Captive of the Deep

by Michelle M. Pillow

  * * * * *

  Lyra pressed her back against the palace wall, listening as the sound of footsteps faded. The cool, hard tiles slid as she inched along. The hall looked familiar, but then that was because it looked like the other halls she’d gone through. As silence resumed, she pushed away from the wall and continued on until she found herself at the doorway to a rectangular room. Long tables stretched over the length, dominating the floor. They were unattended.

  Lyra couldn’t resist. An eclectic collection of human artifacts were laid out in an orderly, yet cluttered, fashion. They spanned the ages, from anchors to hooks, to coins dating from antiquity. The barnacled pieces of a shipwreck were set on the floor in the corner, as if pushed away for later cataloging.

  She walked around the table. There was an old pocket watch with a broken chain and clouded face next to the tarnished silver handle of a lady’s brush. A hardened glove with delicate buttons wore a large ruby ring. There were pieces of yellowed silk, chipped vases, a Greek bust, rusted navigational tools, pewter silverware, pieces of a crystal chandelier, and sections of armor.

  Growing up in a family of fishermen and sailors, she knew a lot about shipwrecks and lore of the sea. These looked like the recovered items of a shipwreck. On impulse, she reached to touch the watch. The once smooth surface felt grainy.

  “Oh, hello, my lady,” a man said. “I did not know to expect you this morning, or else I would have been here to greet you.”

  Lyra stiffened, quickly withdrawing her hand from the table.

  The man was slighter than the other Merr in stature, with short brown hair and kind brown eyes. He wore loose wool pants and a shorter wool shirt. “I did not mean to startle you. Of course, I am pleased that you have come. I have been asking Rigel to allow you to visit. We have so many questions for you.”

  “Allow me to visit?” she repeated, unable to help her frown. “I need his permission?”

  “They really aren’t that good at explain things, are they?” he said, more to himself. Then, as he came closer, he added, “I’ve been here for so long I have forgotten that you might not know everything we take for granted, though if truth be told, I’ve been relearning quite a bit with you new ladies in residence. When I said he allowed you to visit, it’s not that he gives you permission, per se, more like he… allows it?”

  “Is that a question or a restatement of the fact that I’m a prisoner and you’re trying to soften the blow?” Inside she hardened. Lyra thought of the poor transparent creature imprisoned in the palace dungeons. Was that her fate? They had referred to it being once Merr, but what did that mean, really? She needed to learn more.

  “The fact that he is considered your guardian means he is in charge of you until you decide to marry. Lord Rigel will take care of you and it is up to him to approve those seeking your hand. Only then will they be allowed to court you. But, don’t worry, you get used to some of the antiquated ways of thinking. He pulled you out of the water, so he is in charge of you. Kind of like that old belief, if you save someone’s life, that life becomes your responsibility. And the person saved is in debt to the one who saved them.”

  Lyra arched a brow and said nothing.

  He seemed to expect more of a reaction than she gave him so he added, “You can choose your own husband.” Still she gave him nothing, so he joked, “They are pretty desperate for womenfolk. You can probably get them to do whatever you want.”

  “I don’t suppose I could get one of them to carry me back up to the surface and leave me on a tropical island, could I?” Lyra wasn’t sure who this man was. She tried to place him. It was clear he thought they knew each other. Unfortunately for him, she hadn’t been paying too much attention during those first days of introductions.

  The man’s features saddened. “No, I’m sorry, didn’t they tell you? You can never go back. We’re too far below the ocean’s surface and, well, even if you were to be taken back up to the surface, you can never breathe surface air again.”

  “So it’s true. I’m trapped here.” She slumped against the table, resting her hands against the hard wood to support her weight. Her head dropped down as she stared at the rusted frame of a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Perhaps if I explain my story it will help you,” he said. “As you well know, my name is Aidan Douglass. I was born in eighteen-ninety-three in a southern providence of Scotland.”

  “Of course you were,” she whispered, more to the table than to him. Her fingers worked against the wood, barely feeling the hard texture as the tips turned white.

  “I was a scholar, a historian if you will, on my way to Africa to explore the great pyramids and to try my hand at digging up some buried treasure. Treasure hunting was all the rage. Our boat, Bella Donna, was attacked from mysterious forces from below, much the same way yours was. Since there were no women onboard when it sank, I was saved and brought here.”

  Lyra merely nodded her head and waited for him to go on.

  “When I told Lady Bridget all of this, she suspected it might be time travel, but it is not. Time simply does not move here as it did for us on the surface world. Once your body acclimates to this place, you never get sick and you never age. I am over a hundred years old.” He leaned over trying to catch her eyes. “If I do say so myself, the years have been very kind to me.”

  Lyra tried to chuckle politely, she really did, but the only noise she managed was a short sigh of air.

  “You do not look too overwhelmed by this,” Aidan ventured carefully. “In fact, you look mad.”

  “Please, go on,” she said through tight lips. She didn’t really want to listen, but she felt she needed to hear it, finally hear it. This was her new reality and she wanted the facts.

