by Katrina Ryan
“Look,” Sarah said, pointing to the distance, “an island. Is it Atlantis?”
Victoria looked to the horizon, her heart racing. She could barely make out a speck of land in the distance. It was impossible to gauge the distance, but she guessed it was less than hour away at the rate the boat was traveling.
“I don't know,” Victoria said. “It's still too far away.”
Half an hour later, the sky was beginning to get dark and cloudy, but the boat was close enough to the island that Victoria could see it was too small to be the main Atlantean island. She was surprised that the boat was going so close to land, but she wasn't going to get her hopes up that this was their destination for the night. The boat cruised to what Victoria could tell was the sheltered side of the island, where the sea became calmer. She was surprised to find a sheltered bay with a stone dock in it.
“Do we jump?” Sarah asked, voicing what Victoria had been wondering. “The water is shallow here.”
The beach was seconds away, but Victoria hesitated. This was their once chance to get to safety, but the boat could continue without them, leaving them stranded forever. “Not unless the boat stops. I’m not going to abandon our only mode of transportation.”
The boat slowed, as if it had heard her, and a few seconds later, it bumped onto the sandy beach and came to a stop. Victoria stood up, testing whether her numb legs still supported her. Stepping onto land, she swayed, but she and Sarah reached for each other and held each other tight.
“I’m shattered,” Sarah groaned. “It feels like we've been swimming all day, not sitting in a bloody boat.”
“I know. I can’t remember ever feeling so tired.” The boat seemed to have taken them to a quiet beach. Beyond the sand was a little meadow that would make a good campsite, surrounded by a forest. “We're running out of daylight,” Victoria said, a wave of exhaustion washing over her. “We should probably put the boat away for the night and stay here, if that's okay. The boat must have brought us here for a reason.”
“Here looks fine with me,” Sarah agreed. “Nobody is going stumble across us while we sleep.”
“I hope you’re right.” Victoria unloaded their bags onto the grass, and she and Sarah secured the boat to the dock for the night before setting up shelter in the meadow. Victoria brought their bags inside and unfolded their blankets onto makeshift beds. Using a lighter she'd found in Sarah's bag, she lit a candle and put it on a lantern in the middle of the tent.
Sarah crawled inside a moment later and surveyed the interior with an expression of appreciation. “This looks brilliant,” she said. “I'm bloody impressed we've pulled this off.”
That was the best compliment Victoria could have asked for. “I’d rather have a magic fire for light and warmth, but this should be safe enough. Atlantis must really want us to find it, if it’s helping us so much,” she said. Sarah made a sound of agreement as she curled up in her bed. “The orb helped me fix the mirror, and we've found a boat programed to take us the rest of the way to Atlantis. We haven't had to row, and all the sea within viewing distance of the boat was perfectly calm. If that's the case, I don't believe we have much to worry about tomorrow.”
“Hopefully,” Sarah agreed. “Anyway, I need to sleep, Vic. That boat ride stole all my energy.”
Victoria felt her jaw drop. Sarah had obviously been joking, but the theory seemed strangely possible. Nothing else explained how the boat moved on its own, or why Victoria felt like she’d spent the entire day exercising when in reality she’d been sitting in the sun. The journey today could have killed us, she realized with a sense of horror, even if the boat is there to help. Wishing Sarah goodnight, she blew out the lantern and vowed she’d be much more careful tomorrow.
Chapter Eight
GHOSTS
Victoria slept dreamlessly until morning light filled the tent. She ate breakfast on the beach and checked that the boat was still secure before she decided to explore a path along the coast. It led her towards the cliffs she’d seen from the boat yesterday. Nearing the highest point of the island, she began to feel that she shouldn’t venture further, but she caught sight of an ancient, pillared building and edged nearer.
What is this place? she wondered. Whoever had built the fortress here had obviously wanted it in an impregnable location, but it was too open to be residential or useful for defense. There must be a reason it's protected so well.
In the end, she ignored the feeling that she wasn't meant to be here and wandered closer. The stones in the building seemed to shimmer as she approached, like the stones in Atlantis. Victoria thought the ruins would have been incredibly beautiful if they didn’t feel so intimidating. Standing in the middle of the structure, she had an amazing, panoramic view of the horizon. The ocean stretched in every direction as far as she could see, with no other land in sight. She could see her tent in the meadow and boat on the pier, and nestled within the forest was a lake she hadn't seen from the path. If the monument had been warning her to keep her distance, the lake was beckoning her to approach. Victoria set off, but halfway down the monument's steps, she noticed the sound of her footsteps change. She stopped, surprised.
The step is hollow, she realized. She sat down to investigate. Gripping the stone, she began to pull. It weighed less than she’d expected, and it only took her a few seconds to push the slab out of its spot completely. Seeing what was underneath, Victoria gasped.
The stone had been concealing a secret passage.
Through the gap, Victoria could see a set of steps leading deep underground. She couldn't tell what was at the end, but she began her descent. Her uneasiness grew more intense, but Victoria ignored it. When her foot touched ground after the last step, she could no longer see anything ahead of her. The air was cool but not damp or stale. Her intuition warned her to turn back, but she couldn’t help but continue.
