Basilisk Eyes

Chapter 122: Unicorn hair

"Okay, we're going to work on breathing now—how to hold your breath when you're in water so that you float and also how to avoid inhaling water. Inhale and fill up your belly—you'll need to lie back and make your body rigid so that it rises to the surface of the water. I'll hold your shoulders, work on getting your hips up. That's right—fill up your belly. There you go. I'm going to take my hand away while you float... don't worry—you won't sink... and get Aminah floating, too. Good, very good. There you go..." Ms. Midgeon instructed... her voice a bit muddled by the water that lapped against the sides of his face. He swished his hands underneath him like little paddles and that also helped him stay on the surface of the water.

Under the water the sounds were echoey and soothing... he could hear Ms. Midgeon telling Aminah to fill her belly with air and there were other sounds, too—the faint sound of bells on the other side of the pool that signaled the end of the lane along with the vibrations and the voices of the others bouncing off the cave walls, and it was very calming. He liked floating now that he was actually doing it. His head butted up against the rope with the charmed bubbles that indicated the swimming lane and he kicked his feet to motor away from it a bit.

I'm actually kind of swimming. Won't Mei be surprised!

Ms. Midgeon had them practice float on their bellies and also taught them how to put their faces in the water and how to draw a breath while they were moving so that they could keep swimming and breath at the same time. Harry was just paddling around (doing a stroke aptly called the doggie paddle), but it was more swimming than he'd ever done before and it felt really good to know that he could keep his head above water for a while.

It makes sleeping next to an Egress to the ocean a lot less frightening.

It was time to go to their next lessons and Ms. Midgeon was helping Gordon with his weights so that he could get out of the pool. Their classmates were laughing and talking as their feet slapped through puddles on their way to the locker rooms.

"Harry?" Aminah asked, paddling up next to him as he was working his way toward the stairs.

"Yeah?"

"Well... I just wanted to thank you for listening today... I guess I really needed to talk about it."

"Yeah, sure."

"It's been hard to talk about..."

"I get that," Harry said, thinking about his struggles to talk about what happened to him.

"It's just that people get so weird about it..."

"What do you mean?" Harry's breath caught—he hoped he hadn't been weird about it.

"Well, it's like they don't get that what happened with my dad is a really terrible and unexpected thing... they think that all Muslims are terrorists who do this kind of stuff all the time. And it is like what happened to me makes sense... fits with their story of what all brown people who wear burkas and turbans do."

"Oh. Yeah, that's the way my uncle thinks. He's always talking about how the government should be rounding up everyone and sending them back to where they came from... but he thinks that about pretty much everyone who isn't exactly like him. He's really... pretty horrid."

"I get that a lot... 'Go home, Paki!' and the funny thing is that my mom's side of the family... we've been here since before the Romans were building walls and massacring druids in the name of their God."

"I don't get why people do it..."

"Do what?"

"Hurt each other so much," Harry said as he climbed out of the water, shivering in the cool air of the cave.