But as she passed a group of actors dressed as pirates, Mireilla bumped into one of them.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to regain her balance after colliding with the sturdy wall that was the man.
“Watch where you're going, girl, or you'll get hurt.”
To say she froze was an understatement. Mireilla gasped as she saw that in front of her a sexy, wild pirate was holding her by the arm, keeping her safe from the crowd around them.
She looked at him wild-eyed and swallowed hard. The pirate was attractive, a real hottie who attracted the stares of the women around him. He was tall, close to six feet and broad-shouldered. He wore black leather pants that fit his body like a second skin. The white shirt that covered his chest was open, revealing part of his magnificent anatomy. For a second, she was astonished to see that he had no hair on his chest. He was hairless. The only hair visible to the naked eye was his long, blonde hair that shone in the intense sunlight and his arched eyebrows. But what sent a cold shiver throughout her body were his blue eyes. They were magnetic, alluring.
And she had fallen into their nets.
CHAPTER 3
Nathaniel could not believe what he was seeing. The woman was holding his father's diary, the object he had been looking for more than six years and which was the reason for his being on this filthy island full of humans.
He had been forced to pass himself off as one of them, taking part in every festivity, sharing a drink with the other men on the island and warding off the insinuations of the women who approached him every night, ready to share a good time. He detested the contact with those beings who were destroying the sea that he loved with all his heart and that embraced him every night when he plunged into its cold waters.
He belonged to the race of the Sereios, inhabitants of the seas, better known in the popular culture of humans as tritons. He had spent his youth in the city of Atleintais. He was to become the next Triton King, until desolation destroyed his family's castle and left him without a crown and with a heart tinged with hatred, rage and a desire for revenge.
I must get it. I cannot allow this mortal to have my father's diary. In it is the key to finding the staff of power. I have been searching for it for years.
When he thought he had lost it, one of the Guardsmen who had raised him and his sister in the South Seas told him that the key to finding it was in an old diary they had hidden in the human world.
At first he was furious with the old Guardsman, but after careful consideration, he realized that they had acted correctly. If any member or ally of the current royal family that ruled the city of Atleintais discovered the existence of the diary, they would get the symbol of power, the staff created by the god of the seas and given to the first Triton, blessing him with the golden metal.
Now his only hope of regaining the throne lay on the heaving chest of a human woman who looked at him with fascination.
Nathaniel smiled openly.
That the woman found him attractive would be good for him. He would do anything to get the journal, even if it meant touching or seducing her, even against his beliefs and customs.
“Are you all right, pretty?” he asked, softening the tone of his voice, staring at her.
Mireilla swallowed hard. Her heart was pounding intensely against her ribcage, and she hoped the man couldn't hear its maddening rhythm.
Was she all right? She wasn't quite sure. She was breathing for now, but if he kept looking at her like that, she would end up shaking from head to toe, unraveling inside.
“Are you all right?” the man asked again.
Before the man thought she was a brainless fool for gawking at him, she finally answered.
“Yes, I'm fine. Thank you.”
I have to get away from this man, or I'll do something crazy. I'm not used to being looked at like this, she thought before looking around for a way out, avoiding the pirate's magnetic eyes.
When she tried to free herself from his grip, she found the man holding her tightly by the arm. Mireilla shifted her gaze from his arm to his face, focusing her eyes between his eyebrows, a trick taught to her by her ancient history teacher back in college when she confided that she was terrified of speaking in front of people. With that gesture, she avoided looking bad because she seemed to be looking him in the eye, but at the same time, she didn't get nervous with the intensity of his eyes.
“Would you please let me go, sir?”
Nathaniel smelled the fear she was giving off at being trapped. If he wanted to achieve his goal without the human calling the island authorities, he had to soften his mannerisms.
It won't be that hard to pass me off as a normal male. I've been on this island for six years, and no one has discovered my secret.
“Not before you tell me your name, beautiful.”
Her response was not what he expected.
He had witnessed how the males of that species would utter that meaningless phrase on the nights they gathered at the only bar in town and got the women to accompany them to the dance floor, where they would jump up and down without any rhythm, trying to keep up with the strident music that echoed loudly in the place.
The woman, who was looking at him with distrust and who had beautiful blue eyes, pulled back and ran away, taking advantage of the fact that he had let her go.
Nathaniel stood still, a surprised expression etched on his face.
The woman slipped out of his sight in a matter of seconds, mingling with the people witnessing the first of that week's parades.
“That woman is a tough nut to crack, Nat. You'll have a hard time taking her to bed.”
Nathaniel turned around.
To his left, a brown-haired pirate with a goatee, gray eyes and a strong build stood beside him, watching the woman who had been at Nathaniel's mercy until just a few seconds before.
“I don't want to take her to the cot.”
“Whatever you say, buddy,” Eric Williams smiled sideways, crossing his arms.
