We sat there for a few moments, watching each other.

Finally, I pointed
to my chest and said "Ytha."
The boy nodded. He placed his hand over his heart and said "Kali." The
girl made the same action and said "Aluanta. Alu."
I nodded and smiled. The girl smiled slightly, and the boy looked at
her, then me, and smiled.
I pointed to the ocean, rolled onto my stomach and started crawling,
keeping my eyes out for others. I suspected their parents were in the
jungle or in another canoe offshore. The children followed me quietly.
I passed their canoe. It looked handmade, and an outrigger was lashed
to the port side. It was just big enough for two. Their gear, a couple
spears and a net, hung off the side. The kids reached for something in
the canoe as I slid into the water.
To my surprise, the children waded right in after me and started
swimming along. They swam almost as well as I did and confidently
followed me, staying on the surface. The sand bottomed out about six
meters down and turned to coral. I paused. The kids were swimming above
me. There was still enough light from the fading sunset to see their
profiles. The water was so calm and clear that it looked as though they
were swimming in a deep blue sky swept with wisps of sunset.
The boy, Kali, followed by the girl Aluanta, dove down. He had an old-
style mask, with round glass. He swooped down, and paused in front of
me, his belly nearly on the bottom. He was unarmed, and here, he was
the one who as at a disadvantage, so, I felt safe. Even if his parents
showed up, I would have plenty of time to lose them in the coral
channels and exit the reef.
He was able to hold his breath for an incredibly long time. After what
must have been almost two minutes, he pulled his legs beneath him, and
leapt for the surface. I followed him, and surfaced next to the two. I
scanned all around. No sign of anyone else. The two children started
talking two one another in a language of which I only understood my
name. I was more concerned about anyone else being here. I would have
left, but felt compelled to stay. I suddenly realized that company was
enjoyable.
I didn't know how to communicate with them, but all children love tag.
I swam up to the boy, tapped his shoulder, and then swam away. They
grinned and plunged after me. A simple quiver from my tail could send
me shooting out of his reach, but after giving a 'struggle,' he tagged
me. The children shot away from me and each other, and I chased the
girl. She swam swiftly across the surface. I passed under her, and
popped my head above the surface and smiled at her as I blocked her
escape. With a squeal, she turned the other way. I dove back down and
turned on my back, looking up at her and reaching for her belly.
Whichever way she turned, so did I. Aluanta started laughing so hard
that she stopped swimming, and I tagged her.
By this time Kali had drawn near, and she simply tagged him. He came
after me, and I simply glided down to the sandy bottom. He dove after
me with surprising agility and speed. I waited on the seabed and when
he approached darted away, keeping a hair's width from his fingertips.
I turned in corners with him chasing me. He didn't give up easily, and
after a minute or so he finally squatted on the sand and then shot to
the surface for air.
I followed and surfaced next to him. He and his sister tread water
right next to me. Their laughter and smiles were infectious, and we
simply hovered there together giggling. Kali reached out and grabbed my
shoulders, and before I thought about it I let him climb onto my back.
His legs split right where my dorsal fin was, and in the water there
was no pressure. He tapped my shoulder and I heard him take a deep
breath. I realized what he wanted to do, and thought about how fun it
would be to share my speed with someone. The tide was high enough that
I could swim over the reef. I slipped just under the surface and
started accelerating; the coral tips mere inches below my belly. I
increased slowly, and his arms clasped around my chest. I sped up. The
reef was a blur beneath me. Nearing the drop-off at the edge of the
reef, I surfaced. I heard him exhale, breath, and then take another
deep breath. With that, I plunged into the drop off, diving toward the
abyss. He held on with one hand while equalizing pressure by holding
his nose. In a few seconds we were about 30 meters down, and I levelled
out, and then shot upward. He held on with both hands again, and I
finned as fast as I could. He started to lose grip just beneath the
surface, but not before we both shot out into the open air, a good 10
feet up. At the top of the arch he pushed away from me, and we both
jacknifed and dove back into the water.
I surfaced, and Kali was shouting exuberantly. We were already about a
quarter mile from the shore. The girl was rowing toward us across the
calm waters. Chatting in his own language at a mile a minute, he kept
gesturing down to me while grinning. He made for my back, but I took
his hands, and pantomimed taking a big gulp of air. He held his breath,
and I flipped on my back, angling downward. With him to my front, I
could watch him with his arms outstretched toward me as I held his
hands. I chose a safe direction and started finning as hard as I could
a few feet below the surface. Thin, silver streams of air leaked from
the corners of his mouth and the long strands of my hair danced in
front of his mask's faceplate. I banked threw the water, did a barrel
roll down, then straightened out and frantically drove for the surface.
