by E J Pay
Trapped
EJ Pay
Copyright © 2019 EJ Pay
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below.
ISBN Paperback: 978-1-7331202-4-1
ISBN ebook: 978-1-7331202-3-4
Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.
Cover design by Mindee Thyrring/PostModernLaundry.com
Printed by Amazon in the United States of America.
First printing edition 2019.
www.ej-pay.com
[email protected]
To my mom
Who is reaching for her future
In her new phase of life
Prologue
We only have one life to live. Well, most of us do, anyway. I have more than one. I am Evelyn Marin. I also trapped in someone else’s body, living their life for them. I am trying to find a way to save them. Trying to find a way out and back to my life.
When I left my ocean-fearing mom to attend college in Florida, I thought I would be able to find some satisfaction in being by the water. For years, I felt the pull of the ocean calling to me in my sleep. I wanted to live and breathe and soak in the ocean air. But being so near the ocean wasn’t enough. The ocean still called to me and in a moment of frenzy, I went further into the Florida waves than I had ever been before. And I breathed. Not the ocean air, heavy with heat and humidity. I breathed water. For the first time in my life, I learned that I could live and breathe air and water. I was a two-worlder.
But I wasn’t the only two-worlder in the Atlantic Ocean. An entire city of two-worlders, including my ex-boyfriend James and my new boyfriend Jack, lived only a few miles from the Florida coastline in the ancient underwater city of Atlantis. They welcomed me as I discovered this new world of possibility. But Atlantis wasn’t merely an underwater civilization inhabited by human and sealife alike. No, Atlantis was a city at war and I was asked to be a soldier in their underwater army.
Who could be an enemy to an underwater city? My aunt, Ceto. Ceto had a hatred for land almost as unnerving as the eight tentacle-legs that grew from her waist. She was using her daughter and my best friend, Gwen, to help in her design. Ceto was making plans to use the Atlantean power source to help her cover the entire world with water. No land dwellers would survive her attack. She had to be stopped. Someone had to find the Atlantean power source before she did. That someone was me, and I had an army of revolutionaries formed by the seahorse, Lachlan, ready to follow me wherever I led.
The pull I’d felt my entire life led me to an underwater battle and straight to the power source - the Atlantean pearl. But she was more than a magical embodiment of power. This pearl was a human being from the ancient world. Once filled with power in her human body, she was trapped in the pearl thousands of years ago by an unseen enemy. When I found her and reached out to touch her smooth surface, everything changed. In an instant, I was shown her entire life and in an instant, I entered it. She absorbed me and took me back in time. Now I am living in her body and I have no idea how to get back.
Chapter 1
“Evelyn!” I hear my name fading in the distance, screamed by half a dozen people in a battle undersea. The voices fade, my mind goes black and I struggle for breath.
Fire fills my lungs. Breathing hasn’t been painful before. It’s sharp and stinging in my chest, and stabbing pains strike my sides. It isn’t the feeling I expected when I touched the Atlantis stone. In my dreams, as I’d reached through the water to grasp my destiny, I knew I could no longer breathe. But I thought drowning would feel more like my chest caving in on itself. Like all the air burned out of me while I collapsed from the inside. It wasn’t ever in my dreams; the actual drowning. But I always imagined how it would be when it finally happened. I feel the burning I envisioned, but not the collapsing.
Everything feels different. The cool, swirling waters from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean have been replaced by something warmer, dryer. I steady myself and slow down my thoughts so I can see what is around me. I turn to look for my father whose proud and sad eyes were the last thing I registered before reaching out for the pearlescent Atlantean stone. But a large olive tree stands in his place. Its branches are wide and outstretched like they want to wrap me in an embrace. A shudder tingles its way down my spine as I think of those scratchy arms cutting my body and clothing, trying to hold me close.
The water I was floating in is gone. The battle is gone. The people are gone. Nothing is floating groundless around me anymore. I am no longer in an underwater city. Everything is motionless except when an occasional breeze moves across the dry earth. Dry earth.
