matter entirely.
Every time I tried to attack Taryn with it, it would turn around and drench me instead, to the point that I’d given up on wearing anything but a swimsuit when we were training.
I’d pleaded with him to switch the focus of my training to the battle cry instead, but he’d insisted I needed to master my control of water first.
I tossed the towel aside and reached out to the waves again, carefully forming a fist the way he’d taught me, then sent it barrelling towards him only to have it stop two feet from him as if it had met an invisible wall and splash uselessly to the sand.
“Did you do that?” I asked hopefully and he shook his head.
“No. You did. You’ve got to stop worrying about hurting me, Zara, because you won’t be able to.” Not at this rate I wouldn’t. “Now, try again.”
“Oh, what’s the point?” I sank down onto the sand with an annoyed huff. “It’s not like I’m ever going to get it.”
“Not with that attitude you’re not. It’s no wonder Seth went off and left you if you’re this much of a drama queen when you’re with him too.”
A mixture of hurt and anger coursed through me at his words, and this time the water answered my call – without me even realising I’d asked it to.
Erupting from the little rockpool behind Taryn like a miniature tsunami, it hit him right between the shoulder blades, sending him staggering forwards a few paces, then the tail end of it flipped up and cascaded over him, leaving him drenched from head to toe.
He shook off the worst of it like a dog, grinning as cold droplets landed on me, then sank down next to me on the sand.
“It looks like anger is the catalyst then. I suspected it might be from what you said about the battle cry surfacing when you get angry. That’s not necessarily a good thing though.
It may serve you well in a fight, but not when we’re trying to practise.
You’re going to have to learn to control it when you’re not angry too.
“I didn’t mean what I said about Seth by the way,” he added as he squeezed water out of his braids. “I just wanted to rile you up to test my theory.”
“Well, I’d say your little experiment worked,” I said.
“Maybe a little too well.” I couldn’t help smirking at the thought of what I’d done because it served him right for deliberately baiting me.
“Perhaps I should try directing my attacks at imaginary enemies in future, instead of someone I don’t want to hurt. ”
He tilted his head to the side the way I was learning he did when he was giving something careful consideration.
“You know, that may not be such a bad idea. We should definitely give it a try. But not today. How about a quick dip before we head back up to the house? It will help to recharge you. And we’re both already pretty wet anyway,” he added with a carefree laugh before running towards the waves without waiting for my answer.
Not that I would have considered saying no, because swimming with Taryn was always an adventure.
It seemed like every sea creature for miles around instinctively knew when he was in the water and would come out to play.
So far I’d got to swim with a dolphin, a sea turtle, and so many different varieties of fish I’d given up trying to identify them all.
There’d been a baby octopus once as well, which had freaked me out at first, but he’d assured me that none of the creatures who lived in these waters would ever harm a siren, and I had to admit it had been kind of cute.
We lay on our backs and floated in companionable silence on the surface for a while, just absorbing the ocean’s energy, and it wasn’t long before a few inquisitive little fish came along and started circling us.
I looked down when a larger one nudged my side before popping it’s head out of the water with what I could only describe as a hopeful look in its eyes.
“It wants you to pet it,” Taryn called lazily. “That one’s a bit of an attention seeker.”
I reached out tentatively and rubbed the top of its head gently with my finger until it dipped back below the waves. Then let out a little shriek when I heard it say ‘thank you’ in my head.
“Er, Taryn,” I called out to him, “do the fish around here talk by any chance?” He’d drifted quite a way from me and hadn’t heard me squeal but he immediately flipped over and swam back towards me.
“Did it speak to you?” he said, with an excited look on his face.
“I thought I heard it say thank you when it had had enough of me petting it. In my head, not out loud. I was probably just imagining it.”
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss it. Some of us do have the ability to communicate telepathically with the creatures of the ocean.
I can do it, but Cassien couldn’t. I hadn’t dared to hope you would have received that blessing as well as the dream walking and the battle cry. This is wonderful news, Zara.”
I wasn’t sure what was so wonderful about it. It wasn’t as if fish were likely to be great conversationalists. Weren’t they supposed to have really short memory spans? I couldn’t say that having the same conversation every five minutes about plankton really appealed to me.
“Wonderful,” I echoed, not wanting to sound ungrateful for the ‘blessing’, and he laughed.
“Admittedly the fish can be a bit boring,” he said, correctly interpreting my lack of enthusiasm, “but the larger creatures can be very entertaining. It took all my powers of persuasion to stop that baby octopus from giving you a good tickle the other day.”
“Hang on a minute,” I said, “all these creatures randomly appearing whenever we get in the water hasn’t been random at all, has it? You’ve been making them come here.”
“Not making. Inviting. They wouldn’t come if they didn’t want to. And some of them turned up with no encouragement from me at all, because they sensed a new siren in their territory and they were curious about you. Let’s see if you can call a dolphin to us.”
I could tell he wasn’t going to let me out of the water without trying, so I closed my eyes and pictured the little dolphin who’d come to play with us last time. I didn’t have long to wait before he came racing towards us and started playfully bumping my hip.
Hello little fellow, I thought at him and felt an unexpected surge of delight when he said Hello back, and then, We play?
“How do I play with a dolphin?” I asked Taryn. “He’s saying he wants to play.”
“Just swim with him,” he said. “To him, that is playing.”
I laughed as he rose up and splashed me with his flippers and I could feel his glee as I splashed him back. He circled around me a few times before swimming away and I thought he was leaving, but then he turned back towards me. You come? he thought at me and I shook my head.
Too deep for me. He immediately shot back to me, bumping my arm with his fin until I got the message that he wanted me to hold onto it. I let out a little squeak of surprise as he suddenly took off with me clinging to him for dear life.
“Don’t go too far.” I heard Taryn’s voice in my head, as if the three of us were now telepathically linked, and my new friend immediately slowed down and started swimming back towards the shore in a zigzagging pattern.
As soon as he’d returned me to Taryn I heard Play again soon? before he shot back out to sea.
“It’s an incredible feeling, isn’t it?” Taryn said once we were back on the beach getting dried off.
“Now you know you can do it, you’ll hear them all.
It can be a bit overwhelming until you learn to filter it out, but it’s worth a little discomfort for the privilege of being able to communicate with them. ”
“It was pretty cool,” I admitted. “And I can certainly understand now why you don’t eat fish.
” I’d been surprised he didn’t when he lived so close to the sea, but after what had just happened, I knew I wouldn’t be eating it again either.
Because there was no way to justify eating a creature you might once have had a conversation with.
I was going to miss having a nice swordfish steak now and then, but that was a small price to pay for hobnobbing with dolphins.