And now, as I had promised, for the reason why they could breathe underwater:
Although the Kala can breathe comfortably in regular seawater, they do not prefer it. And so, for this reason, when their city was founded, many many centuries ago, they had decided to build upon a system of naturally occurring underwater air vents, or geysers, which to any novice observer had looked like continually erupting volcanos of air. Which in practice, had aerated the waters in the golden lit city of Kalastaa so intensely, that incredibly, even land dwellers could breathe the water. And although it was the most unnatural thing to do, and would oddly enough make one horribly thirsty, they could breathe the water within the city without fear of drowning.
And it was sometime during their tour of the city, and its arenas, and parks, spiraling towers and apartments, that Barbara’s hair began to glow an extra shade brighter. Which was hardly noticeable in that shining golden city, until it had traveled down her face and to the edges of her fingernails.
It was their thirteenth day in that world, and she was being reflected.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Queen’s Ship
Queen Ilayda stood upon the forecastle of her flagship, the Ismet (that same massive vessel our travelers had been imprisoned upon), with its three-masted sails and forty cannons. And that morning the Queen relished in the sky peoples’ failed attacks, picking off the best of the swarm one by one: with water cannons, and nets, and bundled lead pellet shot that was horrifically apt at close ranges.
And she had caught up to the city before they could make their escape, and had ordered her long range cannons to be filled with cannonballs that would flame upon firing, and all was ready and awaited her final order.
(The following conversation was of course spoken in their ancient language, but I have translated it, here, for you into modern English.)
���We’ve done what was asked, Your Majesty,��� Captain R��zg��r said.
But the Queen did not turn to acknowledge him, but slyly amused herself with her long awaited victory. The saltwater breeze blew its air across the bow of the ship.
���If I may, Your Eminence,��� he said with a strain in his voice, ���The city is unarmed, and is filled with innocent people, women and children.���
The Queen’s back and shoulders stiffened at the word innocent, as true as it was.
���We’ve already ruined their army, Your Majesty,��� he continued, ���Perhaps we should let them retreat, and you would be praised, My Queen, for your kindness.���
Ilayda turned to face her captain, with no ounce of kindness in her expression.
���Is it kindness to let these traitors go unpunished?��� she said, her lip curling in disgust. ���And if their insurrection should spread across the Empire, what then, would that be merciful?���
The Queen’s fleet looked like toy boats below him, as Ata stared down from the edge of a dragonfly ship, one of the few remaining after the attack.
With one hand he held an explosive charge close to his chest, and with the other he grabbed at Destek’s shoulder to steady himself.
And that morning, thus far, had been especially horrific for Ata: a failed attempt to recover the globe, the monster that had swallowed his friends whole, and the battle in which they’d sustained heavy loses. Rarely does anyone know the day in which they will die, but if it was to be this day, then Ata, who was predominantly self-preserving, had decided to do something good, and for a people he’d hardly known.
���This won’t explode when I hit the water, right?��� Ata asked.
���It is unlikely,��� Destek replied. Which was hardly consoling, but Ata had to stick with his plan, and it might be that this was their last chance to disrupt the Queen’s navy.
He closed his eyes, held in a deep breath, and leapt. Falling past the beating dragonfly wings, falling faster and faster; Keeping his body straight, and his armbands from touching.
At such speeds the cool water would burn against his skin. Toes pointed. His eyes and mouth clenched tightly, and holding the cap onto his explosive charge, as firmly as anything he’d ever held. The water. Pain.
Splash!
Captain R��zg��r, the Queen, and all her crew, ran to the port side�� to see what had fallen, but they could see nothing below the waves.
���What was that?��� the Queen shouted.
���A boy, Your Eminence,��� one of the crewmen answered.
The Queen’s hair tousled in the sea breeze.
���Earth…��� she grumbled, knowing whom it must be.
The force of the impact had all but rattled his consciousness from him, and he had sunken so deeply beneath the waves that the Queen’s ship seemed to be only a slim shadow, but through it all, somehow he’d kept ahold of the explosive.
And once his eyes came into focus again, he swam upward to the surface, toward the direction of the ship, being, as you’ll remember, a fantastic swimmer, but desperately out of breath, all his air knocked from his chest in the fall.
His lips were barely above the water, as the arrows sung over his head, nearly clipping his ears.
���There he is!��� Queen Ilayda shouted.
A deep breath, then back below the surface. They continued shooting at him, but their arrows bobbed at the surface, and he was far from their reach by then, diving under the ship’s hull.
In the murky shadowed portion below the stern, he found the rudder, and driving the explosive charge with his hand, he wedged it between the wood of the rudder and the wood of the ship. After such a brutal fall, could he really trust the device’s capped fuse? Scientifically he knew that he shouldn’t, but he was running out of air, and the city might have started their ascent into the clouds by this time, and this may be their last chance for escape.
Decisions like these, if adamantly purposed beforehand, are hardly decisions at all. The cap was pulled. Silvery metallic sparks shot out of the charge.