My feet are standing on the ground. I turn to survey the changed landscape. Rolling hills covered in large orchards of trees are all around me. There is a large home of clay and stone in the valley below. It wraps around a courtyard. An animal pen is near the house. One or two animals move around inside.
I feel something prickly on my feet. I look down to see that dried grass is scraping against the leather sandals which have replaced the underwater shoes I was wearing just moments ago. Instead of battle armor, I am dressed in light linen robes with a leather belt wrapped around my waist. A small charm, a hand with an eye in the palm, hangs from a thin piece of rope around my neck. My body is glistening with sweat like I have been running. My lungs burn.
“Pearl!” I hear a young voice call. I turn to see where it is coming from. A boy about 10 years old with dark, curly hair is staring in my direction. He also wears robes and leather sandals. He is just down the hillside and stands breathless in the long golden grass. He is calling to someone I cannot see.
“Pearl!” He calls again, “You’re it. You’ve got to get me now!” My body remains still while I swivel my head around from side to side to see who he is speaking to. He rolls his eyes and jogs toward me. “Pearl,” he grabs my arm and gives it a gentle shake, “are you okay? It’s your turn. You are the titan now.” He shakes his head at me. When I don’t answer, his eyes soften and his voice sounds concerned. “Pearl. Are you okay?” he asks.
I blink several times, trying to understand what is going on. Why is this boy talking to me like he knows me? Why does he keep calling me Pearl? I look around again, trying to recognize anything in my surroundings that might help me understand what is happening. Nothing registers, nothing at all. Until…
I turn to the boy. His skin is golden brown and his eyes are dark like chocolate. His hair is thick and full and his face is familiar. I know I’ve seen his face before. I know I’ve seen this moment before. Only a short while ago I was seeing this same moment in time through the memory of the Atlantean stone. The Atlantean pearl.
I stumble backward a few steps, my head swirling with the impossibility of what is happening. I look down at my hands. They are changed. Rather than the rough skin and deep tan I have acquired over the past several months living so much in the ocean, my hands are now soft and small, golden brown tones like boy in front of me. I am small like he is. I reach my hand down to my stomach and run my fingers over my small waist and smaller chest. My hips are smaller, my legs are shorter, everything is different - like it was when I was a preteen. I reach my hands up to my hair. Instead of the long, straight braid I was wearing in battle, I feel thick, soft curls. I pull a section forward in front of m
y eyes to have a good look at what is growing out of the top of my head. It’s black. My brown hair is now black.
I’m not myself anymore. I’m someone else.
I look to the eyes of the boy. This is the boy I saw when I touched the pearl. He, this is the first memory she showed me. “Pearl,” he says again, his voice gentle and unsure. I think we need to get you home.” I nod my head and let go of my hair. He reaches his hand out to me, and I take it, knowing instinctively that he is a safe place. As soon as our fingers touch, something registers within me. Brother. Twin. Domideus. Dom. This is the pearl’s brother. Her twin. Pearl is who she is and what she became. Pearl is who I am now. As I follow dazedly behind him – my brother - focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, her voice enters my soul, filled with a search for freedom.
“You have come.”
Chapter 2
Agentle hand brushes across my forehead and I blink my eyes open. When I focus, I see a woman leaning over me. She is completely and utterly beautiful, with dark curls and soft, brown eyes. She looks so much like my mom. But she isn’t my mom. She is Pearl’s.
She looks deep into my eyes to see if she can decipher what is hiding inside of me. Inside of her daughter.
“Hello, my girl. How are you feeling?” I manage a half smile as an answer. “You’ve been asleep since yesterday afternoon. No fever though, thank goodness. Would you like a drink of water?” My throat is parched. Water would be wonderful. I give her a small nod and another half-smile. “Just a moment, then,” she says and leaves the room.
