He climbed down and placed his face in the water again, to say farewell to the dolphins who lived in the waters around the island.
“Buccan, Brewe, Bottle, farewell!” he called the names of those he had been most familiar with. “I’m leaving these waters now. Live long and swim far,” he gave the traditional dolphin parting blessing.
He started to scramble from his rock to another one, then fell into the water as he tried to make the jump across a break in the stones.
Chapter 25 – Kieweeoee’s Example
“Man with legs! Legged swimmer!” Marco heard the voices of two dolphins not far off.
“Bottle?” he called as he clung to the side of the rock, waiting to hear from the dolphins before he began to climb up.
“Here you are! We’ve been looking for you. Come with us, hurry!” they spoke with even more energy and excitement than dolphins usually exhibited.
“What’s wrong?” Marco asked, worried by their explosive arrival.
“Your friend, Kieweeooee,” Bottle said.
“She’s getting married!” Brewe explained.
“She wants you to be at her wedding! She’s sent out messages to all the dolphins in all the waters to find you!” they both explained.
“Married? Kieweeooee?” Marco asked in confusion. “She’s getting married? To another dolphin?” he foolishly asked in his state of astonishment.
“Did you expect to ask her to marry you?” Brewe asked with a laugh.
We talked about it,” Marco said in the serious, formal language of the dolphins, making his two acquaintances stop and stare at him momentarily, until he started laughing.
“How can I get to Kieweeooee’s wedding?” Marco asked.
“Come with us. Hold on to my fin; we’ll take you to the next swimmers, who can take you to the next swimmers,” Bottle told him. “Grab on!” And with that, they started weaving in and out among the rocks to get to the open sea, at which point they picked up speed and began to fly through the water at the fastest rate Marco had ever experienced.
For two days Marco was transferred from dolphin to dolphin, relayed as rapidly as possible to an empty stretch of open sea where dolphin ceremonies were traditionally held. He inquired about food on his first day, and grew so hungry he eventually agreed to eat the raw fish that was repeatedly offered to him, stolidly chewing the uncooked flesh just to put some substance into his growling stomach.
“We’re almost there!” the fourth dolphin to pull him along told him after his second sunrise at sea. Despite his bleary sense of exhaustion, he grinned in anticipation.
“Weddings happen when the sun is straight overhead,” his guide told him. “We should get there in time for you to join the ceremony. Imagine, a two-legs from the place with no water, at a royal wedding!”
“Royal wedding?” Marco asked in surprise. “Why is it royal?”
“Why is it royal?” the dolphin repeated his question with a laugh.
“Because Kieweeooee is marrying the prince of the gathering of the pods of the waters where the sun rises, that’s why!” he explained. “She told the prince she had to have you at the wedding, and so he sent out the messages.”
Marco shook his head in wonder, astonished that his friend was about to become royalty among the dolphins.
Two hours later, his dolphin slowed the pace of their progress considerably, and then began to call out, “The legged one is here! Let the festivities begin, and don’t forget that it was Wahheelee who brought him!”
Within minutes, a score of dolphins converged upon them, and Marco was transferred to the care of dolphins he knew from the waters of Barcelon harbor. “Krewe, Wineeooee, tell me this is not happening!” Marco laughed. “Our Kieweeooee is getting married?!”
There was laughter and joking between them as Marco was escorted to the place of the ceremony.
“Usually the wedding takes place in deep water, but Kieweeooee insisted that this one happen where you could breathe the air,” Krewe explained.
And soon after that, masses of dolphins congregated, and Marco watched as Kieweeooee and another dolphin slowly swam in circles around one another as the king of the western dolphins officiated at his son’s wedding.
“Marco legs!” Kieweeooee came racing over to him as soon as the ceremony finished, and she dragged him to meet her groom and her father-in-law, the king.
“He is the one!” Kieweeooee excitedly told her gathered family. “I helped him get under the evil we felt in the water, and then he went and he defeated the evil-bringer in battle on the land! I felt the evil go away.”
