Robbie’s voice faded, as though he were speaking to me through a bubble. Everything—the city, the castle, the garden—began to spin around my head until my legs gave way and I was falling.
The next minute Robbie was kneeling on the grass beside me, cradling my limp form.
‘Let me go,’ I whispered, even as my head rested against his warm chest. I couldn’t find the muscles in my neck.
‘Your reaction is perfectly normal.’ Robbie spoke in a low voice. The vibrations of his words hummed through his chest against my cheek.
I raised my eyes to the blue-black heavens and the enormity of it all overwhelmed me.
An underwater city…I am in this city…underwater…
‘Just breathe,’ Robbie instructed, gently rubbing my back.
‘When I was first brought here I was only a little boy, and ran around screaming for hours, demanding to be taken home.’ He smiled down at me, his eyes soft. ‘You’re doing really well for a beginner.’
His admission confused me.
‘Where are you from?’ I whispered, attempting to raise myself into a sitting position using my elbows. I ended up collapsing against Robbie’s arm. He smelled of pine and sea salt.
‘Cornwall, England. I hardly remember it now.’ He raised his head as though he could see his homeland floating in the sky.
I followed his eyes skyward—well, seaward—swallowing the bile that persisted in climbing up my throat.
‘What keeps all the water out?’
He looked down at me and frowned. ‘You sure you want to know all of this right now?’
I nodded.
‘This city was apparently built around twenty thousand years before the Egyptian pyramids. The entire dome above us, which encloses the city, is made up of light crystal so thin you can see through it, but also indestructible and capable of withstanding the natural compression of these deep-sea depths. You can’t actually see the dome, though, because of its transparency and distance.’
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. I concentrated on breathing in and out and focused my eyes on the grass instead, but the colour made my stomach churn, so my eyes returned to the blackness above us. I imagined a faint outline of the crystal dome even though I couldn’t see it.
‘Why did Marko’s grandfather want to live here? Who would want to live in the dark like this, like mole people?’
Robbie rubbed my arms, firmly, perhaps to keep me alert, and called out to one of the nearby guards before answering my question.
‘They say the threat of nuclear warfare from the Cold War frightened him. He believed the world would eventually destroy itself. At first he began storing food and supplies down here, but he became so obsessed with the place that he decided to live here, invite others to join him and create his own paradise.’
My forehead prickled with sweat and, before I could even do anything to stop it, my stomach rose and heaved its contents all over my lap, Robbie’s shirt and the manicured lawn.
In an instant several guards were upon us, all females, tall and strong, barking out orders while they hauled me to my feet with the kind of force a prison guard would use on a criminal. From out of nowhere several handkerchief-headed women materialised and wiped us down with wet cloths. Robbie kept asking me if I was alright, but I was too numb to speak, and the acid from the vomit was burning my throat.
The next thing I knew I was in a warm bath, getting washed down with a soft flannel by the German maid. She dressed me in some flannelette pyjamas and helped me to my room before tucking me into bed. I heard Robbie’s voice and Sylvia’s, but their murmurings soon faded as I dozed.
The sleep was restless, and plagued by a single nightmare: my sixteenth birthday all over again.
Mum and Dad stand at the front door, wearing guilty faces. I smile and tell them that it’s fine, to go ahead and enjoy their night. They are off to a fiftieth birthday party for Dad’s boss. It happens to fall on my sixteenth birthday and, although I completely understand why they have to go, I can’t help but feel a little let down.
Lauren smiles sweetly and reassures them that she’s hired Ryan Gosling DVDs and will make popcorn for us, and that she’ll even bring out an ice-cream cake with candles on it for me later.
Five minutes after Mum and Dad leave, I’m getting into my PJs, kind of excited that my older sister has sacrificed a huge party at her boyfriend Jackson’s house just to keep me company on my birthday. I feel special. We haven’t spent any time together, one-on-one, since Aiden died, so I hope tonight is the night we settle our differences and be proper sisters again.
