father is the High King,’ Denaero declared. ‘When the Festival of Spawning is over, he will come looking for me, and hunt you with spears. You will be stuck full of spears till you bristle like a sea urchin. You won’t be so scornful then.’
Keerye laughed out loud at her defiance and her pride, and the girl sulked, then laughed too, ducking her head underwater when he let go her hair to inhale her native element.
‘Why must we talk like this?’ Denaero asked, meaning above water. ‘Can’t you talk undersea?’
‘I can, but Ezroc can’t. He’s a bird,’ Keerye explained.
‘I heard, there are birds that fly through the water,’ Denaero said, not wanting to appear ignorant, ‘called pinwings. If you can fly underwater, why can’t you talk there too?’
‘I’m not a penguin,’ Ezroc said. ‘I’m an albatross.’
The girl shivered, and shrank away. ‘A windbringer,’ she said. ‘I thought they were only in stories. Is it true, you can fly round the whole world in a day, and you bring ice storms from the north to destroy us? Did you bring the ice now?’ She glanced from side to side, as if expecting ice floes to emerge from nowhere.
‘I don’t bring ice,’ said Ezroc. ‘I don’t want to harm you.’
‘The stories say you are much bigger,’ said Denaero, recovering her courage.
‘He’s only young,’ said Keerye. ‘Like you. When he’s full grown, his wings will be as wide as – as the entire reef.’
‘Could I ride on you then?’ Denaero begged suddenly. ‘Could I fly – really fly – up in the sky among the stars?’
‘Well …’ Ezroc temporised.
‘One day,’ said Keerye. ‘But now we are on a quest. We are looking for islands. Do you know of any?’
‘Only in stories,’ Denaero said. ‘The Goddess ate the islands. She is always hungry. Once, there were whole kingdoms above the sea, full of creatures that didn’t swim, and strange people, neither merfolk nor selkie. I wish I could have seen them. But the Goddess swallowed them all up. Then she devoured the islands, one by one, crunching up the rocks that were their bones. There are no islands any more.’
‘We heard there were Floating Islands,’ Keerye persisted, ‘south of here, or east, or west. Have you seen them?’
The girl’s face changed; her hair lifted of its own accord, rippling with sparks.
‘Those are not islands,’ she said. ‘Don’t go near them … Listen!’ She dipped below the waves, the better to pick up vibrations, reappearing a moment later. ‘The Festival is over,’ she said. ‘My father is coming to look for me. If he finds you, you will be stuck full of spears like a sea urchin. I do not want that. You must swim fast, fast, till you come to the Great Reef Wall where the sea boils and the steam goes up a hundred spans into the air. If you can cross that, you will be safe. But you must go fast. Your swimming makes an echo-pattern that we can detect from far away; that was how I found you. If my father senses it, he will hunt you down.’
‘How far to the Great Reef Wall?’ asked Ezroc.
‘Can’t you stop the king?’ Keerye said.
‘I will leap and dance in the water and make a great splashing which will overlay the echo-pattern, but you must go now. Please!’
‘Thank you,’ said Keerye, and he kissed her cold little cheek.
‘Thank you!’ cried Ezroc, and he spread his wings, driving himself into the air.
The mermaid held her hand to her face for a second or two, as if she feared to lose the imprint of the kiss, though it was a gesture she had never known. Then she forgot it in the wonder of the bird’s rising.
‘Come back when you’re grown!’ she said. ‘Come back and fly me to the stars! Promise?’
‘I promise!’ Ezroc called, as he veered southward. Below, Keerye streaked like a javelin through the still-gleaming water.
Behind them, Denaero arced and plunged and dived, churning the midnight waves to a tumult of foam.
It was dawn when they reached the Great Reef Wall, and saw the steam of the boiling sea like a cloud over the sun. Keerye swam to the edge of the shallows, where the reef fell away in a submarine cliff, down to unguessable depths. Far below there must have been vents in the seabed, emitting gas-jets from the planet’s core, and so the water beyond the Wall bubbled like a cauldron, and the stink of sulphur hung in the air. Ezroc flew high above, soaring on the thermals, but he could see no way for a selkie to pass. ‘The steam-barrier stretches as far as the eye can see,’ he told Keerye, ‘and at its narrowest it must be more than twenty spans across. We might travel a sennight and find no way through.’
‘Show me the narrow part,’ the selkie said. ‘In seal form I can leap high and far, higher and farther than any from the Ice Cliffs.’
‘Not that high and not that far,’ said Ezroc. ‘You’ll scald in the water and bake in the steam. It will kill you.’
‘If you were to lift me, I could do it,’ Keerye said.
‘I cannot bear you. I am not yet strong enough.’
‘But if you swoop as I spring, and hold my fore-flippers, the joint impetus of both leap and flight will carry us over the barrier,’ Keerye declared.
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Ezroc said doubtfully. ‘The risk is too great. Let us turn west. Somewhere, there will be a break.’
‘You said there were none,’ Keerye pointed out.
They might have argued about it long, but Ezroc, rising to scan the seas again, saw shadow-shapes skimming the reef towards them – the vanguard of the hunt. Mermen mounted on blue sharks wielding spears of bone tipped with blood coral, barracuda trained for the chase with fin rings that rattled to denote their route, and behind them on huge hammerheads the king and his court, trailing cloaks of whalehide and brandishing axes of polished obsidian. The king himself wore a helm or crown adorned with the claws of a giant lobster and mail of oyster-shells gleaming with mother-of-pearl.
‘Now we have no choice,’ said Keerye. ‘Swoop on me as I leap – catch me and hold firm – and we will make it.’
‘Suppose I cannot …? If I let you fall …’
‘I have faith. You won’t let me fall.’
Keerye could not go deep – the reef was too near the surface – nor give himself a long run – the hunt was drawing close. But he swam back as far as he dared and then arrowed towards the Wall, driving himself forward with his powerful tail, all seal now, breaking the water and rising up … and up … The sun glittered in the spray around him, then the sea-smokes stung his eyes, and he felt the talons of the albatross digging into him, tugging, lifting, sweeping him through the fume towards clear air and cool sea. Sudden pain scorched his flank – a well-aimed spear glanced off him and dropped into the fog. And then before he knew it he was plunging down, betrayed by his own weight, torn from the albatross’ grip to fall into the seething water …
It