I could have gone faster, but I slowed down when I felt I was losing my
grip on him. As we burst through the surface I heaved my arms and
shoulders, throwing him up and away. Earth and sea changed places as I
backflipped back into the water.
Aluanta joined us. She threw what looked like an improvised sea anchor
from her dugout and jumped fearlessly into the ocean with us. Together
we continued to have a blast. With a little imagination, and recalling
what I saw dolphin-riders do at Seaworld, we came up with all types of
ways to play. I could drag each child with one arm as I swim on my
back, or push both of them threw the water as they 'stood' on my hands,
which I held out above me head. The boy had much more zeal for the
acrobatics, though, and soon the girl was in the dugout watching while
we put on shows. We kept playing long after the sun went down. The Moon
was full and so bright it made shadows in the water.
The thing we determined was best was for him to ride my back to about
eighty feet, where I would stop and he would stand on my shoulders. I
would fin madly for the surface, gaining peak speed just before we
broke it. If we didn't get 30 feet into the air, I would be surprised.
From the apex of our air, the dugout looked tiny, and we were out of
the water for almost five seconds.
We did this dozens of times. Finally, exhaustion intruded on our fun.
We were just too tired. Aluanta in her dugout was falling asleep. I
pointed to shore. The boy crawled right into the dugout. We had drifted
a long way from the beach. Another island was closer. The boy and girl
turned right to the closest island. I didn't know what or who was on
the other island, so I objected. I guess there was nothing more
important there besides convenience, so we went back to our original
beach.
I realized I was starving. Eat, eat, eat, eat, eat. I broke away from
them and dove deep. I turned a few times before sensing prey. I ended
up near the reef wall. The only fish I saw were a trio of reef tip
sharks about my size, cruising for an easy meal. I wondered what they
would do to me if I attacked one. I hadn't killed a shark yet. All the
other fish I'd preyed upon had simply swam for their lives, leaving the
losers to be my meals.
I thought about it for a moment. I could spend some more time looking
for something easier to kill, and maybe less dangerous, but I was
starving. When I became hungry it was difficult to focus on anything
besides food. I selected the smallest one, about four and a half feet
long, and swam toward him from behind. I decided that a violent stab
with my knife right on the top of his head, between his eyes, could
kill him quickly and effortlessly. Besides, he'd be more than enough
for all three of us to eat.
The sharks didn't pay me any mind as I swam about twenty feet above
them. I got a little ahead, and then dove down hard to intercept. My
strike was spot on, and the knife punctured the top of the shark's
head, sinking to the hilt with a tangible crunch. The other two sharks
split up and circled. My prey quivered as if electrocuted and its eyes
rolled up into their sockets. The mouth opened and closed as if
panting.
Using the knife as a handle, I steered the dying shark's aerodynamic
body toward shore and finned fast. A smooth trail of blood poured from
around the puncture wound and dispersed in our wake. We cleared the
reef wall. I kept an eye behind us. The two other sharks had finished
circling and were now on my trail. I held my catch out away from my
body and finned harder. The bolder of the two put on a burst of speed
and drew near, but I could tell it was angling for my dinner rather
than me. It shot like a bullet and grabbed my dinner's tailfin, shaking
its head and tearing off a bite. The second shark, which I had lost
sight of, suddenly appeared out of nowhere and grabbed a bit of flank,
tearing my dinner off of my knife. The shark corpse sank toward the
reef, bleeding even more. I swept back and sank my one hand into its
gills, while brandishing my knife in the other hand. I started towing
it fast for shore. The sharks were dispersed on my left and right, and
a third appeared from behind my again. I made it over the reef and onto
the beach covered by high tide. But the sharks were persistent, and
didn't want their food taken away. I was swimming so fast I slid onto
the beach, and lost grip of my prey. The bold shark nearly beached
himself as he grabbed a bite, and frothed the water as he shook a
mouthful free. My first instinct was to stand up and stab at it, but
with no legs I merely floundered. I recovered and dragged my body out
of the water, then dragged my hard-won food onto land, too.
