by E. G. Foley
What’s this?
“Did you find something?” Dani asked.
“Aye.” A smooth silver ball about the size of a grapefruit lay carefully placed in the basin of an old offerings bowl, as if to stop it from rolling away.
The wide, shallow bowl sat near the edge of the water and contained a collection of other odds and ends and shiny trinkets besides the mysterious metal orb. Girly things. A strand of pearls, a finely jeweled comb, some pretty bits of blue sea glass.
None of the objects in the bowl matched the look of anything else in the temple, but the strange metal sphere was something completely unknown, quite alien to him.
The colors were coming from little chips of glass or crystal that banded its equator. They glowed like tiny, watchful eyes.
What on earth? Jake thought. This might even stump Archie.
Confused, he reached for the object—then stopped himself. For once in his life, it wouldn’t kill him to show a little prudence. That lesson he’d learned all on his own, considering all the trouble he’d caused of late with his tendency to just rush in. Look before you leap, idiot.
Besides, something about the shiny silver ball seemed treacherous; the very strangeness of it gave him a weird chill. He had never seen anything like it before. And he had seen a great many strange things.
As he reached for it, it dawned on him that it might not be entirely safe to touch it, so he used his telekinesis to levitate it off the bowl.
“Whoa, what’s that?” Dani asked, joining him.
“No idea.” But he lifted it easily with a steady stream of the telekinetic energy he had learned to project from his mind.
“It’s pretty.” Dani paused, bending down beside him, hands resting on her knees. “And…sort of creepy.”
“Aye.” To his surprise, the orb seemed to like having his undivided attention. The chips around the middle started to flicker and dance. Some of them glowed more brightly. It was almost as though the object somehow realized it was being exposed to an unusual form of energy in the grip of Jake’s telekinesis.
He twirled his fingers, causing the orb to rotate slowly in the air so he and Dani could inspect it. He could not begin to guess what metal it was made of, but its color was gunmetal gray, with a satiny finish.
The whole sphere was covered in strange engravings, but the little hieroglyphs did not resemble the Latin letters on the temple walls or the Greek ones he’d seen in Archie’s various equations.
He glanced at Dani. “Better ask Arch.”
“Or Nixie. Maybe it’s magic.”
They nodded. But before either could call to the clever pair, a distant, deafening boom like an explosion shook the temple.
As his concentration snapped, Jake lost his telekinetic hold on the orb. Afraid he’d break it, he dove and caught the ball in his hands, then saw Dani teetering on the edge of the water, on the verge of losing her balance as the thunderous rumbles shook the whole building.
Jake put the ball down, jumped to his feet, and grabbed her, pulling her back.
She clutched him as he steadied her. “Thanks! Oh, I could throttle that cousin of yours. He just had to go and say it! Him and his seismic activity.”
“Earthquake!” Archie howled from over by the altar.
“Everybody, back in the sub!” Maddox ordered.
Dust and alarming trickles of water began to rain from the ceiling. As the chaotic rumbling grew louder, waves began sloshing higher up the temple walls.
“Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!” Dani said, holding on to Jake’s arm.
Barely recovered from the apoplectic fit she had almost given him with her near-tumble into the sea, Jake still had the presence of mind to grab the orb.
“What are you doing? Leave it!” Dani scolded.
“No. I found it. It’s mine.”
“Hurry up, people, move!” Maddox yelled, shepherding the others quickly into the Turtle. “Griffon, come on! Dani, let’s go! This place is coming down!”
Dani kept fussing at him to leave the orb behind—it wasn’t his, and he had made such strides with not stealing anymore—but Jake angrily ignored her as he hurried her toward the sub.
“I’m pretty sure the original owner’s dead by now, carrot,” he muttered, but she continued henpecking him as she climbed down the hatch.
Jake happened to look up at that moment; he gasped, spotting a massive marble pillar in mid-fall. It was angled perfectly to crash down onto the Turtle and crush it, along with everyone inside.
