A Kingdom Beneath the Waves

by Bowles, David;

  Tenamic gestured with his staff. “Very well. We must be off immediately. I will employ magic, drawing on ihiyotl to alter the water around us, creating a warmer, faster-moving current so that we will perhaps outpace our rogue nagual.”

  With the glow of his staff cocooning them against the dark, the seven of them dove into the trench. Tenamic muttered obscure incantations, and the water around them began to stream past, shedding its cold and propelling them forward.

  Carol’s palms ached as she worried about her brother. It was a familiar feeling, one she had experienced again and again when they were kids.

  Once, when they were in third grade at Adame Elementary School, a couple of retained fifth-graders had started picking on younger kids, calling them names, tripping them, the typical behavior of mistreated children who learn from their parents to take their frustrations and self-hatred out on others.

  Though the twins, rather tall for their age, hadn’t become the targets of the bullies, Johnny had finally got tired of waiting for the adults to do something about the problem. He had confronted the boys in the bathroom and threatened to take care of them himself if they didn’t back off.

  They hadn’t said anything. They just looked at him sullenly, their silence a greater menace than Johnny could realize.

  That Saturday, when the twins were out in the neighborhood, tooling around on their bikes, the boys had yanked Johnny to the ground and started kicking him. Carol, frantic, had rushed back to the house, grabbed her brother’s BB rifle, and returned to threaten them. They stopped the abuse long enough for Johnny to get his wits about him and punch them both in a strategic spot that sent them sprawling.

  Carol had covered for her brother at home, inventing a story about how they’d used plywood at a nearby construction site to make ramps and try to jump cinder blocks.

  “Johnny’s kind of clumsy,” she had said. “He fell and smashed his face up.”

  A little dubious, their parents had bought the lie. For a time, the twins had been left alone by the bullies, but there was always something. Johnny was always finding new injustices to fight.

  Why does he keep biting off more than he chew? I always end up rescuing him.

  For the best part of an hour, the team slipped past blurs of bioluminescence, until one set of lights ahead kept growing in size.

  “Elementals,” Enehnel said. “Four of them.”

  “Yes,” agreed the Archmage. “One is Xomalloh. He must have betrayed our presence in hopes of regaining his place among the Lords of Water.”

  Carol could see them now. Johnny and Ana were bound to a rocky knob. The largest of the elementals, lit by a golden interior light, leaned close to her brother, making threatening gestures. She could see the wicked smile on the boy’s face. She knew what was coming.

  “Oh, God. Do something, guys. Johnny’s going to screw this up.”

  Xicol barked orders at his men. They shot out in four different directions, unslinging their spear guns and taking aim.

  The golden elemental raised a wicked-looking blade of light and water. Ana’s scream trembled frantically through the water.

  The guards fired at the Lords of Water. As the spears passed harmlessly through their insubstantial forms, the elementals spun as one. Ana was forgotten momentarily as they began to hurl discharges of power at the guards, who barely managed to twist out of the way.

  With shaking hands, Carol seized her necklace, looking for an option, anything, that could keep her brother and the merfolk alive.

  Her fingers stopped at a bit of baleen.

  Bad idea. Insane. Too deep. Too risky

  But there was no other choice.

  “Tenamic!” she shouted. Bolts of energy sliced the water around them. At any second, they would be dead. “I need you to change the water around me. A huge bubble, a lot less salty and dense.”

  “What? Are you mad? I have never attempted—”

  “I don’t care! Do it now. A six-rod sphere of pressurized water, or I’m dead and so is everyone else!”

  The Archmage pulled his staff tight against his chest, closed his eyes, and began to shudder with the effort of the sorcery.

  Carol uttered a silent prayer.

  Tonantzin, Quetzalcoatl, Matlalcueyeh, Huixtocihuatl—my life is in your hands. Give Tenamic the strength he needs. And, oh, mighty gods, HEAR MY SONG!

  With fierceness born of boundless love, Carol seized the baleen in her fingers and bid her tonal to transform. There came an agonized groan as her massive new form displaced thousands of liters of seawater. Around her, scintillating like the promise of sunlight, Tenamic wove a vast pressurized bubble, fifteen meters in diameter, that kept the crushing Deep away.