The dorsal and tailfins of three sharks patrolled the water just off
shore, cutting through the moonlit waters. The children raced over to
me. They had started a campfire near their beached dugout. I pantomimed
eating the shark. The boy spoke to the girl and they dragged it toward
their camp. I started dragging myself toward the fire. The children
raced back, and picking my up gently by my armpits, nearly lifted me up
off the sand and dragged me quickly over to the fire. I laughed at the
roll reversal, and it must have been obvious to them, too, as their
laughter joined mine. But at the same time, I felt anxious as I watched
their brown legs moving effortlessly across the sand.
They brought me to the fire. The girl dragged the shark corpse to the
edge of the water. I lay on my side and stared at the fire. The sounds
from the jungle behind us were almost intimidatingly loud, but I hardly
noticed as I thought of the stupidity of my actions with the sharks. It
had been stupid to try and grab dinner with those predators all around,
and I had been lucky. If I was attacked out here, who would patch me
up?
Aluanta returned and was cooking shark steaks on a wok-type pan that
looked like it had been made from a hammered-out artillery shell and
started cooking, throwing in spices and salt. In a few minutes dinner
was served on green coconut husks. The meat almost burned my mouth as I
wolfed it down. Whether it was my newfound taste for fish or her
cooking, it tasted awesome. I went through four plates and kept the
poor girl at the fire by the time they had gone through one. I would
have eaten it raw, but didn't want to gross them out, and she was also
obviously trying to be very hospitable. They seemed to be a little
shocked at my appetite, since it took me about six plates to be full.
After dinner, Kali packed a pipe with some spicy-smelling tobacco and
started smoking. The girl grew close to him for warmth. From the looks
they gave one another, the way they communicated, and the tenderness
with which they touched one another, I realized they must be husband
and wife instead of siblings or just young friends. Even though they
had childish tendencies, their actions and relation seemed very adult-
like. It was shocking to realize that they were old enough to be
married, mates, or whatever, but it was obvious they had no need for
parental supervision. They navigated the ocean and were capable of
surviving, or even prospering. I wondered if they were from a nearby
village or whether they were on some type of honeymoon or sojourn.
Perhaps they came here to gather a certain type of fish or something
from the ocean. Even if they were adults in their culture, they did
have a great sense of play. I guess I did too, since I'd enjoyed it so
much. I was only 19, and they perhaps 14 or 15, but to me they seemed
very young.
As we sat we talked, trying to communicate in English and their
language, of which I was ignorant of even the name. The moon reached
the horizon. It and its reflection looked like a gigantic, blood red
number '8.' It sank into the sea, and the stars appeared - stars like
I'd never seen before. The Heavenly River ran through the middle of the
sky, and the atmosphere was so clear it almost seemed as if you could
see each individual star in its massive body.
As the fire went to coals, so did our conversation. I dug a hole for my
dorsal fin, lay on my back, and stared at the sky. Kali brought me a
thin sheet, which was their only blanket. I gratefully refused, but he
insisted. He and his girl gathered their gear into a little nest along
the side of their dugout, and called something that might have been
goodnight.
"Goodnight," I said back. But I didn't sleep. I watched the sky and
counted shooting stars. The air smelled fresh and clean, the ocean made
a rhythmic hissing on the coral sand, and the racket of the jungle
faded to a quiet cacophony that stayed in the background of awareness.
Soon, I heard Kali snoring. I felt wide-awake and more alive than ever.
But I felt a bit lonesome despite the company of my new friends. I had
only befriended them because they seemed innocent. But they must be
connected to a larger society, and that had to pose a danger to me. So
by befriending people, I was playing with fire.
When I fled area where I had transformed, it had been almost a panic. I
hadn't thought in the long-term. I just figured I had to get away while
I was in this altered form. I guess I had figured it was temporary. But
now almost a month has gone by. It'd been a busy month, just becoming
accustomed to what happened, and finding a way to live through the
shock of it all, but I was mentally catching up with the changes. When
a person loses a limb in an accident, they have little time for
remorse. Survival is the number one priority, and they are able to
figure out ways of surviving, whether they simply start hopping on one
leg or tying a tourniquet around the stump of an arm with one hand and
their teeth. I had essentially lost an entire body, an entire life, and
an entire culture in which I lived. Somehow, that fact only caught up
with me on this night, when I lay here on this beach.
