The Seadragon's Daughter (Dragon de la Sangre)

by Alan F. Troop

  “Swim through them!”

  I race between the two rocks, a hole in the sheer stone wall suddenly looming before me. Shooting into the hole, I find myself in a large, circular, stone chamber. As I circle it without finding an exit anywhere on its walls, one dolphin after another slips into the chamber and begins circling me.

  Each one seems larger than the next, none of them less than ten feet long. I consider shifting to my natural form—my deadliest. But I realize if I do so, I’ll lose all ability to see in this dark water. Just shifting my mouth would prevent my jaw from receiving the reflected clicks that now make up my sight.

  The four dolphins continue to circle, spreading themselves out until they have me surrounded on all sides. The largest of them lets out a whistle and they rush toward me.

  With no choice but to stay and fight or to swim upward, I shoot up with a kick of my tail. But I find the stone dome of the cavern after only thirty yards. With four angry dolphins hot behind me, I scrape along the ceiling, looking, searching for any possible advantage.

  The lead dolphin bites down on my left fluke. I rip it away from him and kick away, my blood seeping into the cold water. Kicking frantically, trying to leave him behind, I almost shoot past the crevice.

  It’s barely six feet wide. I have no idea where it leads, but I slip into it and follow it upward. The lead dolphin trails just behind me, closing in and biting my poor fluke once again. But this time, in a closed place, with no danger of more than one creature attacking, I shift my good fluke into a leg and lash back at him with my rear talons.

  Bleeting shrill whistles, the creature falls back. I ignore its pain and continue to rise. “Lorrel? Where are you?” I mindspeak.

  “Just past the rocks. Where are you . . . and they?”

  “I found a crevice in the chamber ceiling. It seems to go up. I think the dolphins are still in the chamber—though one of them’s probably pretty unhappy right now.”

  “You should come to Dryndl’s Tomb any moment.”

  With no dolphins in pursuit I become aware of the tightness building in my lungs. “I hope so,” I mindspeak. “How much longer can the dolphins hold their breath?”

  “They cannot go more than about fifteen minutes between breaths. You should be able to go longer.”

  “I think I did,” I mindspeak.

  “Just go a little further. I am sure all will be well for you. But I am not sure how to join you. . . .”

  My head breaks clear of the water and I let out a blast of air, clearing my blowhole, sucking dank cave air in. “I just made it up to the tomb. I’m going to swim back down. I’ll call for you to join me in the chamber when I do. You have a while until you run out of air, don’t you?”

  “I was the last to dive.”

  “Good,” I mindspeak. “They have to start feeling a need for air pretty soon.”

  Taking one last breath, I dive down the crevice, racing for the bottom as quickly as my flippers and flukes can carry me. Calling out to Lorrel, “Now!” I burst into the chamber, ramming the largest dolphin in his side, biting his flukes as he writhes in agony.

  Another dolphin shoots toward me, and Lorrel slams into it, leaving the stunned creature and biting another. The fourth dolphin turns and streaks out of the chamber, toward the open ocean. I wheel and ram the Pelk girl’s first target, the beast shuddering from the impact and swimming away slowly toward the chamber entrance.

  With only one healthy dolphin left, I mindspeak, “Go find the crevice!” and turn, rushing at the creature. But, either low on air or unsure it can win, it turns and flees too.

  Just the large dolphin remains, its body twitching on the chamber floor. I consider finishing it, but my lungs have already begun to ache for fresh air. Leaving it to die, I speed upward to the crevice and climb until I burst from the water. My sides heaving, my heart still racing, I clear my blowhole and suck in deeps breaths of cave air.

  “Do you still find dolphins so lovable?” Lorrel mindspeaks.

  I look up from the water. Already in her natural form, the Pelk girl has begun pouring phosphorescent powder into a glowpool, a green glow growing, chasing the dark from the small cavern.

  “I find I like fighting them even less than I like eating them,” I mindspeak.

  Lorrel trills out a laugh. “It appears to me you do both equally well. Mowdar will be pleased.”

  “Mowdar’s opinion means nothing to me.”