“That evil went away, and we have to thank your friend for his good deed that has made life better for us all,” the king said. “But there is another, greater evil out there that hungers to come and destroy our happiness, the happiness of all.
“We thank you for your great courage and strength, and we thank you for befriending my beloved,” the eastern prince said, as he floated just inches above Kieweeooee.
“Kieweeooee, will you go away from the waters where we have met and played?” Marco asked.
“Not all the time, Marco friend,” his friend answered. “We will spend many days among the waters of the sunrise, and then we will come back to spend some days among the waters where you play.
“And what about your heart? When will you take a mate?” she asked Marco.
“I hope to ask soon,” Marco told her. “I have to go back to the land by the waters where we play, so that I can speak to the girl who my heart belongs to.”
“Can we deliver him now, my dear?” Kieweeooee turned to her prince to ask. “We can make this day of our romance a day of romance for my friend as well!”
And so Marco found himself being tugged through the water once more, and four days later he was in sight of the beaches near Barcelon, waterlogged after having traveled so many miles, at a rate faster than any sailing ship could have achieved.
He bade farewell to the honeymooning dolphin couple, then doggedly staggered up onto land, his legs having difficulty returning to the duty of carrying his weight upon land.
Several minutes later he walked into town, his approach watched closely by the guards at the gate who only saw a youthful man without shirt or boots, wearing a sword and a sparkling golden hand, who came trotting towards the city gate.
Marco greeted the guards cheerily, unaware of the scrutiny he received, and he passed into the city streets. He wove his way through the crowds in the city, his need to see and hug Mirra growing more urgent with every few seconds. When he reached the city square where Gabrielle’s shop was, he sprinted across the paving stones of the square, and burst into the shop’s front room.
Gabrielle! Mirra! I’m back!” he shouted, and then he went behind the counter and entered the hallway.
There was a sound upstairs, and Marco climbed the stairs two treads at a time. As he reached the landing on the second floor, the door to Gabrielle’s apartment opened, and the owner of the alchemy shop screamed in gentle delight
“Thank the Lord! Look at you!” Gabrielle cried, as she opened her arms and gave Marco a gentle hug. “Look at those scars! Look at that hand! Are you well, Marco? Can I do anything for you?” she asked with genuine affection and concern.
“I’m fine. I’m good. How are you?” he asked, trying to appear polite before he asked the question that was foremost in his mind.
“I’m as good as gold,” she assured him. “But I expect it’s not me you want to know about,” she accurately understood his attention.
“You’ll have to hurry,” she said suddenly.
“Hurry where?” Marco asked.
“After that pretty girl, of course! You need to go catch up with Mirra and Glaze. They left just an hour ago to go to a some great palace up in the mountains. Do you possess a palace, Marco?” she asked.
“Yes, the Duke gave me one. Which way do I need to go? What road are they on?” he asked hurriedly.
“Go towards Sant Jeroni, on
the road of the same name,” she told him, “due west out of the city,” she helpfully added.
“I’ll be back Gabrielle, I promise,” he told the kindly land lady.
“You don’t have to hurry away from Mirra just for me!” she laughingly told him, then fondly shook her head as he galloped down the staircase.
Marco resumed running outside the shop, hastening to try to catch his quarry. He’d thought of the girl frequently and longingly during his convalescence on the Isle of Ophiuchus, as well as during his journeys afterwards, and now he knew he was only minutes away from finally reaching the girl, from being able to tell her how he felt.
He ran through the city, and out the lightly-traveled city gate for the road to the mountains. Once outside of the city he slowed down to catch his breath, then started running again. He passed a wagon that carried only a farmer and his family, then a little while later he passed a group of pilgrims on their way to the Compostela site of miracles. And finally, as the sun began to drop behind the mountains that were already starting to make the terrain roll and the road constantly rise, he saw in the distance ahead of him a well-appointed carriage slowly rolling along behind four horses.