After a few years, he had accepted that Nat was capable of denying even the obvious. His pride prevented him from giving in, defending his position and his way of thinking even though he was wrong.
Nathaniel walked past Eric and returned to the parade route. They had both fallen behind, and if they wanted to finish that day's journey, they would have to pick up the pace to catch up with the others.
Eric stayed close behind him, keeping up with the pace he set to reach the bulk of the parade. Nat had kept quiet, not even replying to his provocation. Eric let out a sigh. At times, he looked like he was made of stone. Anyone else would have jumped, or played along with the joke…anyone but Nat. His arrival on the island had been unexpected. He had appeared overnight, skin and bone and wearing old rags. Many were those who asked him if his ship had been wrecked, but he remained silent and did not answer any of the questions; not even the sheriff of the island managed to get any information out of him.
The only information they got was his name, Nathaniel Klaider, and his profession as a professional diver. And although Eric hated to admit it, Nathaniel was a better diver than he was. The two of them had set up a small diving company to show tourists the rich marine fauna of the island and its surroundings.
For a small fee, they showed the corals surrounding the island and protected them from the strong waves caused by the multiple tidal waves and eruptions of underwater volcanoes.
The route they followed showed marine caves with a wealth of animals that could be seen clearly in the crystal clear waters. The tourists who paid for their service were pleasantly satisfied after swimming among fish of thousands of colors that approached them with curiosity and without any fear. Nathaniel even fed them.
It was a sight to behold.
Nathaniel, who was always serious and with a grimace of eternal boredom on his face, mutated when he dived into the water. His eyes sparkled with intensity, and his body moved fluidly.
The project they had started after a night of drinking a
t the bar had paid off, quickly recovering the money they had invested to found the company.
“Where were you?” The voice of the organizer and owner of the only bar on the island sounded annoyed when they finally caught up to the parade. “Fuck, we need to stay together. You can’t stay behind just because you want to.”
“Yes, boss,” Eric saluted him militarily before joining the others who had stopped with their dull metal swords drawn.
Nathaniel passed on saying anything to him and followed Eric to intermingle with the others.
The organizer shrugged, choosing to ignore their behavior, and walked to the front, stepping in front of everyone. He drew his sword and raised it above his head.
“The tourists are watching us, you know what to do,” he said in a low voice to be heard only by the men at his back. “Tonight the island will be ours!” he shouted with euphoria, provoking the animated exclamations of the tourists who were waiting for this performance. Thomas Flintter, tavern keeper by night, that day was the famous and ruthless Blackbeard who shouted the order to his men to attack, and they obeyed him.
The celebration of Blackbeard's assault on the island was a festivity in which the whole town participated, wearing the clothes of that time, and the tourists were amused when they were hit by water balloons, and the women were lifted in their arms by sturdy and good-looking men.
Nathaniel participated like every other year. But his mind was fixed on one woman: the elusive human who held his father's diary in her hands and had beautiful blue eyes that reminded him of home.
CHAPTER 4
The walk to the motel was exhausting. People who crossed her path kept pushing her as she went in the opposite direction of the parade. Mireilla sighed in relief when she saw the front of the motel.
She was exhausted. She looked like she had just come back from the war in which half the town was running around like crazy, participating in this senseless festivity. How was it possible that they were celebrating the assault of bloodthirsty pirates?
She did not understand.
As soon as she walked through the front doors of the motel, Mireilla greeted the old man who was following the party, listening to the cheerful voices of the local radio station, and she went upstairs to her bedroom.
Locked in her room, she sat on the bed after taking off her shoes and concentrated on the newspaper. Stroking the soft covers of the old book, the pirate's intense gaze came to her mind.
She blushed and leaned back, lying on the bed, covering her eyes with her hands.
“No one would believe me. That man must have been playing with me. It is impossible that he was interested in me.” She remembered the words of her sisters, who made fun of her on many occasions when she showed interest in a man, and one of them snatched him away. “If a man approaches you, it is only because he needs you for something, not because of your beauty or because he wants you,” she said aloud, unintentionally showing the bitterness she felt when she remembered those times that marked her for life.
Her romantic life was practically non-existent. She had been in a relationship with her only formal boyfriend in college, whom she met when they shared a library book for a paper on Ancient Egypt. Thomas Feilder was a nice man her own age who had managed to cure her low self-esteem. They both shared the same tastes and did the same activities. They seemed like the perfect couple, until her sister, Maryam, decided to visit her after reading one of her letters.
It took Maryam a week to break her heart.
Mireilla squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Remembering the night she found her boyfriend playing doctor with Maryam still made her ache.
Today, she still wasn't speaking to her sister, and her sister was taking advantage of her silence to cast her as the bad guy in front of the rest of the family, turning the others against her.
“Fuck all of them!” she exclaimed loudly, sitting up suddenly, gathering her legs and leaning against the headboard of the bed. “That's in the past; now I just have to concentrate on my work. I don't need anyone else.”
