Water
Authors: Natasha Hardy
Surrender to the power of the water…
Alex knows she is different. She’s plagued by nightmares that feel shockingly real and an intense restlessness she cannot explain.
As the long hot summer holidays stretch before her, Alex seeks out adventure in the rugged mountains of Injisuthi. But during a camping trip to the mystic jade pools, Alex meets Merrick, a boy who tells her the shocking truth about herself, and Alex’s nightmare is about to become reality.
Because Alex is no ordinary teenager…she is a half-mermaid and her adventures are only just beginning.
NATASHA HARDY
began writing when the adventure of her life had turned dark and gloomy, as all adventures must at some point, in order for them to be a true adventure. It was in the depths of the winter of her adventure that she found a way, through writing, to escape into the sun.
Like most escapes it turned into an adventure all of its own, where characters have their own problems to solve, albeit far more complex problems involving mythical creatures that aren’t meant to exist, and expect far more than they reasonably should.
Her escapes, for there are many still to come, are sparked by the adventures she has had in the wildly beautiful South African bush, seasoned with the true stories of the explorers who make up her ancestry, and woven through with the intrigue, and sometimes sheer madness, of living in Africa.
She now spends most of her time – happily – in a world of words, and the rest trying to keep up with her full time doctor, part-time rock star husband and their two gorgeously mischievous little boys.
She would very much like to chat to you at
natashahardybooks.com
.
To my husband and boys who are the sparkle and magic in my life, my family for their unending love and support, and to the Light that shines on in the darkness.
A huge thank you to:
My English teacher Mrs Allison, for showing me the magic of words.
Victoria, my Carina UK editor, and overall guide through one of the most exciting and daunting experiences of my life.
The editing team for seeing the potential in
Water
and helping me to make it into the best story it could be.
The design, marketing team and technical team, for turning my dream into a reality.
My friends, for the encouragement and laughs you have given me along the way.
We’d been running for days. The children were exhausted and I was worried that we’d lose some of them if they didn’t rest soon.
I still seethed at the betrayal. How could they?
The fathers of some of these precious little ones who were so trusting and so young!
Slavery at that age would mean they’d never really remember freedom, which of course was what the slave traders wanted. If a person couldn’t remember freedom then freedom was not something they’d long for, not something they’d fight for. They would be happy with their lot in life, content to live as animals, owned creatures.
I didn’t have the energy left to expend on fruitless anger. Anger that I could do nothing with because we were in a hopeless situation and should I have the opportunity to confront these monsters my worst fears would be realised, and all would be lost.
We’d crossed the river sometime around midnight when the moon was directly above us and I was pushing to get to the dark slash of forest that signalled a vague hope of rescue.
Vellamo, love of my life, had promised to meet us there with as many men as he could find from neighbouring tribes. My heart twisted, as the bile rose in my throat, at the certainty of the battle that would follow. The tribe that pursued us was renowned for their ruthlessness. No one left alive unless they wanted them for darker purposes.
“Almost there,” I whispered to some of the women beside me. One of the small babies cried pitifully as its mother shushed it urgently, trying to keep it quiet, and all of us safe.
My heart began to pound with fear as we approached the forest. Our tribe didn’t venture into the forests of these mountains. There was ancient magic here that was not friendly to the mere mortals that lived on its door step.
A rustle in the trees ahead froze every muscle in my body, as I crouched, spear in hand, ready to fight whatever revealed itself as best I could.
A warbling whistle filled me with relief as I recognised our tribe’s greeting. He was here, Vellamo, he’d kept his word. My body trembled with exhaustion as he stepped out of the shadows along with some of the other tribal leaders I’d been hoping would come.
He was so beautiful in that moment, tall, lithe and strong. I was only too happy when he led our little band of vulnerable women, children and babies into the shelter of the mountain.
As we picked our way through the shadowed valley over boulders and around the icy stream I was surprised to hear the rustle and whispered voices. Instantly my senses were on high alert.
This was not part of the plan.
I daringly brushed Vellamo’s arm, challenging his decision with a questioning expression meant only for him to see. Insubordination of this nature was not well tolerated in our tribe, and I was afraid to offend him.
“They are the families of the other tribe’s men, Sabine. They are also worried about the safety of their families.”