  At the speed of thought, her tonal drew from the vast knowledge of the humpback whale, wise beyond her comprehension, at humbling unity with sea and earth and sky. She knew at once its ancient and glacial language, the songs of a thousand generations, aching hymns whose subtle meaning surpassed the greatest verse ever composed by human hand.

  And in that tongue, with those leviathan lungs, with that behemoth voice, she began to sing a sweet and playful tune from her childhood, one that echoed with community and joy, focusing the warbling low frequencies at the Lords of Water:

  A la víbora, víbora,

  De la mar, de la mar,

  Por aquí pueden pasar.

  Los de adelante corren mucho,

  Y los de atrás se quedarán,

  Tras, tras, tras, tras.

  Una mexicana que fruta vendía,

  Ciruela, chabacano, melón o sandía.

  Verbena, verbena, jardín de matatena.

  Verbena, verbena, la virgen de la cueva.

  Campanita de oro déjame pasar,

  Con todos mis hijos menos el de atrás,

  Tras, tras, tras tras.

  Será melón, será sandía,

  Será la vieja del otro día,

  Día, día, día, día.

  El puente está quebrado,

  Que lo manden componer,

  Con cáscaras de huevo,

  Y pedazos de oropel,

  Pel, pel, pel, pel.

  The waves of sound thrummed with unmeasured violence, smashing into the elementals: PEL! PEL! PEL! PEL! Their watery bodies were blasted away; their heart-gems cracked, flung into the Deep; their haughty glow faded into darkness.

  As the bonds trapping Johnny and Ana crackled and then disappeared, Carol shifted back into siren form. Tenamic slumped, drained and feeble. She swam to him and held him in her arms.

  “Thank you,” she muttered in his ear. “That was incredible. Come, just a little light now. Let’s guide everyone back.”

  Captain Xicol took the Archmage’s arm. “Let me bear this burden, Lady Carol. You…you have performed a wonder I would have sworn impossible. To defeat four Lords of Water! Years from now bards will sing of this victory. A savage mage, wielding sacred songs, felled one of Tlaloc’s generals. Amazing.”

  Johnny rushed up and gave Carol a spinning hug.

  “¡No manches, güey! You just went all Aquaman on those elementals! Holy crap that was awesome!”

  “Someone had to save your butt. As usual, I drew the short straw.”

  “No, pos, thanks, Sis.”

  Ana, shaken but physically fine, embraced her as well. “That was well done, friend. Iyauhquemeh is one of the four Eldest, firstborn sons of Tlaloc and Xochiquetzal. This deed of yours will be recorded in our annals, to be shared in Retellings for generations to come.”

  Johnny smiled. “Songs and history books, huh? I just want to mention for the record that I turned into a bunch of crabs. I’m hoping that merits, you know, a footnote or something.”

  Ana put her hand on his arm gently. “Setting aside all jests, it was a foolhardy yet very brave thing you did, coming here alone to rescue me. I will not soon forget it.”

