by J F Mehentee
She sounded confident. I wrapped an arm around her.
‘Are you sure?’
She returned my hug.
‘I’ll be fine, Jaybird,’ she said, and began to unbutton her shirt. I stood in front of her to hide her from the crew. ‘Keep an eye on Cubchick. Make sure it behaves itself.’ At the mention of its name, the anzu lifted its head and then went back to its chewing. Biyu glanced back at Damini who faced the water. ‘I still don’t trust her,’ she said, her words almost a hiss. ‘And I’ve seen how you look at her.’
I tried to stop my face from reddening. She’d told me off at the governor’s mansion for staring.
She’s attractive, I said—I’d only be lying if I said otherwise. I held up a hand when Biyu glared at me. More than anything, Bee, she reminds me of you.
She had undressed. Her third eyelids swept across her eyes.
How can you say that when I’m like this? Biyu said, her voice quivering. That woman doesn’t have a mouth that reaches her ears and teeth that prick you whenever we kiss. For frit sake, I’ve got a tail! Biyu wiped tears from her eyes.
I wanted to hold her, reassure her and explain she’d misunderstood what I’d said.
‘Starboard side.’
Damini pointed at an airship heading in our direction. Unlike the all-white airships of Air Zadrinesia, this one was dark grey, and it flew low. A row of projectiles hung from either side of its gondola. Two of them dropped and slipped into the water without a splash.
‘Fritting torpedoes,’ yelled the captain.
The two projectiles left a stream of bubbles in their wake. The dhow’s crew didn’t wait for orders. They flung themselves into the water and swam towards the shore.
Everything slowed.
Biyu stepped around me and scooped up the anzu, the rope hanging from its mouth. She jumped. She floated into the air and grabbed the collar of my sweatshirt. Behind her, the upturned prow disintegrated into splinters and kindling. Planking slammed into the back of Biyu’s head. Her eyes screwed shut. We fell. Her arm loosened, and the anzu slipped from it.
I hit the water. Its coolness clenched my muscles. Through the clear water, rigging snaked towards the darker depths. I spotted Biyu, her arms held out as if waiting for a hug, a trail of blood in her wake.
I dived, my tattoos aglow.
Biyu sank faster than I could swim. I kicked harder, ignoring how my lungs burned and my ears popped. Biyu grew smaller and came closer to the blackness the sun’s rays failed to penetrate.
Even though I’d upset her, brought her to tears, her last actions had been to save the anzu and me. I didn’t deserve her, and she didn’t deserve to die.
The glow from my tattoos faltered. The darkness swallowed Biyu and left behind a thin trail of red. I thrashed my arms as my oxygen-starved brain rebelled. I thought I heard thunder. It didn’t matter—I couldn’t see. Darkness enveloped me.
12
I woke to the hiss of streaming air. My clothes were wet. The walls, ceiling and floor were as white as the mattress I lay on. Damini lay on a similar mattress close to the opposite wall. Her staff lay beside her.
My heartbeat quickened. I lifted my head hoping to see Biyu. The walls in front of me and behind me lacked a mattress. I closed my eyes and rubbed them. I saw again the tears I’d caused just before Biyu yanked me off the boat and saved my life. My throat and chest constricted.
Something between a groan and a scream escaped my lips. I curled into a ball, thrust my fist into my mouth and bit down, hoping the pain would counter the oppressive heaviness sprouting inside my chest. Biyu was dead. I hadn’t saved her. I didn’t deserve to be alive. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks.
I don’t know how long I lay that way, rocking and crying until my eyes were dry and my throat hoarse. Cold air escaped through the vent above. It smelled of sea salt. The air chilled my damp clothes and made me shiver. I uncurled and noticed the room lacked a door.
Were we Leyakian prisoners?
If so, Damini wouldn’t have her staff.
Fuelled by a desperate hope, I stood. Dizziness overcame me, and I had to press my hand to the wall. After a few seconds, I shuffled over to Damini and knelt.
‘Wake up,’ I said.
I patted her cheeks. No response. I gripped her shoulders and shook them.
