"I guess I was wrong."
Cass had no idea how much time had passed when she heard Selena's voice, as familiar as her own. The sun had dropped toward the horizon, its light on the waves blinding her.
Amak pushed against her hand, hard, reminding her that she was supposed to be scratching his back.
She squinted at the sun-spotted water. "Wrong? What do you mean?"
Water splashed to her left. Cass kicked around to see Selena's head break the waves only a few strokes from her. "I was wrong about you being completely human. Amak sees something of worth in you."
Happiness thrilled through her. She did hear the orca's name. "I think he likes me."
"Obviously. The question is, why?"
White arms flashed as Selena closed the distance between them. She bobbed in the wave beside Cass, riding it up and down in rhythm with her movement. "Amak's mother was our mother's bondmate."
Cass looked from the orca to Selena. "Bondmate?"
"It's a pairing, orca and Serra. We travel with the orcas, with all of them, but this is something more. Bondmates are like...like kin. More than kin, because with time our hearts connect and we share each others' thoughts." Selena motioned at Amak. "He would be yours. As you said, he likes you."
Cass blinked drops of water from her lashes, extended her hand as Amak glided past again. "Did you know my mother?" she whispered.
She felt a wave of...of other flood her mind: she saw a world of white-streaked aqua, a mirror surface above. A woman with a familiar cloud of red hair swam ahead of her; an immense orca swam at her right, so close that her nose nearly touched the orca's pectoral fin and their sides brushed against each other. It was known as mother/calf position.
She was seeing a memory, through Amak's eyes.
In front of them, the woman turned, swinging a child through the water.
In a heartbeat, the sense of other disappeared and Cass was just herself again. She felt a wave buoy her up and drop her, felt the moment her fingers lost contact with Amak's flank. In the next heartbeat, another memory flashed: swimming with her mother, only this time with only two orcas, one adult and one calf. Her memory, mirroring what Amak had just shown her.
Salt water slapped into her mouth, making her choke and open her eyes. She was still riding the waves far from shore. Selena still floated beside her. Amak dove and resurfaced, tracing a broad loop around them.
Selena smirked at her. "Didn't you expect him to answer?"
"No," Cass breathed. "How did...what happened?"
"He gave you his thoughts. That's what bondmates do."
Cass spun in place, tracking the orca. "Is he my bondmate, then?"
"No, not yet, although you've obviously begun the process. It doesn't happen all at once."
"Do you have a bondmate?"
For the first time, a smile-a real smile-flashed across Selena's face. Without answering, she dove. Even above the water's surface, Cass could hear what sounded like a whistle, exactly like an orca's. When she surfaced a moment later, a black shape glided alongside her. "This is Adlartok. She is three years old."
Without warning, Amak shoved up under Cass's feet, sliding her down the slope of his back as he broke clear of the water. Her hands reached automatically for his dorsal fin, but he twisted; she dropped off his side into the water with a squawk. Her heart was pounding louder than the waves. She was playing with an orca. Playing with him.
"Even after all those years with humans, you take to the sea as if you grew up here," Selena said. Cass spun in the water to find her near again. "Can you breathe it?"
"Breathe it? No!"
"Are you sure? You're part Serran. You might have the ability." She scissor-kicked sideways, studying her. "Follow me. I won't go deep." She disappeared beneath the water. Cass glimpsed a flutter of white: her feet, kicking deeper.
Her heart lurched. It felt too close to the last time, when the woman on the beach had ordered her to dive, to kill herself. She wasn't afraid of Selena, exactly. Selena didn't seem like she meant to hurt her and even if she did, Cass couldn't help thinking that the orca-Amak-would stop her.
She sucked in air and dove.
She had to keep her eyes open to see where she was going but, like before, she was surprised to find that the water didn't sting. Her vision blurred for a moment and then cleared, almost as if she was wearing a dive mask. When she raised a finger to one eye, it came away covered with some kind of clear gel.
Light and shadow rippled through the water. Cass twisted in place, sculling her hands overhead to keep her body from floating upward.
