I gestured to one of the landing boats, in case she had not sufficiently understood my words to grasp my meaning. With my eyes I communicated the urgency of the decision; time was short, and at any moment crew, guests, bride, or groom might awake and discover us.
She looked at me; looked at the growing light in the sky; yes, cast a last look back at the tent where Lord Rackliffe and his bride still slept. But her gaze did not linger; after only a moment her eyes returned to mine and she stepped forward.
“I come,” was her answer.
I needed no more.
We stole to one of the ship’s landing boats and slipped away, rowing unseen for shore. Upon landing we immediately fled to the next city, where we boarded the first ship bound away from Egypt.
During the course of the voyage, we spoke of many things. She had begun learning some English simply by listening to the conversations of those around her, but as all had assumed that she was mute and therefore made little effort to converse with her, her gleanings had been sparse. I wasted not a moment in beginning to teach her myself, as best I could. She, being sharp-witted and intelligent as she was beautiful, learned quickly, and we were soon able to converse freely, if not quite fluently for her part.
It was on our voyage I learned that her name was Eyrál, and that she was a princess of the Mer. I learned of Eyrál’s drastic action taken in effort to be with the human object of her love. I learned of the sea-witch’s spell. I learned the true depths of what she had suffered since coming ashore and finding that Lord Rackliffe did not—could not, for his heart had not the capacity for it—return her love.
In my turn, I told her what little there was to say of myself, and took pains causing her to understand the lowliness of my station, for the more I learned of the nobility not only of her bloodline but of her regal character, I saw more and more clearly my own unworthiness of her. This she persistently brushed aside as insignificant, for among her people character was what determined worthiness and nobility. Would that humanity were to adopt for its own the same standards! Would not that at once put an end to the tyranny and corruption that rots at the heart of power?
I digress.
Our ship brought us in due time to Greece. The night before we were to anchor and disembark, Eyrál confessed to me that she returned my love. Was there anything more that I needed to hear for my happiness, my contentment, my assurance to be complete?
No, nothing.
“Well then,” said I, at once falling to my knees, “if you love me, can you find it within your heart to consent to be my wife?”
And, by the mightiest stroke of favor that ever Almighty God bestowed upon an undeserving mortal, she agreed.
We were married the next day by the first priest we found in the city, and in that same city we began making a life for ourselves. For two years there was nothing to detract from our happiness, and much to add to it.
Though we were far from her home and her family, we nevertheless lived on the coast, the border of Eyrál’s world. Often we would leave the city and walk down to coast, and Eyrál would take me into her world itself. We spent hours and days exploring the sea—I now possessed the gift of the Mermaid’s kiss and could not drown, and thus was enabled to follow her no matter how long she stayed beneath the surface. She showed me everything—varieties of sea plants, species of fish and mollusks I had never before seen, habits of sea creatures unknown to the inhabitants of dry land, and treasures which the land-dwellers could never hope to discover.
We discovered cities of her countrymen who, though at first shocked to see two-legged creatures in their territories, nonetheless welcomed us upon realizing that Eyrál was one of their own. (As I have said, their loyalty and devotion to one another are admirable beyond any of which mere humans are capable of discovering in their petty, cowardly hearts.)
I learned the Mer tongue and the Mer ways. I learned to hunt as they hunted, to harvest the sea’s treasures as they harvested them. Even with my two legs, I became one of them. As Eyrál and her people guided me, taught me, embraced me, I found myself becoming more and more a part of their world, less and less a part of my own.
It was not long before we discovered that Eyrál was with child. It was her wish to give birth to the child in Vaelish, one of the Mer cities we had come to frequent, where we had many friends. And so, our daughter was born deep beneath the sea. Black of hair, she was, with her mother’s blue eyes. Nerissa, we named her—a name with its origin in Greece, where we had found freedom and made our life together.