I rush to the kitchen where I left her, the buttery smell of popcorn permeating the air, but she’s not there. So I check the lounge room— no Lauren. After I call her name a few times, to no avail, I search the bedrooms and bathroom—nothing.
But before I walk away, something catches my eye. Lauren’s clothes, the ones she’d been wearing a minute ago, crumpled in a pile on the bathroom tiles. The countertop is littered with the contents of her makeup bag.
And then it hits me like a kick in the guts. She’s gone out. She’s left me alone on my sixteenth birthday.
I return to the kitchen and pick up the phone. I know I should ring my friend Zoe, who couldn’t come tonight because she has gastro, and vent it all out to her sympathetic ear. But I don’t. Instead I punch in another number and wait while the line on the other end rings…
I woke up screaming.
Robbie rushed in and hovered above me, but I screamed louder and scrambled to the other side of the bed.
He took several steps back and waited until I rode it out, until everything came crashing back to me—the midnight swim, kidnapping, Marko, the city—and I eventually let go and flopped against the mattress like a dead fish.
‘Can you bring me a clock or a watch, please?’ I asked, after I’d caught my breath. ‘I need to know the time so I can at least guess what my family are doing.’
‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said, avoiding my welling eyes and raking a hand through his hair. ‘Marko wants you to be as comfortable as possible.’
‘Gosh, he’s so generous,’ I said with snark, before sitting up. ‘By the way, how did he know that Steinbeck is my favourite author? Did he do a profile check or did you stalk me a while before you took me?’
‘You were entirely random, Miranda. I’ve been reading a bit of Tim Winton lately and decided to use one of the many chutes leading to Australia,’ he said, his eyes dark with guilt.
Great, so a literary genius was to blame for my kidnapping.
‘That still doesn’t explain Steinbeck.’
Colour spread across Robbie’s cheekbones.
‘After you first arrived, while still under the influence of the drugs, you dreamed a lot and, once,’ he swallowed thickly and shrugged, ‘once you muttered the author’s name. I mentioned this to Marko while I was reporting on your health.’
I almost laughed out loud. Lauren would find this hysterical; the fact that I’d muttered an old, dead writer’s name in my sleep. I smiled just to think of her reaction.
‘Here.’ He offered me a glass of wine, seemingly disturbed by the wide smile on my face. ‘It’ll help you to sleep. Red wine has a sedative effect.’
I snorted.
‘Trust me, I know,’ I sighed, recalling how I used to save my school lunch money and go buy a cheap box of goon every Friday after Mum and Dad died.
Robbie looked at me with a thousand unspoken questions in his eyes, but he said nothing and placed the goblet in my hand.
The drink slid down my throat like liquid fire, and in one long gulp the glass was empty. I handed it back to Robbie, all the while thinking about Pop and the way he too had turned to alcohol last year.
‘Get some rest,’ Robbie said softly, and I allowed him to tuck me into bed like I was a small child. It hit me then that I didn’t want to be left alone in this room, to dream about the night I lost my parents, even if it meant asking him to stay. I could
n’t bear to shut my eyes again and live through the worst night of my life all over again.
‘Can you stay and talk a bit?’ I asked and propped myself up onto one elbow, ‘About how you came to live here?’
Robbie stared at the door for a long time, as though expecting Marko to come bursting in, before settling himself on the farthest corner of my bed, his broad back resting against a bedpost. I studied him while the wine spread through me, unknotting my nerves, thinking how odd it was that out of everybody here he was the one chasing my nightmares away.
‘What do you want to know first?’ he asked in a quiet voice, his forearms resting on his knees, his eyes holding mine.
‘Everything,’ I sighed. ‘Especially the times you tried to escape, if you ever did.’
He half-smiled, his large shoulders visibly relaxing beneath the fresh black shirt he’d changed into after the vomiting incident.