���The fuse. The sparks. It’s working,��� Ata thought, then realizing he was completely foolish to have stayed so long to check for them.
Pushing back away from the hull, bracelets struck together, he rocketed backwards out of the water. Pain, again; Coarse rope burned into his skin, enclosing around him. His armbands tried to pull him forward, through the net, which was impossible. He was above the waves, his arms pulling through the holes in the net, but the Queen’s crew had him firmly in their grasp, and being themselves raised in such a culture of fishermen, they would not easily let him go.
Ata twisted and wriggled, trying to get free off the net, but the more he struggled, the more entangled he became. The crew pulled all the harder, and patiently and meticulously he was dragged to the deck of the ship, and immediately he felt the force in his armbands zapped away, and he collapsed upon the wood planks.
���That should be about thirty seconds,��� was the thought that entered into Ata’s mind, when the explosion happened.
Blast!
A deep and thunderous boom, water sprayed outward and upward from below the ship, and high into the air, raining a hot mist onto them all.
The ship was thrown into chaos, and the crew was ordered to check the damages.
Men yelling from the lower decks, ���Biz bat��yoruz,��� which means, ���We are sinking.���
And the Captain jerked Ata from the net, holding him up by the collar of his wetsuit, so that his feet did not even touch the ground, shouting into his face, words that being translated mean, ���What have you done?���
For already they could feel, in the slightest way, that the ship was off balance, as it pitched toward the stern, and that area near the shattered rudder tucked lower, inch by inch below the rising waves.
*
�� The port side is the left side of a boat, when facing toward the front.
Chapter Thirty-Five
���Fire the cannons,��� Ilayda ordered.
���But, Your Majesty, the life rafts, and it is impossible to have a clear aim like this, and the gunpowder will be-��� the Captain objected.
���You question me, R��zg��r?��� the Queen asked, as if her mere statement were a threat.
And then shouting over the shuffling noise of distress flags being raised, and the cutting of life raft restraints that held each to the deck, the Queen yelled, subverting her captain’s customary chain of command.
���Fire the cannons!��� she yelled.
All work stopped, and the men just stared at her in bewilderment.
���Well, don’t just stand there,��� she continued.
Still there was no movement, as all the crewmen looked at their captain for confirmation, who was gazing at his queen, noticeably angered. He turned again to face his crew.
���Fire the cannons,��� he said, without the Queen’s adamance, and in his normal volume.
And so, it was in this way, with water seeping around their ankles, that the gunmen filed into the lower decks, readjusted their trajectories to compensate for the deepening slant of the ship, as they struggled to light the already dampened fuses.
And this is also how an apathetically fired flaming cannonball had, by chance, struck the edge of a wind sail on the lower portion of the island, igniting against the canvas, catching the island ablaze and burning upward: A roaring fire that might destroy the city of Aden, all for a Queen’s anger.
Atat��rk ��elik (as was Ata’s full name), stood upon the deck railing of the Ismet, that severely tilted and slowly sinking flagship of the Queen’s navy, watching as, far away in the distance, the citizens of the city of Aden stirred in a panic, cutting the ropes that tethered the wind sails, and the air scoops, and the kites that held aloft that glorious impossible city. He saw it burn in flames, until it crashed into the sea, and he felt the impact of the large rippling waves against their sinking hull.
All this he saw with his hands tied in front of him, the Queen having stolen his armbands, and gloating at her success, and looking in no part divine, as she claimed to be.
���Do you know your crimes, dear child?��� the Queen said, falsely loving, as if to mock him.
Ata glared at her.
���Do you know yours?��� he replied.
���Ahh,��� she cried in disgust, and grabbed at a sword with the hand that did not hold Ata’s armbands. And she drove the point at his back, between the shoulder blades, pushing him forward so that he would fall from the railing.
But it was in that moment that something incredible had happened. Riding upon the last surviving dragonfly ship (for all the others had been either shot from the sky or had burned in the fire), the last remaining and oldest member of the resistance that was still able to fight, Destek plummeted from the sky. He scooped Ata from the air, as he leapt from the railing, away from the Queen’s sword blade. And they lifted up into the air quickly, away from the range of the crewmen’s arrows.
���Just like we planned,��� Ata joked, as the old man cut through the ropes that had bound Ata’s hands.
���You planned for this?��� Destek asked, confused by Ata’s English sarcasm.
Ata smiled. ���No, I guess not,��� he said.
From their heights above the sea, they looked down and saw the city of Aden floating, defenseless against the Queen’s navy, but the Queen’s own ship slowly sinking.
���Let’s go back,��� Ata said, motioning toward the ship.
���Now that is a good plan,��� Destek replied, and tilted the weight of his airship, aiming it downward.
Arrows skimmed past them as they dove, making a loop around the ship, and coming at a full speed toward the Queen. An arrow shot out, striking Destek’s arm. Their airship fell sharply, crashing into the deck, sending Ata rolling. The repeated force of the splintery planks battered his elbows and scuffed his hands. His head was spinning, but his eyes quickly came into focus.