Though our human forms required us to spend a portion of our time above the surface, despite our inability to drown, we still spent as much time as we possibly could among what had come to be our people, the Mer. Nerissa, when she learned to speak, spoke the language of the Mer with more fluency than she spoke either English or Greek.
We lived in perfect happiness, until news arrived that overcast our entire world with its black shadow.
The world of the Mer was at war.
When Eyrál had refused her sisters’ entreaties to kill Lord Rackliffe in his sleep, they had at first retreated back to the depths of the sea, overcome with grief. They were soon to return, unable to carry on without knowing of their youngest sister’s fate, but not before Eyrál and I had fled to shore and been on our way.
When Eyrál’s sisters heard the exclamations from those on board the ship regarding Eyrál’s disappearance, they naturally assumed that their sister had died and been dissolved into sea foam, the fate to which the sea-witch’s spell would have doomed her had not my love spared her. Crushing grief turned to furious rage, and, rallying their kin and countrymen to their aid, the Mer attacked Lord Rackliffe’s ship and destroyed it without hesitation or mercy. All on board that vessel were drowned, from the crew and guests to Lord Rackliffe’s new bride herself.
All, that is, except for the one among them who had been given a Mer maiden’s kiss and could not drown.
Lord Rackliffe had watched, helpless, as the Mer wreaked their destruction, ripping the ship to pieces, killing crew and guests with brutal swiftness. Only by concealing himself in pieces of the wreckage had he escaped with his life. He had struggled in vain to rescue his bride, and reached shore clutching her limp form, from which all the life had irrevocably gone. He was himself grievously injured, and promptly rescued and brought to his own home by witnesses who had seen the Mer’s destruction of the ship from shore.
For many days he waged a battle between life and death, divided in his own allegiance between them. Death beckoned with promises of peaceful oblivion, and in his despair at the loss of his bride and family he nearly succumbed to its allure. But as days passed, things began to change. As fever raged hot in his body, hatred kindled and raged hotter in his heart. As the fever subsided, his hatred increased, growing in fury, spreading into the farthest and deepest corners of his soul. By the time his body had healed, his heart had been completely consumed by a lust for vengeance—vengeance at any and all costs.
As soon as he was barely able, before he had even recovered all of his strength, he returned to the sea, driven by a single intent. Now the sole heir to a vast fortune and estate since the Mer attack had taken the life of his father, young Lord Rackliffe began an immediate renovation of his father’s fleet of ships, outfitting the yachts and cruise vessels for war and training his sailors for combat.
But he was not to be contented there. Next he began buying and building new ships—ships made for war from their beginnings—and enlisting the services of already trained and seasoned men of war to sail them.
When he had amassed this fleet of death, he attacked. For months he had been sending spies out with fishing boats to search for clues ascertaining the locations of any and all Mer dwellings or cities. The spies had gleaned but little—the Mer have not avoided being common knowledge among humans for centuries for no reason; nevertheless, Lord Rackliffe, now calling himself Captain Rackliffe, led his fleet to war.
The Mer city tha
t had been Eyrál’s home was destroyed, and countless of her family and friends killed. Weighted barrels of explosive charges were dropped from the sides of ships onto Mer cities below. Sailors armed with rifles and harpoons waited at the rails, ready to fire upon any Mer who came in sight, whether in effort to fight back or merely escape it mattered not. Skulls of slaughtered Mer were hung from the sides and bowsprits of the ships that had hunted them down as gruesome trophies.
But Captain Rackliffe’s hunger for revenge was not sated. No, for in his cancerous grief and rage he found the taste of vengeance sweet, and longed for ever more and more. As he and his fleet decimated the Mer population of the nearby area, they expanded their range further and further into the Mediterranean, leaving only death in their wake. By the time word reached Eyrál, myself, and our friends off the coast of Greece, Captain Rackliffe and his fleet had already murdered thousands, and the ever-expanding borders of their bloodied waters were making their way across the sea towards us.
