by N. R. Larry
“It has begun,” I said.
“Until it ends,” they automatically responded.
A crystal clear, blue light rushed across the floor, coating every inch of the room, protecting all the surface things. Then, there was a low rumble. White foam bubbled up into the room, and bluish-green water swept over my feet. My toes curled and gradually, my vision changed. The walls of my chambers, those gleaming towers that burned yellow during the day, and silver at night, shot up all around me. It was as if my feet left the floor and were splashing in water again. Magic burned through me until I shook with it. If I wasn’t so versed in energy work, I would have sworn I was really there.
In Atlantis.
Slowly, I lifted my arms in the air with my palms facing the ceiling. The piece of Jett’s aura involved with the working zipped into my hands, and then pressed down against my skin. I bared my teeth. My eyelids fluttered closed. Lowe’s energy shot into my other hand and I rocked forward before it funneled into my ears. Seconds later, white flowered in the space behind my eyelids. My head jerked forward. I clamped both hands over my heart, and then forced my eyes open.
Dottie’s spirit hovered over the water, spraying droplets everywhere. Beneath her, the water rolled, until finally, a small cyclone formed. I met her gaze, if you could call it that. “Show me how you died,” I said from between clenched teeth.
She hesitated. With my magic, I pulled her toward me. My body trembled from the brief struggle between us. “In the name of the sea gods, old and new,” I said. “Show me how you died.”
Water rushed into the room. There was a low pop in my ears. I tensed and relaxed my jaw. It was no use. I couldn’t hear. Dottie’s pulsing, green form shivered toward me. Before I could react, her hands pried my mouth open, and then, she stormed down my throat.
The world washed away with green, and then, I collapsed into the water. Thrashing around, I struggled for some degree of control, but all I could feel was her anger. It stormed into every part of me, biting at my organs and forcing unfamiliar memories inside my head. The more I fought against her, the hotter my muscles burned with rage. Finally, I gave in and let myself sink.
A small eternity stretched out below me. Inside my body, Dottie howled and struggled for breath. In my head, she was sucking water into lungs that didn’t exist anymore. White light flashed in my skull. Somewhere in the distance, laughter echoed. Another white flash brought Dottie rushing back. Bubbles rushed away from her nonexistent mouth. A tightness wrapped around my chest, and the entire time, there was all that anger. It sank me like an anchor to the bottom of the ocean. Forever passed before I had a thought that could be heard above Dottie’s fury.
“If you stop struggling,” I said, pressing my cheek against a bed of red worms. “You won’t drown.” The worms stirred beneath me, tickling my flesh, and although I still hadn’t regained my sight, there was a throbbing at my temples that let me know my connection to all ocean life was still strong. I ran my fingers across the searing bodies of the red worms. They went still under my touch, and my vision cleared. Darkness pressed in on me from every direction. “Trust me Dottie, this body cannot drown.”
A scream ripped through the space between my ears. My back arched off the worm bed. I slammed my hands to the sides of my face, which only made the noise worse and more terrifying. I kicked my legs, faster and faster, until the blackness all around me brightened into deep blue.
“Take me to where you died,” I muttered, curling my hand into a fist. “Or I’ll send you to places even ghosts are too frightened to haunt.”
Her scream echoed in and out, before stopping completely. My hands and feet began to itch, and once again, a rush of strange images blurred together in front of my eyes. There was a low whisper at the back of my head. I couldn’t make out what she said, but a feeling settled into my gut.
Instinct.
I turned and started to swim.
In the distance, there was a cone of yellow light. I passed through it, knowing that it was the portal that would take me back to my familiars. It didn’t take long to swim the few miles to a nearby shore. When I surfaced, the sky was a soft pink that didn’t last long. As I climbed onto a nearby flat rock, the world flickered in and out of focus, before finally settling on a dreary gray. I had made it to the dream world, or the world of memory. A world of things long since passed. My stomach tilted with nerves. I knew I had to be careful. I was moving through two worlds at once, but my actions would only have consequences in the real world.
