‘Still,’ I said, standing with my hands in front of my dangly bits, ‘I think you have seen enough for today.’
She said she didn’t know where my clothes were, so she gave me a white robe, the same as she and Graysea were wearing. I put some weight on my leg and it felt good. ‘It’s a little stiff but no pain. It was broken wasn’t it?’
‘Actually it was dislocated at the hip. What in the sea happened to you?’
‘I got pounced on by a dragon.’
‘Moran pounced on you?’
I nodded yes.
‘Ouch.’
I walked around the room and everything seemed to be OK. I had a twinge in my knee and the matron had me sit while she did her fish trick and then it felt fine.
‘Would you mind if I ask you how old you are?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sorry, I don’t want to upset you. I’m just trying to sort some stuff out in my head.’
‘And what does my age have to do with your head?’
‘Well, I think I’m on one of the islands off Fearn Point.’
‘You’re under one actually.’
‘Under?’
‘You’re in an underwater cave about half a league under Mertain Isle.’
‘That’s sounds deep.’
‘It is. Healing is faster this far down.’
‘How did I get here?’
‘You will see when you go back up.’
‘Which will be when?’
‘Soon,’ she said. ‘I think you are ready to travel and I’ll tell them that – once you stop asking me questions. So what does this have to do with my age?’
‘Well, I figure you must grow old out here, except for the King…’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Graysea told me.’
‘You got information like that out of our Graysea – I am impressed.’ She folded her arms again. ‘Go on.’
‘I guess I just want to know how fast people age out here. Is it as fast as in the Real World?’
‘I do not think so,’ the matron said, ‘if you must know I am under a thousand.’
‘OK, so no then. And let me say you don’t look a day over five hundred.’
That got my usual dirty look. ‘You are obviously well enough to answer the King’s questions. I imagine his school will be here shortly for your ascent.’
‘School?’
‘Yes, the King’s guard.’
‘Oh, mermaids, fish – schools. I get it.’
The matron shook her head and left.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It took a half an hour before the school came to escort me to the King. I tried to rest but every time I put my head down I saw an image of Araf, Tuan and Brendan with wide terrified eyes, being burned alive. I just didn’t have the strength to think about it. I tried using a Fili mind mantra but eventually I just had to get up. I spent most of the time before the guards came peeping into all of the nooks and crannies, searching for my clothes. I didn’t find them so I guess I was doomed to go to see the King in my nightgown, which I suppose was better than my recurring nightmare of going naked.
Matron and Graysea walked me to a larger cave containing a beach and an underground lake. Waiting for me were six humourless macho thugs – the school. A couple of days previously I would have cracked a few jokes about them being a bit old for school, but it seemed that Moran killed my sense of humour along with my friends. In the centre of the lake was the top of a car-sized submerged brass dome.
‘Get in,’ the senior guard said.
‘How do I get in there?’
‘You swim, Faerie,’ the matron said. ‘Follow Graysea; she will show you the way.’
‘Aren’t you coming with us?’
‘It is very close quarters in the pressure chamber and I am certain that you would rather have Graysea scrunched in with you than me.’
‘I don’t know, after the initial shock you’re not so bad.’
She scowled at me but it had a smile in it. ‘Good luck, Faerie.’
Graysea took my arm and walked into the water. I stuck one toe in and then popped it right back out again. ‘It’s freezing.’
Graysea giggled, grabbed me by the wrist and said, ‘Come on.’ That girl was stronger than she looked. I hit the water and my body exploded with cold. I screamed so loud I was sure that the walls of the cave above the water must have collapsed and crashed down on matron like a bad guy’s lair in a British super-spy movie. Swimming was out of the question. I struggled to get back to the surface but then Graysea, equipped with her flipper bottomf, zoomed me through the water into the underside of the pressure dome. She placed my shivering hands onto the railings before she was finally forced to push me up the stairs with her shoulder. I was beyond cold and just shy of being cryogenically preserved. I flopped down on a metal deck, dripping wet and rattling my teeth so hard I was sure I was going to crack a molar.
Graysea knelt next to me, looking like she had just stepped out of a garden on a summer’s day. ‘Dry off,’ she said.
‘I cccccaaaaan’t mmmoove.’
She placed her hand on my robe and it instantly dried itself and me. Then it lengthened and heated up. She tucked the material around my feet and slowly I started to thaw out.
‘How did you do that?’
‘You can do it too. Your robe is made of kelp. If you are nice to it, it will do what you ask.’
Just as my core temperature was reaching the point where I could talk without sounding like I was riding over cobblestones on a bicycle, the chamber began to move. I looked over the side of the metal platform we were lying on and saw the ocean floor moving horizontally. Periodically a mermaid would zoom past the hole in the floor.
‘Aren’t they going to close a hatch or something?’
‘Why?’ Graysea said as we lurched upward.
I looked over the railing and saw the ocean floor disappear at an alarming rate.
‘Because I really don’t want to-’
I didn’t get to finish that quip ’cause that’s when the first pressure change hit me. Pain exploded in my ears and Graysea, looking uncomfortably worried, told me to swallow to equalise the pressure. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t an idiot and I had been doing that, but the pain was too intense to allow me to speak. Graysea cuddled up beside me as a spark of pain hit me in the ears, which was so bad I thought I was going to pass out. When I pulled my hand from my head it was covered with blood. Graysea placed her hands on both sides of my head and I felt her flipper flap against my leg. The pain subsided and when I turned to look she was changing back from a fish already. We didn’t have much time to talk – the ascent must have happened at a phenomenal speed. In the process I punctured both eardrums – my right one twice. Closer to the surface I started to get pains like I had never experienced before. Tiny strange twinges in my joints grew to the point where I started praying that I would soon die.
