The dolphin opens its mouth, leaves the fish flopping on the deck as it shimmies back into the water. “What other form would have worked?” she mindspeaks. “Neither humans nor you Undrae ever worry about the dolphins around them. The fish is one of my favorites—a yellowtail. Try it.”
I look at the flopping fish and curl my lip. “I think I’ll have a steak upstairs instead.”
“Suit yourself,” Lorrel mindspeaks, swimming toward the center of the harbor and diving from sight. The dolphin’s gray form swims toward the dock underwater, thinning and lengthening, turning pale, Lorrel’s long hair flowing in a black stream as she swims. The girl breaks out of the water, grabs the dock with both hands and pulls herself up and out in one fluid motion.
She reaches for the yellowtail, holds it in both hands and sits crosslegged on the deck, seawater dripping from her body and hair and puddling around her. “You should try this,” she mindspeaks. “In my srrynn we will have no beef to feed to you.” She takes a bite from the fish’s midsection, scales and all, and holds the fish out to me, oblivious to its last dying spasm, the blood and other fluids dripping from it.
I shake my head. “I don’t plan to stay with your srrynn long enough for that to matter.”
Lorrel laughs and returns to devouring her fish. It takes her only a few bites. Standing, she tosses the fish’s remains into the water and then looks down at her bare skin, the streaks of fish fluid and the red splotches of fish blood now staining it.
“I will be back in a moment,” she mindspeaks, diving from the dock, swimming out of sight.
Putting the gas nozzle into the fuel tank, depressing its lever, I smile at the mechanical flutter of the fuel pump going into action. Without it, I’d have to venture to the mainland or Key Biscayne for fuel. I doubt Lorrel would like me to do so this morning.
The Pelk breaks from the water again and joins me on the dock. Her body rinsed clean, she stands next to me dripping, sniffs the air and grimaces. “It smells bad,” she mindspeaks.
Tilting my head toward the fuel nozzle, I mindspeak, “It’ll go away as soon as I finish fueling.”
Lorrel nods, reaches behind her neck, gathering her wet hair, wringing it out. “I don’t understand why you bother with all this,” she mindspeaks. “That stink, all the boats, all the machines, the clothes, as if you were humans. Mowdar says the Undrae lost their way a long time ago. He says you have forgotten how to live the old way.”
Her words make me think of how my father objected when I first installed generators on the island, and how Chloe’s parents complained when we installed both power and a satellite phone in their home. Yet Don Henri soon came to like the convenience of having frozen beef whenever he wished, and while Charles and Samantha Blood rejected their phone, they’ve been perfectly pleased to have electric lights and running water.
“The old ways aren’t necessarily the best,” I mindspeak. Lorrel shrugs, turns toward the sun, closing her eyes, spreading her arms and legs as if to catch every last warm ray. A quiet hum breaks from her lips.
I look away from her pale, trim body, the tight, round curve of her buttocks, and busy myself topping off the tanks and stowing the fuel line. By the time I’ve finished the sun has baked her dry, yet she still stands spread out to its heat. “You like that don’t you?” I mindspeak.
Lowering her arms, turning toward me, she nods. “All Pelk like to bask. I think it is because of all the time we spend below.”
She looks at the boat and then back to me. “Do we leave now?”
I shake my head. “No. There are some other things I have to do first. Besides, I want to eat and find something for you to wear while we’re on the boat. . . .”
She trills out a laugh and moves closer to me, her ocean smell filling my nostrils. “You want to make me wear clothes so you do not have to see me? I have seen how you look at my body,” she mindspeaks. “You say you are mated for life, yet you still stare at me that way.”
Once again I wish Chloe hadn’t gone. She remains the only female I desire. But Lorrel is far too correct in her assumptions for my comfort. I certainly never would admit such a thing to this irritating creature. I turn away from her and walk toward the house, mindspeaking, “You Pelk have a high opinion of yourselves. I’m not about to risk being stopped by a patrol boat with a naked girl onboard who looks hardly more than thirteen.”