I thought this over carefully. It made sense that if the men had agreed to leave their villages to protect us, they would be concerned about the safety of their loved ones too.
Regardless, the logic didn’t completely wash away my anxiety.
I was all too aware how power could corrupt, having watched the chief of our village agree to sell the women and children in exchange for more grazing land and power, women and children, some of whom were his own daughters and grandchildren.
We rounded a corner and I stopped short, my heart in my mouth.
We were at a complete dead end, a massive waterfall in front of us, falling in a white froth into an inky pool.
One entrance.
One exit.
I looked up at Vellamo again, struggling not to question his authority, struggling to follow him into what appeared to me to be the worst possible position. I didn’t touch him, but he must have felt my hesitance, and surprisingly wasn’t offended by my concern.
“This will allow us to defend you more easily without worrying about them coming around from the back.”
His voice was firm but his eyes gentle as he took my hand and led me and the other weary travellers into the perfect trap.
Abandoned
Brent’s happy freckled face laughed at me as he raced me to the pool. I laughed a delighted giggle from deep within my belly as I flung myself from the edge of the pool and into the water, a few moments after him.
I didn’t hit the water as I’d expected.
The air pummelled out of my lungs as the water closed over my head in a viscous bubble that seemed too thick to be water. It moved over my skin in sickening silky threads, pushing me deeper and deeper.
Brent seemed to move in slow motion above me through the dappled light, the splashing of his arms and legs as he swam creating a halo of bubbles around him.
I was out of air. The surface may as well have been a million miles away, because I couldn’t move to get to it.
Pain seared up the sides of my head, so intense everything around me faded in colour. I screamed, the last of my oxygen bubbling to the surface, as the pain intensified to unbearable.
And then with a sharp jolt, it was gone.
Brent wasn’t moving towards me any more. He was floating, his arms and legs spread-eagled and his eyes frozen open in shock.
I breathed in and out and in, before the water-muffled screaming that always woke me from this nightmare filled my ears.
Sunlight pierced the darkness of the dream as I forced my eyelids open angrily. I knew I should expect the nightmare. It had been happening for years now, but it always started so happily, and it was the only way I could remember what my adored older half-brother had looked like.
It took me a few moments to remember where I was. The unfamiliar smell of lavender and mothballs and the alien sound of a cockerel crowing jogged my exhausted mind. The Van Heerden’s, Dad’s oldest friends’ farm.
I’d been so excited to spend almost two months in the Drakensberg with Dad for my summer holidays, but, as inevitably seemed to happen with Dad, he’d changed the plans at the last moment, abandoning me instead with friends as he rushed off to do business in Namibia.
I took a shuddery breath, still trying to calm my pounding heart. Cold misery clouded my thoughts, in sharp contrast to the buttery sunshine seeping between the gaps in the curtains of my bedroom.
The day stretched interminably long before me. As much as I liked Maryka and Allan, their two sons hadn’t been overly enthusiastic about my forced appearance into their lives.
Luke’s begrudging inclusion of me in some of his holiday activities – mostly fishing and shooting – was odd. We’d been good friends as children and I’d been surprised by how sulky and resentful he’d been, until I happened to overhear a conversation he was having with his mother, two nights into my stay.
The heated conversation had been crystal clear as I’d stopped in the passageway that led to the lounge where they were sitting.
“But Mom,” he was arguing, “I organised to go on that youth camp months ago, and all my friends are going and…”
“Luke,” she’d interrupted him quietly but firmly, “the camp is full. If there was another spot, she could have gone with you, but I’ve spoken to David and there’s nothing we can do about it. I know you’re disappointed, my boy, but you can go next holiday.”
Luke had tried to argue again, only to be lambasted by an impressive guilt trip and quietly threatened with grounding if he didn’t at least try to include me in his now forced holiday on the farm.
Blood had rushed into my cheeks, as I’d listened to him trying to get rid of me, embarrassment and rejection burning in equal portions.
I’d had a fleeting moment of hope, somewhere at the very beginning of the holiday, that maybe, just maybe, these kids would be kids I could get along with. That perhaps the easy friendship we’d shared when we were younger would have somehow survived the avalanche of hormones that had transformed Luke, at least, into the shadow of the man I could see he would one day be.
I’d been surprised when he’d appeared out of the kitchen just after we’d arrived at the farm. He was taller than I remembered and his lean frame, clad in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, had displayed sharply defined muscles that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.
