Grayson by Lynne Cox Read Free Book Online

a mermaid’s world where color and light were transformed into liquid. I swam through colors, through liquid silvers, whites, yellows, greens, purples, and blues. It was like diving into bubbly white champagne, into clear gin, deeper into swaying walls of yellow chardonnay. The water grew colder and colder the deeper I dove. I passed into a world of shimmering julep green, through merlots and grape into heavier waters, and finally into deep water the color of blueberry juice.
    Sunlight became liquid too. Undulating beams of white and gold and silver light whorled and wavered around me as if I was lying in the center of a neon hula hoop. The deeper I dove the tighter my goggles felt, like they were squeezing into my eye sockets, and myhead felt as if it was clamped in a vise and the pressure was twisting down on my head. My ears and sinuses hurt. Swallowing hard, I released the pressure and pulled past a large field of kelp that was rolling in and out with the surges, riding a liquid breeze. I dove deeper, until the liquid color faded into a soft baby blue.
    Using my hands like pectoral fins, making sculling motions like a goldfish, I turned slowly around in a circle. My blood was pulsing in my temples. My body felt squished in by the water pressure.
    Stay under just one more moment, I told myself. Look again. Turning around in the mermaid world, I strained to see something, but there was no sign of the baby whale.
    My lungs were on fire from my desperation to breathe, my head throbbing from the buildup in my blood of carbon dioxide that I couldn’t exhale—it increased the blood flow to my brain and my urgent drive to breathe. I shot back to the surface, hoping I could reach it before I ran out of air, before I blacked out from the lack of oxygen, and drowned. My ears were popping from the acute changes in pressure, mymuscles ached from lack of oxygen, and my lungs felt like they were imploding and screeching for life.
    Three bubbles, two bubbles, one bubble—hold on to that last bubble. Intense pressure. Pain. One last huge silver bubble flew to the surface and burst.
    Gasping for breath, lying on my back, treading water, body one big ache, I breathed hard and fast. My heart was pounding and my head felt like it was about to explode. I lay there floating, trying to get my breath back to normal. Trying to get my heart rate down. Trying to get back in balance.
    One more time, I would try. But I knew I needed to rest for a few minutes. I needed to get the lactic acid out and more oxygen into my blood.
    Lifting my feet up, remembering to pretend that I had a quarter between my shoulder blades that I needed to press into the water, I floated, letting my mind relax to take the pressure out of my head. Looking up into a sky filled with the colors of Provence, the bright blue of the sky, the yellow of the sun, and the white of the clouds, I watched the clouds become beluga whales, angelfish, sticky macaroons, woolly llamas playing flutes, the summit of Mont Blanc, greatcutter ships and white elephants and fluffy white house cats, furry borzois and the great Pyrenees. Floating like the clouds I rode the ocean currents.
    The water suddenly became gritty, discolored, earthy brown and red, flecked with shiny mica. I was in a small river of sand and silt, caught in a riptide flowing offshore. It was a small riptide, moving at only one knot or two, but in a few minutes, it had carried me two hundred yards offshore. I knew it was nothing to be afraid of; it’s only when you try to turn and swim directly into a rip that you have problems. If I needed to get into shore at any point, I could get out of the rip by just swimming fifty or a hundred yards parallel to shore, and then I could swim to shore. I enjoyed the free ride on the riptide into deeper water, and the trip gave me inspiration for a new plan.
    This time I would dive deeper and faster with the hope of finding the baby whale. Taking seven deep breaths, I dove and pulled as