by Elsa, Sandra
“Good thought. We’ll have to research that. We’ve done as much as we can for this trip. Let’s move the nets deeper then go check out your other sites.”
“I’ll help,” I said, “but if a current catches me you have to promise to swim to the rescue.“
“Not a problem,“ Paul reassured me. “Currents aren’t bad at all here. Bet you didn’t bring your suits.”
We all stripped down to underwear to wade in to help with the fish. We successfully moved the nets then played in the water a bit before returning to shore.
Once we dried we got dressed, packed up the cars and drove up to the mountain site.
As Jerry had said, our guests appeared quite at home. They met us as we got out of the car and hurried to show us their additions. Tony, Nan and Dee took pride in the expanded garden plots, most of them planted right up against the cliff which would be bad for getting maximum sun but best protection against the storms. “We turned the soil and fertilized,” Tony said. “Figured we’d wait for you two so we can water right after we plant.”
Next stop was the flower beds we’d planted. They thrived. Our pansies displayed beautiful pink and white flowers. A couple of the black-eyed-susans and daisies waved in the wind. The beehive was set up amidst the flowers. I was pleased to note the bees were in occupancy and busily working the few flowers present. Three plastic dishes were set out around the hive. My father awaited approval on the hive and as I glanced at the dishes he said, “Sugar water, to supplement them until the flowers come in well enough to support them.”
“Who got them from the can to the hive?”
“That would be me,” he said. “We stocked everything in the caves and unwrapped everything with paper to build a fire so we could smoke them. Turns out Nate knew a little about them since he worked parks and rec. Had to find just the right material to make smoke and not too much heat. But we got it.”
From there we moved on to the most amazing change to our colony. Crystal trees had been pushed over and set up in teepee like structures. Hadn’t even thought of that. It cleared land and provided shelters. Though we would need something to cover the outside still. Greg walked into the largest one and said, “Once we get some plastic sheeting to cover the outside, this is my manufactory.”
“Take it that’s one for staying here.”
“You bet,” Greg said. “Fresh air, sunshine, no crowds. I’m loving it.”
“So whose idea was this? They’re amazing.”
“That would be my man,” Dee said, “the history teacher.”
“Though if I’d known how heavy a crystal tree would be, I might not have suggested it,” Ryan said, but he smiled with pride at his idea come to life. “Had to dig a hole and stand one up and then tie a rope on it to pull the others up so they stood. We’re out of rope or we’d have made more. As soon as we cleared a spot those three were following us with shovels and fertilizer.” He nodded at Nan, Dee, and Tony.”
“Made more?” I let the admiration carry clearly in my voice. “We were only gone a little over twenty-four hours.”
“Color us enthusiastic.”
“Great,” I said. “You and Dee look good together. Hate to break that up before it got started.”
“I’d still like to keep my job until there are kids to teach, but I have all summer. Probably the first time in my life I’ll be looking forward to weekends and vacations more than my students.”
That would cause problems. If he stayed the summer, Jordan Drover would have him followed every time he left District Seven. But that was a future problem, one we could work out after we saw how long the enthusiasm lasted.
Nate tugged Harrison’s sleeve, and Harrison turned to look where he pointed.
I recognized the wording on some plastic crates which no longer looked at all like plastic crates. They bobbed on the lake in a handsome little one man boat. Definitely Nate’s hand.
“She’s beautiful for what you had to work with.” Harrison strode to the lake. Paul and Jesse followed after with their handful of Brittle Naiad. Paul set about planting it since the lake seemed to be the end of the tour.
“Might want to go a bit higher,” Harrison said. Frankie and I will be filling the lake in a bit.” This one had only dropped about three feet. “The rising water will probably tug the roots out.”
Everybody watched Paul a minute, then Nate turned his attention back to his creation. “Still looking for something to make either an oar or a sail, but the crates went further than I expected.”
“Hop in,” Paul said.
Nate shook his head. “Can’t go anywhere.”
“Humor me.”
Nate stepped into the boat and Harrison untied it from the crystal branch they’d staked it to.
Paul stripped out of his shorts and took the rope from Harrison. He tugged the boat away from shore then disappeared underwater. The boat followed the towline at an amazing speed until Nate had circled the lake once. Back where they started he looked over the side of the boat where the line was slack. Paul’s tail emerged from the water following an immense arc of water that splashed those of us near the shore. His head cleared the surface and he smiled. “If we’re going to be some of the first to make this move, I’m not going to start a new life by hiding who I am.”
Dee looked like she wanted to touch his tail to make sure it was real. Greg managed to look like he’d known all along that merfolk existed. The rest of the Seveners were interested but they seemed jaded. They’d lived their whole lives knowing that if something could exist magic could make it happen. Wondered if it would deflate them to know this was science not magic. Or rather science manipulating magic. Of all those present only my father and Harrison truly grasped that fact.
Jesse joined Paul in the water, using her salmon colored tail to flip the lower half of her swimsuit onto the shore after she changed. She seemed far shyer than Paul about being naked around a bunch of people.
