Hidden Depths

by L. M. Brown

  The air was cleaner than any he had ever breathed and there wasn’t a single cloud in the blue sky.

  The ground seemed to be one huge bed of flowers, most of which he had never seen before in his life.

  “Welcome to the Isle of the Gods,” Medina said. “If you’d like to follow me back inside, I’ll show you how to travel to Atlantis by crystal.”

  Despite the clear blue sky, a crash of thunder roared across the isle.

  A strange man, surely a god, appeared directly in front of them.

  “How dare you defy my edict,” the god raged.

  “Cynbel,” Medina said. “What a pleasant surprise. How delightful to see you awake again. I don’t believe you’ve had the pleasure of meeting my family.”

  Cynbel didn’t spare a glance for anyone except the goddess. “I banished Atlanteans from Atlantis. You have no right to bring one of them back here.”

  “Jake is a distant descendant of mine,” Medina said. “He and his lovers are here to visit Kyle’s family in the city. They won’t be staying forever.”

  “I don’t care,” Cynbel replied. “That man doesn’t set foot in Atlantis—not now or ever.”

  Medina bowed her head respectfully. “I’ll ensure Jake remains on the isle until his lovers have returned from the city. It is only temporary.”

  Cynbel didn’t look happy about it but vanished anyway.

  “Who was that?” Kyle asked.

  “Cynbel, God of War,” Medina said. “He can be most disagreeable. He’s Caspian’s father and the one Caspian inherited his volatile temper from. He’s only recently rejoined the world.”

  Now that she had mentioned it, Finn could see a certain resemblance between the two gods. He didn’t like the idea of getting on the wrong side of either of them.

  “Come along,” Medina urged. “The sooner Kyle speaks with his sister, the sooner we can get you all home.”

  “What about you, Finn?” Jake asked. “Are you going with Kyle or staying here?”

  Finn hadn’t thought he would have to make a decision on what to do so soon. He’d imagined having plenty of time to consider things on the long swim from England.

  “You don’t have to decide right now,” Medina said. “We have plenty of time.”

  “I’ll go down with Kyle,” Finn said. “I’d like to see Justin and Lucas again, and I don’t like how things ended with my father—or I guess I should say, the man who raised me.”

  Jake pulled Finn into a quick hug. “Remember… No matter what he says, you’ll always have me and Kyle, as well as your parents back home.”

  Finn buried his face in Jake’s shirt and breathed deeply. “I love you.”

  “I know,” Jake replied. “I love you, too.”

  From the corner of his eye, Finn saw Kyle staring at his feet. “Come here,” he said, pulling Kyle into the embrace.

  “We’ve got to work on that communication,” Jake insisted. “Now, you two take care down there, and return to me soon.”

  “Come,” Medina said as she led the way into another room in the building that seemed to be in a slightly better condition than the previous one. Someone had apparently been doing some repairs here recently.

  Finn watched as Medina explained how to open the portal back to England by touching a particular crystal.

  “How do you know which one to use?” Kyle asked.

  “This one goes to my temple in the palace, while that one on the other side of the room goes to my public temple. If you forget, peer closely into the crystal and you’ll see for yourself the place it leads to.”

  “What about those?” Finn asked, pointing to numerous broken crystals on columns just like the others.

  Medina wiped away a tear as she approached the nearest shattered gem. “These used to transport my most loyal priests to various temples around the world. Unfortunately, as the other races waged war on the Atlanteans, jealous of their gifts, my temples and those of my brethren were destroyed. When a temple is leveled to the ground, the crystal here is broken, too. As you can see, only those leading directly to Atlantis have survived the centuries. Had we not sunk the city below the waves, they, too, would no doubt have been broken long ago.”

  Finn didn’t know what to say to that. Medina was a goddess, yet he felt the urge to comfort her. He gave her a small pat on the arm, hoping he wasn’t overstepping. She offered him a watery smile before steeling herself and waving at the crystals.