I fingered the necklace, feeling its innate resistance to being pulled
off my neck. I regretted ever picking the thing up, and going back to
the water. I raised myself up on my elbows, and looked down at my fish-
half in the starlight. If I were to ignore my body from the naval up,
it looked like three quarters of a dolphin was laying on the beach. I
remembered what it was like having legs. Even though I've lived with
this form for over a month, it felt as though my real legs were
somewhere inside this fish body, that it was a rubber costume of some
type. But I only had to touch the smooth skin with my fingers, or move
my fins or tailfin to know it was real. Still, it was hard to grow
accustomed to.
Also, my torso, and arms, and breasts. I felt as though I was still
here, but somehow wearing a mask. I hadn't had an occasion to look in a
mirror. And I spoke rarely. The sound of my own voice was still
shocking. The only time I'd seen my reflection was in the mirror-like
undersurface of calm water.
I sank back into the sand. The sky was getting light in the east.
Again, I fingered the necklace, trying to think of a way to break free
from it. If I could get it off my body, I rationalized that I should
change back. Changing back would be the solution to all my problems.
I'd be in a little trouble from the Marines by being absent for so
long, and I'd have to find civilization, but at least I would be human,
and male, and normal again. The military might have already written me
off for dead and informed my family. I didn't want them to suffer,
unknowing what happened.
I tried to get the necklace off some more. It still wouldn't budge. I
started using the serrated portion of my diving knife. It was tight
work, cutting about one inch from my face, but I noticed there was
progress. The necklace seemed to be made of gold. It was slow going,
but flakes were coming off. I suddenly felt a surge of hope. The thing
wasn't indestructible after all.
But, I had another problem. It would be day soon, and I figured that I
had to part from my friends. I was too afraid more people might come,
and catch me on land. For all I knew, people in this part of the world
are big fans of mermaid-fin soup. Perhaps they'd stuff and mount me, or
just capture me to sell off. Regardless, I didn't want to take the
chances on any of it. While the two slept, I slipped back into the
ocean. I found a private grotto on the edge of the reef, sank to the
bottom, and continued sawing at the necklace.
The sun rose, and its rays spilled into the grotto. Scores of fish
swarmed through the grotto. The surface lowered with the tide until the
coral on the rim of the grotto almost touched the air, turning the
grotto into a massive bathtub. I realized it would be a bad place to
get caught, but then again boats or humans can't get across the reef
surrounding the grotto at low tide, anyway.
I felt bad about not saying goodbye to Kali and Aluanta, but had a
feeling they were here to do something specific, like fish, so would
probably be around for a bit. Or maybe they might understand that I
can't afford many social connections.
After some hours, I was halfway through a link in the necklace. I
laughed to myself with excitement. This was it! Every 100 cuts I would
cease sawing and try to pull the link apart, to no avail of course.
This became so routine that I wasn't even thinking about the
possibility of escaping this mermaid form when I ceased sawing, grasped
the necklace chain with both hands, and pulled it apart. The link broke
away, and I watched in disbelief as the necklace slipped from around my
neck and into my hand. I rubbed my unleashed neck with one hand while
staring at the bundle of gold chain in my other hand. It glinted in the
sunlight.
I looked at my body, expecting a change. I felt nothing. But hope
persisted. As I waited, I grew hungry. The sun had already come and
gone, and the tide had rushed back in. Still, nothing. Well, the last
time I changed, it had happened when I had slept. Perhaps the same
thing would happen.
After finding some easy lobsters I went to shore. Kali and Aluanta were
gone. I slipped back into the water until sunset, chose another beach,
and came ashore. At first I was too excited to fall asleep, but
exhaustion from being up all night and day caught me.
I awoke to a grey dawn. I was lying on my stomach, my head in my arms,
and I knew at once that nothing had changed. I rolled on my side and
looked down at myself. Long hair, girlish arms, breasts, tapered waist
flaring into the fish body. The fish portion of me was dry and sandy,
and looked like something that you should be able to buy by the pound
at your local fishing wharf. I pounded the sand in frustration.
I picked up the necklace. So, nothing had changed despite freeing
myself from the stupid thing. As I turned it in my hands, I realized
that the broken link was now mended. The chain was whole again. I felt
like putting it on, but then thought twice. Perhaps the change back to
normal takes longer than a day. Or, perhaps my proximity to the thing
has something to do with staying in one form. I felt like chucking it
into the ocean and not looking back, but was worried I might need it at
some time.