Then, don’t act, Dottie whispered at the back of my thoughts.
I looked up. The sun was a dull rock in the sky, and white flakes floated down, dissolving as soon as they hit the water. “Easier said than done,” I told her.
I held my hand out and caught some of the flakes only to realize they were sand. Grains of silver sand. Brushing my hands together, I glanced around again. The people that had been on the shore when I first surfaced were no longer there. Instead, there was a leggy woman pacing along the shoreline, her head bent toward her shoulder. Her dusty, yellow hair was pulled up into a messy bun, and when she turned to face me, her smile shone through the shadows all around her.
“Dottie,” I said, stepping back into the water and making my way toward her. I was halfway there when something stirred on my left. The water rippled into a series of circles, as if someone had thrown a pebble, even though there was no one in sight.
I turned back to the shore. The Dottie of memory had her hand draped at her eyebrow line, shielding her eyes from the sun, which had to have been bright that day. I started toward her again. She was on the phone, a smile on her face. Looking down at the pale sand, she traced hearts into the wet earth. At that point, I was close enough to touch her, only I couldn’t.
She was an older woman, but youth shone in her pale blue eyes. Her cheeks were splashed with light freckles and her mouth was shaped like a heart. There was a lightness in her that made me smile.
“Son, you should ask her out,” she said into her phone. To me, her voice sounded far away, or buried in loud wind. “Life is too short to not—” Her mouth froze, and something passed through her expression, something like horror. “Hey, I have to go.” She dropped her phone in the sand and ran.
I turned in the direction she moved in. There I was, washed up on the shore on my side, my reddish-brown hair tangled in a wet mess on my forehead. My eyes widened, my heart thudded so hard nausea clamped down in my stomach. I swallowed the extra moisture in my mouth and stopped only inches away from them.
“Miss?” Dottie asked, lowering herself onto one knee. She swept my hair off my chest, took hold of both my arms, and shook me. “Miss are you alright?” She pressed her head to my chest and I circled the two of them.
“Stop,” I muttered. A thick wind blew across my face, blowing sand everywhere. I kneeled across from Dottie and ran my hand over the form that was an exact copy of me, only it couldn’t have been, because this never happened. “What are you?” I asked Dottie’s memory. “Shape-shifter?” Closing my eyes, I whispered an incantation that would reveal any creature that could wear another’s skin. When I opened my eyes, it was still me.
I leaned back, confusion flooding me. “Magic?” My hair blew into my eyes, and I roughly tucked it behind my ear.
You know what this is, the ghost of Dottie hissed from inside my skull.
Ignoring her, I snapped my fingers, and the living Dottie of the past raised her head, and then pressed two shaking hands, one stacked on top of the other, over my heart. “You’re going to be okay.” Tears pooled in her eyes as she started compressions. “You’re going to be—”
My hand shot up and wrapped around her neck.
She gasped and beat at my hands, her eyes wide with shock and fear. With a smile on my face, I sat up and tightened my hold around her neck. That’s when I noticed it. My eyes were red. I was reminded of the memory of the vision I’d shared with Lowe.
A croaking sound came out of Dottie’s
mouth, so I bared down harder. In the dream world, my hands itched. In the past, I dragged her to the water, holding her high enough that her toes slid through the sand as I went.
On the way, I almost tripped on something. I glanced down, and then bent over and snatched up a phone. “Vidchat,” I muttered, pressing a bottom on the screen while Dottie thrashed wildly in my arms, beating at me, doing all the damage of a goldfish trying to take on a shark. A handsome, smiling man filled the small screen. His face flashed from joy to horror in one blink.
“Who are—Mom?”
I snorted and dropped the phone.
“What the—Mom!”
By the time I reached the water’s edge, Dottie had lost most of her strength. Her blows were like kisses of wind against my skin. Still smiling, I lowered her to the surf slowly, enjoying as the water enveloped every inch of her face.