  “Undrae, take care. It will go better for you if he respects you.”

  “What will go better?” I mindspeak.

  She shakes her head. “Come join me. This is another safehold. We have dried fish stored here. Change form, eat and rest. We are not far from home. You will have all your questions answered soon.”

  My wounds ache, as do my lungs and my empty stomach. I yearn to be done with this, to be home, to rest in my bed, not on a pile of seaweed in a cold, dank cave. “Not soon enough,” I mindspeak.

  22

  This time I accept when Lorrel offers me a dried slab of fish. This time I offer no objection when she sits next to me, so close that her haunch warms mine. After all, I’ve allowed the Pelk girl to penetrate my consciousness. How can I object to such a small, innocent physical thing as our sides touching after such intimacy?

  Besides, Caya DeLaSangre and Miami, Chloe and my children, seem so far away, so long ago. I count the days and shake my head. Only three have passed, and the fourth still has many hours until it ends. Chloe won’t even be back from Morgan’s Hole for days more.

  I frown, wonder how I’ve come to feel so distant from my family in such a short time. Focusing my mind on my wife, I picture her and our children until I finally ache for their company again.

  Lorrel nudges closer, pressing against me. “You fight as well as any Pelk. I think I would have died before without your help,” she mindspeaks.

  “I think you would have escaped to the island and waited for the dolphins to leave.”

  She strokes her tail over mine, the underside of hers smooth and pleasant as it massages me. “I gave you a compliment, Undrae. Accept it.”

  “Sure,” I mindspeak, my stomach full of dried fish, my body relaxing after our hours of tension and effort, the Pelk girl’s warmth joining with the rest to make me drowsy. I lean toward Lorrel, press slightly against her before I catch myself and pull back. Chloe, I think, Chloe. How I wish she were with me now.

  Lorrel nuzzles her snout against my shoulder. “We cannot sleep now, Peter. We must go. Mowdar will be impatient if we stay here too long,” she mindspeaks. “I will make a nest for you tonight. You will be able to sleep long into morning.”

  I shake my head. “In the morning I will want to leave as soon as possible.”

  “Of course,” she mindspeaks. “Whatever you and Mowdar decide.”

  Lorrel leads me away from the water to a dark passageway at the far side of the small cavern. “Dryndl and his srrynn carved this passageway during the Great War. They cut an entire staircase out of the rock. This was the first Pelk safehold. Dryndl died defending it from the Undrae, and his srrynn entombed him somewhere in its walls. Mowdar says the staircase will lead us to another cavern where we will find our way out.”

  “Mowdar told you about the two rocks too, right?”

  She looks at me and shakes her head. “I have nothing to carry glowlight in, so follow me as best you can.”

  After a few steps, we leave the green glow of the cavern behind us. I feel my way up each wide stone step, aware of Lorrel scuffling in front of me.

  We reach another cavern after only a few minutes of climbing. Lorrel feels around until she finds supplies stacked on stone shelves. Once again she sprinkles phosphorescent powder into a small glowpool. She returns to the shelves, searches until she picks up a small package, wrapped in what looks like leather, about the size of a hardbound book. “Good, this is what Mowdar wanted.”

  “And it is?”

  “I only know that I was to find something wrapped in
dolphin hide. We use that to make things waterproof. I am sure Mowdar will explain what is inside.”

  I laugh. “He’s going to need a list to explain all the things you’ve promised.”

  The Pelk girl ignores me. “We can leave now,” she mindspeaks, pointing to the far corner of the cavern, where water laps against the stone. “That underwater passageway will take us to the outside. It will not be too much farther before we reach my srrynn’s hunting waters. Few dolphins venture there anymore. We will have no need to change from our natural forms.”

  Heaving a long sigh, I frown at the dark water. I want no more dampness, no more swimming underwater until my chest threatens to burst. “Can’t we go another way?” I mindspeak.

  The Pelk girl shakes her head. “There is no other way.”

