Surfacing - Book One in the Swans Landing Series

Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Sharp pains seized my legs, causing them to curl up toward my body. I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed, but only a stream of bubbles escaped from my mouth. My shirt and hair floated in the current and twisted around me. My legs felt as if they were swelling inside my jeans, pushing hard against the seams. The ripping of the cloth could be felt throughout my body as it morphed into something else. My knees popped, my bones bent and fused together.

Tears would have streamed down my face if it weren’t for the fact that I was underwater. I wrapped my arms around my legs, curling tight in on myself as the pain continued to wash over me. Something ripped through my skin, tearing it into agonizing shreds. Waves of pain seared through me as my toes stretched, pulling tight at the webbing of skin between them.

What was happening to me?

After long agonizing minutes, the pain receded, growing duller as each minute passed. Finally, I could straighten my body out, arching my back against the tingle that raced up my spine and stretching my legs.

But my legs weren’t there anymore. They still felt like legs, but when I looked down through the murky water, I found that they had become fused together and were covered with golden scales. I ran a hand over what should have been my thigh. The slick scales blended perfectly into the skin of my abdomen so that I couldn’t tell where my skin ended and the scales began, as if they had always been there. The tattered remains of my jeans floated uselessly in the water.

What had I become?

I moved my legs slightly, letting the fin at my feet flow back and forth with a smooth motion.

I still felt like the same Mara, even though I knew I wasn’t. A deep trembling began racing throughout my body.

A fish passed in front of my eyes and I realized I was actually breathing under the water like it was. The water had filled my lungs, but instead of causing me to sputter and cough and rush toward the surface, I breathed in and out as if it were ordinary air. The salt felt good inside me and my body reveled in it.

People weren’t supposed to breathe water and grow fins. Ordinary people didn’t do things like that.

I kicked and clawed my way to the surface. I hadn’t fallen very far under, so it didn’t take long before my head broke the top. I scratched at the scales along my legs, trying to find an opening to peel them off. But I only succeeded in slicing my fingers open until the pain forced me to stop. I tread water several yards out from the shore and watched the birds circling overhead in search of food. Was that what I had become? Just another sea creature, destined to be caught up in a net or a hook?

I started paddling back toward shore, gulping large mouthfuls of water as sobs made their way through me. The first thing I had to do was get out of the water and pretend this had never happened. It was another nightmare. In the morning, I’d wake up in my bed and none of it would be real.

I wasn’t a freak.

But then I stopped, pausing to study the shoreline. Back on shore I’d have to deal with Lake. And Dylan and Josh. Sailor. Everyone at school. Things would be different now that I really wasn’t one of them. They had been trying to tell me all along. It wasn’t anything I’d done—it was me they didn’t like. A part of me that I had never known existed.

I had no other option.

I flipped over and dove down into the water, rushing past startled fish and swimming farther away from shore. Going back was no longer necessary. I didn’t know how or why this had happened, but I now had the ability to leave everything behind. If three quarters of the world was water, then I could theoretically swim anywhere I wanted. The thing I’d wanted most since my arrival in Swans Landing was there at the tip of my tail. Freedom. No one could hold me here.