by A. L. Knorr
I peered at the gem, reaching for it. So it wasn’t superior lungs which had helped Antoni survive the tunnel; it was the magic of the aquamarine.
He enclosed it in his hand, hiding it from view. “I can’t risk losing it. I’ll need it to get out of this place, unless you’re going to do all my breathing for me. As fun as that sounds, I’m not sure it’ll be very efficient in these tight tunnels.”
“The gems give people gills?”
Antoni nodded. “Crazy, isn’t it?” But his eyes drifted to my own gills, and then to where my naked torso and my long silvery-white tail swayed beneath us in the pool. “Maybe you won’t think it’s that crazy.”
I gave a startled laugh.
He brushed my wet hair off my neck and back over my shoulder. He kissed my lips with his own cold ones. “When were you going to tell me?”
I took a breath, wanting to ask a million questions, make a million excuses, and pour my heart out to him. I was overflowing with relief and shock, and was completely confounded at the lack of surprise I saw in Antoni’s eyes. The only possible reason for that lack of shock––he had already known.
There was a muffled crack, distant but distinct.
We looked at one another.
“Gunfire,” Antoni said, his jaw tight.
“Emun!” I cried. “I have to go back!”
“Emun?” Antoni’s brows pinched. “Who is Emun? There’s someone else here with you?”
“I’ll explain later. Wait here, don’t move. Please don’t move until I get back.”
“But…”
This was the last thing Antoni wanted and I couldn’t blame him, but if something had happened to Emun, I would never forgive myself. I had blown our cover to go after Antoni, then left him to deal with the fallout all by himself.
“Promise me,” I cried, desperate, squeezing Antoni’s shoulders with my hands.
“I promise,” he said, doubtfully, and then added, “I’ll wait as long as I can.”
This was the best I could ask for, I was out of time. I gave him a quick kiss and submerged, swimming back through the tunnels as quickly as I could without scraping my skin or scales against the rock walls closing me in.
25
I emerged to a seemingly empty cavern. The broken dome and spray of aquamarines across the rock floor was untouched. My heart gave a high, frightened leap when I spotted a pool of blood, almost resinous and pitchy in the strange lights of the cave. It smeared across the rocks in the direction of a glistening black pool and disappeared over the edge. Was that Emun’s blood?
My tail morphed into legs and I set my feet on the pool’s base with my head just above the water line, looking around for some sign of life. I hesitated to use my voice to call out and draw the wrong kind of attention.
Movement in my periphery drew my view sideways as a human shape emerged suddenly from another pool. Adrian, water streaming from his head, rose from the pool like an apparition from a dream, eyes focused, hand lifting, the barrel of a gun coming to find its mark––me.
“Don’t shoot!” My siren voice blasted from my throat like foghorn.
He froze, and his face went slack, the gun relaxed to his side. I let out a huge relieved breath. Not Atlantean, then.
“Lower the gun and be still,” I commanded. Adrian’s arm dropped.
Hopping out of the pool, I walked to the smear of blood, studying it. Looking into the pool where the blood trail ended offered no revelations. Slipping into the water I submerged and searched the pool, but it appeared to be vacant.
Emerging again, I glanced at where Adrian stood, body relaxed, face slack.
My eye was drawn to the spray of gems catching the light and glinting wetly. I knelt and picked one up.
It was my undoing.
Weakness flooded my limbs and I fell to one knee. Shock coursed through me, my vision blurred and a dull burning sensation flared and throbbed in my head, torso and limbs.
Someone knocked into me from behind, sending me sprawling toward the gems and onto the cavern floor. Landing on the jewels Antoni had spilled, they pressed into me like stinging insects, making me writhe and cry out in pain. My body would not respond to my desperate requests to get up, and my siren voice did not respond to my will.
Lying on my back, head swimming and body in agony, a blurry shape appeared above me. His shape spun as the cavern ceiling whirled and I wondered if I was going to be sick. The final member of the party, come out of hiding to finish me off. He spoke softly in Swiss German, his tone that of wonder. He nudged my hip with a booted toe, hard enough to rock my body. A tortured moan echoed in the cavern––mine.
