by Laura Wylde
I tried mouth to mouth resuscitation and listened for any sounds coming from her chest. Not one wisp of air, not one gurgle. I tried again and bent my head, hearing only silence. The third time I pressed down on her chest, she coughed. I turned her to the side and a stream of water poured out. She coughed again and weakly pushed herself up into a sitting position. I helped her. “We made it?” She asked.
I sighed. The others were returning. I could hear them touch down on deck. A shaft of daylight crept inside the cabin. “Yeah,” I sighed. “We made it.”
8
Kazan
The Gigantic toppled in a heap of flailing arms and legs that twitched and turned lifeless even as he was falling. The massive arms, big as tree trunks, furiously struck the water, sending enormous waves that roared and bashed against the cliffs. Already weakened from his earlier bites, his knees buckled, and he toppled forward, face down into the churning sea. The waves crashed up around him, and bristled out, hammering the toothy rocks jabbing up in the channel, and rolling toward our modest fishing boat.
“Haul the line!” Called David, swooping by me, his neck outstretched, his wings tucked like a jet liner. I folded my wings half-way and sped after him. Barreling down from the shadowy heights of our stony walls, he caught one end of the silvery cable, and shot straight up again. I darted through the air until I found a good hold, wrapped my toes around it and pulled. The boat dipped and groaned, wobbled as an angry wave washed over the deck, threatening to push it over. Reuben appeared and the three of us held tight, pulling the boat through the maelstrom.
As the Gigantic floated, arms spread, face drowned in the black current, the water around him calmed. Ahead, was the opening between the towering cliffs. We were through! Too dazed to think, I clung to the cable, still towing the boat. There was light. There was open water. I pulled at the line, eager to break through. A whisper of wings flew close and I heard David say huskily. “You can let go now. Reuben’s reeling in the cable.”
My pads were so numb, I could barely tell if I had let go. The line was dragging through the water, slowly wriggling, and cranking toward the boat. I flapped off after David, my limbs aching from the constant pull and attempts at steadying the boat. I also realized; my mouth was sore.
It was dry as the desert and throbbed like a son-of-a-bitch. The minute I was hovering over the boat, I shifted to human form and collapsed on the deck. A few minutes later, Reuben appeared and handed me a glass of water. I sat up and drank it down thankfully. He sat on the floor beside me. “You did good, boy. You make the old man proud.”
I felt my retracted fangs. Great gods, they hurt. “I killed a Gigantic,” I said, my voice muffled behind my hand.
He clasped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. I winced. My muscles were sword-dancing with my collarbone. “That you did boy. Feeling the strain a bit, are you? We’ll fix you up in a jiff.”
The water was refreshing. I suspect he’d tasted it first, but I didn’t mind. I could feel the tight knots at the back of my neck begin to melt. “What will the Director say?”
He fished out a clean, straight, unsmoked cigar from his pocket and examined it like a prized treasure. “Well, son. Things have changed since we added Macy to our group. We’re not just protectors anymore. We’re defenders. He knew it was going to happen. He knew as soon as he learned David had killed a Ceti. That’s why he needed to see Macy.”
I had heard about the rites of passage more times than I can count. I was no more than a fledgling the first time it was giggled to me in the nest. It didn’t make sense then. It didn’t make sense in my adolescent years and it was still very confusing. “I don’t think I understand,” I mumbled tiredly.
He looked critically at my glass. “Bottoms up. All of it, now.” I swallowed it down obediently. He nodded with satisfaction. “How are the fangs?”
“They hurt like hell,” I admitted.
“You put everything into it, did ya? Emptied the whole wad.”
“Yeah, I did. It just all came out at once.”
He looked at the cigar wistfully. He still hadn’t mangled it. “You were defending Macy. Just like David did.”
“Macy!” I bolted up straight. “Is she alright?”
“She’s fine. She’s fine. Kauris got to her in the nick of time. She had taken on water, but she’s alright now. You calm down and rest. You’ve got to get your juices back.”