  Carol couldn’t help but grin at the smitten look in Johnny’s eyes.

  ~~~

  Two hours later t
hey rejoined the rest of the expedition, huddling miserably around faintly glowing globes at the edge of the trench. Castellan Nalquiza listened impassively as her guards reported all that had transpired. She withheld comment, instead giving orders.

  “Sleep for a half-watch. Then we depart for the waystation.”

  The guards hammered spikes into the rock and lashed nets in place so that sleepers would not drift off. Carol wrapped herself up in this strange hammock and tried to sleep despite the adrenaline and cetacean memories bubbling within her.

  Just as she was slipping into dreams filled with lonesome whale song, she heard Tenamic whisper, “The girl is the more dangerous of the two. We must keep close vigil over her.”

  Then the ancient hymns transported her, and she heard the waking world no more.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Verónica Quintero de Garza rushed in jaguar form from bow to stern, slamming into man-fish and tumbling them from the yacht into the sea, where a dozen pink dolphins beat at the gilled humanoids with powerful tails. Captain Sandoval and his three sons shot harpoons, bullets and flares into the water elementals that surrounded them, but these attacks were in vain.

  Iyauhquemeh rose high on a sea swell, golden energy building to a crescendo in its chest. Then it sent a shuddering wave of power crashing against the Estela de Mar, and the boat exploded into fragments of wood, hurling the jaguar into the foaming waves, unconscious. Dolphins rushed to rescue her, but it was too late. The monsters surrounded her, seized her and dragged her down into the sea.

  The scene faded. Johnny found himself shivering with rage and sorrow upon the strange sands of Mictlan, where he and Carol had begun their search for their mother six months before.

  Xolotl, the massive red-furred dog-twin of Quetzalcoatl, looked down at him with large, compassionate eyes.

  “No!” Johnny wept. “Tell me that’s not real!”

  “Ah, Juan Ángel, if you’re asking me whether your mother just died, then no. What you have seen is simply a possibility. Rather, a probability. About three days from now, that battle could very likely occur. I tell you because you have to save her, son. Her death would be horrible in many ways. What it would do to your soul is especially worrisome to us.”

  “But we would have to turn around right now to reach her in time, Xolotl! And what would happen with the Shadow Stone then?”

  The great canine muzzled away his tears. “Don’t worry, Juan Ángel. Continue with the mission. When the time comes, you will be given a way. Trust me. And when that path is opened for you, take it without hesitation. For what is to come, you will need your family more than any power or skill. Take care of her first, do you understand?”

  The bleak landscape of Mictlan began to fade.

  “Wait!” he cried. “I’ve got more questions.”

  “I know. But you must act of your own volition, son. Remember, though—when all seems lost, tell Carol to remember the well. Tell her to sing.”

  Then the darkness of the Underworld grew deeper and deeper till it swallowed Johnny completely.

  He awoke with a start.

  “About time,” called Enehnel. “Thought we’d have to drag your unconscious body all the way to Atlan, lazy bones.”

  The company was breaking camp, stowing their gear on the few remaining pack sharks. Johnny unraveled himself from his net, yanked up the spikes, and handed them off to a nearby guard. “Thanks.”

  Swimming groggily to his sister’s side, he told her about the danger their mother was in and Xolotl’s promise of a path.

  “Oh, God,” she muttered in distress. “I didn’t destroy them. Just made them really mad, huh?”

  “It’s okay, Carol. We can’t be that far now. It’s in the hands of the gods to get us to Mom once we’ve stopped Maxaltic. I trust Xolotl.”

  “Sure, me too, but this is pretty stressful.”

  The group was soon heading south and down. The water grew even darker, denser. The magic inherent in all merfolk combated the crushing pressures as they descended another kilometer.

  Johnny’s vision and the motives of the tlaloqueh were the main topics of conversation as they traveled. Mihuah suggested that they might be working with Maxaltic, trying to block the company from reaching Atlan, but Johnny wasn’t so sure.

  “I really doubt the prince has got the clout you need to call up the Lords of Water. I mean, sure there’s a connection, but the elemental attack is probably more Tezcat’s attempt to mess with our heads—mine and Carol’s. He’s cool with Maxaltic getting the Shadow Stone and all, but we’re his real weapon, if he plays us right.”

  Tenamic agreed somberly. “He wants you out of sorts, so that by helping to stop the end of the world, you are pushed closer to destroying the cosmos.”

  “That certainly will never happen,” Ana countered. “History shows us that time and again the Lord of Chaos underestimates the power of love and creation. Try as he may, I cannot believe that he will bend the twins to his will or trick them into fulfilling his plans.”

  “Thanks, Princess,” Carol said. “With allies like you all, our parents, the Little People, the gods of order, I know we can stand firm.”

  Johnny gave her a thumbs-up. He had to admit, his sister always found the positive side to things.

  ~~~

  After two hours, they were almost at the floor of the Acapulco Trench, and the Archmage drew a brighter radiance from his staff to reveal a horrific edifice rising from the ooze. Jagged towers jutted at different heights like the teeth of a mutant predator, surrounding an irregular dome that reminded Johnny of a beached jelly fish. As they approached, crystal tubes that snaked along the waystation like gnarled veins began to glow faintly, illuminating squirming eels and other monstrous forms carved all over the hewn stone.