The shape kneeled and he reached out of my view for something on the floor. I heard the dry clinking sound of a pile of gems being gathered into his hand, lifted over my helpless form. Almost lovingly, he lay the handful of gems down my torso. My body rocked in response to the pain, my muscles seizing and my mouth opening to cry out, a hoarse cry escaping. My tongue felt leaden, I tried to talk, tried to beg him to remove the gems, but my powers had abandoned me.
A blurry shape hit the man bent over me with a dull thud and I heard two sharp exhales of breath. Both of them disappeared from my view, but I could hear the sounds of a struggle, of fists hitting flesh, and grunts of pain. I couldn’t lift my head or turn my neck but my mind screamed, Emun!
Two gunshots were followed by further combative sounds and a loud splash of water. Then nothing. Silence. Panic blossomed in every nerve as I lay there in agony, vulnerable and praying that Emun was alive. I felt as helpless as an infant, and just as weak.
Several agonizing moments later––moments that felt like hours––a face appeared overhead. The pale, angular face of Emun spun in sickly circles overhead.
“Targa! What’s wrong with you?” His voice echoed a thousand times over, and pierced my ears and my brain like an ice-cold needle.
I tried to tell him the gems were hurting me but I couldn’t speak. A strangled moan leaked from my mouth. Drawing breath sent tiny knives stabbing through my ribcage, my tongue had gone numb. Closing my eyes shut out the spinning ceiling, but my mind thought my body was still whirling. My stomach clenched. The stinging insects had penetrated, were drilling toward my heart. I had never known agony until this moment, and I wished for death to end it. I opened my eyes again, begging for relief.
Emun understood. His hands brushed over me as he pulled away the pile of gems on my torso. I heard him take a wheezing breath and knew he too was in pain. Rolling me off the gems I had been lying on, he made sure none were in contact with my skin. Immediately, the cave stopped spinning, my breathing eased. My limbs began to tingle. My tongue was still leaden.
“You need salt,” I heard him say.
With a sharp gasp of pain and a grunt, he picked me up and carried me to the nearest pool, where he let me slide into the water.
The briny water touched all the places the gems had stung and the pain began to ease. My legs melded, but slowly, sluggishly, painfully. For several minutes I just drifted in the pool, letting the saltwater soak my gills and nurse my aching, weak body. My tongue and throat tingled, my gills greedily pulled the salt water through them, soothing with every inhale. I let out a long sad siren note, relieved to the point of tears that my voice had returned to me.
When I felt something like normal, I broke the surface.
Setting human feet on the pool’s bottom, my legs trembled as though I’d been running sprints and overdone it. With a shaking hand, I reached for the pool’s edge and gripped it, resting there. Emun had slipped into the water beside me and stood watching me, his face etched with concern.
“Feeling better?”
I nodded. “Thank you.” My voice was a dry rasp. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the beautiful aquamarines filling the column, how sinister and ugly they appeared to me now. “They were killing me.” I dragged my eyes to Emun’s face.
“The magic is real, just not in the way we expected.”
&
nbsp; “I thought they were supposed to help mermaids.”
“But you’re not just a mermaid,” Emun said quietly, “are you?”
I didn’t answer, but he was right. I wasn’t just a mermaid, I was an elemental. Rare and powerful. But was I really so different, that the gems would help others of my kind, and yet kill me? I lifted a trembling hand and covered my eyes. It seemed I was not as impervious as I had once thought.
Adrian stood where I’d left him, in the pool, gun hanging at his side. Emun’s eyes darted to him. “He’s making me uneasy.” Emun got out of the pool and went to take the gun from Adrian’s lax hand.
He turned to me, gun in hand. “Where’s Antoni?”
“He’s through there,” I gestured to the underwater tunnel. “I need to go get him. I told him to wait for me.”
“I’ll go. You rest,” he said.
