Page 6 of The Mer-Mate
He’s helped me breathe. He’s helped me see. I’m in no danger with him. “You saved my life today.”
“Today?” he says, disbelief clearly written on his alien features. “Do you have any idea how many times I have saved you?”
He crosses his arms over his huge chest. With a flick of his tail he shoots back several feet, a vortex of water swirling between us. His head tilts again, and I swear he looks hurt.
How many times.
And Iknow. In every fibre of my being, I’ve always known. A strange feeling of weightlessness sends my heart lurching in my chest, like a boat pitching down a swell.
“It wasyou,” I whisper, the sound rushing through thea’weshlodged in my throat.
Thirty years.
I see the boy in the merman in front of me. The same dark, curious eyes. His face, so similar and so unlike my own, observing me from beneath the waves, his hand reaching up to meet mine.
Then, just flashes of memory. Me, leaning over the edge of my family’s boat, trying to touch him. Unbalancing. Cold, the light fading as the currents and riptides dragged me below the surface. Arms circling me. Waking up on the tiny wild island off the shores of Tofino, freezing but alive, and miles from where I went overboard.
IknewI wasn’t crazy.
All these years trying to prove myself wrong, because anything else would be unfathomable.
Unfathomable is in front of me right now. Huge, preternatural …
And kinda pissed at me.
“Of course it was me,” he grumbles. “Every time. And you keep putting yourself in danger with no regard for your safety.”
Years of near misses on the ocean come to me. A squall that should have capsized my boat. A shark making a beeline for me on a dive, veering away at the last moment. A broken anchor line that turnedme back to harbour, docking minutes before a rogue wave claimed two other vessels.
I search his face. “You’ve been watching over me.”
“Not always me.” A series of chirps leave his throat, and a dolphin swims into the cave “—let me know you were in trouble.” He crosses his arms in a very human move. “It is like you have a death wish.”
My merman isincrediblypissed at me.
“In my defence,” I mutter, “I was trying to findyou.”
His expression doesn’t change, but the dolphin chatters at me.
“Is—” I try to mimic the chirps “—the dolphin?”
At my attempt of the name, the dolphin swims deeper into the cave, turning a somersault. It’s (he? She? Does gender matter to them?) a Pacific white-sided dolphin, though something tells me that label would be meaningless to them.
The dolphin shoots through the water and blows a stream of bubbles in my direction, and I can't help but laugh. I try to recreate the series of chirps again, and fail.
“I don’t speak dolphin.”Yet, I want to add, but go with, “I don’t suppose you’d be okay with me calling you Pacey?”
The dolphin flicks its tail at me, unbalancing my precarious equilibrium and sending me windmilling.
I’ll take that as ano.
“For a first attempt at her name, you did not embarrass yourself too badly,” he says.
Her. An odd feeling creeps into my chest. “Is, ah, she your mate?”
Another look of disgust. “She is my best friend and sentry. She has helped me keep you safe for years.”
Huh. My nickname at the research station is the dolphin whisperer, because almost every trip we took, at least one would show up. Now I know why.
