Chapter 15: The Library of Atlantis
For the first time in a very long time Barnabas Coy had to pretend he wasn’t excited about something.
Given his history and life choices, he found enthusiasm hard to come by. He envied people who found simple joy in looking forward to the little things in life. He wasn’t a joyless person, exactly. He just rarely showed it. He learned the hard way how often the world will disappoint you.
But as Reina led them graciously into the Library of Atlantis, Barnabas—pirate, wizard, seeker of secrets—saw a room full of things worth knowing, and he instantly wanted to know them all. Stacks of books rose several stories high, long, elegant archways connecting catwalks and landings. Between the shelves and racks, artifacts—some clear of purpose and others inscrutable—broke up the endless tomes to offer visual mysteries. The room was relatively empty, with just a scattering of Atlanteans making their way among the higher stacks. The room, he noted, was bone dry. He could smell the enchantments built into the room protecting it from the moisture of the ocean.
“I could legitimately spend five years here and never leave,” he muttered under his breath. Echo smirked at him.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you for a bookworm,” she said.
“Every magician is a bookworm,” he said. “Books are where all the things worth knowing are.”
“This is what it takes to get poetry out of you,” Echo said. “I’m good with that.”
For once, Barnabas withstood the barbs and had nothing with which to retort. It was taking all his willpower to not dart off and just start opening books at random to see what they contained. He did, however, drift a bit to the side behind the group so he could scan the shelves, surreptitiously pulling a pair of small, simple glasses from within his pirate coat.
Artem caught the sleight of hand.
“Oh,” Artem said, staring.
“Are you going to make fun of me, too?” Barnabas said.
“No, you just… The glasses suit you, oddly enough. They look nice on you.”
“I really can’t tell if you’re making fun of me,” Barnabas said.
“Just take the compliment before it gets any more awkward,” Artem said.
“Deal,” Barnabas said.
“Hey, you wear glasses now?” Yuri said. Barnabas groaned. Yuri held out his hand for a high-five. “Glasses bros!”
“We’re not glasses bros,” Barnabas said. “These are enchanted glasses. They let me read languages I can’t otherwise speak.”
“Some might consider that cheating,” said an Atlantean woman she had never met before. Her hair was a soft shade of purple with a silver streak along the part. “Though personally, anything that assists in the gaining of knowledge I approve of.”
“Echo and company, let me introduce you to our head librarian, Lady Sawya,” Reina said. She introduced them in turn. “Princess Echo, my brother’s daughter. Her companions, Artem of New Scythia, the smuggler Barnabas Coy, and Yuri of…”
“Massachusetts,” Yuri said. “Grand Poobah of the North Shore.”
“I know you’re lying to me, but I really can’t be bothered to argue,” Reina said. Sawya had affixed her eyes on Barnabas.
“You,” she said. “You’re the one who flooded the prison.”
“Y’know, that really wasn’t my fault,” he said. Sawya appeared unconvinced.
“We’re here in search of information about Poseidon’s Scar,” Echo chimed in. Sawya gave Echo her full attention.
“I can honestly say I can’t remember the last time anyone asked about that particular topic,” Sawya said.
She led them up a walkway to an area above, somewhat cut off from the rest of the collection. She examined the spines of several books, then withdrew a map case. Reina held out a hand, and Sawya handed the case to her.
“Do you know what created the Scar?” Echo asked as Reina carefully opened the map case and gingerly rolled out the map inside on a nearby table.
“I don’t know if you’ll find your answer here,” Sawya said. “Poseidon’s Scar predates Atlantis. It was, as far as I know, here when we arrived.”
Reina beckoned the group over to view the map.
“It’s as I suspected. Atlantean cartographers have mapped out the surface of the Scar very well, but none have done significant exploration of its depth,” she said.
“Any particular reason why?” Yuri asked.
“Because we thought nothing was out there,” Grimmin said, entering the library and the conversation unexpectedly. He walked up the stairway to join them. “A dark, hot pit in the middle of the ocean where nothing could live. Our engineers considered looking at ways to use the thermal energy for something, but turned to other means of powering Atlantis instead. It was just a geological graveyard.”
“All this time, and nobody ever wondered what was down there,” Artem said.
Reina chimed in, rising from where she’d hunched over the map.
“Atlantis considers itself the caretaker of the entire ocean,” she said. Noticing a frown on Echo’s face, she continued. “Whether or not you believe we’ve failed at that task, the truth remains we have people and forces watching over the seven seas, from the poles to the Equator and back again. Were some of our scholars curious about this gash in the earth in our own backyard? Of course. But we had wars to fight and monsters to manage and, as you’ve seen, our own internal struggles. We had a surface world hell bent on killing us all. And in fairness, nothing ever came out of that ravine, not in a thousand years.”
Barnabas scanned the nearby shelves, not sure what, exactly, he was looking for, hoping for a gut instinct to grab him.
“What about mythology?” Barnabas said.
“What now?” Echo said.