I shook my head. “I promised I’d be back for him.”
Emun nodded. “I’ll wait for you then.”
It was only when he turned fully to face me that I noticed the blood oozing from a bullet hole just below his right rib.
“You’re shot!” I beckoned for him to come to me. “Let me help you.”
He put a hand over the wound. “It didn’t hit any vital organs. I’ve been shot before. Hurts like hell but I’ll heal.”
I beckoned to him impatiently, frustrated that he would make me have to insist. “Get over here.”
He slipped into the water beside me and we submerged together. Calling on the healing power of the salt water, I drew from the ocean and put a hand over his wound. The bullet had passed through, leaving a hole not unlike the one my mother had had after being shot with the speargun. Slowly, very slowly, the wound stopped bleeding and the muscles and skin drew closed and stitched themselves together. Emun blinked lazily at me, down at where he’d been injured, and back at my face. He touched my face gently, saying thank you.
Leaving Emun in the cavern to finish healing, I made the journey through the tunnel and back to Antoni. A dark shape coming toward me in the gloomy light told me he’d grown tired of waiting.
Stopping myself by bracing my hands against the tunnel walls, I reversed direction.
“That was quick,” Emun remarked when both of us surfaced and climbed from the pool.
Antoni wrapped his arms around me and I hugged him back. He tightened when he saw Adrian, until Emun explained that Adrian was under my command.
“It was agony, waiting, and when I heard more gunshots I had to come,” he murmured against my ear.
I just nodded against his shoulder, still feeling weak and too tired to waste my breath with unnecessary words.
When he released me, Antoni turned to Emun. “You’re Emun, I guess?”
“Nice to meet you.” Emun extended a hand to Antoni and the two men actually shook hands––here in this deep underwater world, with a still and vacant looking man standing beside them.
Antoni shucked off his wet shirt and draped it over my shoulders. I gave him a weak smile, wishing I had the energy to laugh. “I’m not embarrassed,” I said.
“Clearly,” Antoni replied, “but I am.”
Emun chuckled and looked down at himself, naked and wet. “Sorry, unless you’ve got a spare set of shorts hidden somewhere, not much I can do about this business.”
“Sorry, but how do you two know each other?” Antoni asked, looking back and forth between the two of us. “Are you…the same?”
“More or less, although Targa’s got abilities I sure don’t have.” Emun bent to pick up a gem. “And these don’t affect me in the same way.”
“What do you mean?” Antoni looked at me. “How did they affect you?”
“They almost killed her,” Emun replied for me.
“What?” Antoni’s arm tightened around me.
My eyes drifted to where Adrian stood, waiting patiently, almost sublimely. “We could ask him,” I suggested.
“I’m going to ask you some questions, and you will tell me nothing but the truth,” I said, my siren voice swelling around him, filling the cave.
“I will tell you nothing but the truth,” he droned.
“What do you want the gems for?”
“To sell to the highest bidder.”
“What do the gems do?”
“When held in the hand, they give a human the ability to breathe underwater.”
“Do you already have buyers?” Emun asked from behind me.
“We have interested parties. They will be auctioned privately.”
“Who are you offering them to?”
“All the major world militaries.”
“Underwater armies,” Antoni muttered, wrapping his arms around himself. “Unbelievable.”
“Who do you work for?”
“The Group of Winterthür.”
I looked at the men, questioningly. Antoni shrugged, indicating he’d never heard of them, but Emun said, “It’s a think tank out of Switzerland.”
“Switzerland?” A bell rang in my memory. “Antoni, do you remember Gerland Chamberlain?”
“The man we met at the museum?”
I nodded. “He was Swiss, and he was awfully interested in the jewelry case at the exhibition. He and Adrian must have been working together.”
Antoni nodded. “Ask him.”
“Who is Gerland Chamberlain?” I asked.
“The Group of Winterthür,” he repeated.
“Is he Atlantean?” Emun asked.
Adrian jerked his head in a stiff nod. “Atlantean.”