As promised, Selena hadn't gone very deep, hovering only ten or twelve feet below the surface. Her hair floated around her like medusa's snakes, with her white face a moon at the center. She reached for Cass's hand. Cass jerked away, but she held her hand out again, insistent.
When Cass reached toward her, the other girl took her hand with surprising gentleness. Then she raised one finger, message clear: wait.
Cass forced herself to stillness, even though her chest had already started to tighten with lack of air. She'd been under less than ten seconds. She could hold her breath another thirty seconds at least, if she conserved air.
Her heartbeat thudded the passing moments in her ears.
Suddenly, Selena shook her hand, showing her something. Her arm. It was covered with a thousand spots of luminescent blue, so faint that even the half-light that filtered through ten feet of water made them almost impossible to see. Cass jerked free, slapped at her skin, and kicked to the surface.
Selena broke through the water beside her. "You are Serra."
"What was that?"
"It's the ocean, inside you. The stars of the sea, the ocean's lights...it has many names. It means that you can breathe the water, like we do."
"But I can't!"
"You already have or your skin wouldn't shine so clearly."
Cass remembered the terrifying feel of water rushing into her lungs and could only shake her head. Had she breathed water?
"You have to let in the water, breathe past the panic." Selena snorted as if she could read Cass's thoughts. "That's the human in you, doubting. Just because you can't explain something doesn't make it not true. Follow me. If you dare." With that, she coiled herself into a ball and dove. Her bare, white feet kicked a moment at the surface and disappeared.
"Shit," Cass whispered. Her heart felt ready to pound its way through her ribs. She looked at the black water. The thought of diving into it filled her with cold dread. Just do it, she thought. Her arms and legs didn't obey. Do it!
She drew her knees to her chest, flipped head downward, and dove.
Twenty feet below, Selena turned to look up at her, her arms carving figure eights through the water. She opened her mouth wide and blew out a stream of bubbles. Then she pointed from her chest to Cass's, her meaning clear: exhale. Like her.
Fear of drowning was a primal terror, one hardwired into the human brain. When the brain sensed too much carbon dioxide in the blood, it triggered the fear centers and sets off a whole stream of panic responses: adrenaline rush, pounding heart, fight or flight, everything. Cass wasn't even close to starved for air and she felt the response beginning. At least, she imagined she felt it.
Selena thumped her chest again, pointing at Cass. Cass shook her head.
Selena shrugged and turned to swim away.
"No!" Cass shouted. Her voice emerged a glugging mix of bubbles and sound waves.
Selena somersaulted back and kicked closer until only a few feet of sun-shot water separated them. Mouth open, she breathed in, her chest lifting and expanding. Again, she pointed to Cass. Breathe.
Every nerve screamed at her to escape, to swim to the surface. Just do it, Cass ordered herself again. Her stomach rose into throat; the panicked feeling of running out of air was an iron band clenching tighter and tighter around her chest. If she was going to try something so crazy, she should do it now, while she still had enough air to get to the surface if she failed. She opened her mouth; salt water filled it, but her lungs refused to draw it in. She felt like she was fighting herself: her brain said she should do as Selena said while her body rebelled against it with steadily mounting pressure.
Something snapped; suddenly she was kicking for the surface. Her head broke out of the water and she gulped deep lungfuls of air. She couldn't do it. She couldn't.
Selena burst out of the water beside her. "Don't be so afraid! Look at yourself-you're swimming in the open ocean, protected from its cold. An orca follows you and plays with you. You belong here."
"Belong where? Swimming around with you? Stalking random islanders?" Cass's whole body trembled. She'd failed. She couldn't stop thinking it, even though it shouldn't matter. "I can't do it. I tried."
"You belong with the Serra." Selena's voice rang earnest, impassioned. "We're your mother's people, your people, and we need you. For centuries, we've lived in these waters and now the humans will kill us off along with the orca, the kelp forests, the great fish-every good thing that lives in the sea!"
"I think I've met more of 'my people,'" Cass told her. She couldn't keep the bitterness from her voice. "Your grandmother. She tried to drown me."