“Take this!” He tossed the orb to Maddox, who caught it easily, then Jake flung up his hands. Summoning forth a burst of telekinesis, full-powered, he stopped the column’s plunge in midair.
He concentrated on it for all he was worth, holding it in place. “Everybody, go! I’ll keep your path clear!” he yelled, using his supernatural gift to set the marble pillar down gently out of the way.
“Absolutely not! No. Get in the sub, Jake. Isabelle, catch!” Maddox tossed the orb down the hatch, then grabbed Jake by the arm. “We’re not leaving you behind.”
“But what if another slab of rock crashes down on top of—”
“Forget about playing the hero for once! You want to be an idiot, that’s your affair, but I’m the one that has to face Derek if you drown in here. So get in the sub!” Maddox shoved him through the hatch, like the big brother he’d never had.
Huffing, Jake reclaimed the orb from Isabelle, then took his seat in the Turtle, while Maddox pulled down the hatch, roughly spinning the handle to seal it. “Go, go!”
Archie threw the sub into reverse and, once he’d backed up far enough, slowly started turning them around amid the churning water. Turbulent cross-currents bouncing off the temple walls buffeted the sub from all directions.
Jake felt queasy in seconds, but when they had got turned around, Archie changed the angle of the side fins, and aimed the nose of the sub deeper.
As they made a beeline for the huge ceremonial door with chunks of the temple plunking down through the water all around them, Nixie murmured an incantation. Her etheric balls of light dipped into the frothing water and glided ahead, showing them the way.
Heart pounding, Jake gripped the strange silver orb on his lap.
In the seats ahead of him, meanwhile, Isabelle glared across the aisle at Maddox. “We could’ve been killed. You said it was safe. Where were your Guardian instincts?”
He looked so amazed by her reproach that he forgot to be polite for once. “Maybe they don’t work properly around you! Your gift doesn’t work around me, after all!”
“Don’t start, you two!” Nixie ordered from the back. “Archie needs to concentrate.”
But stoic Maddox was rattled enough by Miss Bradford’s accusing question that he couldn’t leave it at that. “It was all Jake’s idea, coming in here, anyway,” he muttered.
As Jake heard this, his eyebrows shot up indignantly. “How was I supposed to know there’d be an earthquake?”
“There’s always an earthquake with you,” Maddox retorted.
Dani shook her head. “I told you we’re gonna die. Nobody ever listens to me. I bet it’s that thing’s fault!” She pointed at the orb in Jake’s grasp. “It’s probably bad luck. Why’d you have to go stealin’ it, ye thief?”
“I just wanted it, all right?” Jake shot back.
“Silenzio!” Archie barked. “I’m trying to drive here! Get your feet on the pedals. One-two, one-two!”
They obeyed, and the Turtle picked up speed crossing the wide main section of the building. Though they all felt like strangling one other in that moment, their united efforts helped drive the sub more firmly through the watery tumult rocking them from all sides. The creaking, sloshing, rumbling noise was awful.
Jake wasn’t sure they were going to make it. But he was fairly clear on one thing: earthquakes didn’t last this long.
Something else must be going on. At the very least, the earthquake had struck near enough to the temple to
bring the whole thing down.
How many centuries had it sat here submerged like this? Yet the moment I walk in… He shook his head in astonishment at his reliably bad luck.
“Everyone, make sure you have your mask in easy reach in case we have to swim for it,” Maddox ordered, his tone resolute as they approached the tall, black, rectangular passage that led to the exit.
Chunks of tile and stone were falling off the walls.
“Should I try to reach out telepathically and summon some dolphins to help us?” Isabelle asked, hesitating.
“If it’s not too much trouble, dear,” Maddox said to her with sarcastic sweetness.
“Ugh!” Nixie said.
The ill-starred lovers fell silent, everyone pedaling in unison as Archie maneuvered the sub through falling debris as quickly as it would go. Isabelle closed her eyes, apparently concentrating on making telepathic contact with any dolphins in the area.
