Water: The Mermaid Legacy Book One. Natasha Hardy

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      Chapter 1

       Abandoned

      Brent’s happy freckled face laughed at me as he raced me to the pool. I laughed a delighted giggle from deep within my belly as I flung myself from the edge of the pool and into the water, a few moments after him.

      I didn’t hit the water as I’d expected.

      The air pummelled out of my lungs as the water closed over my head in a viscous bubble that seemed too thick to be water. It moved over my skin in sickening silky threads, pushing me deeper and deeper.

      Brent seemed to move in slow motion above me through the dappled light, the splashing of his arms and legs as he swam creating a halo of bubbles around him.

      I was out of air. The surface may as well have been a million miles away, because I couldn’t move to get to it.

      Pain seared up the sides of my head, so intense everything around me faded in colour. I screamed, the last of my oxygen bubbling to the surface, as the pain intensified to unbearable.

      And then with a sharp jolt, it was gone.

      Brent wasn’t moving towards me any more. He was floating, his arms and legs spread-eagled and his eyes frozen open in shock.

      I breathed in and out and in, before the water-muffled screaming that always woke me from this nightmare filled my ears.

      Sunlight pierced the darkness of the dream as I forced my eyelids open angrily. I knew I should expect the nightmare. It had been happening for years now, but it always started so happily, and it was the only way I could remember what my adored older half-brother had looked like.

      It took me a few moments to remember where I was. The unfamiliar smell of lavender and mothballs and the alien sound of a cockerel crowing jogged my exhausted mind. The Van Heerden’s, Dad’s oldest friends’ farm.

      I’d been so excited to spend almost two months in the Drakensberg with Dad for my summer holidays, but, as inevitably seemed to happen with Dad, he’d changed the plans at the last moment, abandoning me instead with friends as he rushed off to do business in Namibia.

      I took a shuddery breath, still trying to calm my pounding heart. Cold misery clouded my thoughts, in sharp contrast to the buttery sunshine seeping between the gaps in the curtains of my bedroom.

      The day stretched interminably long before me. As much as I liked Maryka and Allan, their two sons hadn’t been overly enthusiastic about my forced appearance into their lives.

      Luke’s begrudging inclusion of me in some of his holiday activities – mostly fishing and shooting – was odd. We’d been good friends as children and I’d been surprised by how sulky and resentful he’d been, until I happened to overhear a conversation he was having with his mother, two nights into my stay.

      The heated conversation had been crystal clear as I’d stopped in the passageway that led to the lounge where they were sitting.

      “But Mom,” he was arguing, “I organised to go on that youth camp months ago, and all my friends are going and…”

      “Luke,” she’d interrupted him quietly but firmly, “the camp is full. If there was another spot, she could have gone with you, but I’ve spoken to David and there’s nothing we can do about it. I know you’re disappointed, my boy, but you can go next holiday.”

      Luke had tried to argue again, only to be lambasted by an impressive guilt trip and quietly threatened with grounding if he didn’t at least try to include me in his now forced holiday on the farm.

      Blood had rushed into my cheeks, as I’d listened to him trying to get rid of me, embarrassment and rejection burning in equal portions.

      I’d had a fleeting moment of hope, somewhere at the very beginning of the holiday, that maybe, just maybe, these kids would be kids I could get along with. That perhaps the easy friendship we’d shared when we were younger would have somehow survived the avalanche of hormones that had transformed Luke, at least, into the shadow of the man I could see he would one day be.

      I’d been surprised when he’d appeared out of the kitchen just after we’d arrived at the farm. He was taller than I remembered and his lean frame, clad in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, had displayed sharply defined muscles that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.

      We’d had so much fun as kids. My memory of those days was filled with carefree laughter. I’d been happy, content and confident in who I was. I’d been comfortable in my own skin. The five of us – Luke, Josh his best friend, Matt, Luke’s brother Brent and I – had always been out finding adventures.

      My heart squeezed at the thought of Brent. Some days, after the dream, I was angry with him. Angry for having a heart attack at eighteen, angry because every time I saw his face in my dreams it reminded me how vital and full of life he’d been, angry because his sudden and untimely death had changed everything – our parents’ marriage disintegrating, the cruel and snide comments about him at school and finally, in this last year, Mom and Dad’s divorce and my subsequent and very unhappy move to Johannesburg.

      The kids at my new school were completely uninterested in a quiet country girl with little in common with them. I had to admit that I found their constant obsession with the latest fashions, and admiration of the muscle-bound, image-conscious rugby team, exhausting.

      It hadn’t helped that puberty had hit me with the force of a wrecking ball, my body changing almost daily until eventually, to my great relief, I’d found in the last month a semblance of equilibrium.

      I’d been assured dozens of times by the myriad of counsellors I’d been sent to, that it was these changes and my new school that was the real reason behind the terrifying sleepwalking that had started a year ago, and that the sleepwalking – a new and horrible habit – had nothing to do with the recurring nightmare that had haunted me most nights since Brent’s death.

      I sighed, relief silvering my black mood a little. I’d stayed in bed last night. I was sure of it. It was either the nightmare or the sleepwalking, never both.

      This had of course put a spanner in the counsellors’ explanation of what was going on with me. Their reassurances that I was a perfectly normal teenager working through some tough times had fallen a little flat; that I was not responsible for Brent’s decision to dive into the pool straight out СКАЧАТЬ