Page 6 - The Mermaid Call

Prologue
10th August 2022
Whose mirror have you been looking in, Vivien?
That question of Mimi’s was swimming through my head as I stared at my refection in the sinister, strange-looking pond – its surface, opaque and oily: greens, blues, and pinks from the minerals feeding the cave.
Whose mirror have you been looking in?
The question she asked whenever I was down on myself (‘too ugly’, ‘too curly’, ‘two big feet’).
As if the answer could be my way out.
A fast glance again, round our new prison, at its star-studded black ceiling, to the rock ledge behind me. Lit only by the glow from her head torch, she was lying as still as Sleeping Beauty. Still waiting for her wish to come true. Extra panic hurtled through me, greyhound after a rabbit – I had to try harder, to save both our lives. If there were bubbles of life in the pond, there had to be an exit.
I began lowering myself into the oily water, my legs starting a frenzy of dog-paddle – it was deep; and cold; lake-cold. Fixing my eyes on the shaft of light beneath the water as, torso stretching, arms pointing, fingers an arrow – I sliced into the water; deep, deep down.
Water’s my friend. In water, I can be dainty and delicate, fast and fierce; I can be anything I want to be. Water turns me regal as a swan. In water, I can be a shark, a dolphin. . .a mermaid. Except: my hands met an ice-cold wall of resistance – now water was the enemy. Like an army of serpentine soldiers I had to fight; a witch I had to foil, or she’d cook us in a cauldron of frog legs and fisheyes. My heart sped up. The lake wanted to keep us here, trapped for eternity.
I could sense my lungful of oxygen leaking, straining to the pit of my stomach. It had to last. A faster kick of legs, a stronger sweep of my arms, deeper still into the cold, wet darkness;