by Jim McCann
Epigraph
“Put two ships in the open sea, without wind or tide,
and, at last, they will come together.”
—Jules Verne
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Epigraph
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Photo Section
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
AMNESTY BAY, 1985
The wind howled that night as though the sea were crying out like a wounded animal. The rain bore down in torrents. The dark sky flashed as lightning streaked across it in a rage. Through it all, the beacon from the lighthouse’s watchtower illuminated the sea and sand as it swept back and forth, patrolling the surf.
From his perch in the gallery of the lighthouse, Tom Curry thought he saw something bobbing in the violent waves. Tom swept back his wavy brown hair and leaned over the rails to get a better view. Lightning lit the air, revealing something washed up on the rocks. The young man raced down the steps of the lighthouse, through the kitchen, and out the front door. The wind slammed the door shut behind Tom as he bolted for the rocks that lined the shore. The storm shutters rattled in his wake.
A wave crashed upon the rocks, sending mist high into the air. Tom wiped it out of his eyes and looked closer. He was right—there was something the waves had carried in on their tumultuous tide. Shielding his eyes from the downpour, he saw something that made him run to the rocks with renewed urgency—locks of golden hair lay across the rough terrain. The sea hadn’t washed something ashore, but rather, someone. Someone who needed Tom’s help. The lighthouse keeper hoisted the unresponsive woman into his arms.
Though she was helpless, unconscious, nothing about her seemed weak. Her clothing was completely foreign to Tom; it looked at first to be a wet suit, but looking closer, it seemed to be some kind of armor. Blood was seeping out of one of the tears. She was injured! As he turned to bring her back to the safety of his home, something sharp pricked his leg. In the woman’s hand was a gleaming trident, the likes of which Tom had only read about in tales of sea mythology. The staff curved at the end, forming five sharp points. He tried taking it from her, but it was as though the trident were an extension of the woman’s arm, so tight was her grip on it. He put the thought out of his mind, focused on the fact that the woman wasn’t breathing. He had to act quickly.
Tom burst through the front door, shoved the table setting for one onto the floor, and laid the woman on the table. The door crashed, closed by the wind, as the television blared something about flash flood warnings from the unexpected high tides. The lighthouse keeper tuned all of that out, intently focused on getting the woman to breathe again. He began to perform CPR, pushing one, two, three, four, five times on her chest before blowing air into her mouth. Nothing. He tried again. Still no response. Lightning struck nearby outside, causing the lights and TV to go dark.
“Come on!” Tom took a deep breath and had moved to repeat the process when he was suddenly stopped. The woman’s eyes had snapped open.
The emerald green in her eyes seared through him, as though she was about to lash out at an intruder. Her eyes widened in shock as she coughed, spitting out water and, to Tom, it seemed, choking on the air around them. Finally, she took a deep breath in.
“You—you’re alive!” But Tom’s joy disappeared as his “damsel in distress” sprang off the table, spun around to face him, and pointed her trident at his face, poised to kill.
Tom raised his hands. “You weren’t breathing,” he managed to choke out, eyes on the deadly prongs of the trident.
At once, the lights snapped back on and the television again began loudly broadcasting the severe weather alerts. The woman twisted her wrist slightly and hurled the trident, impaling the TV. She turned back to glare at Tom. He knew he should be scared, but for some reason he felt something far different from fear. The way the woman moved was so fluid it was as if they were underwater. He admired her.
Just as he was searching for the right thing to say, the golden-haired siren who’d washed up on his shore, the killer of his television, collapsed into his arms, unconscious.
The next morning, the mystery woman stirred. She had slept the entire night on the couch without moving, a well-worn blanket wrapped around her. Tom looked over from the kitchen, where he was frying eggs. He poured two cups of tea from the kettle on the stove and walked over to her.
Tom blew on his mug. “Careful, it’s hot.”
She took the mug from his hand, looking into the warm water. She brought it to her lips, blowing on it as well.