Antoni and I shared a look. Antoni just shook his head, amazed.
“How did you learn about the gems?” I asked Adrian.
Adrian droned out his story without emotion in his voice or on his face. “An archaeologist looking for Atlantis found ruins that told the story in pictures and a language that very few could decipher. It told of a sea god who made an aquamarine columnar for his lover, who had been cursed by an ancient enemy. The aquamarine lifted the curse for her as long as she held it in her hand or wore it on her body. It was discovered ages later that the same aquamarine gave humans the ability to survive underwater for as long as they wanted.”
“But it lifts the salt curse?” Emun insisted. “It doesn’t hurt mermaids?”
“It is said to free mermaids,” Adrian droned. “This is what the ruins said.”
Emun and I shared a look. “Why did it hurt this mermaid then?” Emun asked.
“I don’t know.”
I resisted the urge to choke Adrian for being so unhelpful. We guessed it was because I was no normal mermaid, but we were still only speculating.
“I might have something to add to this conversation,” Antoni said, and when I turned to look at him, I was alarmed to see that his lips had turned blue.
“Antoni! You’re freezing.”
He nodded and his teeth chattered, his body tense and his arms around himself. “I think if we don’t get out of here soon, I might become more of a burden than I am already.” He nodded at Adrian. “Him too.”
Adrian’s lips were also taking on a blue-ish cast. Though he wasn’t moving to warm himself, his skin was waxy and covered in gooseflesh. He had also begun to shiver.
“We are a long way from warmth,” Emun said.
“There are warm clothes in the sub, if we can get back there as soon as possible, that will be a good start.”
“Him too?”
“Well we can’t just leave him here,” I said. I looked at Adrian’s face. “Do you know the way back?”
“Yes.”
“Lead the way, and be quick about it.”
With that, Adrian moved like he had an infusion of energy.
“Wait, what about the gems?” Antoni asked, through a tight jaw.
Emun, Antoni and I considered the pile of aquamarines.
“Adrian, does anyone else know about this place?”
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“I don’t think we should just leave them
here,” Emun said. “They’re too valuable, too powerful.” He bent and retrieved a backpack, dumped out its contents and he and Antoni began to gather up the gems and put them in the bag. When they’d deposited every last one, Emun put the straps over his shoulders and gave me a nod.
“Lead on,” I commanded Adrian.
By the time we returned to the sub, both Adrian and Antoni were shivering uncontrollably, teeth chattering so hard they could barely be understood. Adrian opened the hatch on the sub and retrieved dry clothes for himself and for Antoni. Quickly, they stripped out of their wet gear and pulled on the dry.
“What about the bodies?” I whispered to Emun once we were inside the sub. “Just leave them?”
“The most important thing is getting Antoni out of danger,” he said quietly, as we watched Adrian at the sub’s console. Antoni was seated in one of the six bucket seats, buckled over the shoulders and wrapped in a tin foil blanket. “We can talk about the bodies later, if you really want to do something about them. If it’s important to you, I can come back and deal with them.”
I gave him a look which I hoped expressed the gratitude I was feeling for this, and then went to sit with Antoni, wishing I had Saxony’s powers of body heat. Dark smudges appeared below Antoni’s eyes as his lids drooped heavily.
“So tired,” he slurred.
“I need you to stay conscious for now, please love,” I said, kissing his cheekbone. “Until you’re warmer.”
Antoni nodded slowly, laboriously.
Emun seemed to realize Adrian was in the same danger of slipping into unconsciousness. He slouched at the controls. Emun slid into the seat behind him and jostled his shoulder. “Hey, look alive, Adrian. No one else knows how to drive this tub.”
I smiled. “Well, well, Emun has limits. You can fly a plane, but not pilot a sub.”
He grinned over his shoulder at me. “Not this model, anyway.” He flicked his fingers at the console in a disdainful gesture. “Too many electronics. Why can’t they just make them like they used to?”
Adrian had straightened, but throughout the journey, Emun had to continuously poke and jostle him.