‘I came here when I was about eight. I don’t remember much of my previous life except I know I lived with my grandfather. But I’m unsure as to the reason why I did, or what happened to my parents. I have vague memories of a little girl.’ A smile briefly curved his lips before it was gone. ‘Sometimes I wonder if she was my little sister. She had the same chocolate-coloured hair as you—only shorter.’ He swallowed thickly. ‘I was diving for mussels when the rope attached to my bucket got caught around my throat. I panicked and started sinking and swallowing water before I blacked out. It was Marko who saved me. He was only ten at the time.
‘He brought me back to Marin, where I learned that an entire civilisation existed underwater. It was crazy,’ he shook his head at the memory and met my eyes. ‘I went into shock, like you.’
‘Wow,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘So you were taken, like me?’
‘Saved, not taken. I would have otherwise died there in the water.’
‘But he could have laid you on the beach after he saved you.’
Robbie contemplated my words for a few seconds. ‘Marko told me he was lonely when he took me. He was just a boy, and his older brother, Damir, had taken to beating him repeatedly. Damir was jealous of his father’s affections towards his younger brother. You wouldn’t know it, but Marko has permanently lost hearing in his right ear because of Damir’s beatings.’ Robbie fixed his eyes on me and sighed. ‘So there you have it. We’ve been like brothers ever since.’
His story bothered me—and not just the Damir beating Marko up part. I didn’t like the idea of somebody getting so comfortable down here they forgot their own family.
‘You really see him as a brother? Even though he stole you from your family?’
He shifted slightly and dipped his head. ‘I took you, even though I didn’t want to,’ he said in a voice so quiet it was almost whisper. ‘If that’s not brotherly loyalty, then I don’t know what is.’
I sat up with a jolt. Robbie was staring down at the bed cover, picking at a loose piece of thread, attacking it with his fingers.
‘Why didn’t you just say no if you really didn’t want to do it? If Marko is such a brother figure, he would’ve listened.’
Robbie sighed.
‘It’s done now.’ He shook his head and fixed me with an intense stare. ‘If I could take you home right now, Miranda, I probably would consider it; but there’s nothing I can do. The journey would be too dangerous to repeat again so soon after you’ve arrived.’
‘But you can take me back?’ I said, rising to my knees, my belly fluttering with hope. ‘At some stage?’
‘No.’ Robbie’s eyes widened. ‘By the time Marko allows you to go home, you won’t want to leave Marin. It’s just what happens.’ He raised his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘There’s this…compulsion to stay. Something in the light-crystals that draws you in like a magnet. Frano Tollin, Marko’s grandfather, apparently did some heavy research on it.’
I collapsed back onto my bottom, the mattress squeaking in protest.
‘I’ll never want to stay here.’
‘You will, and you won’t be able to help it.’ Robbie stared off into the distance, his face pensive. ‘I should go. You must be tired and Marko wants you to start work in the sorting room tomorrow morning.’ He leapt off the bed and landed on his feet in one fluid movement.
‘Goodnight, Miranda,’ he muttered, before locking the huge door behind him.
I fell back against the pillows.
Goodnight? I almost laughed out loud. Although the city had been beautiful, there was nothing good about this night, nothing good about being trapped beneath tonnes of ocean, nothing good about having to get married to a stranger and have his babies, nothing good about the threat of a psychopath—who enjoys beating little brothers around the ears until they turn partially deaf—lurking around the city; nothing good about starting to sympathise with the guy who stole me.
Nothing good at all.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, after a breakfast that consisted of a warm, donut-like cake with jam in the centre and a tiny cup of thick, sweet black coffee, I got dressed in a green top with tiny black robins on it and some fitted jeans that actually made my butt look good for once. The night before, after trying to sleep and failing, I’d picked the outfit out after spending a good couple of hours sifting through all the clothes in the wardrobe.
Shortly after I had dressed, Robbie unlocked my door and entered my room.
‘Good. You’re ready.’
‘Ah…yeah,’ I said, with a shiver. The shiver wasn’t fear. It was a combination of excitement and nerves. I was looking forward to working and hopefully meeting others—maybe even others in my situation. Anywhere else had to be better than being holed up in my room. But I didn’t have a clue what ‘sorting’ involved, or who it would involve, and whether or not I’d like it.
