She had been right–in spite of everything I’d been through I didn’t quite believe them. And yet I remembered, now, Abraxia coming at me and drawing up short when something slithered around me from behind and sent a thousand volts of electric pain through my body. And from what Tara said, jellyfish tentacles had been seared into my flesh.
Knowing the size of the jellyfish that had stung me, it would be a wonder if I came out of that alive.
I frowned at the recollection. The jellyfish had saved me, effectively staving off any further attacks from my assailant, but what was the use if it killed me in the process?
Too many questions vied for the spotlight. But I was here with Axel and Tara now. Best to focus on what they could answer. So, they’d resurrected me. “How?”
Tara glanced around the cavern. “The instructions for the resurrection ceremony are laid out in the hieroglyphs. We’ve been studying them. You just need your dead person, the blood of a sacrifice, an hour glass filled with sand from the area, and to chant this old Egyptian proverb, and voila. The only kicker is you can only use the crypt to resurrect one soul per century. But, since it hasn’t been used in millennia…”
“A sacrifice?”
“Er, well we just took that to mean the blood of a living thing, so we stole a blood bag from the hospital. We weren’t completely sure it would work, but…we had to try. To be honest, I’m not sure how much of our success was because there’s something to the ceremonial spell, and how much had to do with…the specimen that came in on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“The jellyfish tentacles? They started glowing when we started the ceremony. Given your extraordinary features, and the way the tentacles were unnaturally fused to you, and that you turned up after vanishing down a rabbit hole searching for Atlantis… It just seemed like you might have had a brush with the supernatural that made you susceptible to this kind of hocus pocus.” She shrugged. “Either way. The magic worked. At least, I think. How do you feel? Do you hurt anywhere? Can you move everything?”
Once again I attempted to push myself into a sitting position, and this time they helped me. I put my body through its range-of-motion paces, finding everything in working order.
Only then did it really start to hit me–I was alive, and I shouldn’t be. But Tara’s mention of sacrifices brought back Abraxia’s terrible plot to murder Turoxo as a sacrifice and cheat her way to the crown, and a feeling colder than death pervaded my body. Despair, deep and sharp, gnawed its way out of the numbness that had a hold of me. I put my palm flat against the ceremonial slab for support, feeling short of breath.
Or maybe I’d just forgotten how to breathe, and it had nothing to do with the plight of another world weighing on my shoulders.
But whether or not its weight was what I felt on my shoulders, it did weigh on my conscience.
“Sayler?”
I turned my head toward Axel’s voice, not really seeing him.
“There’s one more thing.” Once again his gaze flicked down to my bare torso, where I could still feel a faint icy-hot burning sensation where the worst of the welts must have lacerated my flesh. “When the resurrection took place, the web of tentacles stuck to your body glowed red-hot and melted into you. They’re gone. Inside you, or…part of you, somehow. It’s like you just absorbed them.”
I stared at him like a simpleton, everything culminating into one big pile of too much for Sayler to process, for one day. The heartache and bittersweet departure from Coda and Atlantis, Abraxia’s betrayal and shocking scheme, our brutal conflict, the lethal shock of a thousand jellyfish volts, awakening reborn in some Egyptian crypt in the upper world… How could I also swallow the implications of a part of that old, wise creature of the sea becoming one with me during my rebirthing?
What did that even mean?
No, it was too much.
“I have to go back,” I murmured deliriously.
“What?” Confusion puckered Tara’s forehead. I could see the dust in the creases of her skin.
But just like they had struggled to explain my resurrection upon my awakening, I couldn’t begin to impart the epic tale racing about in my head.
Brax was going to kill Turoxo–if she hadn’t already–and poison Codexious.
Oh, Coda…
How long had it been? I had the distinct urge to demand what day it was, how long I’d been asleep–how long I’d been dead, too–but I hadn’t measured time by anything other than auroras since diving to Atlantis, so what good would it do?
“What happened to you out there, Sayler?” Axel probed, trying to chisel away at my side of the story.