'Well, I can carry it with me for some time, and if nothing happens
I'll leave it in a safe place and swim away from it,' I thought.
I carried it in my net bag for another day and night as I swam and
hunted through the numerous, tiny islands. After another night on dry
land, I hadn't turned back to normal. I finally left the necklace
dangling on a limestone outcropping on the edge of a submarine cliff,
and remembered the location. I lived without it for two days, then went
back to find it. It was right where I left it, so I swam off for
another week. My days fell into familiar patterns that didn't leave me
a lot of time for despair. Explore, swim, keep an eye out for humans
and sharks, bed down at night on a deserted beach, repeat.
After two weeks away from the necklace, I was still 100 percent
mermaid. The only thing that was changing about me was improvements in
my fishing skills, and improvements in my ability to sense proximity to
land and prey. I was become more mermaid, not less. I went back, and
fetched the necklace. Tentatively, I put it on. I felt no change,
except this time I could take it off at will. The easiest thing to do
seemed to be to leave it on, so I did.
After eating a meal, I was floating on my back staring up at the
surface and the bright blue sky beyond. I didn't want to think about
the problems of being stuck like this. When I did, I felt acutely
alone, and panic started seeping into my mind. But, I had to face my
situation. For some unholy reason, I was stuck as a mermaid. I at least
wanted to cry on someone's shoulder. I asked God why? What was the big
joke? Of course, no matter how many times I pouted this question, no
answer.
This mood prevailed for almost a week. But one morning I awoke to a
perfectly sunny, blue sky, and another ocean of crystal clear water
filled with life, and realized I had been feeling sorry for myself. I
had got no more answer to 'why?' than 40,000 people do every day when
they are born into this life. Some people simply get degenerative
diseases, or are stricken blind, or by fate or accident end up
paralysed. Some people end up old and lonely and have no one to talk to
whatsoever. I at least was able to experience things that no one else
could, and I had people who loved me. I just needed a way to contact
them without ending up as the star of unwanted attention.
So, at the moment, due to restrictions and isolation, I was all alone.
But it didn't have to be permanent. I could somehow contact my family,
on the other side of the world, and arrange a visit of sorts. At first
I thought the idea ridiculous. I have to convince my folks that I'm
their son, turned into a mermaid? And then what, how do we spend time
together even if they accept such a grotesque development?
Well, I figured that my first priority was to get to America. We sure
weren't going to do a lot of family visits in the middle of... whatever
islands I was in. So, I had some problems to figure out. But, I had
6,000 miles of swimming to think up solutions.
------
I started for my journey by eating. I planned to hunt for prey as my
primary source of nourishment, with a cache of live mussels to get me
through the dry spells. But the best way to store food on a body is to
gain fat. I simply hunted, killed, and ate. Hunting for more game gave
me just enough time to get room in my belly. Eating was a vulnerable
period for me, and my paranoia of sharks was never more acute than when
I was ripping into a baby tuna or pulling apart lobsters. I kept it up
for a week straight. The effects were showing - I was definitely
starting to get thick around the middle. The muscle striation in my
powerful fish body grew dimmer under the body fat. And, my breasts
seemed to expand. I continued for another week, and my belly was
definitely rounding out. Still, I tanked up some more. But by the time
I felt a second chin forming, I was growing sick of the non-stop
hunting and eating. I decided to start moving.
By luck, I found a piece of plastic netting from an industrial cast-
off. With some nylon rope, I made another net bag. I packed both bags
with as many mussels as I could carry without sinking. I spent my last
night on land, and watched the gleaming dawn star rise ahead of the
sun. I crawled into the water, dragging my gear, and started swimming
straight for it.
Within an hour I had lost sight of land. Again, the same fear I had
felt when I left the Japanese islands crept into my mind and body.
There was no hint of a bottom to the ocean, just endless rays of sun
beaming into the azure depths. This time, I wouldn't try to bed down on
the bottom. I decided to simply keep swimming, non-stop, and sleep only
when I was too exhausted to continue. I cruised at my easy pace, about
fifteen miles per hour. I swam on my back, grew tired, and swam on my
belly. I navigated by the position of the sun, cross-checked against
the data from my watch-compass. I kept a bearing of exactly due East
the entire day.