I stretch my legs and flex my hands, squeezing life back into my tired body and trying to clear my head, remembering the events of yesterday. I touched the pearl of Atlantis, saw her life, embraced it, and stepped into her sandals. I sift carefully through each memory so I don’t miss anything. I want to make sense of what is happening. I am Pearl’s body, but I have no idea why.
A pang of fear shoots through me. If I am here, what is happening in Atlantis?! Is the battle still raging? Is my family okay? Did Ceto send me here? I try to sit up, but I am too dizzy. I lay my head back on the rough pillows.
I take deep breaths and find things to focus on to calm my racing heart. I turn my head to the side to take in Pearl’s home. I feel the coarseness of her blanket when I move on the small bed. It isn’t like any bed I’ve slept on before, not even in Atlantis. It’s a straw mattress laying on a wooden platform. The blanket looks handwoven and has an earthy smell. I am still wearing linen robes and the necklace I wore yesterday. I hold the hand and eye charm in my fingers. It is something I’ve seen before, but I don’t know what it means. I stretch my toes beneath the blanket. The sandals are gone, but my feet feel clean and washed free of the dirt that caked them after my day in the orchard.
I turn to my side to face the door and see a soft light coming in through a glass-less, exterior window. The window is covered by a woven cloth that serves as a curtain. The room is clean and comfortable. The walls are plastered in white. Earthen rugs cover the cool, tiled floor. I see a few scrolls on a small wood table in the corner. A short and stubby candle sits there as well. A few clay pots sit against the wall by the door. A wooden wardrobe stands near the foot of the bed and I can see several items folded and hanging inside. A tall basket with used linens is beside it. There is a small chair by the bed. It isn’t empty, though.
Dom is sitting in the chair, fast asleep by my side, his head resting on his arm as he leans across the straw mattress. He wears a bracelet of rope around his wrist with a charm like mine strung between the strands. A little bit of drool is dripping down the side of his cheek, and the sight of it makes me smile. I want to wake him up. I want him to tell me about Pearl, about me. Maybe then I can find a way home. I stretch my legs and wiggle my feet until they shove his arm. He raises his head and yawns. Pearl’s Mama calls to him to not bother me.
Dom reaches across the bed and pinches my toes. I pull my feet away. I hate having my feet tickled, even in this new body. “Pearl,” he says. He sits up and stretches, “how are you feeling?”
That’s a question I’m not sure how to answer. “Confused. Hungry. Sad.” I have to push each word through the groggy fog in my head. Dom’s chocolatey eyes look sad, but then he brightens.
“I can help hungry,” he says, and he jumps from the chair and out the bedroom door.
Pearl’s Mama comes back in the room just a moment after her son left it. She has a wooden cup and carafe on a woven tray. A single lily lay near the cup. I try to lift myself up so I can sit and drink, but it ends up being more of a shrug. Pearl’s Mama sets the tray on the table with the scrolls and comes to help me sit up. Her robes are lighter than mine and she has a red swath of fabric crossing her body over one shoulder. She is so beautiful.
She comes to me and her gentle hand reaches behind the curls cascading down my neck, bracing the back of my shoulders. With her other hand, she takes hold of my arm, and together we get my new body into a proper seated position.
“How are you feeling, my love?” Her voice is creamy and rich and soothing. Her eyes are dark and chocolatey like Dom’s and, I assume, like mine. A look of concern crosses her brow, but she covers it with a smile, encouraging me to open up to her.
I remember that she sees her daughter in front of her. If I am unwell, if I tell her what is going on, she will not hide her concern anymore. She will think I am sick. She may send for a doctor. I don’t know what time period this is, but it must be hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. There is no buzz of electricity, no sound of airplanes or cars or trains. The home is clean, but looks more like the homes I have seen in paintings of the ancient world. I don’t want an ancient doctor looking at me, covering me in leaches, or doing some crazy beating ritual to remove evil spirits from me. So, I decide to be healthy Pearl until I can find my way back home.