  “You’re welcome to use whichever you like,” she said.

  “The palace one is probably most convenient for us,” Kyle said. “King Nereus is likely to be there, and my sister works in the palace.”

  Medina stepped back and tapped the crystal. “Well, here you go.”

  Finn pressed the crystal and the room shimmered as a bright glow appeared in front of him.

  “Just walk into the portal and you’ll be in the palace,” Medina said. “You’ll get your fins back in a few moments and you’ll be on your way. You can return here the same way, whenever you’re ready.”

  “We can?” Finn asked. “Don’t you need to be with us?”

  Medina shook her head. “No. All you need to do is make an offering in my temple and it will activate the portal to bring you back here. If you want to bring others with you—Kyle’s sister, for example—you can.”

  “Could anyone else activate it on their own?” Finn questioned.

  “Yes, but only if they know what to do, and those who have evil intentions in coming here will find themselves swiftly and harshly dealt with.”

  Finn nodded that he understood and stepped into the portal.

  Kyle’s tail and fins appeared, as Medina had said they would. He felt strange suddenly being back here in the city. It hadn’t been his home for long, and when he’d left, he hadn’t thought he would one day be coming back.

  “Which way?” he asked Finn, who was far more familiar with the catacombs beneath the palace than he was.

  “To the left,” Finn replied as he swam out of the temple and into the corridor. “Let’s check the kitchens first. If Lynna is still working in the palace, she’s probably there.”

  Kyle swam after Finn as they quickly navigated the labyrinthine underground levels of the palace.

  “The kitchens are that way,” Finn said, pointing down a passageway. “I’m going to head to the king’s audience chamber and see if he’s sitting. No sense in putting off the inevitable.”

  Kyle held Finn back with a hand to his arm. “I’m coming with you. What if he hasn’t calmed down and his forgiveness is a trick to get you to come back here?”

  “Then it’s best I go alone,” Finn replied. “If he throws me in the dungeon, I’ll need you to come rescue me.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you going to see him alone.”

  “You have to see it makes sense. It’s not like Jake can come down and get us if we’re both locked up, even if he did know where to go. You go find your sister, keep a low profile and I’ll meet you back on the Isle of the Gods before nightfall.”

  Kyle wasn’t happy about the decision, but it was clear Finn had made up his mind. And if King Nereus did throw him in the dungeons, Kyle would make sure he got him out of there as soon as he could.

  “Take care,” Finn called as he swam out of view.

  Kyle continued down the corridor, passing a couple of guards on the way. Neither of them was familiar to him or gave him a second glance. They carried tridents rather than the spears Kyle had used during his brief stint among their number. He wished he had brought a trident or spear with him, but it was too late to worry about that now.

  There seemed to be a lot more merpeople in the palace now than when he had last been here. If an evacuation of the city should take place, he had no idea where they could all safely go.

  As he neared the kitchens he spied a familiar face and sped up to chase after Xane. If anyone knew where his sister was, it would be her mate.

  “Xane!” Kyle called. “Hold on.”
>
  Xane spun around and banged into a nearby guard in surprise. “S-s-sorry, Otus.”

  “Watch where you’re going,” the guard snapped.

  Kyle hadn’t had much to do with Otus during his time in the guards. He’d found the merman to be ambitious and unpleasant and had stayed out of his way as much as he could.

  “Kyle?” Xane gaped at him in surprise. “What are you doing here? We thought you were in the land of humans.”

  “I thought he’d been banished,” Otus added. “Maybe we should go pay a visit to King Nereus.”

  Kyle ignored him and focused on Xane. He’d already heard via an old friend who had briefly visited England that he was welcome to return to the city. Were it not for Jake and his life on land, he’d probably have visited long before now. Besides, Finn was already going to speak to his father, and he was sure King Nereus was far more interested in the return of the merman he had raised, rather than Finn’s former bodyguard. “I’m here to talk to Lynna. Do you know where she is?”

