There was a loud noise, a shock wave in the water that tumbled them both forward, and then a wave of momentary heat. The blast threw the two companions apart as they were tumbled downward towards the bottom of the hull. Marco felt his head hit something hard, and he inhaled a mouthful of salty water.
Hold on, Marco!” he heard Kreewhite’s voice carry clearly under the water, and a moment later he felt the merboy grab his torso and move him swiftly through the water.
Their heads breached the surface of the water that sat inside the hull of the sinking ship, giving Marco the chance to exhale, then inhale noisily as he coughed and sputtered and tried to clear his lungs of the water he had taken in.
“Marco, can you reach up to that sill and pull yourself up there?” Kreewhite asked urgently, his mouth next to Marco’s ear.
Marco looked up at the very close opening through which flashes of lightning glowered. It was only four feet overhead.
“I can try. I’ve only got one good hand,” Marco responded.
“When you get to the deck, go to the back of the ship, and get ready to jump when you see me in the water,” Kreewhite explained.
“How will you get there?” Marco asked, treading water as he held onto the merboy.
“I’ll make it, no problem,” Kreewhite said. “Are you ready? Go!”
Marco bunched his muscles and tried to boost himself out of the water. He rose a few inches, then suddenly felt Kreewhite’s hands grab his legs and thrust him upward energetically. The fingers on his good hand grabbed the edge of the open hatch, and pulled desperately, adding to his momentum. He flung his crippled hand over the edge and lurched his torso, so that his stomach scrapped along the wooden edge of the opening, and then he landed, his legs flailing in empty air. He raised his feet and rolled to his left, and suddenly he was on the deck of the ship.
A wave crashed upon the deck and the rain fell in drenching sheets, and the impact of the wave pushed him back towards the opening momentarily before he grabbed a rope and held on tightly.
As the wave passed beyond him he rose to his knees and looked around. There were no men in sight, while a pair of small boats appeared to bob among the fearsome waves not far from the ship. As Marco began to press himself forward through the wind and the rain, he looked over his shoulder at the small boats, and saw a yellow dome suddenly appear over one of the boats, a sign that the sorcerer was in the vessel and taking steps to protect himself from the storm.
Marco stumbled upon the deck, and as he started to flail, he caught a glimpse of something shooting skyward, leaving the ship behind as the gale-force winds caught it and sent it flying off to the left. Marco moved his hand, which landed on the handle of a sword that had been abandoned on the ship’s deck, and he instinctively grabbed ahold of the hilt, then clung to it as he made his way towards the rear of the ship, while more and more waves began sweeping across the deck of the sinking ship. The sword felt solid, like something that could keep him safe, and in some mysterious way it felt lucky too. He didn’t know what to expect, or what to do, but he knew Kreewhite had given him direction, and he clung to that instruction as the only thing he knew or understood in the horrific situation he was trapped in.
“Marco! You made it!” he heard Kreewhite’s voice faintly as scrambled to the railing that marked the rear of the Corsair’s ship.
“Jump!” the merboy called. “Jump in the water. I’ll get you and we’ll find someplace safe.”
Marco lifted his leg with difficulty, and straddled the railing, still holding onto his new-found sword, then tumbled forward, into the turbulent water of the sea.
Kreewhite was with him immediately, placing an arm around his shoulder to hold his head in the air between the pounding of the constant waves.
“Drop that sword! It’s weighing you down!” Kreewhite advised.
“I want to keep it; it feels lucky,” Marco shouted over the sounds of the waves.
“It won’t be lucky for you if you carry it to the bottom,” Kreewhite told him.
Marco said nothing more, as he silently acknowledged within his mind that Kreewhite was right, and that he should prepare to forgo the excitement of holding the sword. He felt the two of them start to move forcefully across the surface of the sea, moving up and over the swells of the large waves, as Kreewhite seemed to effortlessly propel the two of them with the rhythmic motion of his tail flukes.
“Where are we headed?” Marco asked after a few moments.
“Out of the storm, I hope,” Kreewhite answered. “The dawn seems to be breaking behind us, so I’m going towards the sunset side of the sea, where the storms usually come from.
“I don’t know where we are,” he answered Marco’s unspoken question. “After sunrise I may be able to find out.”
They were silent after that, as Kreewhite masterfully carried the pair of them through the gradually calming waters, as the sky behind them grew gray with the dull light of the sun rising behind the clouds in the east.
Kreewhite stopped when they reached a large, floating wooden plank, possibly a piece of some unfortunate ship’s wreckage, similar to their own ship’s demise. “You stay here and hold on to this,” the merboy instructed Marco. “I’m going to go look around and see if I can find out where we are. I’ll be back in a little while. Don’t go anywhere,” he instructed Marco.
“What if a mermaid comes along?” Marco laughingly asked.
“Especially if a mermaid comes along,” Kreewhite answered with a grin. “I get first chance to strike up a conversation with her!”
“I won’t argue,” Marco agreed, as he slung his arms over the wooden plank. He watched as Kreewhite disappeared, his large, greenish-golden tail flipping upward to splash Marco soundly with a drenching shower of seawater as the merboy disappeared beneath the waves.