Her hands gripped my wrists and the tattoos beneath her tee shirt glowed. Her eyes opened, and it took a moment before I caught recognition in them. She loosened her iron grip. I sat back and let her explore our surroundings.
‘Where are we?’ she said.
I had no time for her questions.
‘Did you see Biyu before you were brought here?’
She grabbed her staff and sat up. Her brow furrowed.
‘Sanjay,’ she said, ‘have you been crying?’
‘Just tell me if you saw Biyu.’
Damini’s eyes scoured the room.
‘When I saw the torpedoes, I ran to the boat’s port side. I was unconscious before I hit the water.’ She reached out a hand to touch my shoulder. I pulled away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
My chest tightened again. Biyu, the anzu and the boat’s crew had perished. The tightness gave way to burning. The fritting Leyakians had killed Biyu, and I’d been too useless to save them.
From above us came a distant, thunderous rumble. A second rumble followed, this one louder, making the floor shake.
‘Explosions,’ Damini said. ‘Are we on a Leyakian airship?’
I gestured at her staff.
‘You wouldn’t have that, if we were.’
Without a sound, a panel slid away from a wall. A man and a woman entered the room. Both wore figure-hugging jumpsuits made from a silver-blue material, their ankles and forearms bare. The woman clutched a drawstring bag made of the same fabric. Their sleek but muscular physique and tanned skins matched Damini’s. Unlike her dark hair and dark eyes, their hair was white and their irises grey. Neither of them blinked, but third eyelids swept across their eyes.
Damini and I rose and faced our captors.
The man plucked out a chain from under his jumpsuit. A silver two-inch tube hung from it. The ends of what looked like cogs’ teeth projected from its surface. The man spoke, words interspersed with clicks. He turned two of the cogs. His device repeated most of his words. More adjustments. The words changed. I glanced at Damini. He tried a third time.
‘Welcome,’ he said. He smiled at our recognition of the word. He let the device dangle from his neck. ‘I am Grishda.’ He never introduced the woman. He pointed at me. ‘Those markings on your body shone and led us to both of you. You were unconscious when we found you.’
I stepped forward.
‘Did you find another woman?’ I remembered the crew. ‘And six other men?’
A split-second later, my words sounded different, some of them contained clicks. The thing he wore had to be a translation device. I wasn’t aware of magic capable of such a feat, but neither did I know of a race whose youths had white hair and third eyelids.
‘There were no others.’
Damini squeezed my shoulder.
I backed away and leaned against the wall.
Several rumbles came from above. Grishda and the woman stared at the ceiling.
‘The Leyakians are bombarding Savan,’ Grishda said. ‘There was an undersea tremor earlier.’ He pointed upwards. ‘These concussions could cause a rockfall.’
All I’d seen from the boat was an ancient jungle-draped ziggurat. I didn’t recall Biyu saying Savan was inhabited. The memory of her in the library and the two research journals she’d found blurred my vision.
The woman handed her bag to Grishda. He reached in and pulled out a golden box.
I spotted the dovetail joints on two of the box’s four sides and gasped. Grishda set it down.
‘One of you must open this for the other to take what’s inside,’ he said.
My hands shook, and my chest burned.
I’d interpreted the
anzu finding my father’s puzzle box as a sign of hope—hope that both Biyu and I would make it through all this. I’d got that so wrong. And now this. What kind of joke were the gods playing? I was about to ask Grishda the very question when a trio of rumbles shook the room.
‘Hurry, please,’ he said.
If not for Damini’s safety, and if the white-haired couple hadn’t appeared so troubled, I’d have kicked the box across the room.
I hunkered down and picked up the twelve-by-twelve-inches box. If, like the last one, it was booby-trapped, I didn’t care. I tapped one corner then turned the box. The ball bearing dropped on my third turn. I slid the lid off diagonally.
I recognised the box’s contents and glanced up.
Damini’s eyes widened.
‘Hah!’ she said. ‘The daughter staff, the bridge between the two islands.’
‘You came looking for that.’ Grishda said. ‘Yes?’
Damini crouched, her hand hovering over the box.
She gazed up at Grishda.
‘How… How did you know?’