Eyrál was inconsolable at the news, holding herself to blame for the violence and destruction despite my assurances that she was as far from fault as anyone could be. The news of the deaths of her family nearly destroyed her, for the Mer are a people of deep love and attachments who feel loss and grief as keenly as they do joy. Her sorrow and anguish were more torture than I could bear—for what heart can withstand witnessing the pain of that which it loves more than its own life?—and so I determined that by any means and at all costs, I would assist the Mer in their plight.
The Mer among whom we had spent so many happy months were at a loss for a course of action, for their methods and weapons were designed for hunting sea creatures and defending themselves against the occasional attack by sharks, not ships, and they could only fight from below while their bloodthirsty enemies dropped death on them from the surface. Their very nature left them at a distinct and seemingly insurmountable disadvantage, for what are spears and harpoons against the thick, armored hulls of warships?
It was at once apparent to me that a new form of weaponry must be devised with which to combat Captain Rackliffe’s armada, and so I set about the task of developing one.
I was faced with countless daunting obstacles: Explosives were of no use under water; even the depth charges that were being dropped into Mer cities by Captain Rackliffe’s fleet, in the event of failing to detonate, were viable for only a few hours before the water seeped in and ruined them. Projectiles were useless; even if being launched through water had not reduced their velocity, the thickness of the ships’ armored hulls would still have prevented their penetration. It was clear that, not better projectiles, but a different class of weapon entirely, was needed.
What would this new class of weapon be? Where would I find it?
My answer, and the Mer’s salvation, came when one of the men whom Eyrál and I knew was killed, not by an attack from Captain Rackliffe, but by an unfortunate surprise encounter with an electric eel.
I had my answer: Electricity! Here was a force that was not slowed to impotence by water’s density, that could penetrate even the thickest armor with complete ease, that could kill with even the slightest contact.
I had the answer, but not the solution; I was a sailor, the son of a sailor, and the grandson of a sailor. My education was in the ways of the sea and the wind, and little more. If I was going to harness an invisible power, make myself its master, and use it to destroy my enemies, I needed to learn its ways, to become intimately familiar with its nature and workings.
I went to the magistrate of the Mer city and told him of my plan—that I would be leaving the Mer for a time, but hoped to return with a weapon that would enable them to finally defend themselves adequately and even, if the fates were with us, to vanquish Rackliffe once and for all. He bid me Godspeed, and gave me leave to avail myself of any and all resources that the Mer had at their disposal. I did this in a sense, although the only resource I needed at that time was one which, to the Mer, had no value whatsoever: gold.
The sea is an immense, inexhaustible treasury of wealth, littered with the lost treasures of mankind’s entire history. You, my dear Erwin, know from your own experience a little of this wealth, but I assure you it is leagues beyond anything you have ever even begun to imagine. From this treasury, I withdrew a sum sufficient to fund my mission, and with my wife and child at my side I set out on a quest to harness a monster.
We travelled first to England, where I met those great men, Mr. James Joule and Mr. Michael Faraday. Under their guidance I began to study that mysterious force, electricity. I learned Italian in order to glean knowledge from the research of Signor Volta. I learned French that I might study the work of Ampére. When Joule and Faraday had taught me all they could, I travelled to Switzerland to study with Ohm.
It was in Switzerland that I reached the end of what the established men of science could teach me. I had studied relentlessly, pressing each of them for more and more information, until I had exhausted in turn each individual’s scope of expertise. Even collectively their knowledge was not enough to harness the power of electricity to my satisfaction, but together they enabled me to surpass them. With their knowledge as a catalyst, I propelled myself forward into realms of understanding that it will take petty, bickering humanity another century to attain.
It was also in Switzerland that Eyrál gave birth to our second child—our son.
We lingered some months more while I completed my research, and then began making our way back towards our home in the Mediterranean. It had been long since we had contact or news of the Mer, and our fear that in our absence they may all have been slaughtered was great.