“That’s right,” Tom encouraged her and took a sip. The woman mimicked him, a look of surprise flashing over her face as she drank.
“I’m making some breakfast. I’m sure you’re hungry after the night you had.” Tom glanced across the cozy living room to the television, where her trident remained pierced in the now-defunct screen. “Um, just curious, but where did that come from?”
The woman looked at him a moment, then stood and retrieved her trident.
“Who are you?” Tom couldn’t keep the curiosity from his voice anymore. He had stayed awake all night, running possible scenarios in his head as to the woman’s origin.
She stood taller, cleared her voice, and finally spoke. “I am Atlanna, queen of Atlantis.”
Of all the theories Tom had concocted, this was certainly not one of them. He moved to her, extending his hand to shake hers. Atlanna glanced at it and looked back into Tom’s eyes, not returning the gesture.
“I-I’m Tom, uhhh, keeper of the lighthouse,” he said, gesturing around his own small “kingdom.”
He gave a nervous smile as he reached over and picked up a snow globe. Inside was a replica of the lighthouse. Atlanna looked at it quizzically. Tom shook it, and Atlanna gave a look of wonder as tiny artificial snowflakes floated in the water, coating the lighthouse in a dusting of white. Tom’s smile was genuine this time.
It was winter. Atlanna stood atop the lighthouse perch looking out to the sea as she had done daily in the months since Tom had rescued her. As Tom came out to wrap a blanket around her, he wondered if she was looking longingly at a home she missed, or keeping watch for something worse to emerge from the waters.
Tom had learned from Atlanna that she had fled her undersea kingdom to escape the unhappiness of an arranged marriage to a man she didn’t love. In doing so, she had betrayed not only her ruler, but her entire kingdom. She hadn’t known what to expect when she’d escaped the guards who had chased her that stormy night that she washed up on the shore. As snow began to fall around her, she reached out to catch a snowflake. Every day seems to bring something new, Tom thought, smiling. Something unexpected.
Looking into Atlanna’s eyes, he saw the most unexpected surprise of all: love.
“Residents are advised to seek shelter inland as the Category Four hurricane Arthur is expected to make landfall within the hour . . .”
The local meteorologist was updating the situation, weather maps flashing across the new television set. It had been nearly a year to the day that the two lovers had first met, and, like that fateful night, a storm was raging once more. Atlanna smiled.
“We’re safe here. I can read the tides.” Her voice was as confident as ever.
Pulling her in closer, Tom put his arms around her pregnant belly. “What about naming him Arthur?”
“After the hurricane? I hope our son will be a bit calmer. Although the way he kicks, I feel like he’s enj
oying swimming around in here,” Atlanna said, placing her hand on Tom’s.
“After a legend. He is a king, after all.” Tom held her, feeling their unborn child kick.
Atlanna looked out through the storm at the sea. “He’s more than that. He is living proof that our people, those of the land and the sea, can coexist in harmony.” Her voice was tinged with hope. “One day, he shall be the one to unite our two worlds.”
Lightning struck and lit the night sky, giving Tom and Atlanna a clear view of the ocean’s swelling waves. There was no thunder that followed, as though nature itself approved the peace Atlanna hoped their child could one day restore.
Arthur was chewing on a picture frame, as three-year-olds do. Tom stifled a chuckle as he took the wooden frame from his son’s hands. He looked at the picture—it showed Atlanna leaning against him, their newborn son wrapped in the same blanket that had kept her warm the night she entered Tom’s life.
“Yeah, this is one of my favorites, too, son,” he said. “You know what else is a favorite of mine? Your mother’s stories. Be a good boy and pay attention; you’ll need to know all about both sides of where you came from one day.”
Atlanna smiled as Arthur climbed back into her lap. She was holding a homemade doll wielding a mighty wooden fork in its hands. As she began Arthur’s favorite story, Arthur clapped in delight.
“The Original Trident could only be wielded by the strongest Atlantean,” she said, shaking the fork. “It gave King Atlan mastery over the Seven Seas. However, he became so powerful that the ocean itself grew jealous and sent a terrible earthquake to destroy Atlantis!”
