Excerpt: The Other Half

Mercaj clung to the rock pillar and watched the tide lap at his feet. He'd chosen wrong. There was still at least an hour left before high tide and he'd run out of pillar. He looked around the bay deciding if he could make it to the next highest one, but the waves were too dangerous. He'd risk getting smashed against the pillar rather than climbing it. And he didn't feel like dying. Definitely not today. His 18th birthday, the day he'd meet his ameta, his other half, the day he'd become an adult and either go into the sea or bring his new wife out of the sea and go join the traders moving from island to island.

He wondered what she'd look like. Of course he'd love her however she looked, but he hoped for curls, tight curls circling a slightly round face with skin darker than the sand on the beach.

Forgetting where he was for a moment, he almost fell off the pillar. He scrambled, scratching the palm of his hand on the rock surface.

He looked up at the moon. Nearly midnight. Where was she? When would she come? He tried peering out into the dark waters but he couldn't see a thing. What if she was late? What if she'd been eaten by a shark along the way? Maybe that's why he'd picked a short pillar. She'd be destined to die and therefore so was he. No one ever lived if their ameta died before their first meeting.

Pushing the morbid thoughts out of his head, he wondered where his friend Tronaj was. He was out there somewhere also waiting for his other half. They both planned on traveling with the traders and getting away from Lesser Tanuj, with their ametalu by their sides.

The Headwoman would like that. Although she'd probably enjoy it more if they both got taken by the sea and she didn't need to pay for a wedding feast.

"You're too wild," she'd tell them almost every day over the past year. "Lesser Tanuj is a quiet island. You don't belong here, either of you."

Tronaj, the truly wild one, would just laugh. He could; she was just the Headwoman to him. To Mercaj she was also his grandmother and besides he wasn't wild. He just wanted to know more about the world.

And of course, he parents never stood up for him. Like most people on the island to them the Headwoman's words where sacred. They'd just pat Mercaj on the shoulder, tell him it'd all be okay, then suggest he go down to the docks to get his questions answered by the traders in port.

"No one wants me," he muttered. "Not even my ameta."

The water was now up around his ankles and it was getting more difficult to hold on. The waves were doing their best to push him off but at least the pillar protected him from the worst of the force.

He glanced back at the island, its rocky peaks poking out like the hair of the giant it'd been named for. The silhouette of Greater Tanuj stood to the left of the island. It was going to be their first stop. They'd go there, get apprenticed to some trader then head south, circling the empty sea, not returning to Lesser Tanuj for at least a year.

A wave snuck around the pillar and almost knocked Mercaj off his perch. Maybe he wasn't supposed to hold on. Maybe the waves where trying to tell him to let go. Maybe he was supposed to just drop and swim out to find his ameta.

Maybe she was waiting for him out there. And here he was hanging out on a rock like a loser.

But where would she be? No one ever talked about what was supposed to happen. The priest and priestess declared it a holy mystery and no one said a thing. People just went down to the shore, swam into the water, spent a night there and either came back paired for life, or they disappeared forever, going to live under the waves.

Maybe that didn't happen. Maybe the people who never came back simply drowned, payment to the ocean that provided land dwellers with husbands and wives.

That wasn't fair, though. Mercaj wasn't going to get himself drowned just so that someone else could find their other half. He was going to find his ameta and he was going to do it now.

Not giving himself any time to reconsider, he pushed himself off the rock pillar he'd been clinging to. The dark wave swallowed him up and he immediately lost his sense of direction. He didn't even know which way was up. He went limp and let his natural buoyancy carry him up. When he felt his back break the surface, he lifted his head and started treading water. He couldn't see his pillar or anything else. In his brief time in the water he must have drifted away into an area of low pillars, ones already covered by water.

He shivered but not from cold which surprised him enough that he stopped moving his arms and legs and he started to sink again. Why wasn't the water cold? It'd been freezing when he'd arrived at sunset. It couldn't have warmed up. Perhaps it was a sign. He was going to go live under the sea. He would become a seaman and spend the rest of his life traveling the world underwater. His heart raced with excitement and for a few moments his worries vanished.

Then his lungs started to burn, demanding air. He realized he'd just been fooling himself. He wasn't a seaman. He was just used to the cold water. He pushed his way to the surface and looked around. He would need to find a new pillar to cling to, or head back to the beach to rest. Unfortunately clouds had rolled in blocking out the moon. He couldn't see a thing. Then he felt something hit his forehead, then another and them more all over his head.

Great. It was beginning to rain.

He decided it didn't matter which direction he went. He'd either find his ameta or drown trying so he started swimming trying to gage which way the tide was going. Within seconds he got into a good rhythm, surging forward with the tide and pushing against the backflow.