  After the dark of the deep water and the caverns, I emerge from the passageway expecting night. Instead, we swim into water made warm and light by a late-afternoon sun. Lorrel swims toward the surface and I follow her, both of us skimming just under the surface, taking breaths when we please. She sets the pace, holding the package in her front claws, using her broad tail to propel her forward, swimming in a straight line toward the southern tip of Andros Island.

  “So we are going to Andros after all, aren’t we?” I mindspeak.

  “My srrynn has made a safehold there,” Lorrel mindspeaks. “We will soon reach a blue hole. We can wait until it sighs, the way it did in the safehold in Bimini, and dive into it and let its current carry us underground to my srrynn. Or we can swim to the south tip of the island and follow Lusca Creek until it disappears into the mangroves.”

  “All things being equal,” I mindspeak. “I could do without being sucked down a hole again. As long as we don’t have to worry about humans. . . .”

  “Where we are going is wilderness. No humans live near it. No fishing boats or kayaks can penetrate the mangroves. Few natives would care to go there anyway. They have a legend about a sea monster they call a Lusca. It is supposed to lurk in blue holes and kill humans. Mowdar said the Indians gave our kind that name hundreds of years ago.”

  Close up, the south end of Andros Island looks like nothing but a jungle of mangrove trees slashed open occasionally by a narrow creek or indented by a small bay. No landmark differentiates Lusca Creek from all the others, still Lorrel leads me into it without hesitation.

  Within minutes we’ve lost all sight of the open water. We take so many turns and pass so many false passages that I doubt I could ever swim my way out. The waterway narrows and soon we find ourselves swimming under a canopy of mangrove branches.

  “In a few minutes we will reach a small lagoon. It is another blue hole. I am afraid you will have to dive with me again,” Lorrel mindspeaks, slowing, waiting for me to swim by her side. “I will be glad to rejoin my srrynn, but sorry for this to end. I hope you do not think me too terrible. I have only done what I must.”

  She presses a little more against me and then shoots forward, toward a solid wall of mangroves, diving under the largest one. I follow, passing under its roots, emerging into a small, circular lagoon.

  Lorrel dives and I follow again, shooting down, descending forty or fifty feet until a dark hole shows in the far wall of the lagoon. The Pelk girl races toward it and I speed after her.

  We swim through the black darkness of the underwater passageway and then up, emerging into another lagoon, this one larger, surrounded on all sides by a huge cavern, green lights glowing from dozens of glowpools scattered on the ground beyond the sandy shore.

  The Pelk girl swims to a sloping, sandy beach and walks up onto dry land. She waits there for me, other Pelk emerging from the shadows, dozens of them, male, female, young, old—all in their natural forms, most as dark and sleek as Lorrel, a few lighter and tending toward gray, none anywhere as large as me. I walk up to her. “This is my srrynn, Peter,” she mindspeaks.

  I nod, mindspeak. “And Mowdar?”

  “He does not come to others. We must go to him.”

  We push through the crowd, Lorrel mindspeaking to each one as they greet her, telling each one’s name to me. After the first few, I give up trying to remember any of their names or appearances.

  Some of the Pelk follow us as we make our way through their safehold. Others fall away, wandering off to nests of seaweed—some tented tepee-style with woven seaweed supported by irregular branches of driftwood, and some open to view. Other Pelk gather together in small groups around the dull green light of their small glowpools. We pass them and piles of what look like, at best, the flotsam and jetsam one would find on the beach. We pass other stacks too, made of nautical and fishing gear obviously salvaged from the sea.

  Mowdar sits on one haunch on a nest of seaweed, his back against the wall of an alcove cut out of the cave’s stone wall. Drapes woven from seaweed hang on either side of the alcove’s opening, like curtains at a theater. Piles of seaweed form seating areas in a semicircle facing the alcove with a large, bright glowpool between the seats and Mowdar.

  A few Pelk have already seated themselves, waiting along with the Pelk leader for our arrival. I stare at their backs, frowning at that of a large one, the creature shaped and colored far more like one of my own kind than a Pelk.

  Mowdar stands on his rear legs. At most he may be a few inches taller than Lorrel. His scales have turned irregular with age, and his color lightened to an ashen gray. Picking up a trident, a three-pointed spear, with his right claw, he motions with it for Lorrel and me to take the center seats facing him.