I stared down at the rusty residue trickling through the fissures of the slab, wondering whose blood had brought me back to life. “More like ‘down there’,” I corrected absently.
“I’m sorry?”
I raised my eyes to his, grounding myself in the present for just a moment. “I found Atlantis,” I breathed.
His eyes widened, his brows riding upwards.
“We knew it,” Tara whispered.
Axel shook his head. “We were so worried, when we heard about the Atlantis Project.”
Wait, what? “What about the Atlantis Project?”
“The recovery boat was hit by a freak storm, not long after you went after it. They lost the ruins overboard.”
Equal parts horror and triumph rushed through me. The archaeologist in me grieved over the loss of such a monumental find, but the part of me that had written ‘no sign of anything’ on that wax slate when I was staring at a fantastical sunken submarine from thousands of years ago…that part of me rejoiced.
The secret was safe.
I nodded. “Same storm that knocked me overboard, probably.”
“So you were there.”
“Lot of freak storms going around lately, diverting people’s courses,” Tara observed wryly.
Indeed there were. “I’m sorry, I don’t have time to explain,” I blurted, sliding myself toward the edge of the slab. If I was going to do anything about Brax’s plot, it had to be now. If it wasn’t already too late. “There’s a mer-king, and a crown up for grabs, and a deep-sea kingdom in peril, and the whole reason you had to resurrect me is because the one mermaid I thought I could trust is going to make a play for the throne, and when I found out she tried to kill me to keep me quiet, and now she’s going to poison Coda–” I choked a little on that last bit, my elbows buckling and a weak spell coming over me, forcing me to pause on the edge of the slab.
Two sets of hands were right there to catch me.
“Who’s Coda?” Tara asked.
Axel cast her a disbelieving glare. “A ‘mer-king’, a ‘deep-sea kingdom’, an underwater ‘throne’, and the most pertinent question you can come up with is ‘who’s Coda’? Remind me never to put you in charge of interrogating a suspect if the aim is to learn anything of import.”
I didn’t have time for their little tussles. My feet found the ground, and I pushed feebly through their supporting arms.
“Ho, where are you going there, Sayler?” Axel stopped me, taking me by the arm in a half-assisting, half-restricting hold.
“There’s no time–I have to get to him before she does.”
“Wait. Huh-uh,” Tara joined the objecting party. “You up and disappeared and were gone for three months without contact. You didn’t call, you didn’t write. Nothing. Radio silence. You’re not doing that again, and definitely not without an explanation. And I highly doubt you’re in any shape to go gallivanting off to…Atlantis–or whatever exotic island you’ve been on–after being in a coma, and then dead, and then freaking resurrected. Look at you, you can hardly walk.”
I wanted to tell her it was just because I hadn’t walked in those three months she’d referenced. That I hadn’t used my legs in a regular capacity pretty much since she last saw me, because I’d been swimming around like a fish, and hadn’t set foot on land. But she was right–how could I just up and return to
that other world, when I’d so resolutely sent myself back to the Surface to make things right? It would all be for nothing, and what if I couldn’t just come back again? What if I got mixed up in Brax’s evil plot and she really killed me the next time we tangled, and down the rabbit hole I would disappear forever, Axel and Tara never receiving any more of an explanation than the first time.
I paused, torn. This might be my only chance to make things right–say goodbye, even–to those I loved above the Surface. But this might also be my only chance to save Turoxo and Coda from Brax’s wiles.
I suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was too stifling down here for my oxygen-starved lungs. I clutched at Axel’s sleeve, my knees wobbling. “Please. I need some air.”
“Come on, let’s get her out of here,” Axel said, and they ushered me up an unsafe-looking sheaf of decaying steps that hugged a rickety ascension up the cavern wall. We wound our way up out of the underground fortress, the dripping silence of the crypt washed away by the rising howl of wind above ground.
So much for fresh air.
“Sounds like it’s letting up,” Tara remarked.