We’d had so much fun as kids. My memory of those days was filled with carefree laughter. I’d been happy, content and confident in who I was. I’d been comfortable in my own skin. The five of us – Luke, Josh his best friend, Matt, Luke’s brother Brent and I – had always been out finding adventures.
My heart squeezed at the thought of Brent. Some days, after the dream, I was angry with him. Angry for having a heart attack at eighteen, angry because every time I saw his face in my dreams it reminded me how vital and full of life he’d been, angry because his sudden and untimely death had changed everything – our parents’ marriage disintegrating, the cruel and snide comments about him at school and finally, in this last year, Mom and Dad’s divorce and my subsequent and very unhappy move to Johannesburg.
The kids at my new school were completely uninterested in a quiet country girl with little in common with them. I had to admit that I found their constant obsession with the latest fashions, and admiration of the muscle-bound, image-conscious rugby team, exhausting.
It hadn’t helped that puberty had hit me with the force of a wrecking ball, my body changing almost daily until eventually, to my great relief, I’d found in the last month a semblance of equilibrium.
I’d been assured dozens of times by the myriad of counsellors I’d been sent to, that it was these changes and my new school that was the real reason behind the terrifying sleepwalking that had started a year ago, and that the sleepwalking – a new and horrible habit – had nothing to do with the recurring nightmare that had haunted me most nights since Brent’s death.
I sighed, relief silvering my black mood a little. I’d stayed in bed last night. I was sure of it. It was either the nightmare or the sleepwalking, never both.
This had of course put a spanner in the counsellors’ explanation of what was going on with me. Their reassurances that I was a perfectly normal teenager working through some tough times had fallen a little flat; that I was not responsible for Brent’s decision to dive into the pool straight out of the Jacuzzi, that this was the cause of his young and healthy heart seizing up.
And then the dream would resurface, or I’d find myself standing outside the front door, my feet wet with dew, and deep beneath the anguish and fear I knew there was something wrong. That there was something else that I just couldn’t put my finger on, something frighteningly alluring just at the very edge of my conscious thought that always slipped away from me when my eyes sprang open in fright.
I pushed at the despair that had clouded my thoughts, prodding it sullenly back into the prison I’d created for it, and refocusing on the potential for a normal teenage friendship that still lurked in the days ahead. The friendship I’d hoped to nurture with Luke hadn’t been helped by the almost claustrophobic tightening of parental supervision that my presence had caused. Luke was usually allowed to explore the farm and some of the surrounding bush freely, but my Dad had pushed Allan to keep us close to the house.
The conversation had been so odd. We’d been sitting around the fire after dinner, the adults reminiscing about past holidays they’d had on the farm…
“Do you remember that one trip we did up Injisuthi when we found those pools?” Dad had asked Allan.
“Yeah, we spent hours shooting down that rock slide into that big moss-covered one,” Allan had joined in.
“The jade pools,” Maryka had murmured, her eyes glazing over.
“I’ve never come across anything like them again,” Allan had commented, “they were so deep, almost black in the centre.”
Maryka had shivered slightly in the warm evening air.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been up there looking for them again,” Allan had continued, his face wistful and slightly puzzled at the same time, as he relived some long-ago memory.
“How old were we?” Dad had asked.
“Sixteen,” Allan had said with certainty.
“It was the year you dated…” Maryka’d paused, her expression anxious, as if she’d started a sentence she didn’t want to finish. “Talita,” she concluded awkwardly.
Allan had whispered something under his breath to her and she’d looked away from the group into the night, her face taut.
“Oh yes, I remember now,” Dad had muttered as he’d become suddenly preoccupied by the bones and scraps of bedraggled salad leaves on his plate.
“I’m not surprised you couldn’t remember how to get back,” said Maryka, her voice falsely cheerful as she changed the subject, directing her comment at Allan. “You boys spent more time sampling the local’s homemade beer than you did mapping out the routes.”
Dad and Allan had laughed, the tension fading like the afterglow of a dying fire.
Although the adults had done their very best to brush over the tension that’d encapsulated them in those few moments, the one kilometre “adventure zone” as they’d called it – as if giving it an adventurous name made the restriction less harsh – had belied their casual dismissal of their adventure.