“I am no girl! I have twenty-nine years,” Lorrel mindspeaks.
“And no mate?”
“Never.”
I turn and stare at her, amazed how much older than my wife she is. “Has no male come for you?” I mindspeak.
Lorrel glares at me. “Until now Mowdar has forbidden it. Pelk females are not slaves to their bodies like the Undrae. We do not spray our scent into the air as soon as we reach our maturity. We do not come into heat and have to accept the first male who comes close enough to poke his thing into us.”
“Yet you wanted to come to my bed last night?”
“Because Mowdar willed it,” she mindspeaks. “He will be disappointed that you refused me.”
“It had nothing to do with who or what you are. I told you that I’m mated for life.”
“And I told you that Mowdar would be disappointed.” Lorrel gives me a huge smile. “I was perfectly pleased to sleep alone.”
Upstairs, Lorrel once again mindspeaks, “No beef,” when I offer to maker her a steak. Still naked, she lounges in Chloe’s recliner, staring open-mouthed at the morning shows on TV, reclining and righting her chair over and over again, ignoring me as I eat and then call the office and ask for Claudia Gomez.
“Hey, Peter, what’s up?” she says.
“Quite a bit,” I say. “I’m going to have to leave for a little while. . . .”
“Ian isn’t going to like that. You have a deposition coming up.”
“I know. I know. But I’m not really concerned with what Ian likes or not. This thing has come up and I have to deal with it.”
“Whatever you say, Peter. Just tell me what you need.”
I smile, glad once again that Arturo had insisted that his daughter come to work at LaMar. In all the centuries that the Gomez family has worked for mine, not one of them has ever disappointed my father or me. “Chloe’s out of reach right now and I didn’t want to say too much on her answering machine. I told her to call you if she couldn’t get me when she came back. If I’m not back by then, tell her I’ve run into a problem with the Pelk—probably somewhere in the Bahamas.”
“P-E-L-K?” Claudia says.
“Right. Tell her I need for her to come back but she should leave the children with her parents until everything’s resolved.”
“And she’s going to understand all this?”
I sigh, not entirely sure whether I understand completely why a naked little seadragon would want to disrupt my life. “I don’t know, but she’ll understand enough to know I need help.”
“You sure I can’t help more on this?” Claudia says. “Whatever this is.”
“No, just pass on the message,” I say, arranging for her to also visit the island each day—to feed the dogs and make sure all remains as it should.
Before I get off she says, “Oh, Peter, get this, Toba says that guy, Pepe Santos, is for real. She absolutely adores the guy. They’re both freaks about fishing. She says he has his own boat—a Mako eighteen-foot open fisherman—they even take it out night fishing a couple of times a week. She has a great time with him.”
If he’s like his dead cousin, Jorge, I’ve no doubt how likeable he is. I still occasionally think of the man, regret that our lives had to play out the way they did. “So we’re paying her to date him, and she’s falling for him?”
“Sort of,” Claudia says. “Ian’s pissed about it, but Toba’s still a pro. She’ll come through for us. I promise, boss.”
I shrug my shoulders. Don Henri always said no problem ever existed that couldn’t be dwarfed by a greater problem. I look over toward Lorrel, my greater problem
. “Hopefully I’ll be back within the week,” I say.
17
When I ask Lorrel to come downstairs with me to see whether anything of Chloe’s might fit her, she shakes her head. “I will not wear clothes just because my human form makes you uncomfortable,” she mindspeaks.
“It’s patrol boats that make me uncomfortable,” I explain again.
It takes more than half an hour to coax her downstairs. We take an equally long time going through the closet and drawers, Lorrel rejecting every piece of clothing my wife owns, except for a tiny blue bikini that Chloe bought and then wore only once because “it was just too tight.”
At the dock, after the Grady White’s Yamahas have been lowered and kicked to life, just before I’m about to cast off the last line, Lorrel mindspeaks, “My grandmother’s ring! I must bring it back to Mowdar.”