“The van isn’t far from the opening, either way,” Axel reassured me. “Here, cover your face with this.” He offered me his cowl, and we paused so he could secure it around my face. Tara put hers in place too, and then we huddled together and climbed the last few steps to a brighter, segregated antechamber, where scaffolding and new-looking ladders propped open a gap in the ceiling that led to the outside world.
I shielded my eyes against the light, used to the dark of the depths, and of caves, and of death.
When we emerged to the world, it was blinding. The wind still blew at a decent clip, but only alternating veils of sand swirled across the desert, letting the sun shine through at nearly full strength. I faltered, clamping my eyes shut. My escorts eased their pace, letting me take a moment for my eyes to adjust. Little did they know it was so much more than that. I rested, hands on knees, and panted into my cowl, readjusting to what it felt like to drag air into my lungs. It was so much more abrasive than the gentle flow of water through gills.
My eyes felt dry, too. Every blink of my lids like sandpaper. And it was so blazing, blistering hot. Ick. Had it been this irritating to adjust to life underwater? Or was part of this just what it felt like to come back from the dead?
I lifted my head, gazing across the desert. The shifting sands played across a shape in the distance. I squinted, trying to trace the culprit through pockets and snatches. Vertical columns, a glittering base, a blinding flash of blue at the top that winked in and out behind the golden gusts.
Recognition slithered up my spine just before the sands cleared enough to paint a full picture for me.
The Atlantean ruins.
Amphitrite’s crown.
Another mirage, of course. But it drew me upright, sucking me into its tractor beam. Like a lighthouse in the desert, it lured me forward. I shrugged off my escorts’ fingers.
“Sayler?”
“Just a moment.”
Confused, they let me go. I wandered away from the crypt, past the van waiting in the sand. Out into the desert, toward the impossible image of the pillars from the Deep. Coral was a pretty color, surrounded by the gold of the desert. It might have been one giant beach if not for the scorching dry heat.
Soon the pillars rose before me, and I stepped into their ring, gazing up at the broken columns. For a mirage, it was strikingly real. And it hadn’t disappeared when I neared, or now that I was in its midst, even.
Another non-coincidence.
Afraid to shatter the illusion, but also compelled to reach out and test the substance of the magic, my hand fluttered up from my side. I extended it, slowly. Hesitated. And then rested my palm against a peach-colored pillar.
It was solid and rough against my hand.
Amazement stuttered through me. Could Axel and Tara see it too? Or did I just look like a nut job, leaning my palm against nothing in the middle of the desert?
It didn’t matter what they could see. This was for my benefit.
Here it was, the crown I had refused. Come to haunt me just like all of the goads in the beginning. Had it always been a mistake, coming back here?
I had to. There was no way around it. But… Had I missed something about my calling under the sea?
Simply refused to accept it?
Of course I felt compelled to go back now that I knew of Abraxia’s plot and the imminent danger posed to Turoxo and Coda, but what if my reason for being lured down there in the first place had been in front of me the whole time?
Time and time again I had looked for a reason, willed the Deep to speak to me, cast around aimlessly for a purpose. The only thing of note that had ever come of my time there was what I’d considered a dalliance in the Deep with Coda, and then his bombshell proposal. I’d blanched at the momentous proposition, but what if I should have given it more thought? It certainly stood out as a significant prod.
It had just seemed so crazy, but this had been one crazy adventure from the beginning.
I’d been hesitant to devote myself fully to the ocean, but Coda had said it himself–I could walk between worlds. I didn’t have to lose one in order to gain the other. And given the mirages, and now Axel and Tara’s involvement on the Egyptian lore front, it would seem the ancient powers of the world, aquatic and landlocked alike, had rallied behind me, wanting something from me.
Suddenly my breathing echoed a lot like the tide in my ears. Some deep-seeded awareness of the sea uncurled inside me, like a flower blooming. I could feel the ocean in my veins. The visions that Old Jelly had shown me at the pit blotted back through my mind, just snippets and slides but enough to reawaken the grief and compassion that had moved me the first time. The invasion of strange jellyfish that a little too closely resembled plastic debris. The darkening of the marble ocean sky that might have been oil spills.