I sighed, stretching and struggling to shake the frustration of my current circumstances, as I swung my legs out of bed and pulled the curtains aside, squinting as excitable South African sunshine glinted off the dew-bejewelled rolling lawns of the Van Heerdens’ garden.
The garden extended luxuriously from the house, edged by fields of waving crops on the left, and lusciously green grazing fields on centre and right. The whole tranquil country view was eclipsed however by the dramatic mountains that encroached on the farm.
The Injisuthi mountain range ran in a deeply contrasted gash of soaring rock capped emerald-green peaks and darkly treed valleys.
I stared at the mountains, willing the unexplained adults’ reactions to make sense. They’d seemed – I struggled to understand it – afraid…
I continued to search the mountains, willing them to provide some clue, because Dad’s reaction in particular had been aggressively protective when he was usually so relaxed and carefree. I’d been surprised by the conversation I’d overheard him having with Allan just before he left.
“Allan, I’m trusting you with my reason for living,” he’d told his friend in a quiet but intense tone. “ Please, my friend, look after her.”
Allan had promised him he’d keep me close to the house and out of harm’s way. He’d reassured Dad that Luke was a responsible kid and would make sure I was safe.
Leaning against the dividing wall between the lounge and the kitchen where I’d been eavesdropping, I only just managed to slip out of the wide-flung sliding doors and settle into a camp chair by the dying fire before Dad came outside to say goodbye.
I’d been given a severe lecture before he left. The normal “listen and be helpful” script had been hurriedly brushed aside as Dad warned me to stay on the farm.
“Please, Alex –” his face had been creased in worry, his blue eyes intense “– be very careful.”
“Sure, Dad,” I’d replied, pasting a smile on my face and hiding my confusion. The farm posed very little threat to me, surely he should be more worried about what could happen to me in Johannesburg, my home for most of the year. The worst that could happen here was I might fall off a horse, should I choose to ride one, or be bitten by an irritable goose.
I’d brushed his worry aside, assigning it to the parental guilt I’d seen both my parents war with since they’d split.
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” I told him, hugging him a little awkwardly.
He’d kissed the top of my head and held my face in his hands for a few moments, worry still pulling his shaggy eyebrows together.
“I love you,” he’d told me seriously.
“Love you too, Dad.”
He’d pulled me into another brief hug before getting into his truck and driving away in a plume of moonlit dust and exhaust fumes.
I refocused on the mountains, confusion at Dad’s odd behaviour still tugging at me and wondered if Luke knew anything about the story I felt sure was lurking in the folds of Injisuthi.
He’d been busy with Matt and helping Allan out on the farm for most of the week, but I was sure I’d be able to corner him after breakfast.
Matt was leaving for Hockey camp this morning, and Allan and Maryka had planned to take him there at about ten o clock, leaving Luke and me alone for the day. A quick glance at my clock had me rushing to the bathroom in an attempt to get ready before Matt and his parents left.
Feigning nonchalance that belied the last twenty minutes of frantic grooming, I was sitting at the large oak dining-room table eating breakfast in the sun-drenched kitchen, listening to Matt and Maryka chatting, when Luke came in.
He flopped into the chair next to me, pouring some cereal into a bowl and joining in the conversation.
I loved the way Luke’s family got on. So different to the strained formality I’d become used to before my parents split. This family’s interaction was as natural as breathing, their affection and easy conversation a balm to my warped perception of “normal” family life.
I concentrated on my cereal, trying to blend into the background as best as I could, my favourite place to be.
“So, Alex.” Luke grinned a naughty grin, the grin I remembered from the carefree days of our childhood. “What were you doing in my bedroom last night?”
I froze, my spoon halfway to my mouth, in horror.
“What do you mean?” I scowled.
“I woke up to find you staring at me in the middle of the night. So what was your plan? Did you want to snuggle?”
Matt giggled and Maryka chided him for asking me awkward questions.
His teasing tone held a hint of something else, and while he continued to grin, his eyes were wary.
“Of course not,” I snapped, recovering slightly from the shock. “I got lost on the way to the bathroom.”
He smiled easily and dropped the subject.
Did he believe me? I watched him surreptitiously as I finished my breakfast. The problem was, I didn’t know what I’d been doing in his bedroom, because I didn’t remember walking into it.