  “She’ll be in the nursery with Maurissa and the other youngsters.”

  “Which way is that?” Kyle asked.

  Xane hesitated. “You aren’t going to upset her, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Kyle replied. “I want to talk to her about coming to live in England.”

  “The Goddess of Love already came to ask her about that, and we’ve already told her no.”

  “Yes, she told me, which is why I’m here to ask myself and try to make her see sense.”

  “What’s so great about the land of humans?” Xane asked. “Aren’t you always struggling to hide what you are among those who would kill us?”

  “It’s not like that,” Kyle assured him. “There are some humans who can be trusted. Not all of them would kill us on sight.”

  “But some of them would.”

  “Probably, but we take care not to draw attention to ourselves. There’s no more danger from hiding from humans than there is from avoiding shark-infested waters. If you and Lynna came to land with us, you’d see that for yourself.”

  “I’m not going to leave my family,” Xane said, “and Lynna won’t either.”

  “I’m Lynna’s family, too.”

  Xane sighed. “Go talk to her if you want. She won’t change her mind.”

  Kyle listened to Xane’s directions then left the merman to his work, while Kyle went in search of his sister.

  It didn’t take him long to find the nursery. He heard the cries of the youngsters at play long before he reached them. At such a young age, the merbabies hadn’t yet learned how to focus their voices on speaking to one person. Their shouts were projected for anyone in the vicinity to hear, making the nursery one of the loudest places in the city.

  Kyle had thought the nursery was located outside the palace, but it seemed things had changed since the day he’d left.

  Watching from the archway, he could see Lynna at the far side of the room. The netting over the entrances prevented the young from slipping away from their minders, and Kyle was careful as he entered, not to let a merbaby escape.

  Lynna and the other mermaids seemed to have the young well in hand as they laughed and played.

  “Lynna?” Kyle called out to her, and she spun around to see him. His sister had put on a little weight since he had last been with her. He guessed that came from her living in the same place and not swimming through the oceans as they had once done before coming to the sunken city. He had enough sense not to mention her fuller figure. His sister could be lethal with her tail when she lost her temper.

  “Kyle!” Lynna charged across the room, carefully navigating through the youngsters, then she threw herself into his arms. “I thought I’d never see you again. When did you arrive?”

  “A few minutes ago. Xane said I’d find you here. Now, first things first, which one of these is my niece?”

  Lynna swam back into the fray and returned a few moments later with a blonde-haired mer-girl with green fins the same color as her father’s.

  “Maurissa, say hello to your Uncle Kyle.”

  Maurissa giggled and batted at Kyle’s nose.

  “Can I hold her?” Kyle asked.

  Lynna snorted in her typical unladylike manner. “Good luck with that. She’s faster than she looks and is the worst of all the youngsters for slipping away when we’re not looking.”

  Kyle laughed as he took the squirming child from her mother’s arms. “You know, if you lived on land, you’d only have one youngster to look after, not a whole bunch.”

  Lynna frowned and huffed. “Two whole minutes before you brought that up… As I told Medina, I’m happy here, and I’ve no intention of putting Maurissa in danger by taking her to land.”

  “We’d take care of her…and you,” Kyle said. “We won’t let anything happen to her.”

  “I won’t let anything happen to her,” Lynna snapped. “I know you and other adults can hide what you are from the humans, but Maurissa is too young to understand. She doesn’t know that she can never let humans see what she is. I’m not going to put her in danger to ease your mind.”

  Kyle had known before they’d made the decision to come here that talking Lynna into coming to land wouldn’t be easy. He hadn’t thought it would be quite this hard, though. He had forgotten she could be stubborn as a barnacle.

  “Perhaps there’s another option,” Kyle suggested. “Our mother is still out there somewhere. Maybe we can find her, and you can live with her. I’m sure she’d love to meet her granddaughter.”