  “From what I gather, this society was the center of the ancient world. It ruled over much of the land—Greece, Italy, Egypt which was a vast empire at the time. Back then they were known as the Atlantes, which we knew as the lost city that fell beneath the waves in one day. The Atlantes’ land prospered with little effort. They were great warriors who were never defeated in battle. According to Merr legend, they were blessed by the god, Poseidon. If you’re not familiar, he was the Greek god of the sea.”

  “I was raised in a family of sailors. I’m quite familiar with Poseidon,” said Lyra.

  “Marvelous! We must talk sailing later. I would hear of the updates made to navigational systems.” Aidan nodded enthusiastically, his face animated with excitement. “As I was saying, Atlantes. Like all great civilizations, the people grew arrogant with power. In those times the afterlife was a grim place, not like the heaven I was taught about. With such a cheerless prospect of death, all these people could enjoy was their mortal lives. So they stopped worshiping Poseidon and began to worship themselves as gods on earth. They became lazy, taking all they’d been given for granted. There were no more battles to fight, so they raided their neighbors, taking more than they needed. One day, King Lucius, after much feasting and drinking, proclaimed to his people that he refused to ever die, for he never wished to leave their bountiful paradise upon the earth—land that was more beautiful than the kingdom of the gods.”

  “I’m sure that went over well,” Lyra said.

  “About like what you would imagine when you anger a god. Poseidon cursed the city for its vanity and self-love. He gave them what they wanted. He granted them immortality, forever condemned to walk on their earthly paradise and nowhere else. This land, he plunged into the water, trapping them so they could never set foot on mortal soil again. Here they have remained on the bottom of the ocean, their land drifting aimlessly with the currents. Now we are part of it, never able to leave.”

  “Your speech sounds memorized,” Lyra said when he finished. She took a deep breath and then another. She stopped kneading her fingers against the table, but did not push up.

  “That is because I have given it several times,” he admitted sheepishly. “And I have had several years to practice it.”

  “I suppos
e you have to tell it to schoolchildren or something?”

  “No. Children are very rare. I have heard of them, but I haven’t seen a single once since I was brought down.” He began fussing with this artifacts, inching them in one direction and then back again to align them perfectly on the table.

  “You said I couldn’t go to the surface? Why not?” Lyra pushed the glasses, following his example.

  “Mortal air is one of the few things that can kill them.”

  “I’m not Merr,” she reasoned. “So long as one of them shifts into fish form and does that lip suction thingy, I should be able to survive the climb. If we take it slow, my body should be able to adjust to the pressure changes just like a deep sea diver.”

  “I should have said the mortal air will kill us,” Aidan clarified. “Once you’re brought down, you can’t go back up. Incidentally, you know they are mermen? You do not need further convincing that it is true?”

  “It’s kind of hard to miss when a fish saves your life by suctioning his mouth to yours like some sort of breathing apparatus. I was awake the entire dive down. I had plenty of time to get used to the idea of merpeople. It was a long trip. Apparently, that’s strange or something.”

  “Rare indeed. I have never heard of someone staying conscious for the entire trip. You must tell me about it in great detail. The others will want to hear your story.”

  “No,” Lyra said firmly, thinking of her family. “I will never speak of it.”

  “But, the people will…” At her hard look, he let his words trail off and nodded in understanding. “I would like you to consider telling me about how the world has changed in the last hundred years. I heard the Americans did get their liquor back. That was a strange business, Prohibition. Though, trust the descendants of Puritans to come up with such nonsense. I’ve been going through my old journals since you’re arrival, trying to remember life as it was. Is it true that they actually found a way to make motion pictures talk? Bridget tried to tell me that ordinary people can even make their own motion pictures with little handheld devices and in full life-like color. But, I’m no fool. I don’t believe that tale for a moment.”

  “You can believe in mermen and underwater cities cursed by gods, but you can’t believe in handheld camcorders?” This time Lyra actually did laugh.

  “I don’t know about these cam cords you’re talking about, but there is unbelievable,” he motioned around them, “and then there is just plain ridiculous.”

  Lyra picked up a coin. “At least it looks like you found your treasure.”

  “I never really thought of it that way,” he said, smiling widely. “We’ve got coins from the Viking, Phoenicians, Arabian and Spanish. Even one from Carthage. They seemed to have done a lot of scavenging during the Middle Ages. I think, before us, many of the humans brought here were from that time.”

  As he spoke, Aidan walked down to a table with broken relics. He lightly touched a leather bound book, one amongst many. Some were ship logs, warped from water. There were a few novels. One in particular looked to be a torn paperback romance novel from the 1970’s.

  He continued, “It’s said that some of the Merr women used to lure the sailors into the water and carry them down, though I don’t know how factual the accounts are as no one really speaks of it. Though, it would explain how they got so many personal artifacts, like the coins and some of the jewelry. It also explains some of their speech patterns, like the ‘my lords’ and ‘my ladies’. Most of what is here is scavenged from shipwrecks.”

  “I can see that.”

  “I can see what you’re thinking and you mustn’t. They are not responsible for sinking the ships—at least not since the Middle Ages and those were much different times. They merely collect from the wreckage along the ocean floor after there had been a wreck.”

  “So I’ve been collected?” Lyra frowned.

