Deeper by Jane Thomson Page A

came to me how it would feel to be human, trapped in the boundless sea– weak and struggling and out of its element.  No wonder they cling to their little floating islands. No wonder they drown without them.
    Why did it come into my mind then to think about humans? I’ve often wondered since.  Was it my totem calling me? Was it yours? I looked across the battle field at the top of a peak, and saw a floater.  It was small, frail.  Even I could see it was much too small to fight in this ocean war.  I saw at once that it was as useful here as a broken off piece of bubble-weed to a drowning pup.  It would climb one side of a wave and then smash down on the other, nose first, water pouring over the wooden topside and over the head of the human who stood there, struggling to hold on to something inside this fragile shell of an island. 
    You could have been a merman, you were so sea-soaked.  I could tell by your white face and hard-set teeth that you were beyond afraid, you were too busy struggling for life itself.  You were losing the fight, too, and you knew it.  Such a tiny thing, this floater.  You’d almost have been better off without it – but suppose you let go, I thought, and then it came crashing down on you like an upended turtle? I couldn’t believe it hadn’t already broken to bits - it must be made of something very strong.
    And yet you hung on, and clung to a tiny stick in one end of the thing, tatters of white straggling out into the wind, while the tall pointed tree that held them shook and strained.  They were the nets the other humans we’d seen used to catch the wind and push their floaters along, but yours had been ripped off by the storm, and all that seemed to hold the pointed thing from crashing into the sea and taking your floater with it was a few strings of wet rope.  It was still pushing its way through, by some human magic - I could feel a low growl undersea as it crawled bravely into the wind.  I let myself rise on the crests and I stared boldly at you, waiting to see if the boat would tip and shatter and send you flying into the hungry open mouth of deep sea.
    You seemed to see me there.  You stared in shock and disbelief and I stared back.  The lightning tore at the sky and lit your face in electric-white, dark storm-wet eyes, long brows drawn down over them like the wings of gliding gulls.  Your hair hung in tangled strands over your face.  The sheen of your skin was like wet sand, your lips black as blood. 
    The dark shape almost lifted me right out of the water.  I slipped off and fell down a rough slope – a great old humpback coming up to spout or check the weather.  I dived underneath him, and when I came back up, there was no sign of you.  Your boat I could see, thrown on its side with its pointed wind tree slicing uselessly through the waves.
    I craned about, remembering the drowned woman, how she’d struggled, sunk, rose, sunk again, died recognising me and asking for help.  I wondered what had happened to her - if she’d swelled and floated up fat with gas, right out of the Squid cave where I’d stowed her.  She would have made a good long meal for the fish, tall as she was.  I didn’t want you to be meat for fish.  You were too beautiful.
    I stood on my tail and looked around, but the waves were many times the height of the tallest mer, and whirled and leapt all about me, here and there, so that I might as well have been looking for a grain of sand in a blowhole.  Now I couldn’t even see the floater.  I hoped it wouldn’t suddenly crash down the side of a wave and knock me out.  Now that would be bad luck, just as Grandmother had predicted for a too curious mer.
    It came to me that I was searching in the wrong way. If you want to find anything in Deep Sea, you have to listen and feel. I dived, and skimmed silently under the turbulent surface, feeling out for the tell-tale vibrations that all living creatures make, and especially the warm-blooded