Halder had done as much this morning on his bridal swim with Miranda on the way back to Tórshavn. He ached to share everything with his brother—the wonders of Miranda’s world. He didn’t know how to tell him that he was now the best deep-sea exploration equipment they could ever have. Tonight when they were alone, he was going to suggest they send the whole crew and the boat full of equipment back to Copenhagen.
In the bathysphere, floating downward, Halder now did his job; he ran the checklist on the equipment and noted the readings on the gadgets and the dials, all the while softly humming to himself as he daydreamed of Miranda. Normally he would have had his face glued to the portal like a kid in a candy store as the bathysphere slowly sank into the depths beneath the ship. But nothing could compare to what he’d seen today and the way he’d seen it with Miranda.
Suddenly there was a jerk, and he was flung to the side. Bashing his head against the wall, he blacked out.
“Halder, are you there! Halder! Halder, talk to me. Are you all right?”
He kept hearing the same thing over and over through a fog. There was something warm and wet on the side of his face, and he had no idea where he was or what he was doing. Then he recognized Holger’s voice calling him and heard the sense of panic in it.
“Hold on a minute,” he croaked as he struggled to rise and pull himself up. The power was still on, but the bathysphere was at a weird angle and it didn’t seem to be moving at all in any direction.
“He’s alive!” he heard Holger shout to someone.
The portal window was about forty-five degrees away from where it should be, and the bathysphere was on its side. The stool was bolted into the floor so he had to lean against it instead of sit on it.
“Halder, are you all right?” Holger asked urgently.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m still in one piece, but I’m gonna have a big bump on my head tonight,” he grumbled. “What the heck happened?”
“The cable snapped. You’re down about two thousand feet. You have to release the clamps on the weights manually so you can float back up,” Holger explained.
“I know how to get this tub to move, Holger. I just need to get myself oriented,” Halder grumbled. “It’s hard to move and see things at the moment,” he muttered while he searched for the release lever. “Okay, I’ve got it.” And he threw the release, but nothing happened.
“Halder, what’s going on, Bro? We don’t detect you rising!” Holger called out over the radio to him.
The real state of his predicament began to sink in, and Halder slowly sat back against the wall, which was now the floor. “I don’t think you will either, Bro. I’m wedged in the bottom at an angle. The latches are buried, and I don’t think there is any way to get them to release. I’m stuck down here until you can come and get me,” Halder called back to him.
“Help is on the way,” Holger answered. “How much air do you have in your oxygen tanks?”
“Not quite three hours left,” Halder replied. “Do you think that will be enough time for the cavalry to come to the rescue?”
“We’re gonna be cutting it close, kid. Very close,” Holger whispered.
“Just in case, I need to talk to you about something Holger. Can you clear the room and give us some privacy? I don’t want to start crying like a little girl in front of the help.” He gave a little, halfhearted laugh.
Up on the ship, without a word, everyone in the cabin cleared the room to leave the two brothers alone.
“Okay, kid, it’s just you and me talking,” Holger whispered back over the radio.
“If I don’t make it out of here, you’ve got to meet Miranda tomorrow morning for breakfast at nine o’clock at the Hotel Foroyar. You’ve got to tell her what happened.”
“We’ve got a few hours to worry about that, Bro. You’re not dead yet, and you’re not gonna be!” Holger snapped.
“Yah, yah. I love it when you go all macho on me. It never worked well with the women, and I’m afraid that hairy chest of yours does nothing for me.”
“Shut up, you pervert!” They laughed for a moment, and then the laughter died into an awkward silence.
“I want to tell you about my girl,” Halder finally spoke. “We said our vows and exchanged rings, so she’s really my wife now.”
“That’s great, Hal,” Holger whispered.
“But the best thing about it, Bro, is I really did get to marry the Little Mermaid after all!” And Halder started to laugh.
“Hey, Hal, stay with me, kid. You sure you’ve got a few more hours of oxygen? Check your carbon dioxide levels. You’re getting a little whacky!”
“Whacky? Now that sounds really official coming from a man with a double doctorate.” Halder laughed some more. “Are we naming all the whales Tubby and the dolphins Flipper?” He laughed again.
“Okay, Halder, try to take deep breaths and relax.”
“It’s okay, Holger. I really am in command of my senses. That’s what makes it so amazing. Miranda is a mermaid, and her mother is—or was—the Little Mermaid. That’s where I was last night—on Little Ditma where Miranda’s mother has the Manor House. It’s over eight hundred years old, but you can’t see it because it’s built right into the mountain cliffs out of the same stone. The island has a huge network of caves, and in the main cavern there’s a marine lagoon with a nursery where she treats the wounded whales.
“I was swimming in the ocean with her this morning. I swam underwater without any scuba gear for over an hour. I rode on the back of a narwhal and played with belugas. There’s this incredible mass of pingos that’s never been mapped, about eleven hundred feet deep between Tórshavn and Little Ditma. It’s so huge, the whole thing sort of looks like the Fortress of Knowledge from the Superman movies. It’s a gigantic ice reef with fantastic frozen structures that look like crystal coral.