I figured that my only real threat was meeting a large, roving
predator, such as a great white shark or maybe a large tiger. I'd spent
days recounting what little I'd learned about sharks from television
and books. While they were efficient eating machines, it wasn't very
efficient to go after live, healthy game that had a good chance of
successfully evading or fighting back. I felt that my top speed was
sufficient to evade a shark. The only problem was that I had to see or
sense the shark before he saw me. I had no problem hearing and
detecting other animals in the water, but I was worried that if I were
fatigued or asleep I wouldn't hear a thing before being attacked.
I also had no idea in hell where I was starting from. I guessed it
might be the Philippines, but wasn't sure. All I knew was that if I
headed due east for a good, long time, that I was bound to hit the
Americas, or Hawaii. Somewhere on all those thousands of miles of
coastline I would be able to find a way to get a message to my parents,
to let them know that I was alive, and perhaps arrange a meeting. I
hoped that perhaps there would be a place on the coast where I could
find a beach frequented by tourists, sneak up on to it at night, and be
able to reach a pay phone on a boardwalk. Or, maybe I could befriend
someone, and convince him or her to lend me their cell phone.
I started growing hungry, and went into hunting mode. I listened
carefully for game, and heard the flutter of a school of small fish to
my right. I angled toward them. It was a school of mackerel. I started
to gain speed to burst into the school, but the drag from my two caches
of mussels was really inhibiting. They weighed about 10 pounds each in
the water, and I had to swim at a slight angle to maintain the lift
necessary to swim without sinking. They were just heavy enough to ruin
my neutral buoyancy. I simply couldn't gain the speed I needed before
it felt like the bags would pull my belt off. So, there went my plans
for the 'emergency' cache of mussels. It was either keep them, or drop
them and hunt. I decided to keep swimming and eat them, hoping that I
would still be able to find game in the deep deep.
I sliced open and ate the muscles, maintaining a slow zig-zag course as
I did so. I didn't want a straight trail of smelliness leading to me.
Soon, it was dark. I no longer had sunrays to give me an easy route
east. I surfaced and swam on my back, like a seal, keeping the Southern
Cross to my left. The water started to grow turbulent, and clouds
encroached on the starry sky. The only sound was that of the water
passing by my ears. Soon, I was climbing into wave faces, and then
sliding down their backs. The waves grew larger as the wind picked up.
The wind started making a slight whisper over the waves, which were
gaining frothy crests at their peaks. I fell into the wave troughs and
could see nothing but darkness. Then, a wave would pick me up, and all
around in every direction, I could see pale white crests of froth. In
the wave trough the wind died down, picking up as I went back up. I
felt raindrops falling on my face, and they hissed as they hit the
ocean. The wind was coming from the east, so I just kept my head toward
it.
I felt as though I should submerge. It would be easier going under the
waves. But something compelled me to stay on the surface. The sheer
emptiness, I guess. There was simply nothing out here except the ocean,
and myself. Was this nature, the lifeless, but dynamic world in which I
was immersed? There was less life out here than in the desert, yet I
felt there was life, in the rolling of the waves, the wind, and the
rain. It was mysterious, and massive. I couldn't identify exactly what
I was witnessing less with my eyes than with my other senses. I didn't
have the words. I wasn't taught words for this. I don't think anyone
could describe it. Somehow, I didn't feel afraid at all. It occurred to
me that the ocean wouldn't harm me in the slightest. It was incapable
of harm. I could only harm myself, by not having enough knowledge of
it. There had to be solutions for whatever I wanted to do. I just had
to learn how to survive in the open-water environment. And, if I
couldn't survive, I had to learn the risks. Once I learned the risks, I
could figure out their weight versus the weight of the rewards they
barred. Then, I could accept consequences.
As I rose to the top of a wave, the rolling ocean was illuminated as
though it were mid-day. A massive lightning bolt struck the water just
to my west. The thunder shook my skull. Was my body a better conductor
of electricity than the ocean water? I decided not to find it out.
I dove below the water. I checked my compass and was glad to see that I
had kept going east. It was midnight. I was tired. My body felt sore.
I'd been swimming for sixteen hours. I yawned in the water. I ate some
more mussels. I wanted to sleep. I decided to just doze a bit as I
swam. With some effort, I found that I could keep finning as I zoned
out. Dream images danced through my mind, but I was somehow able to
stay conscious of the disposition of my body. It was almost as if I
could pre-program my body and then let my mind wander. If the slow
fanning of my tail faltered, or I felt the water passing over my body
at an angle, I would wake up briefly and make a correction.