Arthur covered his eyes, peeking through fingers that were already stronger than those of most children twice his age, as his mother’s voice grew ominous. “Down, down, down Atlantis tumbled, crashing below the waves and deep into the sea. It cracked into seven pieces as it fell before settling on the ocean floor.”
Arthur gasped. Atlanna took the fork from the doll and held it up. “Legend has it that one day a new king will rise to power. He will find the lost trident of Atlan and use it to restore the Seven Kingdoms into a unified Atlantis, bringing peace, unknown for centuries.”
She handed the fork to Arthur, a symbol of his destiny. Arthur began to chew on the fork, giggling.
“I’m not sure which he likes more, the story or the fork,” Tom said, laughing at their son’s alternating actions of jabbing the fork in the air and chomping enthusiastically on it.
“He’s destined for great things, Tom. I can feel it. One day, I hope to bring him to my people as a symbol of peace, and they will see that wars and fighting can . . .” Atlanna’s voice trailed off as she looked past Tom and out the window, something in the sea suddenly capturing her attention.
Tom sensed a change in Atlanna even before she yelled his name. At the sound of her warning, “TOM!” he ducked beside the couch and covered Arthur with his own body as the wall exploded inward from a powerful gush of water.
He turned to see a pair of strangely suited figures enter through the opening in the wall. Tom could only describe them as wearing what appeared to be high-tech deep-sea-diving suits—skintight, showing bodies toned for fighting; helmets with water inside them, the faces inside clearly breathing the seawater; and carrying strange blasters that fired water like a cannon.
“Hydro-pulse rifles!” Atlanna shouted. With a swiftness he had only seen once before—on the night they met—Tom watched Atlanna streak across the room and kick the nearest soldier hard in the ribs. Atlanna had been injured the night they met, so Tom had only witnessed a fraction of his love’s capabilities. Now, as she fought to defend Tom and Arthur, he saw just how strong and deadly Atlanna was. He understood why she was a queen.
A blast of water erupted from the rifle of the other soldier, nearly hitting Tom. Atlanna leapt in a fluid motion and, with deadly precision, spun in midair and kicked through the glass of the soldier’s helmet, leaving him unable to breathe. Two more soldiers stormed in through the hole in the wall. Looking up, Tom saw Atlanna’s trident mounted on the wall where they had hung it years ago.
“Atlanna!” Tom threw the trident to her. The two operated like one as she reached up and caught her weapon without looking back.
“RRRRAAAGHHH!” Atlanna’s fury was unleashed fully as she knocked back the two advancing soldiers that remained with a single thrust.
Without taking time to catch her breath, she scooped up the soldiers, two under each arm. Running to the pier, she threw their bodies back into the sea. As she returned, her eyes were beginning to swell with tears.
“It’s okay. You were amazing. We’re safe now.” But Tom’s assurance was met with resistance as Atlanna shook her head. These weren’t tears of relief, he realized. As he searched her eyes, he knew what this was: goodbye.
She walked across the room, hung the trident on the wall, and looked at her son. This would be all he would have of her, aside from stories and pictures. Tom picked up Arthur and joined Atlanna as she walked to the edge of the pier.
“You don’t have to do this, Atlanna.” Tom’s voice cracked as he pleaded his case. “We can run. Away from the ocean, far into the mountains, or to a city where they—”
Atlanna’s hand on his arm told him this was one decision that was out of either of their hands. “They’ll come back. They know I’m still alive, and no matter how far I go, they will be relentless.” She stroked her toddler’s curly hair. “You must look out for our son. Please tell him I did this for him. For all of us.”
“He’ll ask about you,” Tom said. They both knew their son would never stop wondering where his mother had gone.
She wiped a tear away from Tom’s eye and used the same finger to wipe away one from her own. She pointed to the pier’s edge. “One day, when it is safe, I’ll return to you. To both of you. Right here, at sunrise, we will meet again, I swear. And it will be forever.” She choked back more tears.