Robbie led me down the main corridor. This time I made sure I memorised where each guard was stationed and how many doors we passed.
Though I now knew escaping an underwater world was impossible without Robbie or Marko or someone from this place, there was no harm in understanding the castle layout should I ever require somewhere safe to hide.
We made a left, in the opposite direction to Marko’s room—thank God, I thought—and took a darker, narrower hallway until we came to the top of a staircase. I peered down its coiled length and breathed in a pungent, musty, briny scent.
The metal rails of the staircase felt cool and smooth beneath my fingers; yet the air around me was warm, presumably because light crystal was embedded every half-metre or so in the walls. As we descended, the sound of muffled chatter and the scraping of chairs grew louder. We stopped before a metal door much like the one to my room. Robbie turned to face me.
‘Marko wants you to be a part of everyday life here in Marin, so this is where you’ll spend most mornings, except for weekends. It’s where pearls are extracted and then sorted, according to size and quality.’
‘Sounds like lots of people in there,’ I said. My belly stirred. Perhaps I’d make a friend, an ally, someone whom I could trust to shed some light on this strange, sunless civilisation.
We entered. The noisy room was large and spacious, lined with rows and rows of narrow, metal tables around which people of all ages sat. Everyone wore casual stuff, like jeans and T-shirts, with the odd jacket and the occasional dress. I’d half expected the citizens of an underwater world to be wearing otherworldly, floaty dresses or even Grecian style robes. The normalcy here surprised and somewhat disappointed me.
Gleaming piles of silvery-black oyster shells crowded the centres of the tables. Knives glinted as the sorters pried open the shells and extracted creamy, shiny balls—pearls—which filled the many waiting silver bowls.
Robbie ushered me towards the nearest table. It had one vacant seat.
To my mortification, everyone stopped what they were doing to openly assess me, all except a large, dark-skinned guy—slightly paler than Aiden had been—in the seat beside mine. He kept his head down and continued wor
king, as though I wasn’t there, stabbing his knife into the crevice of an oyster with, it seemed, extra intensity. The way he hunched his shoulders and scooted his chair away from mine told me he had taken an instant dislike to me without even having met me yet.
The others, however, were a different story. When I slipped into the chair, they all leaned forward and craned their necks so that they could see me better, their hands waving about in front of me, waiting to be shaken. It was oddly formal to be shaking hands like this; it felt like I’d stepped back in time.
‘Hello, I’m Poh, as in P-O-H,’ said a small girl with a round face and sparkling brown moon-crescent eyes. When I took the girl’s delicate hand into my own and shook it, a wide smile spread across her face, revealing tiny, perfect teeth.
‘I’m Miranda,’ I said, raising my voice, because the room had returned to its former shucking noisiness.
Poh, who was seated directly opposite me, swatted at the air in front of her and rolled her eyes. ‘I know who you are; everybody does,’ she said, before leaning forward to whisper. ‘Stick with me and you’ll be okay.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You have to be careful who you place your trust in around here.’
‘Thanks.’ A nervous smile twitched at my lips. My eyes shifted from face to face, wondering how I was going to be able to tell who was trustworthy or not.
‘Don’t believe a word she says. Poh’s a conspiracy theorist and thinks every second person is a spy for Damir,’ said a blonde girl with a large nose. ‘Everyone knows Damir lives far away in the underground,’ she snorted. ‘He’s about as harmful as a worm while we’re safe within these walls. My brother says so, and he’s a royal guard.’
‘Don’t listen to her. We should all be concerned,’ said Poh, her eyes fixed on mine. She leaned in and swallowed thickly. ‘Girls go missing from the city all the time. I’ve heard rumours Damir likes to cut them up.’ Poh stood up and propped her leg up on her chair, trailing her knife down the hem of her trousers. Goosebumps prickled my arms. ‘He slices down the insides of their legs, then sews them together to make a mermaid tail.’
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