Excerpt: Urban Legends

The whiteness dispersed, deepened, became tangible, became actual color. Light blue, blue, turquoise…finally, it settled on green. Dark green. There was movement, movement and the promise of things you could touch, the serene gliding motion of a manta ray, swimming by way above her head.
Well, that’s awesome, she thought, the speed of her thoughts on par with the ray, one relaxed swing at a time. I cross over into another world, and they treat me to a place exactly like back home. Goodness, she had heard the saying that, no matter which exotic way you swim, the waters end up being exactly the way they are at home, but this was stretching it. She had crossed over to the human world, hadn’t she?
Water was being splashed on her face.
Wait. That was wrong. Something was definitely not right.
Ah, and now she knew what it was – she was surrounded by air, not water. Her entire body was bathed in cold, empty air – there was even a slight breeze – instead of the pleasant tangibility of water.
Except for those droplets on her face.
Well, that all didn’t exactly make matters less confusing. How could she be facing air and still be looking at a manta ray from below?
Nobody prepared me for just how strange the human world would be.
More droplets, lukewarm. Tentatively, she extended her tongue from her mouth – she was lying on her back, another useful and not quite useful piece of information there – and the tip found one drop.
She tasted no salt.
Fresh water.
At home, she remembered having some distant relatives who actually preferred salt-less waters, like small lakes or ponds. But even their water wasn’t as unnaturally clean as this was.
Human water.
So she had made it, somehow.
Now if only she could remember what had happened afterwards… or where the rest of her limbs was.
“Miss?”
Ohh, that word again. But, Mala had to concede, it did not sound like the mirror guard this time. As far as conventions went, this voice was most definitely female.
“Miss, are you all right?”
A face leaned over hers, obscuring the circling manta ray overhead. Female, yes, and definitely human, as well. Inexperienced with the human standards of “beauty” as she was, Mala could not have said whether the young woman was pretty or not; she did have those weird eyes Mala personally still found disgusting. Now she hoped the disgust didn’t show on her face.
She closed her eyes and heard herself groan as darkness engulfed her. Humans and their ugly eyes, not now already. Where were her glasses?
What was she doing here? And why were her thoughts still sluggish as snails with absolutely no intention of catching up?
The room – and she hazarded a guess it was a room she was lying in – wasn’t silent, she realized now; now by and by noises came trickling in, more voices, a strange, all-encompassing hum, and occasionally, water splashing. Every sound was underlaid by a sort of hollow echo, like standing in a spacious, jagged underwater cave.
“Good gracious, Harold, what do you think happened?”
Harold? I’m not looking for a Harold. Gods, what an ugly name. Has anyone seen a Jonathan around here? Where is here, anyway?
“Do you think we should help her?”
“Stand back, Jason, let the assistant lady do her work.”
The next voice was a child’s, shrill and squeaky, all the more effective amplified by the strange echo. “Look mommy, she’s wearing no shoes! And no socks!”
“Hush, Regina – you’ll only embarrass her.” But judging from the tone, the girl’s mother was rather uncertain about the whole situation herself.
“Can I go barefoot too, mommy? Please?”
A random voice chimed in: “She is wearing an anklet, though. Must be the latest fashion or something."
Feet. Anklet. The words were heavy with significance and weighed her down like rocks. They’re talking about me.
Mala opened her eyes, blinked, her thoughts had reached normal speed. She lifted herself up on her elbows and looked forward – she was lying on her back, propped up against something hard, and there was the anklet around her left foot, twinkling in the light, almost as though it was winking at her. There were a couple humans circled around her, most standing, some kneeling, their faces wearing the collective expression of worried mackerels. Yet none of them, she fancied, were looking as perplexed at her as she was looking at those feet, which were supposed to be her own.
If that was true, then so, probably, was the rest…
“I made it,” she whispered, but the sound was ampliefied and audible all the same.
“What was that, Miss? Are you okay?” The young woman who was kneeling by her midsection spoke up. “You caused quite a commotion in this hall, Miss.”
Words, way too many words. “Mala. My name is Mala.”
The woman seemed not to have heard, and babbled on. “You fainted, Miss, straight into one of the aquariums. Luckily it’s really tough glass, isn’t it, Miss,” the woman laughed unconvincingly at her own attempt at a joke. “So the impact just knocked you clean out.”
“I guess I was a bit confused…” She held her head, trying to remember anything that came after the cross. “I thought everywhere I looked were fish…”
“Well, that is to be expected, isn’t it, Miss, if you come visit this local aquarium.” Another attempt at laughing, even weaker than the last. The mackerels kept staring. Somewhere in the distance, fish were swimming behind a transparent screen – that was just too weird to handle just now – completely minding their own business.
“Aqua… what?”
“She really is confused,” said the man a female voice had formerly called Harold, as though he had taken up the unspoken task of defending a complete stranger lying on the ground.
Like children through a half-open door, memories kept tumbling in now – she had crossed over from home, her feet had touched the cold and overly smooth ground, and there had been the one thing she’d thought she would leave behind for a while – fish. Fish practically everywhere, flashing their fins at her from all sides she looked. Hundreds, no, millions of them, most of the kinds familiar as anything to her, of course, but there were some she could not at all identify. And they were all locked, encased in peculiar, rectangular compartments made of glass; she knew glass. It was a little like the smooth, icy surfaces the mirror guards used to write on, but more solid and smoother if you touched it. And touched it she had, wandering around the room like a sleepwalker, wondering if she had just dreamed the whole episode of crossing over, let alone the examination processes of the mirror guards, and this was just another stage of the dream – being surrounded by air, and watching fish dance behind human glass. And maybe the crossing over had taken its toll on her organism as well, and there was the… well, she didn’t like to call it by name yet, but it was there…turning a body she didn’t know how to handle to begin with into an absolutely unpredictable something.
And then…nothing.
Not exactly a good way to start your life in a new world, but who was there to set the standards?
“Could you help me up?” she asked the woman by her side weakly, after all this passed through her head. “I had a pair of tinted glasses, as well.”
“I found those!” squeaked the young girl who had so accurately described the state of her feet. “Are those really yours, lady? They look so cool!”
Mala gave the girl an odd, distanced look, then decided it wasn’t worth going over the words she did not understand, as long as her glasses weren’t broken.
But eventually, she would have to learn how to deal with humans.
Surface dwellers.
The next thought was harder to raise up.
Because she was a human herself now.
The woman at her side forestalled the rest of this mental dispute by carefully helping Mala onto her feet. Wretched things.
“Thank you,” she said, all the same. It was good to be breathing.
“Your rucksack is in the staff room.” Mala had completely forgotten about what little luggage she had brought over to the other side – this body was enough to deal with at the moment.