‘Our people are the offspring of a goddess, Savan Maccha, and the Divine Monkey, Anjaneya,’ Grishda said. ‘Anjaneya left his staff in our safekeeping. He’d said that one who carried a similar staff would claim it.’
Damini lifted the staff from the box. She flicked her wrist. The staff lengthened. For a moment, a tall macaque with grey human eyes held it. I blinked, and in its place stood Damini.
The staff returned to the size of a rod.
‘I can feel its power,’ she said, her voice soft. She turned her attention from the daughter staff to the Savanans. ‘We need to get above ground. I can use the staff to take out that Leyakian airship.’
I still crouched beside the golden box. I’d have been happy to remain in the sterile room and wait for a rockfall to claim me, but my anger needed an outlet and directing it at Anjaneya, Yahata, whichever god, was futile. The Leyakians, however, were a different matter. I heaved myself up. My hands curled into fists and set my tattoos glowing.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
13
I followed behind Damini and the male and female Savanans. The room we’d been in opened out into a dark hallway. Framed glass lined the wall in front of us. Ocean stretched beyond it. Shards of sunlight pierced the water and the wavering shadows. It was like staring into an infinite aquarium. Wards glowed in the metal framework. The magic powering them had to be powerful—how else could the glass panes withstand such pressure?
‘Sanjay.’
The voice was female but wasn’t Damini’s. I stopped and looked away from the ocean to see the female Savanan wearing a translation device. She caught me staring at it and touched it.
‘This is Grishda’s, my brother’s.’ She pointed ahead of us. Grishda and Damini flanked the elevator doors. ‘My name is Grishma,’ she said, the tone of her voice conversational. She joined me and faced the expanse of water. ‘You lost your wife out there.’
I took a deep breath to calm the hollow ache. I didn’t want to talk about Biyu to a stranger.
‘How do you know that?’ I sounded as if I were choking. ‘How do you know my name?’
Grishma addressed the glass and not me.
‘Some Savanans are empathic. I am one of the strongest, and I felt your pain as you swam to save your wife. We do not meddle in the matters of the Surface, but I felt an alien presence in the water, one unlike anything I have experienced before. It was not a Deepdown. So, Grishda and I swam out to find it. A tremor displaced the water and the presence it surrounded. We almost turned back when I saw the light from your skin.’
Too weary to ask what she’d meant by an alien presence or what a Deepdown was, I looked past Grishma and saw Damini and Grishda enter an elevator. All I wanted was to follow them, get to the surface and kill Leyakians.
‘Come then,’ Grishma said, and led the way.
Inside the glass-fronted lift, Grishma spoke to Grishda with their clicks and unrecognisable words. Grishda nodded and pressed a button to stop the elevator several floors beneath the topmost button he’d pressed earlier. My knees bent as the elevator began to rise, revealing similar floors to the one we’d left. Either awestruck or unwilling to converse in the siblings’ presence, Damini watched our underwater ascent in silence.
I glimpsed several empty hallways. Had they already evacuated this undersea city? Thirty seconds later, the lift slowed and bounced to a halt. The doors opened. Grishma stepped out into a hallway and more of the underwater view. She beckoned me to join her.
‘We will not be long,’ she said to Damini. ‘Please join me, Sanjay.’
I wanted to reach the surface, but I couldn’t prevent my legs from moving. I exited the elevator. Concern lined Damini’s face. The elevator doors closed, and the lift swished upwards.
‘What’s going on?’ I said.
Several steps ahead of me, Grishma halted.
‘If you want to help rid Savan of the Leyakians,’ she said, ‘join with us in a summoning. Your anger will inform the Deepdown of the Leyakian threat. The tremor weakened the wards surrounding the island. The Leyakians have seen a city hidden beneath the sea. We cannot allow them to escape with our secret. Your anger is an example of the pain the Leyakians can cause. The Deepdown will help us destroy them.’
Most of what she’d said made little sense. I followed Grishma. All that mattered was destroying the Leyakians.
We entered a room that projected several feet out into the ocean. Three glass walls and a ceiling surrounded a polished concrete floor. Water lapped against the sides of a warded circle at its centre. Two woman and two men dressed in lilac robes circled the opening.