“We were swimming all around and through it, and I wasn’t even cold. The ring she gave me enables me to breathe underwater, and it keeps me warm too. But the thing is, Miranda and I, and the whales and seals, were reflected back a hundred times on the surfaces of the pingos ice formations. It was the most unbelievable sight you could ever imagine.”
Holger just sat and listened with tears streaming down his face. There was nothing to say, but “Wow!” and “Sounds terrific,” and “I can’t wait to meet her.” His brother was more than likely going to die, and if his last hours were spent in a dreamy delusion, he was going to share it with him to the last second.
“The ring!” Holger suddenly heard Halder shout.
“Halder! Are you all right?” Holger called back to his brother.
“Yes!” and then Halder started to laugh, loud and rich. “I’ve got the ring, Bro! I can breathe underwater. I’m gonna be fine!” Halder laughed again with joy, and as if to echo that joy, he heard a sudden pounding on the portal of the bathysphere.
Back aboard the ship, Holger thought he heard the sound of banging coming over the radio. “Halder! Halder! What’s that sound? What are you doing?” He was afraid his brother had begun to succumb to hallucinations due to the climbing ratio of carbon dioxide to oxygen, and believed his own delusions. It sounded as if Halder was trying to break out of the bathysphere.
“What’s that sound, Halder?” Holger called down through the radio.
But Halder was too busy scrambling over the stool and the oxygen tanks to get a look out the porthole to answer him. When he got to it, there she was, his own Little Mermaid, frantically pounding on the hull and the window to get his attention.
“Miranda!” He thought she would never be more beautiful than when a smile of relief at seeing him still alive sprang across her face.
“It’s Miranda, Holger,” he yelled back over his shoulder. “My Little Mermaid has come to take me back to the sea!”
Miranda waved at him and pointed to the ring finger on her hand. Halder knew she wanted to know if he was still wearing the ring she’d given him. He slid his hand into his pocket and quickly slipped the Ring of
Atlantis back on his finger. He then held his hand up to show her, and laughed with glee.
“Halder! Halder, keep talking to me, Bro. Keep talking to me!” Holger shouted from above. Hearing the wild laugh, he was sure his brother had finally lost his mind to oxygen deprivation.
But Halder was fine. Miranda motioned him to step back from the porthole as far as he could, and she swam off to the side. Then he saw one of the large male narwhals aim his spiral tusk at the bathysphere porthole and come rushing toward it.
“Don’t worry about me, Bro. She’s taking me back to the sea. I’ll be fine.”
Holger heard the sound of glass shatter and metal collide with metal, then the sound cut off and changed to static, leaving him staring at the radio microphone.
“Halder?” he started flipping switches and turning dials desperately to get the radio back on. “Halder! Halder talk to me! Halder what happened? Halderrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” He screamed like a wounded wild boar. Holger pounded his fists on the top of the desk, and then he wept.
Halder was fine. The narwhal’s horn had pierced the porthole and shattered it, causing the freezing ocean water to rush in, which immediately shorted out all the electronics. The bathysphere went pitch black except for the dim, grey-blue light coming through the porthole. The cold water didn’t bother Halder, thanks to the ring, and once it had filled the bathysphere, equalizing the pressure, he quickly released the porthole latch, swung it outward, and swam into Miranda’s waiting arms.
“Halder!” was all she could think to say as they hugged each other for dear life.
“I prayed you’d come, but I didn’t know how to call you,” he whispered with his mind, as they whirled around, embracing each other. He wasn’t sure how long they just clung to each other, drifting with the current as the whales sang the news that the new prince was safe and back in the sea. But he felt completely reborn in that moment.
“The whales were guarding you for me,” Miranda murmured between one kiss and the next. “They sang to me that you were in trouble. Mother had a vision that you might be in danger. I came back as soon as their songs reached me,” she explained in a rush of words, seeking him with her hands and fingers, exploring his body to see that he had not been harmed.
“Wait until Holger meets you. Now he’ll know I’m not crazy!” Halder smiled at Miranda and kissed her.
“I don’t think we should do that,” Miranda told him, as she took both of his hands in hers and made him look at her. “There is a man named Vasili who knows who and what I am. He has stalked me for years. He wants me and what I could give him, but I can never do that, never love him. Someone sawed through your cable. Someone tried to kill you. They need to think you died.”
“But I can’t let Holger think I’m dead. He’ll go nuts. We’re not just brothers, we’re twins. You don’t understand what that means!”
“We will contact him after things have quieted down.” Miranda held him firmly by both hands. “He already thinks you’re dead now, Halder. Whatever grief and pain he would have, he is having it now, and that will keep him out of danger too. If you went back, Vasili might try to use your brother against you, or try to kill you again. He would not hesitate to destroy your ship and everyone on it. He has done it before.”
“Who is this mad man?” Halder gasped.
“Someone who knows a lot about evil and the power it can wield. If you really love your brother and he loves you, he will understand when we explain it to him later. Right now we need to go back to the Manor, make a few plans, and leave the Faeroe Islands so Vasili can’t track us—or rather me. He mustn’t know you’re alive until we can figure out how to be safe.”
“How long will that take?” Halder asked.
