“It’s not just the war.”
“Grant, shush. Now isn’t the time. What do we do?”
“Get her to the creek. I’ll meet you there. I’ll … tell Mr MacGregor the dogs spooked a wild boar and we’re going to track it. He won’t say no to the meat.”
“Right oh. Up you go, girl. Come on.”
“Izz. It hurts!”
“I know, girl. Hold on, we’re almost there.”
“The fire … can’t hold it in …”
“Oh, shoot … Robbie, why now? Here we go. Down here. That’s a good girl, Clarissa, you old tough nut.”
“Ow … hurry, they’re calling me!”
“Who?”
The hisssssth of the water wove a torrent around Tea’s head. Slippery strands like seaweed in the weave, gripping her hands and pulling her under. Heavier things called and pulled from further away and deep, cold flow hot flow, great walls of viscosity rubbing against each other, the hisssssth sensuous, angry, always moving, always alive and teeming, boundless, skin bones blood mettle all part of it.
“There’s sand. Lots of sand. And salt. Salt in the wounds. It burns. So cold. Shooting stars. No, that can’t be right. Not that many. A river. River salt red. Blood. Oh God, the blood!”
She came out of her daze up to her elbows in the creek, the eels nibbling reassurance and wrapping love around her wrists. Come swim come, they whispered. Her own eelskin flipped fast and black up her arms.
Grant burst through the bushes, more energetic and precise than Tea had ever seen. He looked like a show horse ready to jump rails rather than the steady donkey he kept in check. His right hand clenched in a familiar spasm.
“You feel it,” Tea gasped, wiping a scaled hand across her loose lips, then plunging it back in the water as soon as the sting gripped her again.
“It’s Robbie. He’s in a fight. A battle.” He shook his head when Tea frowned. “And things are going—”
“—wrong. Very wrong,” Tea finished.
How did Grant feel Robbie’s pain this strongly? He wasn’t connected by blood like her. She glanced around the muddy bank and bushes as if searching for an answer. Her gaze skittered over Grant; anger and fear made an uncomfortable mix in the usually steady boy. Izzy stood as solid as the rock she had always been, only her fingers twitching. Dogs danced with agitation, and Clarissa shifted from hoof to hoof. Maybe the whaiwhaiā was so powerful something was leaking off her. If the animals were picking it up, why not another human?
The words fell out of Tea’s mouth before the thought formed fully in her head. “I have to go to him.”
“Go where? How?”
Tea’s fingers caught in the laces of her boots. Undressing; another involuntary response. And in front of a boy, no less! “I’m … I’m going to swim there.”
“I’m coming, too.” Izzy bent to undo her own boots, as if this idea made perfect sense.
Grant flushed – fury or embarrassment, or both. “Tea, maybe. She’s a taniwha.” His pronunciation was terrible: ‘tanny-farr’. “But you’re canine, and I’m … well, I can’t ride across oceans!”
He spoke as if he believed Tea could make it.
Ssssswim come ssssshow you.
Being this close to the creek’s agitation, its depth and breadth, pulled the breath from Tea’s lungs. Its song itched at her until she wanted to tear all her flesh off to reveal her eelskin beneath.
“Wait here.”
Something in the tone of her voice made Izzy and Grant pause.
Tea waded out in the creek. She thought it would only come up to hip or chest height. She went under spluttering when within three steps the bottom of the creek dropped away to nothing.
With a swirl of kissing black skin, the eels roiled around her, holding her up, pushing her forward.
Swim.
Tea thrashed for the surface, all stars and knives of light. She’d never been the strongest swimmer and her lungs ached for breath.
Come.
An especially large and tenacious eel circled her chest and squeezed.
Bubbles from her terrified screech shot up but the water did not rush in to kill her. The eels demanded something of her bones, her muscles, her breath until it all creaked and cracked and she felt as long as all the rivers combined and as wide as the oceans.
She was not Tea anymore. She was a hiss of a beast, lengthened out into something finer and truer. The age-old water song promised her a might her human flesh could never imagine.
Her eelskin tasted, sinuous eeltongue smelled, and eelsight heard in a series of rumbles and shifts, a gargle-rattle of a thousand throats all singing different hymns but the same song, the water song. And within that song, disharmony; water shed, breath shed, bloodshed.
A border approached, where the green loam of the creek met sharp mineral. Creek to the ocean to the currents that swirled and touched and loved and mixed and broke apart again, delivering song sweetness savour surrender to the other side. Tea touched this border with wispy protrusions; she had to cross over to get there.
Beyond there was Robbie, caught in the tornado of danger battle blood death.
What remained of her human mind cried out I can’t do this! I’m not a fighter! I’m only a girl.
Sssswim come eelgirl squirmed the water and eels. Ssshow you like we ssshow all.
Show all? Show who?
No time.
I have to do this. I must. For Robbie. Even if it hurts. Even if it kills me.
Tea gave herself over to the current. The water gave itself over to her. Fight, pull back, move around, hold. A merging, as water and water should.
The wisps around her resolved into long, thick whiskers, extensions of her eel flesh. Anything would be safe wrapped in their embrace.
She rose to the surface.
Gasps from Izzy and Grant.
“Is it that bad?” Tea found her words coming out round and deep from an elongated mouth and long chest. “Am I a hideous beast?”
Grant’s large Adam’s apple bobbed in his scrawny neck.
Izzy stared, eyes as soft as a moonless night. “No,” she said. “You are beautiful.”
7.
“Dragon,” Izzy argued, fists on hips.
“Mermaid!” was Grant’s rebuttal.
“But the whiskery things, and scales!”
“No wings, though. No fangs and claws, either. And look at that tail!”