He’d landed near a pile of something, intertwined upon the deck: a net, the same net that he’d been caught in when he was dragged back to the ship before the explosion. It was hardly a weapon, but something at least. He snatched it off the ground, and running at the Queen, he threw it over her.
She laughed, jarringly.
���You’ve done nothing,��� she said, and continued laughing, so that all the commotion on the deck ceased, as the crew was caught by surprise; all of them, least expecting such guttural laughter during an ongoing battle.
Though Ata did not seem to hear her. For something else had caught his attention, something that had rolled away from their crashed airship without any to notice it until then. And while the crew stood silently, in wonderment at Ata’s nonresponse and at the Queen’s continued laughter, Ata simply knelt down to pick that thing up from the grainy deck. It was his mechanical ball, and the Queen still held his armbands in her hand.
And with the Queen’s laughter still in his ears, and the smoke from Aden rising above the ocean waves, Ata twisted the ball in his hands until it reengaged, springing open around its center, and glowing an electrified haze.
Then, reeling back with all his strength, he hurled the ball into the sea. And the armbands that the Queen held pulled up suddenly, dragging her into the air, until she could let them go, and she was dropped into the sea, a net hung over her, that was weighing her head below the water.
���Help!��� Queen Ilayda cried, her mouth choking with water. ���R��zg��r!���
But he did not say a word, and held up his hand for his men to stand down.
Now you may remember that, in a previous chapter, Barbara and Timothy had been reflected from the bottom of the ocean, away from that underwater civilization, to the place where the globe had resurfaced, after Ata had inflated the recovery balloon (which by an odd miracle came to the surface only yards from the Queen’s own ship).
And you should also know now, that the contents of our story have not all happened in order. So that at the same time that Ata was throwing his mechanical ball into the sea, Barbara and Timothy were both being pulled upward through the deep layers of ocean, toward the surface, just in time to hear the Queen’s desperate cries for help, and to see her crew standing motionless on the sinking ship’s deck.
Barbara and Timothy coughed up the deep seawater from their lungs and began to breathe the fresh sea air again. They wiped the salt water from their blurred eyes, though it took them only a few seconds to assess the situation. Without a second thought, Barbara began to swim towards the Queen.
But Timothy grabbed her hand before she was too far beyond his reach.
���What are you doing?��� he asked.
���Let me go,��� Barbara snapped. ���She’s dying.���
���So,��� he answered. ���She’s a murderer… How many thousands of people has she killed?���
She glared at him with no amount of patience, so Timothy let her go.
���Fine,��� she explained. ���Then let her die, but not like this.��� And she swam to aid Queen Ilayda, but the weight of the net was too heavy and awkward for her to lift on her own. Ilayda sputtered, gasping for any bit of air as her head went under. Yet, all of a sudden, Barbara felt the net grow slightly lighter, and glancing up she saw her friend, who by his expression was good enough to admit when he’d been wrong.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Of Guilt and Justice
If there is one science that the people of Sonsuz Su are most capable with, it would be the science of astronomy. Thus, it took them little time at all to finish recalibrating the globe, as soon as Barbara and Timothy had explained the dials and switches as best as they knew them.
Though what took several days longer, where the larger debates an
d delineations, regarding what to do with Queen Ilayda. Through several heated days within the House of Justice, an even representation of the elders of Aden, and of respected captains from the Queen’s navy, met to discuss her fate.
From the very beginning, and during the process of these meetings, Ata said often, and ardently, that he’d not known why they should stay, considering they’d had the new coordinates. And also, that his father, he was convinced, would need his help, being stranded in that cavern with the man in gray, and his deplorable henchmen.
Albeit, Barbara and Timothy didn’t seem bothered by this fact, saying that his father would be as safe, at that moment, in Gleomu, as he could ever be; And that Matilde Wolcott could handle twice as many armed guards, and would come out alright. But this was not something Ata could believe, having never sparred against Timothy’s grandmother, nor having seen her aim with a dagger or a crossbow. And so, consequently, he made such a terrible fuss all through the ���trial���. (Though it was strictly speaking not a trial, because there was no doubting the Queen’s guilt. Instead, it was more accurately a sentencing hearing, albeit a hearing held by many admirable and gracious judges.)
Which after all was done, and debated, they decided to exact on her the same sort of punishment that she’d so freely given to many of her subjects. Namely, she was to be marooned in the open ocean, with the provision that if she could return the next day unharmed, then she would be allowed to live. Though first she was given a special punishment, being forced to stand before the elders, and the chief captains, and all her soldiers, and the people of Aden, to admit to the crimes for which she was charged, and to recant her claims that she was ever a goddess, or divine by any special right. And during the final sunset, she was sent away from the city, in a single-manned boat, and a bell sounded to signal her execution.
The Histories of Earth, Books 1-4: In the Window Room, A Prince of Earth, All the Worlds of Men, and Worlds Unending Page 38