  “You have taken a long time to arrive,” he mindspeaks.

  Lorrel bows her head ever so slightly. “It was unavoidable, Father. The Undrae did not come willingly.”

  The creature coughs out a laugh. “He is his father’s son.”

  “And he wants to know why you sent your daughter to poison him,” I mindspeak. “If you truly knew anything about my father, then you should know better than to make an enemy of a DelaSangre.”

  “Well said, old man. Well said. Does the old bugger good to have someone put him in his place.”

  I turn and stare at the large creature seated just a few feet from me, and my jaw drops open.

  My brother-in-law, Derek Blood, returns my stare. “Sorry about all this, old man. I didn’t mean to get you involved.”

  23

  Mowdar hisses, slashes his trident in a short arc in front of him. “Enough!” he mindspeaks.

  He stares at me, making a show of examining every inch of my body. “Undrae,” he mindspeaks. “You are not the only one here who has DelaSangre blood running in his veins. I am Mowdar, son of Gedalia, the only child from the union of my grandmother, Dalhanna, and my grandfather, Don Henri DelaSangre.”

  I shake my head. “My father made no secret of his history. He told me about the wives he had before my mother and about his other sons and daughters. He never once mentioned the Pelk or a Pelk mate.”

  The Pelk leader turns his gaze on Lorrel. “Daughter, did you bring it?”

  She nods, gets up and walks to Mowdar, the small package she brought from Dryndl’s Tomb held in her outstretched claws. He takes it from her and then stares at her throat. Touching near the partially healed puncture wounds with his trident, he mindspeaks, “You have been much injured?”

  “Not terribly so. It is just a dolphin bite. . . .”

  “Just?” The Pelk shakes his head. “We have lost others to such wounds. I will have a healing circle come to you later. They will help you become whole again.”

  “Thank you, Father.” Lorrel nods and backs away.

  Mowdar looks at me again. “Your father, my grandfather, did much harm to my people. I cannot say just why he kept you in ignorance, but I would think he did not want you to know you had relatives among the Pelk. I doubt he wanted you to go searching for us.”

  I frown. “At least I’d think he’d want me to know that your srrynn was living so close to our island—in case I needed to defend myself.”

  “He wo
uld have been sure there were no such need. By the time you were born we had been gone for centuries. Your father attacked us with his ships and cannons, at night when we were asleep in this safehold. He killed most of us in the attack, sparing Dalhanna and my father, and allowing the twelve others who survived to leave with them—as long as they swore to go far south and to never return.

  “Our people have long mourned that exile. We had lived in these waters since before the rule of Atala. You cannot imagine the joy that went through our srrynn when that one”—Mowdar points his trident toward Derek—“told us that Don Henri no longer lived.”

  I turn and glare at my brother-in-law.

  Derek shrugs and mindspeaks, “Look, old man, I told you it was unintentional. I was in the same fix as you are now and just making conversation . . .”

  “You,” Mowdar mindspeaks, pointing his trident at Derek, glaring. “You will have much time to talk later—if he cares to listen.” The Pelk leader looks at me again. “Because of that wonderful news, Gedalia decided to send part of his srrynn to reestablish our home here. He also instructed me to find you and bring you into our family.”

  Mowdar turns his attention to the package, slitting it open with a pass of his claw. He lets the dolphin skin drop to the ground and holds up the slim, ancient book that had been inside. “We do share a common blood. You already saw my grandmother’s ring. This was your father’s,” he mindspeaks, holding it out to me.

  Taking the old manuscript from him, I examine its cracked leather binding, find no sign of words ever having been printed on either the front or rear cover. “It’s not one of his log books,” I mindspeak, opening it, small flakes of brittle paper crumbling and falling as I leaf through the pages. Squinting at the handwritten words, I struggle to make out what they say, wish I had more to read by than the green light of the nearby glowpool. Still, it takes only a moment for me to realize that the words have been written in my father’s hand, and to regret that he chose to write each one in Spanish.