I groan and look at my watch—11:12 A.M. As much as I know Bimini’s only thirty-five miles away and that we have plenty of time to cross the Gulf Stream and cruise to any of the islands near it before dark falls, I’m ready to get underway. “I’ve put it away. It will take a little while for me to get it,” I mindspeak.
She trills out a laugh. “Now you want to leave? Do we no longer have time? Or is the ring already in your treasure room? Mowdar told me how much you Undrae love your treasure.”
“Okay already,” I mindspeak, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Leaving the motors growling in neutral, I step off the boat. Lorrel gets up to join me and I hold up one hand, open palm toward her, mindspeak, “Just wait here,” and walk toward the stairs to the veranda. For all her avowed disinterest in treasure, I’m still not about to let this Pelk see the DelaSangre treasure room or how to access it.
“Oh, the Undrae wants to keep his treasure secret,” Lorrel mindspeaks. “He wants to make sure no one steals one of his coins.” Her laughter follows me all the way into the house.
To my chagrin, no patrol boats stop us as we shoot out the Wayward Channel into the ocean—though I’m sure the skimpy blue bikini and Lorrel’s trim, small body would have made any patrolman stare at me as if I were a dirty old man out with an underage girl. I wait for Lorrel to say something about our not needing to be so concerned about being stopped, but the girl sits beside me, silent, slipping her grandmother’s gold ring on and off her ring finger.
The ocean, so sleepy and calm in the early morning has woken up, and I guide the Grady White through swells that grow higher the further we venture from shore. By the time we reach the Gulf Stream, the swells have grown to the size of small hills.
I grin as I work the wheel and the throttles, the Grady White responding exactly as I wish, the deep blue waters of the Gulf Stream rising and falling around us, the air rich with the wet, clean smell of the open ocean.
“You like this?” Lorrel mindspeaks.
“Sure.” I nod.
“It would have been so much simpler to swim.”
I gesture toward the side. “Be my guest. You’ll find me anchored in Bimini Harbor.”
Shaking her head, Lorrel mindspeaks, “We are going near Bimini—not to it.”
The swells diminish as soon as we leave the Gulf Stream and enter the clear, light blue shallows of the Bahamas. I throw the throttles forward and race the rest of the way toward Bimini. For the first time Lorrel stands, searching the sea, the horizon for something.
She sees Bimini rising into sight first and points toward it. “That way,” she mindspeaks.
The closer we get to the island the more boats we see, sailors, fishermen, large yachts cruising over for a few days’ relaxation. Some come close enough to wave, and when Lorrel waves back, I mindspeak, “Aren’t you glad you’re wearing that suit?”
Lorrel shrugs. “I am sure they have seen naked boaters before. Have not you?”
She guides me closer to the island, sniffing the air, peering at the water, making me circle until we face the narrow strip of pine tree-studded sand and mangrove swamp that make up North Bimini.
“Do you know where you’re going?” I mindspeak.
Lorrel nods. “It is easier to find underwater. But I know.” She points to an area a little less than a mile off from the island. “Over there.”
“Bimini Road?” I mindspeak, turning the boat toward it. I know the area. I’ve taken Chloe and the kids to it a number of times, to swim and dive and sightsee.
“I do not know it by that name.”
“There are rock formations there. Because they’re pretty uniform and placed all together like giant stone pavers, some people think they were cut and put in place. . . .”
“They were cut and put in place,” Lorrel mindspeaks.
The certainty with which she says it makes me turn to her. I’ve heard the conjectures for years and treated it as a fun tale to tell Henri when we dove over the rocks. “So you think it’s Atlantis too?” I mindspeak.
She shakes her head. “Atlantis is a myth for humans. Once they called my people mermaids too.”
At the rocks, Lorrel motions for me to slow down. My depthfinder reads fifteen feet, but in the clear water the wide, flat, rectangular stones look as if I could reach down and touch them. I shake my head at the mammoth size of it all, wide as a major expressway, sixteen hundred feet long. “Why would anyone want to put this here?” I mindspeak.
Lorrel grins at me. “Ask Mowdar.” Walking to the bow, she points for me to cruise up the middle of the stone formation.