  “That is not what I meant to say.”

  “But that is what you said. I was collected because I am female. My family is dead and I am not because I’m a woman? How am I supposed to react to that?” Lyra shook. She tried to hold back her anger, but it seeped out.

  “You lost family?”

  “I lost everything that night in the sea.” She turned her full attention on him. “Since you seem to know so much about my situation, I want you to tell me who wrecked the ships.”

  “I…” he began to shake his head.

  Lyra slammed her hand on the table, causing it to shake. Aidan jumped protectively for his artifacts, reaching his hands over them as if he could shield them all from her sudden show of rage.

  “Who wrecked the ships? How is it the Merr know where to go and when? If they’re not wrecking the ships, then they must know who is. I want answers. Who killed my family?” When Aidan’s mouth opened but didn’t release the answer she sought, she picked up the wire-rimmed glasses and held it up between them. He gasped, reaching as if to snatch it as she pressed her thumbs into the center nose piece. It wouldn’t take much to break the delicate metal.

  “No, stop, please. It’s not the Merr. It’s the scylla. The Merr go out into the water to hunt and capture the scylla. They try to stop the wrecks, but they cannot always be successful. I have it on good authority that they try to save as many of the humans as they can.” He gestured to the glasses motioning that she should set them down. She did, but she didn’t let go of them. “There were two scylla in the water the night your ship went down. They caught both of them.”

  Lyra relaxed her hand, letting it drop to her side. Aidan visibly sighed in relief. “What happened to these scylla?”

  “You don’t have to worry about them. They never survive.”

  Chapter Six

  “The scylla you brought back from the ocean is your brother.”

  Rigel stared at Gregor, unable to process the man’s words for a long moment. Then, glancing behind the scientist, to where the scylla were kept in isolation, he asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Nemus’s transformation started this morning. It is him.” Gregor waited patiently as Rigel processed the news. “We’re sure. The profiles match.”

  Rigel took a deep breath. He’d been waiting, hoping, fearing this moment would come. Of course he wanted to find his brother, yet he feared what was to happen next. With Nemus in the ocean there was always a chance they would find a way to transform him back into what he once was. “Have you told Demon and Brutus?”

  “I’m on my way now. There is a small window if you would like to see him. I don’t have to warn you what to expect. He has been out there a long time.”

  Rigel nodded. “And the other one?”

  “Denhu. Our records show he left a few years before your brother. He began his transformation immediately and we lost him early this morning. There was nothing we could do for him. He was one of the fast ones.” Gregor looked to the floor. “We don’t know why the transformation happens faster for some than for others. There is no way of knowing how long they will last once we bring them from the ocean. The scientists are stabilizing him. I would give them an hour. After that, they will be expecting you whenever you are ready. There is no guarantee how long your brother will be lucid.”

  Rigel nodded. “I will be there soon. I have one thing I must attend to first.”

  Gregor left Rigel alone in the hall. Torn between going to see his long lost brother and finding Lyra, he wasn’t sure which he should do. Then, as he took a step to search the halls one last time for Lyra, he suddenly stopped. If Nemus was the scylla they pulled from the ocean than…

  “My brother is responsible for the death of Lyra’s family,” he whispered. A cold wave washed over his heart. If Lyra discovered the truth… If someone told her…

  Rigel began walking with renewed purpose, desperate to find her. He had to get to her before someone said something. If she knew, he would lose any chance he had with her. But, how could he not tell her. It was her family. She had a right to know the truth.

  Guilt, such as he
had never felt before, filled him. What was he going to do?

  * * * * *

  Lyra listened to Aidan’s incessant flow of words as he walked about showing her his treasures. The artifacts were hardly mystical to her, not as they were to him. Though his assumptions about some of them were comical—like his inability to believe in the advanced technological impact of computers on surface society, while living in a mythical world using the advanced robotics of pleasure nymphs.

  Lyra began counting his words in her head instead of listening to them. Five… fifteen… fifty two…

  “Lyra.”

  Lyra stiffened at the sound of Rigel’s voice. There was a hard edge to his tone. Mimicking the sound, she said, “Rigel.”

  The show of attitude must have gotten his attention because he softened his voice. “I have been searching for you.”

  “I’ve been showing her the artifacts,” Aidan answered. “I had hoped to get to her recollections about the surface as soon as we are finished with the tour.”

  “That is fine,” Rigel said. “I will come back for her later.”

  Lyra frowned at the commanding tone in his voice. He looked at her as if he would go to her, but then turned and left. Giving her full attention to Aidan, she said, “So, what is it you want to know?”

  “Everything,” he stated.

  Lyra felt a tiny knot of dread in her stomach at the enthusiasm in that one word. Soon the emotion was founded as the man continued.

  “I think we should start with every exact detail you remember of geography. I have an old map drawn out that we can go off of. Then, perhaps advancements in science, medicine, politics, avionics, astronomy, geology, music, books—you must absolutely sing and recite every song and book you remember. You might think that you’ll never forget, but after a hundred years down here the ditties don’t come as readily as you might think. Oh, and we must have a full description of clothing, food, sanitation, industrial…”