Grishma bowed to them. A look passed between her and a woman who’d tied her white hair into a bun. I’d seen the same frozen expression on Biyu when we spoke telepathically. The memory made me swallow.
‘Welcome, Sanjay,’ the woman said. She didn’t wear a translation device. She had kind rheumy eyes, and her parchment-like skin hugged the ridges of her brow, cheeks and chin. ‘I am Talma. Join us, please.’ The others clasped hands. Grishma held my right hand and led me to the circle. The older woman took my left.
A calmness suffused me, making me choke. Grishma and Talma held onto me, preventing me from collapsing into the water.
I left behind the room with its circle of water and stood outside a walled city. Above the walls a ziggurat gleamed in the midday sun. The columns of an army surrounded the city. Beside me, covered in shining armour, a man with the body of a macaque leaned on a staff. A woman with smiling grey eyes and short white hair rested her head on his shoulder.
She spoke. I couldn’t hear her words, but I knew she thanked the Divine Monkey for sparing her people and their city.
The Divine Monkey embraced Savan Maccha and with soundless words told her others would one day come to claim the island and enslave her people.
The goddess heeded his words and said she would tell her followers to build a city beneath the island’s surface. Her magic would change them so they could live on land and in water. With the magic he’d taught her, she’d hide the city and her followers from the Surface.
My consciousness slipped through rock and into water. It sunk until sunlight formed a ceiling over a blanket of wavering darkness.
If not for Grishma’s and Talma’s grip on my hands, I’d have screamed as I continued to sink. A diffuse mist rose to meet me. It thickened into pockets of light and resolved into a city of crystalline domes and spires.
‘Awaken, cousins,’ the circle of Savanans intoned, my voice added to theirs. ‘We call upon the help of the Deepdown and its Protector.’
Silvery lights winked on. Beyond the city, something darker than the murk stirred. The hands supporting me turned clammy, and a chill crept down my spine.
I tore out of the darkness and into the glimmering light. I slammed back into my body with a gasp.
Talma released her grip on my hand. She gazed at me with chil
dlike awe.
‘You saw the gods,’ she said. ‘You saw our beginning.’
‘And he knew how to open Anjaneya’s box,’ Grishma added.
Talma smiled.
‘This is just a first meeting,’ she said. ‘I’m certain of it. You will know when it is time to return. Believe, Sanjay. You must believe, because the gods believe in you.’ She placed a hand on my shoulder and pushed me in the direction of the door I’d entered through. ‘Go.’
Grishma still held my hand and pulled me away before I could ask Talma what she’d meant.
Outside the room, Grishma wagged a finger.
‘Before you ask, I do not know. Talma spent many years living on the Surface. She’s also a mystic. She talks in riddles.’ We reached the elevator, and she pressed the call button. ‘If she says you two will meet again, trust me, you will.’ The elevator doors opened. We stepped in.
And Talma had insisted I believe in the gods. The calmness I’d felt earlier evaporated. My answered prayer had transformed the woman I loved into a dragon, and our last moments together had been a misunderstanding.
Frit the gods.
The elevator jerked to a halt. Its doors opened onto darkness.
‘Follow me,’ Grishma said, before disappearing into the blackness.
I blew out a long breath and followed. Several moments passed before my eyes adjusted to the dim light. Grishma knelt before a slab of black granite. Behind me loomed a wall of the same rock.
‘Here,’ she said, handing me a lightening pistol. A weapons cache lay under the slab.
I flicked the gun’s safety off. Grishma pulled out a curved long knife and a lightening rifle. She put down the knife and waved her hand across the cache. The slab slid over the weapons. We both rose, and she led me to the cave’s mouth.
Outside, a bullet pinged off the rock beside me. I ducked and kept close to Grishma who’d darted into a patch of tall dry grass. Around us, I heard more gunshots. The Leyakian airship floated one hundred yards offshore. The frame the projectiles had hung from was bare. Ropes dangled out of the open door of the airship’s gondola, their ends swaying two feet above the water. The airship was close enough for a lightening rifle’s bullet to reach it and puncture the skin.