Huffing and puffing from his grueling journey, Marco slowly gained on the carriage, and his hopes continued to rise. The carriage began to climb the first significantly steep slope of the rising mountain range, and Marco closed to within a quarter mile of the vehicle as it slowed on the uphill grade.
Then suddenly, Marco saw the carriage turn off the road into a grove of deep green pine trees on the left side of the road. He began to run faster again, sweating profusely; only a few hours earlier he had been immersed in seawater, and now he was sweating as he labored on a journey miles from the sea. He thought to himself of the wide swing in the nature of his surroundings, then forgot it as he imagined seeing Mirra’s smile.
When he reached the grove of pines he saw a narrow drive that the carriage had taken, and he saw a gate across the drive, closed. A tall stone fence extended an unseen distance on either side of the gate, and the metal bars of the gate were solidly shut and locked.
Frustrated, Marco banged his right hand against the solid metal plate of the locking mechanism, and to his astonishment watched the plate spark, and then the gate flew open from the impact of his light blow.
He stared in astonishment at the open palm of his hand, then stared at the gate. He stood in dumbfounded amazement for several seconds before his brain registered that he could proceed to catch up with carriage. He entered the grounds, pushed the gate back into place, then started running once again along the curving arboreal drive.
Marco came around a sharp curve in the drive, and suddenly saw a large, stone mansion sitting on a shoulder of the mountain. It was a proud-looking structure, but Marco paid no attention to it as he saw the carriage pull to a stop in front of the main entrance, and a rider from the driver’s bench jumped down to disappear between the coach and the home, as the door opened, and a small flock of servants came out of the building.
With one last burst of energy, Marco started running again. “Mirra! Mirra!” he called loudly. The servants looked up, startled.
A woman’s head appeared, peering around the corner of the carriage, and Marco knew it was the incomparable face of Mirra.
She stared for just a moment. “Marco?” he heard her voice faintly, then she called again, more loudly, Marco!” as he drew closer, and she started to run towards him.
Seconds later they collided in a fierce embrace, and they clung to one another for long seconds of pure joy. Marco backed away, and held her at arm’s length, as they looked at one another.
“You’re healed!” she said with sparkling eyes. She looked at his right hand as it gripped her shoulder, then looked up at him with a question in her eyes.
“It’s fine. It works. The Lady healed it,” he told her. “How are you, Mirra? Is everything okay?” he asked.
“It is; it is now that you’re here,” she told him with a delighted smile. “I was so afraid it would be a long time before I’d ever see you again, and now you’re here. Are you here to stay?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But at least for a while I’m here. I’m here to be with you.”
He saw Glaze standing with the servants, holding Sybele and saying something urgently to the servants, holding them back from interrupting the reunited lovers.
“Mirra, there’s something I have to know,” he said. As soon as he spoke those words, he knew he had to ask her. He descended to one knee, and looked up at her, as her face took on a different expression.
Mirra, will you marry me?” he asked the simple words. The one short question that he had thought about a great deal since he had been parted from the girl.
She smiled at him with sincere joy. “For a long as you’ll have me, for whatever time you can spend with me, Marco, I would love to be married to you! Since the day I first met you, when you healed Sybele, I’ve dreamed of you. Yes, my beloved hero, I will marry you.”
Glaze was releasing the servants, who came streaming down the drive to meet their new master.
“Welcome my lord,” one of the maids spoke first, “or from what I’ve seen, should I say welcome my lord and lady?” she asked with a smile on her face. Marco rose to his feet, a wide grin on his face.
“By all means, thank you for your greeting, and let’s all go inside and show off this home to the new lady of the mansion,” he said, and taking Mirra’s hand in his, he led the way back up the drive towards the mountain home that had gained a new master and mistress and a new story of romance to pass down through the ages.
The Gorgon's Blood Solution Page 31