Marco hung onto the wooden plank, and tried to look around, hoping to see something – anything – that would offer some break in the monotonous view he had of water and more water. There was nothing, except the promise of a break in the clouds overhead, as the gray overcast grew lighter in patches.
With a sigh, he closed his eyes and laid his head back, resting from the exhaustion he felt in every bone and muscle of his battered body. He didn’t fall asleep, but his pain-wracked mind wandered amidst speculation about the past and the future. He wondered if the citizens of the Lion City had recovered most of their loot, and he particularly wondered if Angelica and her maid had been safely rescued. At the same time he dreamed about Kreewhite taking him someplace safe, someplace from which he made his way back to the city, back to a hero’s welcome for his role in fighting the sorcerer, disrupting the Corsair’s defense of their looted goods and unraveling their planned escape.
When he opened his eyes, the sea was calm, the sky overhead was clear, and the sun was shining down from high overhead.
“Marco, are you awake?” Kreewhite was next to him, his head rising from the water.
“We might as well get going,” Kreewhite told him. “Are you ready?”
“Where are we going? Is it close by?” Marco asked.
“Well,” Kreewhite paused, “I’m not sure. I couldn’t find any landmarks I recognized, and none of the currents taste familiar,” he admitted. “We’re lost.”
Marco grabbed the sword off the top of his wooden plank.
“So what is your plan?” he sighed.
“We’ll start going in the direction of the rising sun. I have a feeling that my people’s home is in that direction.”
“But you’re not sure?” Marco pressed.
“No,” Kreewhite let his own frustration show in the tone of his short answer. “Do you have a better idea? Would you like to just float here?”
“Not at all,” Marco hastily assured the merboy. “You’ve saved my life. I trust your judgment. I’m ready to go east.”
“That’s the human word for the place where the sun brings daylight – east?” Kreewhite asked.
“Yes,” Marco answered.
“Such a short word for such an important task,” Kreewhite murmured. “Here,” he positioned himself next to Marco. “Lie down on my back and hold on,” he floated prone in the water as Marco awkwardly moved over and positioned himself on Kreewhite’s broad back, his sword tucked between their two bodies as his right hand held onto a shoulder and his injured left hand dangled uselessly.
Kreewhite began to wave his tail, and it felt to Marco as though they leapt ahead. He tightened his hold momentarily until he felt settled, then loosened his grip as their journey began.
They moved through the water wordlessly for over an hour.
“What is your home like?” Marco asked.
“I live with my sister and her mate. We’re in the new town that everyone moved to after a human ship found our old town,” he said.
Marco felt awkwardness. “Did the humans chase you away?”
“They hunt us down. They take us captive, and cut us into pieces. That human with the evil powers back on the ship – people like him use our body parts to help make their magic stronger,” Kreewhite said back over his shoulder to Marco, who was glad he could not see the boy’s face at that moment
“You saved my life. I heard the men on the ship say that you injured the wicked powerful one, and wrecked their plans. If you hadn’t done that, if they had been able to get away the way they planned, with the evil one healthy and whole, I’d be dissected already,” Kreewhite’s voice was somber.
Marco was silent for several minutes. “And you’ve saved my life too. So I guess we’ve both done a favor for each other.”
“Our first favors for each other,” Kreewhite said. “Let’s hope there will be many more chances in the future!” he laughed.
“There will be,” Kreewhite said. “I feel it. I feel that we are going to be arnelli.” He spoke in a confident tone.
“What are arnelli?” Marco asked.
“They are people who are more than friends; they are companions and protectors and partners,” Kreewhite explained. “We will be the first among my people to be arnelli with both a tail and legs!”
“Arnelli it is,” Marco agree decisively. He knew he owed the merboy his life, and he liked Kreewhite immensely. He didn’t even think about the fact that the boy had a tail instead of legs as they talked and swam.
“And where do you live?” Kreewhite asked.
“In the Lion City, among the humans. I have a room under the pier. That’s how I was able to sneak up on the sorcerer, though I didn’t plan to,” Marco answered.
They traveled on for a while more, and the sun started to set in the western sky.
“Kreewhite, could we go to that island?” Marco asked as he happened to catch a glimpse of a tree covered cliff off to the left, a short distance behind them.
“What island?” Kreewhite asked. Marco pointed as Kreewhite turned, and the merboy’s motion ended as they floated to a stop.
“I didn’t see that. I don’t know how we could have passed it without my noticing it,” he spoke in a puzzled, and indignant voice.
“I’d like to feel land under my feet for a little while. Maybe we could spend the night there, or at least I might find something to eat besides fish,” Marco hesitantly suggested, wondering if there might be humans who could help him.
“Yes, of course. We’ll go right there,” Kreewhite quickly agreed, and they began moving again, making a sharp turn to the left as they headed towards a new destination.
Chapter 8 – Isle of Ophiuchus
They swam towards the island, as the sun dropped swiftly towards the horizon, and the sky grew red. The sun fell behind the island as their angle of approach changed, and suddenly Kreewhite came to an abrupt stop, nearly throwing Marco forward over his shoulders like a bucking horse. The boy grabbed the merboy’s hair in his haste to hold on.