Her eyes widened. There was a plea in her gaze.
“No,” the real me in the present whispered. “Stop it, no!”
Dottie’s eyes and mouth opened and shut. Soon, bubbles obscured her face. They didn’t clear until she stopped moving. “See you again soon, my Kappa,” I said, standing, never moving my gaze from her dead, unmoving face.
With that, I turned and walked until my head vanished beneath the water. Screaming, I jumped in after my past self. I caught sight of the memory of me swimming toward a familiar looking man.
The real me stopped. “Lowe?”
“Priestess Zarya!” his familiar voice cried out. “What are you—what have you done?”
Ignoring him, I tried to swim past, but he took hold of my arm and pulled me back. I stared at him with a blank expression. He shook his head and muttered. “He’s done something. He’s—” He sniffed the air in the water around us. “Seven seas.” As he started to pull something out of his pocket, the real me was tugged back toward the golden cone of light.
My time was up. They were pulling me back. When I turned to look back upon the me of the past, there were only dark figures. “No!” I swam toward them, but an energy at the back of neck yanked with such force that I couldn’t fight it.
“No!” I whispered, shielding my eyes from the bright light.
Seconds later, I surfaced in the middle of the living room, and blinked everything into focus. Crawling out and across the floor, I coughed violently. Puffs of green mist spewed out of my body. Hands touched me in various places, muttering words of comfort. The portal slammed shut, and there was the blip of it locking again. I hacked until the last of Dottie was out of my system.
I stood on shaky legs until my gaze homed in on Lowe. “You.” I stumbled toward him and placed my hands on his chest. “You know something about this.”
His eyes widened as if in pain and his silence told me everything I needed to know. The venom of betrayal twisted itself deep into my gut. I dug my nails into him and tried to still my shaking body. “How could you know something about this and not tell me?”
He sniffled and remained silent.
“No, you will tell me. You will tell me everything you know.”
15
Marlowe
There was no power in her voice when she told them to leave. Dottie still floated at her side, only she seemed much calmer, unlike Zarya, who was bent over, still trying to catch her breath.
In that moment, I felt more alone than I’d ever felt, which was fucking terrifying. The day she chose me I knew I’d never be alone again, and yet, there I was, in her presence, more alone than I was the day she found me. I was a junker, collecting scraps of abandoned tech from the waste of Atlantis. She gave me the chance to be a scientist. A warrior. And what had I done? I had lied to her like my coward of a father.
“Your anger is gone,” Zarya said in a breathless voice.
It took me awhile to figure out she wasn’t speaking to me, but to Dottie. Zarya eyed her with a mixture of guilt and anger twisting the features of her face. “I promise you, that wasn’t me,” she said, swallowing, and turning away from the ghost. “But, I will make this right. I will bring you and your son justice.”
The lights flickered, and then there was a low, pop. When I glanced around, Dottie was gone. Zarya sniffled and, already dry, went to sit down on the couch. She waved a hand in the air, and glasses materialized on the coffee table in front of. From upstairs, there were a series of loud bangs. Something shot by me, and I jumped back. It wasn’t until it landed in Zarya’s hand that I saw it was a bottle.
“Sit down,” she said, her voice strained. She poured two glasses, and then sat the golden flask down. The smell of mead, that mix of honey and strawberry filled my nose. My legs felt like were made of concrete as I made my way over and took a seat next to her. She scooted the glass in my direction, and it left a light trail of water on the glass surface. “I have a feeling we’re going to need it.” She gripped the glass and jerked her head back, downing the warm liquid in one go.
I stared at my glass and my stomach twisted in knots. “No, thanks,” I whispered, leaning back into the cushions.
“In all the time I’ve known you,” she said over the sound of more liquid splashing against the inside of her glass. “I’ve never known you to refuse a drink in my presence.”
Unable to think of anything to say, I drummed my fingers against my knee and tried to keep those images out of my head. Images of her falling into the water, and what that would mean for us. Images her coming back through the portal, coughing up bits of ghost.