You could get lost, she reminded herself, looking over her shoulder after every few steps. As long as she could still see the light from where she’d come, she could make her way back. She wished she could see what was around her, and for a moment, she considered powering on her phone to use the flashlight, but preserving its charge was more important. A second later, she bumped into a solid object and fell forward.
The sound of crunching glass filled the room as Victoria landed on her hands and knees, and a searing pain shot through her right palm. She hissed, feeling a sticky mix of blood and dirt on her skin. It could have been much worse, she reassured herself, imagining herself plummeting into an invisible chasm. It's probably just a scratch.
She stood up and took her time retracing her way back outside. When she was in the sunlight, she sat down, shaking despite the warmth of the day. She knew she was lucky that she had only tripped. Holding her breath, she looked at her hand. The cut was shallower than she’d expected and barely bleeding, but it was still the worst pain she’d ever experienced. If there hadn’t been sand in the wound, she would have gone back to the tent for the medical kit, but she knew she wanted to get to the lake first. Vowing to be much more careful with her future explorations, she managed to push the stone slab back into place with her foot and set off.
Up close, the lake was larger than Victoria had expected. A wooden bridge connected points the main shore to a small island in the middle of the lake. Victoria tested the structure with a few steps before she was convinced it would support her, then walked to the middle island and sat down on the grass. The pain in her hand had subsided into an unpleasant pulse, but she rinsed her cut in the water and bandaged it with part of her sleeve until she could get back to the medical kit in the tent.
Satisfied that the wound would heal, she pulled out the map and eventually found an unlabeled island that had a lake in the middle. By her calculations, she and Sarah were most of the way to Atlantis. We could be there tomorrow if everything goes well in the morning, she thought. Now that she’d been stuck on this island for the better part of a day, she was beginning to regret her promise to Sarah.
It's only one day, she reminded herself. The world won't end.
After lying in the sun for a while, Victoria stripped out of her jeans and shirt, ready to swim. The water was so clear that she could see sand at the deepest part of the lake. She waded in and reveled in the feeling of blood, dirt, and sweat washing off her skin. Finding that her hand wasn't hurting, she dove in began to swim. Further away from shore, the water appeared to be sparkling, tinted with a hundred streams of colors that danced in the otherwise invisible current. How strange, Victoria thought. The streams began to move faster, then morphed from vague lines into more distinct, terrifying forms underwater.
Translucent ghosts.
Atlanteans.
Victoria screamed as a force pulled her underwater. The apparition nearest to her was a girl with pale hair. With a sad expression, she reached out and touched the Sentence on Victoria's wrist before Victoria could realize what was happening or recoil. The girl's hand seemed to pass through the skin as if she was not solid, though Victoria felt a stab of freezing cold where the specter had touched. She screamed, but the sound disappeared in a flurry of bubbles that nobody could hear.
And then an immense weight began to pull her down, dragging Victoria underwater. She kicked harder, but she couldn't propel herself to the surface or push the ghosts away. The Atlanteans blurred as her vision flickered, and Victoria knew she only had a few more seconds before she would need to breathe. She stopped struggling and let herself sink. As her fingertips brushed the soft sand at the bottom of the lake, a sense of serenity washed over her. Her fate belonged to Atlantis. Her vision darkened, and she began to fade out of consciousness.
And then, the weight lifted. Victoria sensed that the ghosts had disappeared. With a final burst of strength, she pushed herself off the sand. After what felt like an eternity, she broke through the water surface with a gasp that gave her new life. She splashed her way to shore and the instant she was on warm, dry land, she started to cry.
She had misread the signs about Atlantis. She’d fallen so hard for its call that she hadn't believed the danger behind it, even if Gryffin had warned her. And despite having convinced herself that she was safe from Atlantis if she had the Sentence, she’d never felt more afraid. Nothing in her life would be the same if she returned to England, but she had to try.
Sarah was sketching in the afternoon sun when Victoria returned to the meadow. She looked happy and peaceful and rested now, Victoria noticed with a surge of jealousy. Still shivering, she sat down on the blanket Sarah had laid out on the grass and sighed, wondering how much she wanted to reveal. Sarah looked up from her drawing.
“Everything okay?” she asked. “You don't look well.”
Victoria shook her head, blinking away a new wave of tears. “I want to go home. Now.”
“What?” Sarah surveyed Victoria carefully now. “We've only just left England.”
Victoria shook her head again. Right now, in the middle of the meadow on this forsaken island, wasn’t the time or place to tell the truth. “This is too dangerous. We really shouldn't have come here, and we should go home.”
“I see you don't want to tell me,” Sarah grumbled. “I don't know what's happened to stress you out so much, but it's okay to feel scared. It probably is a stupid idea to be out in the middle of the ocean with just a boat and a tent, but we've done so well in getting here. You should sleep on it, and if you still want to go home in the morning, I'll go. Sound good?”
Closing her eyes, Victoria could still see the ghosts, the young girl reaching out for her in the lake. She'd be lucky if she could ever sleep again, but if waiting a day was the only way to get Sarah to go home, Victoria had no alternative. She finally nodded.