They swam in the lake while Harrison and I sat on the shore and called up rain clouds. As they darkened and swelled overhead his mother insisted that he soak their gardens first. Everybody stayed outside to watch as gentle rains soaked the turned earth. Nan and Tony hurried to a wet patch and dug two fairly deep holes then waited while they filled with water and drained again before planting the two trees we’d purchased for experimentation. They filled the holes then pounded crystal stakes in around them and used twine to hold them upright until the roots got a good start.
When Nan was happy with the moisture content of the soil they all sat back and watched as Harrison sent the clouds to the south end of the lake and began the slow process of refilling what had seeped out in our absence.
After an hour of rain his friends began to look at him in dismay as the rain continued. “How are you doing that?” Greg asked. “I’ve been with you when you watered District Seven before. No way you can do that much at one time.”
“My limitations were one of the major things that held up my father’s plans. I’d have had to consent to work day in and day out until I burned out my talent to start anything. When we first started I couldn’t get anywhere near this distance from the shore while holding water. I think the minerals from the ocean water made it even harder. Without Frankie, this would be impossible.”
“Then her sitting with you is more than your need to keep her by your side?”
“It’s that too. But yes, she holds the water I’m using.”
“Where exactly? It’s not like she has an aura?”
Harrison explained the process to his riends as rain continued to fall. Paul adjusted the naiad as the lakeshore rose then got out of the water and tossed Jesse her swimsuit. He sat down beside Harrison and said, “To answer your question I believe we could live here in the fresh water. Though I doubt any of our people would want to give up the free range of the ocean for a lake, it’s hard to tell though, some might.”
“Three months from now, this is yours. We’ll visit to fill the lake at least once a mo
nth but we’ll need to come up with a system to water regularly unless you fancy hefting watering cans.” Harrison gestured at the surrounding gardens. Some of them nearly two thousand feet away from the lake.
Without a word, Paul dove back in the water. In the middle of the lake he began swimming a circle. At the end of the first circle a small wake built behind him and his next circle was slightly larger and faster. After about the tenth circle Paul dove under water and the energy of the current he created continued to surge until a whirlpool formed. Paul resurfaced and the swirling water rose above the level of the lake in a funnel, still in motion, looking very much like one of the tornadoes that had been pictured in the natural history museum. He sent the water shoreward, following after it, growing legs so he could stay with his creation. As he neared the garden plots he inserted a finger into the swirling water and droplets began to form, imitating Harrison’s rain. Eventually the entire garden area had received another soaking and Paul inserted his entire arm in the spinning water then flung his hand toward the cliff. The remaining water hit the rock so hard a shallow hole carved the face, where none had existed before.
The Seveners were properly impressed. All of them began talking at once. My father asked the pertinent question. “How many of your people can do that?”
“About half. It’s pretty basic water magic,” Jesse answered.
“Would they be willing to work inland? At this point expansion is limited to where ever Frankie and Harrison can bring sufficient rain. But if they can fill lakes and others can spread the water as things start to dry up, we’d considerably increase the area we could expand into.”
“We couldn’t begin to speak for all of them,” Paul said. “I know a couple who would at least be willing to rotate. A few of our people actually prefer living on land.”
“When we return to the District you should introduce the idea of moving to the rest of them—“
“It’s been under discussion since Frankie first brought it up. Quite a few are happy with where they live now but at least thirty are eager to try something new. Might be able to get a couple of the land lovers to agree to a move if they know they can be useful and live with legs most of the time. But we’re going to have to do something to get Poppy and the pod outside before I come up here again. She wasn’t happy we were going without her this time. Great-grandfather’s already got a male dolphin in the tank. So Poppy can take her turn at motherhood.”
Talk devolved into new species to be added to support those of us already planning on the move.
The following week consisted of planting with a bit of fun and games in the way of target practice and experimentation with various methods of combining everybody’s magic at my father’s direction. By the time we returned to the dome we were a fairly well coordinated team with a plan in place.
Nan and my father departed for District Seven, followed by Greg who promised he’d be returning with a couple of people and his stock of gems and pendants to move his manufactory. The rest of us moved into a larger house and began shopping with the plan to spend the entire summer in our colony.
Father had managed to alter the matter projector to where calling up the lasers only required Harrison’s presence and with me nowhere near, the laser became a useable tool. A dolphin sized door was installed near the bottom of the dome, and within the week, Poppy took her first swim outside. A few at a time, Paul and Jesse took those that wanted to move, out to the site and by the time we returned at the end of another week, over forty mer had moved. Three of them chose to remain in the lake near the settlement we had taken to calling, Crystal Colony.
Some of the crops we planted on our first trip, like leaf lettuce, we’re already providing food. Grass covered the ground in a fine carpet for nearly a mile around. The mers used their ability to carve rock with water to provide more cliffside dwellings for Greg’s adventurous employees. We replaced the rope on the crystal teepees with chain and sided them with plastic. Building several more, as our numbers swelled with eager volunteers from District Seven, Two-Three-Seven and even several of Dee’s most trusted friends from District Eleven. They arrived with news that a Were was looking for us. We invited Salas to visit and he fit in with the rest of our people.