Things we had done.
I’d resisted the idea of being queen of the ocean because I’d felt underqualified, and only a half-resident, but what if that actually made me the perfect candidate? An ambassador for the ocean, able to walk between worlds and speak on behalf of the ocean to all who were poisoning it?
What if I was exactly the kind of figure the sea needed?
It was a crazy notion, and yet, there it was–a reason and a purpose laid out neatly–compellingly–before me.
I could still come up with a million reasons why I wasn’t qualified or surely couldn’t accept such an undertaking, and I wasn’t sure yet how I would affect change any more than the existing organizations set up for the same purpose, but Abraxia was right about one thing. The ocean did need a queen, and if it was between a deceitful murderess poised to inherit the throne through her wiles or my own daring claim if only I had the audacity to pursue it–then, well…it wasn’t as if I needed another reason to dive back into that world to intervene for the sake of Turoxo and Codexious, so I might as well do it on behalf of the entire ocean while I was at it. Not to mention, a vague impression of a mysterious dreadlocked mermaid appearing in the abyss was swimming through my mind, and I couldn’t help the sneaking suspicion I’d glimpsed my mother, somehow, somewhere between being stung into oblivion and washing up unconscious on land. A dubious, indistinct impression, but just one more shard of intrigue drawing me back.
It was decided, then. This enduring mirage was the sign that I needed, just one more concrete omen nailing my resolve into place.
I let my palm fall from the pillar, and in the next gust of wind, the illusion smeared and was stripped away by the currents. Turning back toward Axel and Tara, I trudged back through my footprints to the van.
“I need to get to the coast,” I announced, pulling my cowl down below my mouth to ensure they heard me. “I’ll explain everything on the way.”
Perhaps it was my obvious determination, or perhaps they already suspected they’d been led to resurrect me for something bigger than
us, but they came forward without objecting. We piled into the van, Axel in the driver’s seat, and I geared up to summarize my adventures for them on the ride. There was just so much to cover, and it was all so fantastical and a lot to swallow in one van trip.
“You guys might want to strap in for this,” I warned cheekily, a sliver of my old self trickling back into my spirit.
Tara craned around from the passenger seat to face me. “Well?”
Here it goes. I took a breath, ready to share the secrets that I harbored once and once only, and exclusively to these two souls because they found themselves involved. “So, for starters, I’ve kind of always had gills…”
Chapter 33
I plunged into the cool embrace of the Red Sea, and the water gushing around me again was an inverse breath of fresh air. But there was no time to revel in it–I had to get to Atlantis. It had already been such a long journey to the coast; I was terrified that all efforts at this point were futile. But I had to try.
Axel and Tara had met my outlandish confessions with dumbfounded silence, Tara slack-jawed and Axel’s eyebrows stuck elevated where I could see them in the rear-view mirror. The silence lasted two heartbeats, maybe three–and then Tara clacked her teeth shut and said,
“After resurrecting you from the dead and watching you meld with a jellyfish…the craziest part about that tale is that I actually believe you. Geez, Sayler. I knew you said that heap of Atlantean ruins was a crown, back in the professor’s trailer.” She thwacked Axel’s shoulder with the back of her hand, glaring at him indignantly. “And you thought it was a gazebo.”
I filled the rest of the drive by penning a note to Sandy–told Tara and Axel to mail it to my mom. I wasn’t ready to tell her everything I’d just divulged to my first two confidantes, but it was past time that she heard from me. I made it sound like everything was peachy but that my schedule was rigorous and demanding, and we’d made some exciting discoveries that had us poring over them 24/7.
That would have to do for now. I ached for a lazy morning of pancakes stacked sky-high and dripping with butter in our rustic Arizona kitchen, Sandy and I leaning over the same plate from opposite oaken barstools, but that was a sentiment I tucked away for later. Something I pinned on the mental bulletin board to look forward to so that I had to come back.
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