We anchor where the stones flow into a wide J at the end of the formation. I look around, study the other boats anchored nearby, a sailboat, two tour boats and a rubber inflatable, none within shouting distance. “Do not worry. I will not draw attention. I will keep the bathing suit on,” Lorrel mindspeaks, smiling. She inclines her head toward the water. “You can come if you want.”
By the time I pull off my T-shirt, she’s already sliced into the water. I watch her reach bottom, skimming just over the stones faster than I can ever hope to swim. Taking a deep breath, I dive after her. After the Pelk girl’s near silent dive, mine sounds more like a buffalo doing a cannonball. I swim toward Lorrel, but as fast as I go her pale body and blue bikini keep drawing further away.
She stops near the far end of the J, swimming from stone to stone, examining each one, feeling around its exposed edge. One particular rock, a slightly elevated one, seems to draw her special interest and she settles beside it, digging beneath it with one arm, sand billowing around her, forming a sand cloud that obscures any view of her and the rock.
I slow, then stop as the sand cloud starts to swirl, the water above the rock turning turbulent. The disturbance expands outward until a final belch of sand shrouds everything within a dozen yards of the stone.
“Lorrel!” I mindspeak, “Lorrel!” swimming forward as fast as I can again. The water turns still but no answer comes. Trying to stare through the murky water, I rush toward the rock and find only the stone and the sand slowly settling on it.
Calling out to Lorrel again, I reach under the bottom edge of the rock as she did. But my lungs start to feel tight. Knowing they’ll soon begin to ache for air. I stop my search, shoot to the surface and tread water, taking deep breaths, building up my lungs so I can spend a few more precious moments below.
I consider changing into my natural form. I know it would allow me to spend much more time between breaths, but I can’t risk it with so many humans nearby. I call for Lorrel again, receive no reply, take one last deep gulp of air and dive.
This time I let my body settle beside the stone just as Lorrel did. I find a shallow depression in the sand under the rock, deep enough for me to extend my arm into it. My fingers encounter sand and the top of something hard, possibly metallic.
Like Lorrel, I begin shoveling sand away from the object, the water around me growing cloudy as I remove enough sand to allow me to work my hand around what feels like a metal rod. I tug on it. Nothing happens and I tug on it again. It budges just the slightest bit, and wedging my shoul
der against the rock for leverage, I yank as hard as I can.
Sand boils around me, the stone swiveling up as if on a hinge, and the sandy bottom beneath it dropping away. I kick my legs and flail my arms, trying to swim away, to reach the surface, but the water rushes under the rock, sucking me along, carrying me down a tunnel that turns dark, in an instant, as the rock swings back into place above me.
Stone walls scrape my skin as the current pulls me downward. I stop fighting it. With no room to shift shape, I concentrate only on relaxing my body, saving as much air as possible, preparing myself to react to whatever may come.
All downward motion ceases. A weaker current draws me along another tunnel, or corridor, even narrower than the first, carrying me forward for a few long moments until I come to rest against what feels like a huge, woven net, slick with algae.
Ignoring the tightness building again in my chest, I feel around it, fingering the knots, noting the regularity of the large square holes. Wondering whether I’ve been caught in some peculiar monster’s trap or if this is some device of the Pelk, I use each knot hole to pull myself up, hoping it will lead me to something before my air runs out.
The climb takes only a minute, but each second of it drags as my lungs constrict and my chest begins to ache. When my head finally breaks free of the water, I gasp into the air, almost gagging at the dank, stale smell of it. Still I gulp one deep breath after another. Lorrel laughs somewhere near me. “Were you really worried about me?” she mindspeaks. “Or were you just concerned about the antidote?”
Turning in the water, I find her sitting crosslegged on a wide stone ledge not more than ten feet from me. A small round depression full of water on the floor near her gives off a dull green glow that lights the area, showing the stone walls of what I assume is a cavern. I swim toward her, pull myself out of the water and instantly shiver in the cool air. “That was a nasty thing to do,” I growl. When she doesn’t react I mindspeak the words.
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