Leo divided his time between running a detective agency and playing great wild cat out at the colony. The agency’s business grew rapidly and Harrison and I both spent time working to bring in money.
Before long we were purchasing bits for our own genetics lab, the first items being solar panels. Arrays on top of the cliff we lived in powered far more than our foundling lab as energy made life easier for our residents. They were willing to pay for the ability to run equipment they’d grown used to having and that helped us funnel more money toward the communities needs without digging into our own pockets. Like it or not we were becoming a government and people were looking to Harrison and I for leadership.
Poppy’s mate joined her in Port Royal Sound sometime in the middle of the summer. Our first attempt at a bat wing pony failed but Harrison and William took the results and funneled it into a second try that produced a viable creature with the ability to fly but insufficient lift to carry anything but itself. To the bemusement of most of our residents the pony spent the days eating the grass we’d put so much effort growing. We added a couple of deer to the population and discovered that hadn’t been such a good decision as they nibbled our young trees.
Tony fixed the problem by adding still more fertilizer to the soil and growing the trees tall enough the deer could no longer graze their tender leaves.
Rabbits ate some of our crops so we added fences around our garden plots. Fish filled our ponds and earthworms burrowed in our soil. I prayed our critters would survive the storms as people became attached to what was intended to eventually become supper.
Father finally received both the narwhal and komodo dragon DNA and he spent his weekends in Two-Three-Seven experimenting. Harrison and I made a journey west. The cliff dwellings still existed. Kind of. They needed considerable work, but after applying the initial fertilizer and spending a week filling a depression to turn it into a lake, it was viable. We made the journey to the Founding-Two-Hundred to visit District Thirty-Eight to recruit quite a few folks from the Pioneer District who were not only willing but eager to help. We had more than sufficient people working on our experimental colony, which we’d had to admit would never be abandoned for greener pastures, so these and several people with talents we’d found necessary, recruited from District Fifty-Five, we sent west with directions to the Anasazi cliff dwellings. As August turned sweltering hot we lost a few recruits to the comfort of temperature control.
True to his word—finally--we didn’t hear another peep from President Drover. Nan and my father received frequent visits. They’d pretty much come to accept that Monday night dinners would be eaten in Jordan Drover’s company and he obsessed on how we were doing. Had they heard of any new developments in our relationship?
Thus far, I found the development he’d master-minded hadn’t slowed me down much, but I was starting to show enough I wore looser clothes to hide the gentle bulge of my stomach.
The pickets on the gate of Two-Three-Seven turned a blind eye to our trailers wandering in and out. Several of the troopers had been invited out to the community. Gerrill became a permanent on-site weapons’ instructor and Ralston chose to stay with his partner. Captain Jarvis didn’t thank us for stealing his men, but nor did he seem too off-put by it. A batwing horse joined our pony. This one, with the addition of the talent of levitation, was capable of not only flying itself, but became viable as a source of transportation. They’d amped up the intelligence level on this version and it became part of the community.
The first several unicorn experiments failed. For various reasons. The first was humanely destroyed when the narwhal DNA emerged as a tusk. The second perfected form, but incorporating null proved to be tricky. The survivor joined our batwing pony as a lawn ornament, and our resi
dents ooheed and ahhed over it.
We had already grown beyond keeping secrets, so our watch members found themselves on patrol duty, using the batwing horse to survey a large area of land, and Remington 700s to protect what was ours. We recruited a couple more watch members from District Fifty-Five, and Gerrill instructed the best of his weapons students and inducted them into the Crystal Colony Watch. We added three more batwing horses.
Chapter 36
Towards the middle of August we started sending people home. A few argued to stay, believing they’d be secure in the caves, but the decision was made that the only living thing we’d leave would be the plants and insects. Captain Jarvis assigned a corner of the city park to fence in our critters while we waited out the storms. Harrison and I took two of the batwing horses and headed west to make sure that colony would use common sense and get inside the shelter of the nearest domes. They didn’t yet have animals to worry about, but by sheer human effort they’d begun planting, carrying the water necessary for their crops. We made the decision we would ask for volunteers from the mer community to live at Cactus Colony, named after the immense crystal cactuses found near our lake, after the storms.
Providing the storms didn’t prove our efforts worthless.
The flight back from Cactus Colony, found us chased by dark clouds, precursors to the actual storms. It was a two day flight. We landed in an area near what we believed used to be the Northeast corner of the state called Texas. There wasn’t much in the way of protection, from the rising winds. If the batwings could have, we’d have flown through the night, but we stopped long enough to feed them and allow them several hours of rest. Sleep was uneasy. The voice of the wind howled. The batwings stomped restlessly and huddled near us, tails into the wind. Harrison wrapped himself around me and we tucked the edges of the blankets under ourselves to keep the blowing dust from eyes, nose, and mouth.