I took a deep breath and leaned against the wall of the cabin. “You know, I wasn’t even afraid. I was angry. Red-hot, boiling angry. To think that monster would dare threaten one hair on her head… I was boiling with fury.”
“Yeah.” He handed me the cigar. “Don’t need to light it. Just roll it around in your mouth a bit. Taste it. Every now and then, you light her up.”
I studied the cigar in my hands. “You know, Reuben, you can always get chewing tobacco. You aren’t supposed to shred these things up.”
He fumbled in his pocket, spilling a half-used cigar, stuck it in his mouth and spat out a small piece. “Neah. I tried that. Tobacco’s not the same. Nothing’s got the flavor of a good cigar.”
Because it was Reuben, I did as I was told. The taste was sharp and sweet. The juice was soothing against my fangs. I looked at him with surprise. He chuckled. “Old warrior trick. Tobacco eases the pain when the venom sacs are empty. A lot of amphibious dragons fought during the medieval wars. We weren’t all healers back then. We were weapons.”
“What changed?”
“We changed. Everyone was dying. People, monsters, dragons, centaurs, shapeshifters of all kinds. There weren’t any sides anymore. No right or wrong. Just survival. We had the power to heal, so we healed – anyone who needed it. We had become sick of death.”
My mouth didn’t ache anymore. My muscles didn’t ache. A breeze rifled my hair and cooled the sweat trickling down my face. “Is that why you joined AMP?”
He chuckled again. “I’m not that old. But I did use my venom a lot in my younger days, before I joined AMP. We are protectors and when it comes down to women, we are defenders. We can’t help ourselves.”
I was beginning to understand what he was saying. Ordinarily, David wouldn’t have killed the Ceti. He would have paralyzed it long enough for us to escape and call the troopers. He had killed it out of anger. Reuben must have read my face. He patted my knee. “You did what you had to do, son. The Gigantic would have killed us all. It wasn’t vengeance. It was defense.”
We were floating on a blue-green sea that barely rippled. A peach-skin sky hovered overhead. The air was warm and moist. There was nothing to give us a heading. The boat purred, folding back the water in “v" shaped layers. I scanned horizon to horizon and found nothing, only the spreading ocean. Somehow, this seemed more ominous than the Gigantic who had guarded gate.
The whole crew was affected. David stood next to Rueben in the pilot’s cabin, searching for a landmark in the barren sea. Kauris sat with his legs dangling over the stern, doing something with his hands. It looked like he was mending a fisherman’s net, but he could have as easily been tying a hangman’s noose. There is something morbid about Kauris. He is the only one of us who has ever talked about using weapons in battle. That was a long time ago, before Poseidon disappeared. We scoffed because these were orderly times. Maybe he sensed something then. Maybe he realized the day would come when we had to be more than peacekeepers.
A shadow passed between me and the pink-colored sky. Macy bent over and smiled down on me. Her boobs were spilling out of a low-cut shirt, peachy sweet and inviting. She sat beside me and stretched her shapely legs over mine. She was wearing denim shorts, cut nearly to the hip. I passed my hand down the golden inside of her thigh. The light hairs were soft as peach fuzz. She made herself more comfortable, wriggling until her bottom was between my legs and her head was against my neck. Her auburn hair shone pinkly in the strange light. “I hear you are recovering.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth, checking. “I’m getting better.”<
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“Kazan the giant slayer,” she murmured.
Her closeness felt good. Her honey-scented skin pressed against me, warm and pliant. I nuzzled her hair, my hand traveling further inside her pants, finding the wet opening. “Do you think they will sing songs about me?”
“If we find our way back”.
She opened her legs wide so my fingers could dive deep inside. They played with her clit while my other hand opened her blouse. “We might as well play in the meantime.”
I liberated her breasts and held the golden globes with both hands. Reuben decided to join us. He pulled down her shorts and stretched her out naked on the deck. We weren’t frantic about it. He laid on one side of her, while I pressed against the other. We stroked her breasts lovingly and moved down the curved in waist to the flaring hips and the auburn bush, burning with pleasure. I rubbed my cock against her, the soft, yielding flesh giving its own pleasure.