“What’s wrong?” Marco asked. “Is there trouble?”
“Look!” Kreewhite said breathlessly. He pointed at the island.
Marco looked for several seconds, then suddenly realized what Kreewhite was staring at.
The island was a small one, with quickly rising sides that rose inward towards a point high above the sea level, like a sharply-inclined hill, or the top of a mountain. At the top of the mountain, was a rock formation, one that was backlit by the setting sun’s red-painted sky in the west.
The rock formation was in the shape of the profile of a beautiful woman’s face. Her chin, her partially open mouth, nose, eye, forehead and hairline were all remarkably evident. Beyond the profile though – even more remarkable – was the display of numerous openings in the stone below the profile. The bright red rays of the sun shone clearly through the openings, illuminating their shapes for the two observing boys. Directly below the woman’s profile was a perfect arrow, pointing upward to the woman. Below that was an obvious crescent moon. And around the moon was a constellation of five pointed stars.
“This is the enchanted isle!” Kreewhite said in a reverent whisper.
“Enchanted isle? You know this place?” Marco asked in an echoing whisper, awed by the extraordinary display.
“I’ve learned the legends of the isle,” Kreewhite answered. “This is the Island of Ophiuchus. His most sacred temple is on this island, and there is a sea grotto with a pool of miracles. Everyone in our race knows the legends of the isle. Do you mean you’ve never heard?”
“There is a cult of Ophiuchus in the Lion City,” Marco told him. “But they’re small and stay to themselves. I don’t know any of them,” he said, as a momentary image of the small temple of Ophiuchus, tucked away on a narrow, backwater canal, flashed through his memory. “The mother church frowns upon the cults,” he added, “But they don’t seem to say anything bad about the followers of Ophiuchus.”
“Ophiuchus is a special patron of our people,” Kreewhite told Marco as they drew close to the shore. Waves were breaking upon rocks at the base of a short cliff on the side of the island they approached. Kreewhite began to circle around to the right, looking for a better approach to the shoreline. “The island is supposed to be a place of special refuge for those of us in desperate situations.”
“I think we qualify,” Marco spoke up.
“There!” Kreewhite began to speed forward towards the darkening island. “I see a cave entrance from the sea. We’ll go in there.”
Marco held on tightly, suddenly frightened by the prospect of entering a cave on an enchanted island. There was no telling what might await them within the cave, but he hesitated to say anything that might contradict Kreewhite’s obvious excitement.
They entered a narrow alley of dark water where the breakers crashed upon themselves in the confined space, then the pair went beneath the high, arching entrance to the cave Kreewhite had spotted. The water immediately grew calm, and the sounds from outside were quickly hushed, so that the only sound was the echoing noise of their own passage through the water.
It was very dark within the cave.
Chapter 9 – Temple of Healing
The cavern became a watery passage through the stone bulwark of the island, an aisle that led into the dark interior, faintly lit by an inexplicable phosphorescence that glowed upon the surface of the water that Kreewhite slowly swam through. The cave took a sharp turn, and a brighter light became visible in the distance, even though the water ahead of the pair was smothered under a layer of clinging mist.
“Where are we going?” Marco asked. “Do you think we should go any further?”
“I just wanted to get away from the shoreline,” Kreewhite answered. “I thought this might give us an easy place where you could get onto the land. Are you afraid? Do you want to go back out into the sea and try to find someplace else to land on the island? It will be getting too dark to see very well.”
“No, this is okay,” Marco answered, stung by the question of whether he was afraid. He did feel afraid, with his injuries and inability to defend himself well, but he didn’t want to admit it. He tightened his grip o
n the sword he still carried. “Let’s go on.”
Kreewhite began to move forward, entering the mist, through which Marco could see nothing. He suddenly felt as though he were in a heavy fog bank, unable to discern any forward motion while they were engulfed in the white mist.
“This water isn’t deep,” Kreewhite commented.
After only a couple of minutes, their enclosed world changed.
The fog ended abruptly, and so did the darkness, and so did the cavern. Both boys gaped in astonishment around them as Kreewhite held a stationary position.
The roof of the cavern overhead soared majestically high above them, as the passageway from the sea opened upon a large, chambered pool, an extraordinary surprise within the solid stone heart of the extraordinary island. Not only was the roof a great dome, but a series of small flames were emitted jet-like from openings overhead, providing the dim illumination that allowed the two visitors to inspect their extraordinary surroundings.
The water had a faint metallic odor, and it felt rich and creamy in an unusual way; Marco could tell that they were more buoyant in the warm waters within the chamber.
The stone walls that rose from the waterline were a smooth, perfectly round circle, broken only at the spot where a broad staircase rose from the water and climbed up into the stone. Several feet above the water the smooth walls ended, and above them were a series of columns that surrounded the entire chamber, topped with decorative capitals that seemed to hold up the island overhead.
“I’ll take you to the steps and you can feel land for a change,” Kreewhite offered in a cautious tone, though he made no move towards the steps.
“What is this place? Is this a merpeople temple?” Marco asked.
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