But when a ceiling tile plunged past them, raking down the Turtle’s hull with a sound like nails on chalkboard, the inventor groaned. “Poor girl; that’ll leave a scratch. Maiden voyage!” Archie patted the dashboard. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear, Turtle. Just get us through this…”
Heart pounding, Jake held his breath as the sub entered the dark ceremonial passageway to the exit. Nixie’s illumination balls led the way, sweeping ahead, but past the threshold, they revealed a dire sight out on the portico: some of the stone pillars were already buckling.
A couple of columns on the outer edges of the front portico were already snapping and breaking like matchsticks. It would likely be mere moments before the heavy triangular pediment above the columns came crashing down.
Jake could hear Dani practically hyperventilating across the aisle from him.
“We’re not going to make it,” Isabelle whispered.
“Easy, sis. Have a little faith.” Behind his spectacles, Archie’s stare was steely, his gaze fixed through the front window.
No one said a word, keeping fingers crossed as the Turtle chugged out of the passageway, over the threshold, and across the portico. Two pillars directly ahead of them started crashing inward, crisscrossed, their motion slowed by the water.
“Pedal faster!” Archie ducked the sub underneath the stone X of the falling pillars, then hauled back to lift the nose once she had squeezed through.
But just when it seemed they were in the clear, the silhouette of a large fish tail suddenly passed lightning fast in front of the viewport.
“Look out!” Jake shouted.
A soft, sickening thud bumped three times over the top of the sub.
They all glanced up at the ceiling, aghast.
Nixie, tending the engine, had missed it. “What was that?”
Archie gulped. “I think I just hit some sort of fish.”
“Steady on, Arch. We’ll worry about it later,” Maddox said. “It’s just a fish. Drive. We’re not in the clear ourselves, yet.”
“Right.” Archie managed a nod, and as the sub chugged on, Dani looked over at Jake, wide-eyed.
“Did we just run over a dolphin?” she whispered.
Isabelle whimpered.
Jake gave the redhead an exasperated look. He didn’t know the answer to her question, but Maddox was right.
They could feel bad about the stupid fish later. For now, they were still in the middle of fleeing for their lives.
“We can’t just leave it here to die! We have to help it,” Isabelle said in a choked voice. “It probably only came that close to the sub because I summoned it to help us! It’s my fault—”
“Calm down,” Maddox ordered her before she went into oversensitive-girl mode.
“Everybody, hold on!” Archie suddenly reached for the controls as the sub lurched.
Right behind them, the sunken temple finally yielded to the sea, crashing in upon itself with a grinding, rocky groan.
As it caved in, a backdraft current clawed at the sub, as though trying to drag it down into the depths with the collapsing structure—the Turtle slowed, faltering, its propellers sputtering in the wild cross-currents.
In the next moment, the rebounding outward wave shot the sub forward violently, and it was all Archie could do to maneuver his craft higher, nearly scraping over the top of a tall coral mound.
All around them, the blue water had darkened, thick with whirling sediment and foam. Jake’s heart pounded like mad. But as Archie took them toward the surface, leaving the temple behind, things gradually grew calmer, brighter…
Until, once more, sunlight filtered through the turquoise depths.
Archie finally sat back in his captain’s chair and exhaled.
Everyone was shaken.
At length, Maddox reached forward and patted Archie on the shoulder. “Well done, doc.”
“Good thing you wore your lucky bowtie,” Nixie offered in a grim tone from the back.
When Archie glanced over his shoulder to cast her a grateful look, and to make sure all his passengers were all right, Jake couldn’t help noticing that his cousin’s face was ashen beneath his freckles.
Isabelle was fighting tears and trembling visibly.
Dani glanced out the porthole in distress. “I do hope that dolphin isn’t too badly hurt…”
# # #
But of course it wasn’t a dolphin.
Sapphira had no idea what just hit her as she went spinning through the dust-roughened water, nose over tail, letting out a cry of pain and clutching her ribcage before sprawling flat on the sandy bottom.
Glancing over her shoulder at the dying temple, she crawled out of the way of the crumbling building, and then lost consciousness briefly.
In truth, she was lucky.