“I’m doing better,” I manage to croak out. “What happened?”
She holds my head and brings the cup to my lips. I drink the fresh, cool water slowly as she answers. “You came home with Dom yesterday afternoon. You were stumbling about and not making much sense. I brought you to bed and you were quite fitful for a while. I was making ready to have Dom go fetch Doctor Amadeaus when you finally rested your body and your eyes. You were not warm, just restless. When you finally settled down, I decided to watch over you while you slept.”
I smile at a mother who loves her little girl enough to go without sleep. My own mom would have done the same. My mom. I ache for her and my smile fades.
Pearl’s mother continues, “Dom sat by your feet all night. He fell asleep after several hours. You know how he is.”
I smile again and nod. Dom re-enters the room with a torn loaf of bread in one hand and a lump of cheese in the other.
“Pearl was hungry, so I got her some of our morning bread with Acacia’s cheese.”
“Thank you, Dom. She may not be able to eat much, but it was very thoughtful of you to care for her so.”
Smiling with self-satisfaction, Dom returns to my bedside, placing the food on my lap. Slowly, very slowly, I pick up the pita bread. It is flat, brown, and rough in my hands. A dusting of flour covers the outside. I tear off a small piece of the bread and bring it to my mouth. It is chewy with a mildly sweet flavor. I like it. Dom picks up the bread, tearing off a much larger piece and smears its surface with the soft goat cheese he brought. He takes a bite from it first, then puts the remaining portion to my lips. I open my mouth and he puts the bread into it, his clean fingers tapping my chapped lip. The cheese is smooth and creamy with a flavor that is slightly stronger than the cow’s cheese I am used to eating. I love it.
Pearl’s memory reaches to my mind.
She and Dom are hiding behind a tree, eating goat cheese and flatbread as fast as they can. The food was specially prepared for visiting guests, but Pearl and Dom couldn’t stand waiting. The smell of the cooking bread and the sun-warmed cheese was too much for them. So, while Cook wasn’t looking, they gr
abbed a small pile of flatbread and scooped a portion of cheese from the platter. They dashed to their favorite tree and ate their prize as quickly as they could. Once they finish, they look up with satisfaction and find themselves staring straight into the eyes of Pearl’s goat, Acacia. She looks accusingly at them like she knows they took her prize cheese.
The pair can hear the sounds of the farm boy searching for Acacia. It isn’t long before they are caught. As he comes upon them, the farm boy, who is 14 or 15-years-old, makes ready to cry out to Cook. But just as he opens his wide mouth with a triumphant face, Dom reaches out and touches the boy’s ankle.
“No need to call out, Theodis,” Dom says, “You can take the goat to Cook and everything will be fine. Tell her you found the goat wandering in the south field.” Without a single utterance, Theodis relaxes his face, closes his mouth, and takes Acacia by her rope back to Cook. Pearl and Dom stifle a laugh as they watch Theodis walk back to the house where Cook boxes his ears and accuses him of taking the food himself. The twins run down the hill, giddy with their feat.
With his touch, Dom made Theodis change his mind.
Mind control. Dom has mind control. When he touches people, he is able to convince them of anything he says. A subtle nudge from Pearl tells me I am right. I look up at her – my – twin, Dom.
Pearl’s mother lifts the cup again to my lips to help me swallow the bread and cheese. Does she know what her son can do? Dom has another piece of bread ready for me and pops it into my mouth. I cannot take my eyes off of him, and for over half an hour, I eat slowly while I listen to him prattle on to his Mama about his friends and the games he has been playing. But I cannot stop thinking about what he is capable of. That kind of gift could go so wrong in the hands of a madman. Will Dom become a madman? My mind races through the terrible scenarios that could take place if this power is set loose in Atlantis – or the rest of the world. I shake off my thoughts when I realize Pearl’s mother has been speaking to me.