The mussel caches were a serious pain, though. It was difficult to
maintain level flight with their constant drag downward. Once I started
giving into their pull, my downward slope accelerated. A few times I
awoke after losing a couple hundred feet of altitude from the surface.
It was a form of sleep, but not true rest. By the time the waters
started growing brighter, my body's rhythms kicked in, and brain
started waking up to the day. I felt like I'd slept, but poorly. I went
up to the surface. The waves were calm again, and the dawn star was
directly ahead of me in a sky of deep blue tinged with salmon clouds.
It blazed like a polished diamond laid on velvet. No wonder the
ancients worshipped Venus, and gave her feminine traits. I could look
at her until the brightening sky hid her beauty.
Inwardly, I moaned. My body ached. I had underestimated how strenuous
non-stop swimming would be. I decided to slow my pace down a bit. I
swam on my back and with both hands bundled the fat around my middle.
Before setting out, I could pinch up a roll as thick as a donut. To my
despair, I had already dropped considerably. I used to run track in
High School, and I had always been a fast runner in the Marines. From
my studies of sports I knew that a sprinting pace consumed about 900
calories an hour. However, I didn't know much about how much energy was
expended in swimming. My metabolism seemed to be crazy, and no doubt
being in the water constantly had everything to do with it. I guessed
that I had packed on about thirty extra pounds in two weeks of non-stop
consumption. Before that, I might have had maybe thirty pounds of body
fat between my torso and my fish body. At 3,600 calories per pound of
fat... Say about 600 calories an hour in the water on average... maybe
over 2,000 at my burst speed for hunting, so about 700 calories per
hour on average every hour...
I calculated as I swam. I figured that I had to be burning about 14,400
calories per day. At first the number seemed ridiculous, but I finally
rationalized it by thinking of lifestyle. On land I was using about
2,300 per day, but I could sleep for eight hours without moving, my
body didn't have to fuel itself against the thermal effect of cold
water, and I couldn't swim faster than a mackerel.
'I should have gained 100 pounds for this trip,' I thought to myself. I
really hadn't done the math before setting out. Lack of prior planning
produces piss-poor results. That's what I had always been told in the
Marines. I consoled myself with the fact that I was dealing with some
unknown quantities. That settled my mind for about three seconds,
before I thought of what my sergeant would have said: "Excuses are
like... Everyone has one and they all stink."
As I had a breakfast of clams, I wondered if their extra drag had
merely offset the calories they provided. I decided to simply finish
them off, which I did. Once they were gone, my buoyancy was fine. I
should have just planned to hunt for food the entire time. Live and
learn.
I kept swimming. I could sense no land, and heard no game. The lack of
little fish eased my mind concerning sharks, but it meant I had nothing
to hunt, either. The water was warm and still. I swam on the surface on
my back. It grew boring, and my entire body hurt. I stopped finning and
coasted to a stop. It felt good just to be still for a moment. The
swimming was different from walking long distance. I couldn't get any
blisters, or crotch rash, or barking dogs or achy joints. Instead, it
just felt like every strand of muscle in my body simply wanted to stop
moving.
After a moment of rest, I started up again. I didn't want to rest too
long and find that it was harder to restart than it was to not take a
break in the first place. The ocean was unusually still, and I had
switched to air breathing. Dark Side of the Moon was playing in my
mind, and I thought about how much I would love to be able to listen to
that able. I tried to recreate all the sounds in my mind. I was
thinking about the voice of the girl in 'Great Gig In The Sky' and how
beautiful it was, just a voice used like a guitar. I could mentally
hear the piano and the slide guitar leading up to her solo, where her
voice, the drums, a bass guitar, and an electric organ would all kick
on at once. The song started repeating in my head, and again I heard
her part start. This time, I decided to sing it myself.
"Woah oh, oh yeah," I sang, and then stopped. Holy crap, that sounded
almost just like the real cut off the album. Granted I probably forgot
the exact way she was singing, but I remembered the melody. I tried
again. My voice rang out above the water, and it sounded alien to me.
But, it sounded damn good!
My newfound talent woke me up a bit. I tried to reproduce the entire
cut from that song, and felt I was doing really well. So, I could sing.
It felt odd singing with a girl's voice, but it had great range, and
plenty of duskiness if I wanted as well.