  “Spells sense our presence,” Tenamic explained, waving away the castellan’s worries. “Nothing inhabits this place now beyond the dumb creatures of the Deep. It has long been abandoned.”

  Nonetheless, Nalquiza had her guards spread out and secure the area. The Archmage sought for an entrance to the ancient building, while Johnny and the others stared at a series of strange statues, some carved in bas relief, others seeming to partially escape the facades, while still others stood partially plunged into the thick mulch that coated the floor of the trench. Many were likenesses of tlacamichimeh, the man-fish that presumably had built the waystation; others seemed to represent strange gods or scary, prehistoric beings.

  Johnny got tired of looking at the nasty things; even the bizarre architecture, which had initially struck him as jaw-droppingly awesome, became annoying, fast. He ended up staring at sea cucumbers crawling through the ooze below him and sea lilies trying to catch food with their feathery appendages.

  They had been waiting more than a half-hour when shimmering lights in the distance brought the guards together, in preparation for a possible confrontation. But as the illumination approached, they were relieved to see a string of merfolk. Royal guards. Their reinforcements.

  Castellan Nalquiza swam up to meet them, saluting with special solemnity an armored, orange-spotted siren.

  “I knew it,” Ana remarked. “Mother has sent Marshal Cenaman. I would have preferred Marshal Mintoc.”

  “Cenaman is, after all, second in command,” Mihuah remarked.

  Johnny couldn’t resist the obvious joke that only Carol would get. “Yeah, I like mint gum better than cinnamon, too.”

  Oh, wow. That’s possibly the worse pun you have ever uttered, Johnny.

  “Ignore him,” Carol said when the two sirens looked at him in confusion. “I take it you two know the marshal?”

  Ana nodded. “Yes. When we were children, Lieutenant Cenaman was the guard in charge of protecting noble children. She had a young daughter then, Zamache, who was allowed to play with us. The lieutenant often chastised us for what she considered bad behavior just as fiercely as she did her own child, attempting to impose a sort of military discipline.”

  Mihuah
laughed. “Oh, but we were entirely too wild and arrogant for her stern commands. I suppose I was the ringleader, being the oldest.”

  Ana touched her arm conspiratorially. “Do you remember when you led us on that escapade to the Midnight Gardens?”

  “Oh, by the goddess, yes! Had it not been for your brother, we surely would have been discovered.”

  The princess gave a little sigh. “Yes, he was different then. Though he had reached the age of adulthood, he never treated us as inferiors and he always rescued us from our own foolishness.”

  “And from the insufferable scolding of Cenaman,” Mihuah added.

  Johnny noticed that his sister turned away from them, her brow crinkling the way it did when she was trying to figure out something strange.

  What’s up? he asked her.

  Maybe nothing. It’s just that, uh, Mihuah gave me the impression that she had very little contact with Maxaltic when she was a kid, even though they were betrothed. Doesn’t seem to fit with this little anecdote, though.

  Weird. Why would she lie about something like that?

  I don’t know. It’s probably nothing, though. Perhaps she was just trying to distance herself from a traitor?

  As the new guards arranged themselves for inspection, Castellan Nalquiza addressed the expanded company. “We are all thankful to the goddess that our scouts have guided our sisters and brothers here to reinforce our ranks as we embark on the next stage of our mission. Marshal Cenaman, my second-in-command, has brought two hundred guards under royal orders approved by the Assembly of Calpolehqueh. Our directive is clear—proceed to Atlan with all haste and stop Prince Maxaltic from recovering or using the Shadow Stone. Archmage Tenamic, have you discovered the entrance to this eldritch edifice?”

  “Yes, Castellan. Yet it behooves us to advance with caution, as the former masters of this waystation may not have wished it disturbed.”

  The Archmage’s suspicions were confirmed once a small group of them entered the building. Several of the newly arrived guards led the way, one a little too eagerly. As soon as the entrance irised open, the triton rushed inside, hand on the hilt of his sword. A volley of darts burst from one of the walls, and only Tenamic’s quick blast of power kept the guard from being killed.