  “No doubt she would,” Lynna agreed. “Unfortunately, I have no idea which way she went, and I’ve not seen her since she left. So, unless you know where she’s swimming these days, I’d rather not go flippering all over the ocean with a young child, trying to track her down.”

  “I wonder if she might have gone in search of her grandmother’s clan,” Kyle suggested. “They usually swam in what humans call the Pacific Ocean.”

  “You’re not listening to me,” Lynna snapped. “I’m not going to put Maurissa in danger. I’m not going to swim all the way to the other side of the world on the basis of a guess that Mother might have gone searching for her grandparents’ clan. That clan might not even exist anymore. Mother might be dead, for all we know.”

  Kyle couldn’t think that. Even though he’d had no control over his mother’s actions, he felt responsible for her. He had to believe she had found somewhere safe to live out her life.

  * * * *

  Reaching the audience chamber of King Nereus without being recognized had never been particularly likely. Still, Finn couldn’t quite hide his groan of annoyance at the sound of “Your Highness” in his head as he swam through the palace.

  He inclined his head respectfully at the guard who had greeted him then continued on his way.

  Word would no doubt spread quickly through the palace. King Nereus would know of his arrival in the city well before Finn reached him. Maybe he would be apprehended by the guards and thrown into the dungeon without even seeing the merman who had raised him.

  The queue outside the audience chamber was long, which wasn’t unusual. Finn, who no longer considered himself a member of the royal family, no matter how the palace staff greeted him, joined the end of the line, ready to wait his turn.

  He hadn’t been waiting for more than five minutes before a guard approached him. “If you’d like to come with me, Your Highness, His Majesty will see you now.

  “I’m happy to wait. There are many here who have been seeking an audience longer than I have.”

  The guard gestured for Finn to swim ahead. “Nevertheless, I’m sure they will understand that His Majesty is eager to see his son after so many months apart.”

  Finn sighed. He guessed he couldn’t put it off any longer. He followed the guard down the line, ignoring the stares of the other mer, much as he had tried to when he’d lived in the city.

  Inside the audience chamber, he was relieved to see the room was empty, save for
King Nereus himself and his natural son, Justin.

  “Hi, Finn,” Justin greeted him with a wide smile. “It’s good to see you again—or at least hear you again since, as you can probably tell, I’ve lost my sight these days. But you don’t want to hear about me right now, so I’ll leave you two alone, but you must visit my chambers before you leave. I want to hear all the news from England. My adoptive father, Caspian, is terrible at bringing me updates on my football team.”

  Finn laughed. “I don’t think I’ll be much better. I don’t follow it much myself.”

  Justin tutted as he passed. “Still… You come by later and we’ll talk more.”

  Finn nodded and faced his father. How strange it was to be back here. He felt an odd connection to Justin, whose life had been so similar to his and yet also completely different. Justin was the true son of the man before him, yet had been raised on land by a god. Finn’s birth father was a human, but he had been raised by the merman before him. The difference was that Justin had always known he was adopted, while Finn had been lied to his entire life.

  He couldn’t blame his father for that. The king had been as clueless about Finn’s true parentage as Finn himself.

  Unfortunately, they hadn’t parted on the best of terms and now, swimming before the man who raised him, Finn had no idea what to say.

  “Don’t you have a hug for your father?” King Nereus asked as he spread his arms wide.

  Finn gave a small sob and swam swiftly into his father’s embrace, for King Nereus was his father, no matter what anyone else had to say on the subject. He still loved his birth father, Malcolm, who had been nothing but welcoming to him since he’d swum to England two years before. But it could not change the fact that King Nereus had been the one to comfort him when he had been stung by a jellyfish, who had told him stories to help him sleep at night and who, if his expression now was any indication, still loved him as though he were his real son.

  “I never thought I’d see you again,” King Nereus said. “I’m so glad you’ve returned. Though from what Justin tells me of your life among humans, I suspect it’s only for a visit. Correct?”