Upon reaching Greece we went at once to the Mer city and found, to our immense relief, that all was well. Attacks from Captain Rackliffe and his fleet upon the Mer and their dwellings continued, but as yet the city where we lived remained undiscovered, and as such had become a place of refuge for displaced Mer from all regions of the Mediterranean.
Satisfied in the knowledge that I had not come too late and that my people were safe for the present, I made another withdrawal from the ocean’s infinite treasury and returned to land to begin building my weapon. My first purchase was a dock and a warehouse where I could store the supplies I would need, and where I could conceal, construct, and eventually launch my weapon. When this was procured, I began making inquiries, searching the world for merchants—whether honest businessmen or pirates, it mattered not—from whom I could purchase, or who could manufacture, the parts that I would then assemble.
Construction was slow and arduous, for I worked alone: Eyrál assisted me where she could, though the children filled the majority of her time and there was much of the work that was too heavy for a woman; the Mer could not assist me, for the assembly by necessity took place out of the water, where they could not go; and I would recruit or hire no human to assist me, for fear that word of my undertaking might be carried back to Captain Rackliffe and destroyed before I could complete it—or worse, stolen and turned against the very beings I sought to protect. Nevertheless, I pressed onward, driven by the urgent desire to complete my weapon and put a stop to Captain Rackliffe’s reign of death while Vaelish remained undiscovered and my family and people remained safe.
Alas! Again Fate turned against me, and I was too late. Captain Rackliffe’s fleet discovered Vaelish, and destroyed it.
Being sequestered in my warehouse at the time of the attack, I was spared, and my son with me, for having been born and lived so long away from the ocean in his earliest months, he required more time above the surface, and Eyrál had left him with me while she assisted the refugees in Vaelish.
Eyrál and Nerissa were both in the city when Captain Rackliffe attacked. Upon receiving news from the Mer of the devastation, I left immediately to discover the whereabouts and safety of my wife and daughter.
Upon my arrival I was shown to a great hall where hundreds of dead had been collected. There, with my infant son in my arms, I found the bodi
es of my wife and daughter, murdered, lying among countless of our slaughtered friends.
Rackliffe had killed them—my wife and my daughter! They who had done him no harm! Indeed, it was Eyrál to whom he owned his very life, she who had spared him when he would have drowned! It was she who had sacrificed her own natural form to join his cruel and miserable world for love of his hard, selfish heart! It was she who had been willing to die that she might not disrupt his happiness!
It was he who had repaid her compassion with utter disregard and left her to die. And now it was he who had murdered her, and murdered our sweet, innocent child.
What storms of inconsolable grief and irrepressible rage took me then, I will not describe to you, for they rage within me still. They have not weakened in any part since that black day so many years ago. My heart bleeds as freely now as it did when I first gathered their bodies in my arms and screamed their names. My anger is as hot now as it was when I first turned my face to the sea’s surface above me and swore that I would have justice. It is they which have driven me forward these thirty-three years.
They…and you, my dear Erwin.
My son and I lingered among our people in the ruins of our city until the dead had been buried. Eyrál and Nerissa were laid to rest with the others in the coral fields, where the Mer have laid their loved ones for time immemorial. I buried them together, for the coral to seal them forever in each other’s arms. As the years pass, despite the ever-changing landscape of the sea floor, I have taken great care ensuring that the place remains well-marked, and rather than fear the death that so quickly approaches, I rest in the joy of knowing that in a few short days I will be laid with them at last.
When two thirds of my heart had been buried beneath the coral, I carried the third part, my son, to the surface, and made all the haste I could in carrying him as far from Rackliffe’s reach as I could. There were friends of my father’s family living in Ceylon, near the Gulf of Manaar; it was to them that I carried my dear little son. I left him there, with a supply of gold more than sufficient to provide for his entire life and that of the family besides.
The Last Will and Testament of Captain Nemo Page 2