She picked up the journal and opened it carefully so as not to break the strap protecting it. She had not made a mistake. Its pages were yellowed and written with a homemade ink. The handwriting was heavy, slanted to the left, with some smudging as the ink ran or drops of water had fallen on the text.
“As if the writer wept,” she said aloud, making a mental note of the possibility.
She left the journal open on the bed for a few seconds and got up to grab her notebook that she always kept handy in her travel bag. After getting hold of the notebook and a pen, she returned to the bed.
“The text is written in three different languages. There are texts in ancient Latin, others in Greek, I think, and these symbols…I don't know what they mean,” she muttered to herself, writing some of the strange symbols in her notebook.
They were sort of curvilinear and crisscrossing stripes, amidst drawings of animals with two long, hairless legs.
As her reading of the Latin text progressed, the euphoria she felt increased. This journal was a kind of Rosetta stone, teaching a hitherto unknown language of a civilization before the Romans.
But the text seemed to be written by a modern mind. It spoke of devices that flew through the sky and obscured the sunlight with their smoke. It described the ships that plied the water and shattered the calm of the sea and were the major cause of the death of many marine species.
With each word she translated from Ancient Latin, inwardly thanking her ex-boyfriend who advised her to continue studying Ancient Latin by specializing in the translation of texts, history absorbed her, transporting her to a city called Atleintais, which suffered from intrigues and the struggle for power.
“Atleintais. You must be joking. It couldn't be true that the mythical Atlantis existed.”
She had never believed that Atlantis had existed. Many on her faculty were staunch defenders of that myth, speculating its location, but she had not believed in its existence.
She was a person who, in order to believe something, she had to see it, to touch it.
She continued reading, jotting notes in her notebook from time to time. So engrossed was she that she did not feel the night coming on.
And it was not until the early hours of the morning, when her eyes were red from so much reading and her mind dulled, that she decided to turn off the light.
She dreamed of a wonderful kingdom under the sea, inhabited by mythical beings such as mermaids and tritons, who swam among the corals.
Perhaps her dream would soon come true?
CHAPTER 5
“Another woman who will go to bed crying for you tonight, Nat. What was wrong with her this time?”
Nathaniel took a long drink of cold beer, a yellowish liquid with light bubbles that he tasted for the first time upon his arrival in the world of humans and that he liked the taste of, but he rarely drank more than two beers because the alcohol it contained would rise quickly, making him drunk. His body was very different from that of humans and was not conditioned to metabolize alcohol, a component that only Terrans consumed for pleasure.
“She's not my type.”
“Ah, she's not your type. And what is your type?” Eric asked, putting down his empty beer mug on the table.
Nathaniel closed his eyes and thought for a few seconds about what his type was. Images came to his mind of mermaids with long, curly hair dancing softly under the turbulent waters of the sea, where the scales of their long, beautiful tails shone in the sunlight, casting thousands of sparkles that illuminated the darkness that reigned in their world.
In the midst of those images, a face slowly appeared…an oval face endowed with beauty and innocence, plump, rosy lips, blue eyes full of curiosity.
When the image became clearer, Nathaniel identified her as the human who had in her possession the journal he sought.
By the god of the seas, how could that woman come to mind? She wasn't a beauty. Her body was small and with an unnecessar
y layer of fat. It must be because I need her to retrieve the diary.
When Nathaniel came back to reality, he answered before Eric asked again, “I like them tall, blonde and with long legs that can wrap around my hips.”
Eric let out a laugh that echoed as if from the bottom of a beer keg. The alcohol was already getting to him, and despite feeling the typical dizziness of abuse, he continued to drink the golden liquid.
Nathaniel, on the other hand, had finished his only beer and left the empty mug on the bar.
“My friend. We all like goddesses like that. Finding them and being taken seriously is more difficult.”
Nathaniel smiled at the human's joke without understanding the expression. If Eric wanted a woman, he had to fight to get her. That was what tritons did; when they noticed a mermaid, they courted her until they mated. But humans were very different. They suffered for matters that to their culture were insignificant.
Nathaniel stretched. Being on the surface exhausted him. His body felt heavy because of the gravitational force exerted by the land itself. In the sea, he felt lighter. Free.
It was time to return home.
He had agreed to go to the bar with the others to celebrate the end of the festival. But his excuse was to meet that woman again; he hoped she would come like the other tourists to the celebration. He had no luck.
The place was full of people joking with each other and drinking pitcher after pitcher, but that woman was not there.
He had hoped that the human would make things easier for him by showing up at the bar. He couldn't wait any longer. Not all Earth women behaved the same. Maybe she was one of those who didn't like parties. If so, damn! Now he would have to look for her in the island's hotels. And not knowing her name, he had no choice but to ask for her, describing her and hoping that the hotel owners would not be suspicious of him.
“I'm leaving, this day has been very long. I'm going to lie down for a while.”
The King Triton Page 2