If she had stayed on her single-minded mission and gone speeding in anyway to fetch the orb for Davy Jones, as intended, she probably would’ve been crushed to death in there.
Instead, she had got run over by some bizarre metal whale.
Regaining consciousness a few minutes later, she shook off the fog in her head as best she could, and, holding her bruised ribs with a wince, looked over at the temple—and despaired.
All that remained was a great pile of rubble.
Oh no. The Flying Dutchman’s violent broadsides thundering over the kingdom and slamming waves of force through the water must have been more than the ancient building could withstand. Already fragile from centuries underwater, the reverberating blasts had shaken it until her hiding place had simply caved in on itself.
Well, no matter. She straightened her spine with resolve. She’d simply search for the orb amid the rubble, even if she had to turn over every stone with her bare hands. Her sister’s life depended on her finding it and handing it over to the Lord of the Locker.
Of course, if the Atlantean orb had been destroyed under all those tons of falling stone, then she might’ve signed her little sister’s death warrant by hiding it there in the first place.
Salt tears of panic filled her eyes. What do I do? She wasn’t even sure what manner of fish had hit her. It felt like she had collided with an orca. But wait…
Given the knock she’d taken, the memory was a bit foggy, but as her head cleared, she suddenly remembered in that final second before they’d crashed, she had seen…people sitting inside!
She gasped quietly. Landers!
Of course! It had only been for a split second, but she could still recall the shocked look on the bespectacled face of the boy in the front. When did the landers get boats that can go underwater? What an appalling thought! Now there would be no escaping them.
All the more reason not to feel too bad about letting Davy Jones drown them all, she thought darkly. More to the point, what had those landers been doing in her hiding place to begin with?
Then an even worse thought dawned. What if they had found the orb in there and stolen it?
Were they more of the greedy tyrants Professor Pomodori had predicted might come if word of the orb got out? Which it obviously had. Wha
t if these were the very folk who had made the rock monsters?
Sapphira swallowed hard, striving for clarity amid her dread. Landers were mysterious creatures, and these ones must have powerful magic, indeed, to have a boat that looked like a whale and traveled underwater.
Unanswered questions swirled in her head like a sardine run, but Sapphira steadied herself and decided to go and try to find the intruders.
Before she bothered digging through the rubble to find the orb—which could take forever—she had better make sure those landers hadn’t stolen it first. Obviously, these invaders had gone into the temple, considering they had been on their way out of it when they had run her over. If they had seen the orb, then they had probably taken it.
Because that’s what landers do. Their kind always take whatever they want.
Scanning the murky blue waters around her, Sapphira saw no sign of their strange metal whale now. Where did you go, you meddling fiends? Sound traveled very well underwater, so she closed her eyes instead and listened hard for a moment.
There. Northwest. Over the distant rumble of the Flying Dutchman’s broadsides, she could just make out the sound of a rhythmic mechanical puttering that she just knew had to be the humans’ strange underwater boat.
Pushing off the bottom, she followed, swimming painfully, feeling rather bruised and battered from the crash. The battle sounds faded behind her as she progressed with wary strokes toward the edge of Sicily.
She limped along through the water following it only for about half a mile before the clanking mechanical puttering stopped.
Ever so cautiously, Sapphira lifted her head above the water a safe distance from the white powder beach. She took care to keep a low profile in between the waves to avoid being seen.
Sure enough, she saw the contraption run aground like a beached whale lying on the sand. Then a large blowhole of some sort opened on its back, and she winced at the disturbing sight of people climbing out.
The first was a tall, black-haired boy—admittedly rather handsome, for a human. He turned and helped the next one emerge: a girl about Sapphira’s own age, with sunny golden ringlets.
These two marched down the beach a bit, as if for privacy. Even from this distance, she could tell that they were arguing: the girl folded her arms across her chest, while the boy planted his hands on his hips. She could not hear what they were saying, but meanwhile, more juvenile humans kept getting out of the whale. At least they weren’t full-grown ones, she thought, somewhat relieved.