“He is mortal. He’ll die in another twenty or thirty years. We’ll live together another thousand. It won’t be that long,” she tried to soothe him.
“I can’t wait thirty years to talk to Holger! I’ve already told him about you. It’ll be okay.”
“Then as soon as we are situated, we’ll call him. It will only take a few months for things to calm down, and I can see what my advocates can do about taking care of Vasili. No one hurts my family and gets away with it,” she seethed.
“All right, I understand. But just as soon as we can talk to Holger, we will. Promise me?”
“I promise you with all my heart.” She smiled back at him and then raised both of his hands to her lips and kissed them. “Our lives are one now. Your brother is my brother, and we will all be a family together soon.”
“You betcha!” He laughed and kissed her back. Then they swam back to the Manor, hand in hand, to begin their lives together.
In Dreams
She Comes to Me
Holger gasped. She was there again, swimming next to him. Her hypnotic smile and dancing eyes flashed playfully as her hair floated all around her like a numbus of writhing gold. With a sudden surge of speed, she spun around in front of him, slid her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Then Holger woke. He hadn’t dreamed of her for thirteen years, not since his phone call from Halder, not once. Yet, before that, he had dreamed of her almost every night of his life.
He had even married his wife because she looked vaguely like her, not nearly as beautiful, but she’d had the shape of her chin, and the same perfect nose. But his wife didn’t have her incredible eyes, dazzling smile, or long, silky hair. No woman he’d ever met had those eyes or smile.
He’d almost forgotten her it had been so long since he’d last dreamed of her. But now she was back, swimming through his dreams once again, and with everything that had happened recently, he couldn’t help but wonder why.
Knights to the Rescue
Canute Bruun was a calm voice of reason for Holger in a storm of insanity. King Valdemar I had been a great military and political mind, which the Knights Templar exemplified. Bruun & Gottorp had had a long list of contingency plans in place for a century or more should just such an occasion as this arise. With a few quick updates, this plan would be brilliant! It was going to rock the world!
Holger kept going over certain aspects of the plan as the duchy’s private helicopter landed on the helipad of the Miranda. It was a giant twin hull catamaran-like yacht that Halder had purchased as the flagship of the Oceanus fleet of research ships. Holger’s own Moonraker had been paid for by a grant from Oceanus. He had always been amazed he’d been selected for such a grant. Now he knew why.
On the Miranda, Oceanus scientists had been carrying out research on the medical properties of various sea plants and corals as it had been literally sailing in circles for the past decade, awaiting the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Egeskov. Well, the time had come, but now they would be receiving a regent duke and a new duchess.
As they were landing, Holger noticed that the helipad was painted with the exact same design that was on the ring Halder and Miranda had left for him in the safety deposit box, the ring he now wore. On both was the Trident symbol, which was in fact, the logo for the Oceanus Foundation. Now he knew why it had looked so familiar.
“Dr. Thorson, welcome,” beamed the captain of the ship. He stood at attention as Holger climbed out of the helicopter, ducking under the whirling blades. He was a tall Nordic man with wavy, honey-brown hair with a touch of gray at the temples. “Captain Gurnard Petersen at your service,” he intoned. He then turned and barked an order in another language that seemed oddly familiar, sending the helicopter off again.
“Where is he going?” Holger asked, nodding toward the ascending ’copter.
“Back to the Danish Embassy to wait for a diplomatic pouch.”
“What was the language you just spoke?” Holger asked.
“Faroese,” Captain Petersen said as he smiled. “All of the executive Oceanus staff are required to speak it,” he explained as he handed Holger a small book titled, Faroese—The Living Language of the Vikings. “Mr. Bruun requested I give you a copy of this,” he explained. “There is also a CD inside.”
“No, Your Grace,” he replied, referring to Holger as the regent duke. “I grew up on Funen Island at the Castle Egeskov, but my mother and father were from Tórshavn on Streymor Island. My family has been in service to the Duke and Duchess of Egeskov for over eight hundred years. The past thirteen years I’ve spent here, waiting for their return.”
“They’re not coming back, I’m afraid,” Holger told him quietly.
“We realized that when the message of your arrival was received.” He nodded curtly and then softened somewhat. “Your brother, Duke Halder, spoke very highly of you.”
“You knew my brother?” Holger asked with a sudden twinge of loss.
“We all did, and the Duchess Miranda.” At the mention of her name, he took a moment to bow his head in reverence, a motion that rippled through the crew in homage to their lost duchess.
“Did you know her well?” Holger asked.
“From birth, Your Grace. The Duchess Miranda taught me how to play Tafl when I was just a child. She bought me a pony for my eighth birthday and paid for my education.”
“It seems she was as kind as she was beautiful. I wish I had known her too.” The regret for tearing the phone out of his wall thirteen years ago came crashing through Holger’s soul once again.
“The saying ‘to know her is to love her’ was the ultimate truth about the duchess. It was also true about your brother, Halder. He made her very happy, if I may be so bold. She was very excited about meeting you. I’m sorry to hear it never happened. You were a great part of the vision Duke Halder had to change the Oceanus Foundation into what it is today. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”
All The Mermaids In The Sea Page 28