On his way to join our leisure recreation, David clattered halfway down the cabin steps then halted. “A sighting! There’s a sighting!”
We stopped our erotic play and pushed ourselves into a sitting position. Way out to sea, something dark and indistinct was bobbing in the water. We put on our clothes. Why, I’m not sure. It seemed if there was life out there, there might be civilization. If there was civilization, it would probably be best not to be naked.
Reuben gave the boat a little more speed and changed his course fifteen degrees to inspect the sighting. It acquired form and distinction as we drew closer. It was an enormous marble head, proportionately twice the size of the Gigantic’s head. Unlike the Gigantic, the features on the face were smooth, not brutal. They looked a lot like David, who is blonde, athletic and I’ll have to admit, kind of smart. If David hadn’t recognized the Eurydome’s gift, Macy would never have been part of the team. The head floated by us, the eyes staring blankly at the sky.
We began to find other pieces of marble ruins; pieces of walls and marble columns; other broken statues, arms, legs, torsos, floating about indifferently. “What happened here?” My voice had squeezed together so tightly, it barely made an audible sound.
It was a war zone floating on the sea. Macy’s eyes were wide and glistening. She clutched the guardrails, her knuckles white. “Were they Gigantics?”
David gazed after the floating wreckage, a sorrowful look on his face. “No. The gods. This was the Nautilus Palace, the home of Poseidon’s wife, Amphitrite. I recognize the art. I’ve seen the drawings. It floated over a sea. Somebody has destroyed it.”
“Triton,” said Kauris positively.
The deathly scene bobbed, the pieces floated by in sad farewell to grandeur and glory. “Then we are too late,” I said sadly.
David didn’t say anything but pulled his cap down to hide his eyes. The boat motors churned sadly as Reuben navigated through the debris. Kauris stared down at a broken face, one eye staring back, the other lost to the sea. “What do we do now?”
“Turn around, I guess,” muttered David.
Macy had stopped gripping the guardrails and had slipped down, crouching, her head cocked as she listened below deck. “Wait. I hear something.”
He strained to hear, his hands jiggling in his pockets. “I don’t hear anything.”
“I do,” she insisted. She got up, went into the shelter, and returned with a piece of bread. She dangled her legs over the side of the boat and threw down a few crumbs.
I sat beside her worriedly, thinking about all the possible monsters that could be lurking in the depths. “I don’t think you should be doing that.”
“Hush,” she scolded. “You’re scaring him.” She made a few chirping sounds and tossed more crumbs. Something formed and rose to the surface of the turquoise waters. It looked somewhat like a pink and orange spotted seal. It was more stream-lined, with silkier hair and paws in front instead of flippers, but it had the same type of face and a fin-shaped tail. It poked at Macy’s feet with its whiskered button nose and she gave it the rest of her bread. “He wants to know if we have any fish. Just one will do.”
Kauris was closer to the holding tank, but he was looking at her with his thundering black eyes, so I didn’t want to interrupt whatever dark thoughts he might be entertaining. I got up from my comfortable position, crossed over to the hold, and unbuttoned the heavy canvas. The tank had weathered the storm well, although what fish remained were becoming lethargic. It would probably be better to dump the whole batch overboard before they died. I picked out a plump sixteen incher and dropped it in the bucket.
She was still talking to the seal animal when I returned. I threw out the fish and the creature followed it eagerly. It chattered once more to Macy, then swam off. “What did he have to say?”
“He said, thank you very much for such a large fish. He does not see many fish anymore since the lady went away.”
“Who is the lady?”
“He didn’t say. He just said the lady always fed him.”
She beckoned us into the pilot’s cabin to join Reuben before telling the whole story. “Hecles, that’s what he said his name is, told methe people who lived in the palace learned the mad god was coming in time for the lady and the children to slip away. When the mad god came, only the warriors were left. The mad god was so enraged, he began destroying everything. He fought with the big gods. They went up in a flash of light and disappeared.”