Selena slipped sideways through the water. "My grandmother is the clan's Matriarch. She wouldn't try to kill you. She was probably testing you. I told you, Serra don't kill their own. Only humans do that."
Cass kicked at the water. It required constant effort to keep the other girl in sight: Selena bobbed and twisted through the waves like some kind of watery bird. Cass caught at her arm when she resurfaced near her. "I don't get it. There you go again, humans are so terrible and awful and destroy everything-but you are human. Part human, at least. And if humans are so terrible, why are you even here?"
Selena's arm twitched. Cass could feel her desire to jerk away, but for some unknown reason she stayed. "I'm only here to serve the clan," Selena said. "Not all Serra can do what I do. You, though-you could help me."
"Help you what?" Selena was talking in circles, but somehow she'd managed to awaken in Cass this incredible longing. Part of her remained wary, hesitant to accept conclusions without knowing all the facts, just as a good scientist should be. Jen would be proud. But a deeper current whirled beneath sense, a powerful undertow of wildness and longing. She was afraid it would suck her under and she'd never escape its pull.
She didn't even know if she wanted to escape.
Selena looked at her long and hard before twisting her arm out of Cass's grip. "I can't tell you."
Cass shook her head. Of course Selena couldn't tell her. Why did she expect anything different? They weren't on the same side, however much she wanted to be. "Why did you take Jen's necklace?"
"Because she's human." Selena didn't actually say "stupid", but it's clear in her tone. "The necklace is a Serran thing. She doesn't deserve it."
"It was a gift. From our mother."
"That's a lie. If it weren't for her, wasn't for all the other meddlers like her, our mother wouldn't have died."
They floated separated by only a few feet and what felt like an ocean of understanding. How could Jen's work have had anything to do with their mother's death?
"Tell me the truth," Selena said. "Are you happy on land, living with them? Don't you want to come with me?"
The question brought a lump to Cass's throat, because Selena was right: Cass wasn't happy, not the way she was here, floating in the water, where all the world was magic.
"I'm happy," she lied.
"Come with me."
The ocean, the orcas, a life uncomplicated by all the things that seemed so important on land-their promise filled Cass with a bone-deep ache. Almost, she could abandon her entire life-Jen, science, the few friends she'd managed to make over the years-just on the hope that something better and magical waited to answer the never-absent longing for...for what, she didn't even know exactly. For parents. For a past. For a place where she belonged.
They'd drifted far from shore and it didn't frighten her at all, although she knew that it should. The memory of swimming with her mother had settled in her, solid and dreamlike. She felt at home, surrounded by gray-green waves, with the hazy mounds of islands rising from the ocean like giant turtles off in the distance. She felt more at home that she ever had on land. Or maybe it was just her imagination. Maybe she imagined that she felt so...so right, here, because she wanted it so badly.
Yes. The word lingered on her tongue, sweet and frightening; but she thought of Jason and the way his fingers had laced through hers when they walked through the forest in the darkest part of night. He'd flipped off the flashlight to watch the stars with her, even though it meant they tripped over every stray root and rock. She thought of his soft lips, tilted down to meet hers, and the way her entire being felt shaken afterward.
Cass shuddered. "You're messing with my mind again. Quit it."
Selena didn't move. "No. I'm not."
Cass tasted the salt on her lips and knew she was telling the truth. Selena wasn't making her want to go with her. That desire was all her own. "Why can't you tell me why you're here? I can't decide whether or not to help you when I don't even know what you're doing."
"Because you haven't chosen," Selena said. Waves pushed her farther away. She didn't swim back. "You live with the enemy."
"The enemy," Cass repeated. "Like Jason?"
"Jason's different. Stay away from him. Stay away from all of them."
"Why should I?"
"Because otherwise I'll have to make you."
"You tried to drown him!"
Her face screwed up angrily. "I did not try to drown him. You don't understand anything."
"Then tell me!"
Selena stared at her again, unblinking. "Are you coming with me?"
It was a sign how much Selena had shaken her, how long it took for Cass to shake her head. But when she did, Selena dove and disappeared. Cass tried to follow, but saw only sun-sparkled water layered by dark, underneath.