The liquid is a strange green from here, turgid barely seeming to move despite my thrashing, but at last I see something below me, a pale blur, struggling weakly, increasingly weakly. I duck-dive, kick, and press further into the icy dark.
The child seems to plummet, heavier than she should be, or perhaps pulled but I can see nothing that grips her. At last, I get a grip her fingers, her palm, her chubby wrist. My lungs are burning. The girl’s eyes are glazing over, the lids beginning to drop. Her hair’s like red smoke around her white moon of a face. I pull her hard toward me and clasp her to my chest. She’s too far gone to hold onto me, so I have to swim single-handed, kicking like a frog. I want to look behind, I want to make sure nothing is following us, but I don’t. Concentrate, Miren, on up. I can still feel a shudder through the water, like it’s shivering from its own frigidity.
Then I break the surface and the air is ridiculously warm. I strike out for the shore, which seems further away than it should be. There’s no gradation, no shallows, my feet scrabble against the steep vertical wall of the lake. Someone takes the girl from my arms, then someone pulls me up too. My legs are like jelly as I’m dragged away from the edge, well away, following the woman who carries her daughter some distance before her legs give way. I break free of whomever pulled me to safety and follow Miriam Dymond. She collapses, howling, with the child draped across her lap. The little one remains breathless.
I grab at the girl, lie her flat on the ground. I press at the chest, then breathe into her mouth; I repeat these actions until she spits up so very much fluid it seems a small pond, then coughs and wails. I fall away. Miriam gathers her daughter, rocks back and forth.
I’m hauled to my feet once more, so exhausted I could cry and all I want is sleep, to let the lethargy that hit me with the lake’s touch take me down. I look up into Jedadiah’s face; the heat of him seems strange but I am frozen through. For a moment I’m confused as he stares at me, then I realise that his expression is one of dread. Not something I expected to see; and he’s not staring at me, but past me.
I try to turn, but he presses my face firmly into his chest. I kick his shin in a temper and he lets me go in surprise. I gaze out to the lake.
Three heads, large; pale skin with a greenish tinge; gills that I can see in the necks even from this distance; and tails that flip and splash and slap.
The mer, grinning at me and hissing. No song this time. No need. They stare for a little while; then they are gone with more splashing. Jedadiah has his arms around me again, apparently undeterred by the kick. He’s shaking as much as I am, but how much is from the cold of my skin and how much from fear is anyone’s guess.
What I realise now that my mind has slowed, my terror has ebbed a little, is that the lake was salty. Not fresh. It makes me wonder how can anyone escape such creatures, when all the waters in the world are joined? Idly, I wonder how the kelpie liked this saltiness.
‘Did you see them?’ he asks and there’s a rough edge to his voice. He knows my answer, that’s why.
‘They followed me from Breakwater,’ I confess. ‘They want no one but me.’
He grabs my shoulders and says urgently. ‘We must talk, Miren Elliott, but not here. There’s more for you to know.’
Any reply I might have given is lost as my name is shouted from the house. Uncle Edward is striding towards us. Nelly hangs in the doorway, appearing somewhat disappointed to see me still extant. Any sympathy I might have had for her is leached away.
‘Tonight at the mine. Midnight,’ says Jedadiah in a low voice. I neither nod nor shake my head, for my uncle has reached us and wrenched me from Jedadiah’s grip as if he was the cause of my ills, not the person who saved me.
‘Miren, you’re soaked through! What happened?’ He’s looking at Jedadiah, as if I’m not an adult to speak for myself.
‘The Dymond girl fell into the lake, Uncle, nothing more. We are both safe,’ I say coolly and point to the child now sobbing heartily in her mother’s lap. He barely glances at her and I’m aware that the disposition of the gathering has changed.
Oh, it was already different when I came out of the water, but there was an air of relief; and as far as I’m aware only myself and Jedadiah saw the mer. So: the fear had dissipated quickly, replaced by that special lighter-than-air fizz that bubbles up when a tragedy is averted. The celebration might well have gone on, people drinking faster and more, laughing more loudly, better inclined towards their fellows, all because of the failure of fate to take something from their lives.
But now, here is my uncle, and the mood is blackening faster than overripe fruit in high summer. People are packing their baskets, scooping food into them, folding blankets, shepherding children and old folk. They all file past the spit where Woodfox and Oliver slice slabs from the carcasses and dump them onto platters, which the villagers carry away with them. The desertion is a swift process. My uncle has brought the curtain down.
‘Uncle,’ I say. ‘Uncle Edward, be calm.’
‘Come inside, Miren. I don’t want you catching your death. Let Nelly tend to you.’ And he grasps both my wrists and all