He realized he didn't need to worry about his ameta. She'd come. She had to. No one was ever without their other half. The world just didn't work that way.

Then he swam right into a rock pillar and knocked himself unconscious.

He woke up on the beach. It was dawn and the tide had gone out. He was alive. He felt a moment of joy then two things occurred to him. His head ached like anything. And he was alone.

He hadn't found his ameta.

He tried to sit up but the movement made his head spin and his stomach flipped over, forcing him to puke sea water out onto the sand. His stomach then started spasming and he started to wretch which turned into sobs. He was alone. He was officially eighteen and he'd spent the night in the sea. He was supposed to have found his other half, but instead he was completely alone.

How could this have happened? Should he even be alive then?

Drawing in deep breaths he calmed both the sobs and the wretching. He then curled up on his side and wrapped his arms around his stomach.

What was he going to do? Should he go back into the ocean and let the tide take him away?

He shouldn't have left the pillar. That'd been his mistake. He'd knocked himself out and his ameta hadn't been able to find him. She must be frantic, swimming in circles, thinking that he'd died and that she was going to die as well. Adrenaline surged through his body and he heaved himself to his feet. He had to find her! If he was on land, she certainly wouldn't be able to reach him. He lurched forward fighting the nausea that the movement generated.

Halfway down to the water's edge he stumbled and fell to his knees. The jolt set off his stomach again and he fell to all fours hacking up stomach bile. Acid burned the back of his throat and his mouth.

"Loser, loser, loser," he thought. "Get up and go find her. Now."

He didn't have the strength to stand, so he moved forward on hands and knees. When water started flowing through his fingers he looked around. Rock pillars surrounded him, growing in height and getting closer together behind him until they merged with the island's cliffs. He recognized their configuration. He knew this part of the beach. He looked forward. Only a few more lengths and the beach dropped off suddenly. Once there he'd end it, either by finding his ameta or dying. It really didn't matter.

The water reached his elbows and he could start swimming out to his destiny when he heard his name.

"Mercaj!" It was Tronaj. Of course. He must have been looking for Mercaj. Maybe the same thing had happened to him. Maybe he'd not found his other half either. He would never have wished something like that on his friend before, but if it had happened to both of them then it wasn't just Mercaj.

He stopped moving and rolled over, sitting waist-deep in the water. He searched the beach with his eyes for his friend. There he was!

And he wasn't alone. Mercaj's heart sank even farther.

As Tronaj and his ameta approached Mercaj felt a moment of anger. Tronaj had his girl. She was just as Mercaj had pictured for himself. Tight black curls around a dark-skinned face. How could Tronaj do that to him? Then reality clicked back into place. If the girl had meant to be for Mercaj, she wouldn't have been with Tronaj. There's only one ameta for each person and no two were the same. There was always someone for everyone.

"Except for me," he said out loud.

Tronaj came running forward, pulling his ameta forward by the hand. They were both smiling.

Mercaj felt sick again.

"So?" Tronaj asked, his eyes darting all over the place. "Where is she?"

Mercaj didn't answer. What could he possibly say?

"What happened to you?" Tronaj's ameta asked.

Lifting his hand to the right side of his head and found blood crusted in his own curls.

"I-" he said, then threw up again, his stomach heaving from his sitting position, pushing bile out of his mouth and trickling down his chin. He wiped it away and started to cry.

"By the sea!" Tronaj said, noticing the gash on his friend's head. "We've got to get you home. Where's your ameta? Has she already gone for help?" He knelt down beside Mercaj to look more closely at the wound.

"She's not anywhere," Mercaj muttered.

"What's that?" Tronaj asked.

"I don't know where she is!" Mercaj snapped back. "I never found her! I messed up!"

"What are you saying?"

"I'm alone! I don't have an other half. I'm completely alone!"

Tronaj flinched as if Mercaj had hit him.

"But that's impossible," Tronaj's ameta said. "Everyone has another half. You can't be alone."

"So where is she? What happened to her? Why isn't she here?" He got to his knees and crawled over to the girl. He grabbed at her clothes. "Where is she? Do you know?"

Tronaj pulled Mercaj away from his ameta and put himself between them.

"Stop that," he said. "You know she can't tell you. No one ever remembers their life in the sea."

Mercaj slumped down into the water. The tide was coming and it was now up to his armpits.

"But I can't be alone," he said.

Tronaj glanced at his ameta, his expression worried. He reached out and patted Mercaj on the shoulder.

"Don’t worry," he said. "It'll all be okay."