“Lowe.” When she turned to me, her knee brushed against the side of my shorts. Even though it wasn’t skin on skin, the warmth of desire raced up my spine. “Why were you there the day Dottie died?”
An imaginary, thick substance seemed to coat my throat, making it impossible to speak.
“Marlowe.”
I winced, because she rarely used my entire name. Swallowing hard, I turned toward her. She looked tired, and here was the hint of something else in her eyes—something that may have been fear.
And Zarya was never afraid.
I took in a deep breath and held it for about five seconds. “It isn’t what you think.”
She sniffled, downed the rest of her drink, and sat the glass down on the table. Clasping her hands together, she said, “I don’t think it’s anything, because I’m completely lost.”
When I opened my mouth, I began to shake. My mouth dried out, as if someone rubbed salt rocks against my tongue. Gritting my teeth, I sat on my hands to hide the tremor from her. It was a pointless gesture, as she could see the rest of me shaking.
“Marlowe,” she repeated. “I love you, but my patience has hit a barrier reef. If you don’t speak soon—”
“I’m afraid—’” I blurted before she could finish her sentence.
She scooted closer to me, resting her arm behind me on the back of the couch. “Of what?” Her voice came out a whisper. She reached for my hand and squeezed.
I closed my eyes, enjoying the heat of her touch. “I’m afraid that you won’t look at me the same.”
She didn’t say anything for several moments. Finally, she pulled away and sighed. “Well, I suppose that’s a risk you’ll have to take.”
I shielded my face with my hand, so she wouldn’t see the expression on my face. Weakness wasn’t something Atlanteans did well. Finally, I leaned my head back against her arm and nodded. “I was there because I followed you.”
“From where?” she asked, her voice tight with impatience.
“You had just seen the king.” My voice was strangled when it landed in my ears. “I knew it was your weekly meeting time, so I was waiting for you outside of the throne room.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to share a breakthrough I had with you.” I cupped my hands in my lap and focused only on the hair on the back of my knuckles. “HOH Labs finally figured out the mind control devices we’d been working on.” Turning my head, I stared at the bottom landing of the stairs. Conway and the big guy flashed through my thoughts. Part of m
e wondered if they were trying to guess what I was telling her. “I remember being so excited, but you… you looked right through me.”
Zarya blew out a breath that whistled between her teeth. “I don’t remember any of that.”
I unclasped my hands and rubbed out the wrinkles in my pants. “You didn’t say anything,” I went on in a dead voice. “So, I followed you. To the surface—”
An ugly silence filled my skull. It was the kind of silence that came before the moment everything changes. “I watched as you… drowned the woman.”
She leaned even closer to me, and I knew it was because my words were barely audible.
“I called out to you. I saw your face as you watched her die.” I swallowed again. “There was something there, something I didn’t recognize. In that moment, Zarya… I had no idea who you were.”
There were several beats of silence before she finally said, “Go on.”
“Dottie left her body, and you started back home.” I cleared something thick out of my throat. “You went all the way back to your chambers.” As I spoke the words, pictures danced in my vision, a haunted memory. “You went to your bathing room, undressed, and soaked in the waters of clarity.” A shiver ran through me, making me feel like a little boy, and I suppose, that’s exactly what I was. “The water was so blue,” I whispered. “And that look on your face… You woke up. You were you.” I tried to swat away the memory of her expression, but it didn’t work.
“You got out and clung to me. I’d never seen anyone so broken. You wailed. You cried out. You told me things the king whispered to you in your weekly meetings. At first, it was merely rambling, but then, I managed to work out what had happened.”
She didn’t say anything, but her question leaned against me, as heavy as a sunken ship. “The king had more than one witch at hand, and there is only one witch powerful enough to work that kind of trance magic on you. He wanted you to kill. To create the Kappa. He knew the people of Atlantis would follow you. He could raise our kingdom without resistance. And of course, he would promise him… his silent magician, a place at his side in a new world.”