Reuben was chewing up his cigar. “The lady – that must be Amphitrite. Triton has destroyed the hearth and home of his own ma. Does Hecles know where the lady went?”
“Not exactly. But he knows where you can look for her. He said to keep following the wreckage until you are many swims past it, and you will see land. She left in that direction.”
They weren’t the best directions, but they were better than no directions at all. It seemed a shame Hecles didn’t stick around to guide us. I did give him a fat fish. I guess he had seal conferences to attend or something. We were clear of most the debris, so now we were about to learn how far many swims equaled. I was becoming appreciative of David’s oversight. The reserves of gasoline that had seemed like an overdose at the beginning of the trip were the one thing that now kept me reassured. The engines throttled down. I grabbed a plastic container and filled it from the main drum, hefting it to see how much still sloshed in the barrel. There was enough to get us home if our journey didn’t take much longer.
There was no day or night here. No way to measure time. The sky remained the same peach color, like the inside of a nautilus shell, never turning lighter or darker. The air temperature was never too warm or too chilly. There was no wind, no rain. We drowsed rather than slept. We were lethargic when we were awake.
After what would have been quite a bit of swimming, we saw a thin shoreline on the horizon. The boat seemed to straighten her masts and perk up her stern. My eyes felt like they were eating candy. A shoreline! Ground under our feet! I watched it hungrily as it grew larger and closer.
It was the most bizarre shoreline I had ever seen. It was made of small, round islands embroidered together like the pattern in a doily. In the middle of each island was a large, green- and- yellow -striped, mushroom shaped tree. Lily pads floated within the network of canals. Reuben cut the engines off to keep seaweed from tangling in the blades and raised the propellers. “We’ll have to pull her through,” he said, puffing on the cigar.
Once again, we were hauling cable, although this time it was an easy haul through quiet water. A few sharp-beaked birds flew through the trees but didn’t stop to socialize. Something between a frog and a fish popped up its head and gaped at us with its froggy mouth, then dived below again. Where the islands were thickest, the circles began gelling together. We flew toward the thicket, tugging at the silvery line. The water was gooey and bubbling. We veered away, looking for more promising land.
The cluster narrowed to an island chain that curled to one side, and left narrow, sandy beaches. The sand was purple. One island stood out among the others. I
t was long, with several islets crowding close to it and sandbars between them. The yellow and green trees stood back from a wide swath of lavender beach. We pulled the boat in and put on feet on solid ground for the first time in …. Actually, we didn’t know how long. It had taken nearly a week to reach the gate. It was impossible to mark time once we entered this strange universe.
Our watches didn’t work. Our navigational equipment didn’t work. The compass pointed indifferently at north no matter where we set it. We had found shore. We moored the boat and stretched out on the sand; our muscles strained from pulling. Macy however, had pent-up muscles and was eager to use them. She strolled along the beach, examining the water-loving plants that crowded the marshy areas. They were mostly rainbow-colored lilies, a type of thick, green watercress and some leafy fronds the color of pansies with the same patterned interface.
She snipped some samples, placing them carefully in Ziplock plastic bags, and scrambled back to sit beside me. “Didn’t you say if we don’t set the remaining fish free, they’ll end up dying?”
“They can’t really stay in the hold long without becoming unhealthy,” I admitted. “Not without flushing it with fresh sea water every day.”
“This is sea water. Let’s let them go.”
“It could kill them. We don’t know what’s in this ocean.”
“It’s barren. I didn’t see any crustaceans along the edges. I didn’t even see any water insects.”
“What will they eat?”
“Maybe the water here is too shallow for the marine inhabitants. We should let the fish go. Something tells me we need to let them go.”
I sighed. “Let me talk to Reuben.”
She pulled me to my feet and tucked an arm in mine. “We’ll both talk to Reuben.”
We found Reuben sitting near a marshy spot, holding a piece of watercress. He had made a dragon face and was sampling the plant with the tip of his tongue. “Not bad,” he commented, rearranging his features into a human face. “It tastes a bit like celery with lime juice dripped on it.”