“Forever.” Tom tried to sound hopeful.
Giving the two most important people in her life one last kiss, she turned and dived into the sea, deep down to the land that she had told stories of, the kingdom that demanded its queen’s return.
Tom stood for almost an hour, Arthur by his side, holding his hand. He looked out to the ocean and made his own vow—he would wait at sunrise every morning for his love to return. Giving a final glance, he scooped Arthur into his arms and carried the young child back up the pier.
Arthur was looking at the sea again—rather, a tiny fraction of it, encased in glass. The glass went from the floor and arced over his head and back down to the other side, forming a tunnel of sea life surrounding him. He was on a field trip to the aquarium.
It had been six years since his mother had left. Six long years of watching his father greet the sunrise at the end of the pier every morning, only to return alone. Six years of stories of a fantastical kingdom in the ocean’s depths, where his mother had returned to rule until one day she could be free and rejoin her family. Six years of wondering whether to believe the stories.
As Arthur looked at the seawater behind the glass and the ocean life that filled it, a part of him sensed he wasn’t normal. Especially here. Even through the glass, Arthur could taste the brine, smell the tang of salt, and, if he quieted his own thoughts, almost feel . . . something. His father told Arthur it was the song of the sea, but he didn’t know what that meant. Whatever it was, there was definitely something more to it.
“All life came from the seas,” the tour guide’s voice droned, repeating the same speech he had given dozens of times to hundreds of guests. “So if we want to understand ourselves, we must journey to where we began.”
“Hey! Can they hear us?” Mike, a pathetically dim classmate of Arthur’s, pounded on the glass.
“Yeah,” chimed in Matt, Tweedledee to Mike’s Tweedledum, also banging.
Arthur’s strange feeling grew as the boys hit the glass harder and harder. He turned back to the glass and saw dozens
of fish staring back at him.
They want those two jerks to stop, Arthur thought. “They want you to stop!” Arthur didn’t realize he had said that out loud.
Mike and Matt stopped and turned on their classmate.
“Really? You can talk to fish now?” Matt made his way to Arthur.
Mike shoved Arthur against the tank. “Freak. Why don’t you tell the fish they’re lame and only good for eating?”
WHAM!
Startled, the two bullies looked up at the glass dome above them. A ten-foot-long sand tiger shark stared down at the boys, teeth bared. The boys stopped in their tracks. The sand tiger shark charged again at the glass, this time causing it to form spiderweb cracks! The bullies ran to their teacher.
Arthur put his hand on the glass and took deep, controlled breaths. Almost instantly, the shark began to calm, its tail swishing slowly in the water. Hundreds of other sea creatures appeared then from the depths of the tank: stingrays, eels, sharks, squid, and a rainbow of fish. They all looked to him as if waiting for instructions. The shark closed its mouth, looked at Arthur, and seemingly gave a slight nod before swimming off.
“Lame? I’m sure he feels the same way about you two,” Arthur said, a sly smile crossing his face as he walked past the two bullies, who were now white as ghosts.
Arthur’s grin stayed on his face; he knew that the bullies would never bother him again.
One
Stalnoivolk, a six-hundred-foot Russian submarine, churned through the waters a few miles off the eastern Atlantic coastline, the seven blades of its propeller cutting through the sea like an underwater Ferris wheel. Attached to the side like a suckerfish was a sleek, high-tech miniature submarine, its white running lights flashing across its pitch-black hull. As sea life parted to get out of the massive sub’s path, inside, the crew was seeking shelter from rapid machine-gun fire.
The emergency lights inside the control room cut out as the machine gun ceased fire and the alarms went silent. A middle-aged African-American man in a slick wet suit hoisted the gun to his shoulder, the barrel still smoking, as he stepped over the bodies of the dead Russian crewmen. Jesse Kane gave a wicked grin as he watched his band of pirates take their places at the ship’s controls.