“Great. What do you want to do now?” Sarah asked. Victoria knew she was deliberately changing the subject. “We've got the whole afternoon free, and it looks like a nice day.”
“I’ll get changed into dry clothes and fix my hand first, but I've got something to show you,” Victoria said. “Bring your sketch pad if you want. I have no idea what it is, but you’ll probably like it.”
Sarah nodded. Victoria dipped into the tent for a few minutes, and when she returned outside in dry clothes, a small fire was burning on the blanket. Sarah had stopped drawing and was staring deep into its flames, looking too enchanted to comprehend what she was seeing.
“What are you doing?” Victoria asked.
“It just appeared a second ago,” Sarah said. “It’s not hot.”
Victoria instantly understood. “Don’t touch it!” she hissed.
But it was too late. Sarah had put her hand in the fire. She jumped back, like the heatless flames had burnt her, and the fire disappeared. Victoria closed her eyes, knowing what would happen next.
“Victoria?” Sarah whispered a moment later. “There’s something on my wrist.”
Victoria looked up, hearing the panic in Sarah’s voice. She could distinguish the words mene mene tekel upharsin in faint letters against the pale skin of Sarah's wrist. “Look at the maps again,” Victoria said. She dove into the tent again and found the maps at the bottom of her bag, and held them out to Sarah with a shaking hand.
Sighing, Sarah took the papers. “Oh, my god,” she whispered, her eyes widening. “I can read it.”
“I thought you might be able to. It must be the Sentence.”
Sarah spent a few minutes examining the maps, talking through some calculations with Victoria until they both agreed on where they were. Maybe Gryffin could read the maps, Victoria thought, her heart falling. Her only consolation was a suspicion that Gryffin hadn't made copies of her maps. She knew he hadn't intended to lose them, and she could only hope that he hadn't had the time or foresight to make contingency plans.
“What happens next?” Sarah whispered.
“I need to bandage my hand,” Victoria admitted, “and then I want to show you something.”
Sarah helped Victoria, and they went to the monument together Victoria still had a feeling she was supposed to stay away, but it was easier to ignore now that the whole island made her nervous. Looking at the structure a second time, Victoria had no better idea of what purpose it had served. “What do you think this place is meant to be?” she asked Sarah.
“I don't know,” Sarah said. She was pulling paper and a pen out of her bag. “A temple, maybe? It doesn’t look fortified for defense, and it doesn’t seem to be protecting anything. There's nothing on this island.”
It seemed too obvious. With its beautiful details, open structure, and pillars that reached for the sun by day and stars at night, this edifice looked and felt like a temple from the ancient world. “It’s got to be something more. There's a secret room hidden underneath the steps,” Victoria said, deciding it wouldn't be unsafe to explore the area if she and Sarah stayed together. “I think the entire building was built around whatever was down there.”
She led Sarah to the stone concealing the secret passageway and sat on the step nearby. After trying for a few seconds to push the stone aside, she could tell that something was different. It didn't sound hollow, and it didn't budge when she tried to slide it with her uninjured hand. The thought of using the other hand made her feel sick.
“Could you help me, please?” she asked Sarah. “My hand can’t take the pressure.”
Together, they pushed and pulled, but the stone still didn't move. Victoria would have doubted her sanity, but she could see the bloody spot where she’d touched the stone hours before. “It must be stuck,” Victoria sighed. “It moved so easily before. I'm sorry.”
“I can see you were here. I believe you,” Sarah said. “Now, why don't you tell me about this room? What did you see?”
“Nothing,” Victoria admitted. “It was too dark, and I didn’t want to waste my phone battery.”
Sarah looked down at the steps and back at Victoria. “Do you think this building is protecting that room?”
“I don't know what else it would be here for.”
“I
t looks like a temple,” Sarah suggested, looking uneasy. “You could have found the crypt.”
“Of course,” Victoria groaned. She shuddered, thankful she hadn’t seen what had been around her. Sarah sketched the temple before they returned to the tent for the evening. They spent the evening on the beach and returned to the tent at sunset.
“Do you miss Tom?” Sarah asked as they crawled into bed.
Victoria flinched as sorrow shot through her body. “I do. I don’t feel right when I’m not with him, but I’m not even worried about myself. The situation isn’t fair on him, and I hope everything will be okay when we get back.”
“We won’t be gone forever,” Sarah said. “They say absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
Victoria pondered those words for a few minutes. She couldn’t imagine a future without Tom, but she couldn’t see how one with him was possible. Their relationship would have to survive years apart at university, if she didn’t get her family’s support, and they would face even more adventures taking a gap year together.
“I found this earlier. It was in the bottom of the tent bag by the way,” Sarah said, holing a folded sheet of paper. “Is it yours?”
Unfolding it, Victoria found a symbol she’d never seen before. Beneath was a short message. Draw this symbol above your navel and you won’t have to eat or drink for a week.
Victoria frowned, reading it a few times to make sure she understood. She refused to believe that a simple drawing on the body could end hunger. If it was that easy, someone would have discovered the secret centuries ago, and the world would have been a much better place since then. But she hadn’t forgotten all the myths that emphasized how corrupt the Atlanteans had been.