“We’re talking about expeditions, or history, or geology, or whatever,” Barnabas said. “But places like Poseidon’s Scar, they usually have a story behind them. Myth is often used to explain away the unknown. And myth is right here in the name.”
He turned away from the books to look at the room and saw half the room making awkward faces of disbelief.
“What?” he said.
“There’s a fairly strong belief that Poseidon is not a myth among some Atlanteans,” Grimmin said.
“Do you honestly believe the Greek pantheon is real?” Barnabas said.
“There’s a fairly strong belief that Poseidon is real among some Atlanteans,” Grimmin repeated, this time putting strong emphasis on very specific words. Clearly Grimmin didn’t believe it himself, but knew when to be polite.
Echo, however, had no such compulsion.
“Look, back where Yuri and I grew up, almost everyone in this room is a myth, so I know the line is a little blurry, but that’s a heck of a line of yarn to pull on,” Echo said. “If Poseidon is real, doesn’t that mean all the rest of it is real?”
The room went dead silent for a moment. Then Reina started laughing.
“I like you more and more the longer I know you, niece,” she said.
Echo gave her aunt a raised-eyebrow side-eye look but kept whatever thoughts she had running through her head at that moment to herself.
“The sleazy one has a point, though,” Reina said. “Perhaps we’re looking in the wrong place. There might very well be information we can glean from myth that doesn’t exist in textbooks.”
Echo turned to Sawya.
“Do you have that sort of information here?” she said.
The librarian frowned deeply.
“We have some, but the Greek pantheon, despite a certain love of Poseidon among some of the population here, isn’t our deepest collection. And I know I’ve never encountered something along those lines. Another library more inclined to track the complete picture of that pantheon might be a better bet.”
“Where should we go?” Echo said. “My friends and I will travel wherever you need us to.”
She pointed at Barnabas as if he were about to speak.
“Don’t contradi
ct me,” Echo said. “This is important.”
“Hey,” Barnabas said, putting his hands up defensively. “I like books. I’m not arguing.”
“The closest library I can think of where you might find answers is…” Sawya began, but Artem cut her off.
“New Scythia,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Where?” Yuri said.
“Oh,” Echo said. “But can you… can we…?”
“You’re the son of an Amazon,” Reina said. “Oh, this took a fascinating turn.”
“Oh!” Yuri said. “Oh, oh no. Are you even allowed to go home?”
Artem shrugged noncommittally.
“Frankly, I don’t know that they’d allow any of us in,” he said. “I was sent away, but for something this important they may allow me to visit. You two I can almost promise they won’t let in.”
He pointed to Barnabas and Yuri. Barnabas shrugged in an almost mirror image of Artem’s gesture.
“I’ve been banned from better places,” he said.
“What if I send Echo as our representative, from the royal family of Atlantis?” Reina said. “We have sent emissaries before, with honor guards.”
“They may let us dock. I can’t promise anything after that,” Artem said. “If you explain what we’re doing and our role in the previous conflict, that would help. The Amazons honor heroes and heroic sacrifice. They may look more positively on us for that.”
“Your father and I will have something drawn up and a message sent,” Reina said.
Echo placed a hand on Artem’s shoulder.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Echo said. “I can go alone.”
“No,” Artem said. “Part of me is afraid they’ll bar me at the gates. But part of me is more afraid they won’t. And you know I don’t like being afraid. I’ll go with you.”
Barnabas, in a last attempt to dial down the disdain he felt from the librarian, leaned over conspiratorially to Sawya.
“Is there anything we can check out of their library for you? Maybe pocket some rare edition you don’t have access to?”
“What a terrible thing to say,” Sawya responded, almost smiling. “But if you could tell me all about what you see in their collection, I might dislike you slightly less when you get back.”
Chapter 16: An ideal I may never be able to reach
Echo’s group was provided with rooms in the castle, despite protests that they’d be happy to return to their ship to sleep.
“Humor me and give me one day knowing my daughter is safe under my roof,” Rhegis insisted. But in the end, they all agreed that sleeping in a real bed would be a nice change of pace. They were fed an embarrassingly nice meal and most made their way to their individual rooms, leaving Echo to talk with her father alone.
Artem closed the door behind him and wandered anxiously around the sumptuous room he’d been provided. One entire wall was translucent, providing a view of the city below. A huge bed dominated the center of the room, and someone had left out a kit to polish his armor, and to sharpen his swords, as well as soft garments he assumed were some sort of pajamas.
I should hate this city, he thought to himself. He’d been able to restrain his emotions earlier around Reina, but she was, in the end, the reason Merrick died. She’d cost Artem the love of his life. And saving the city had almost killed all of them, several times over. Atlantis doesn’t deserve the things we’ve done for it, Artem thought.
I’m not a vindictive man, he thought. But this place should bring out the worst in me, and yet here I am, willing to do it all again.
He unclasped the elegant armored breastplate he wore, emblazoned with the eagle crest of the Amazons. A male breastplate, he thought, marveling again that it existed at all, or that Barnabas had found it among the discarded treasures of the Island of Unwanted Things and had given it to him. Someone, somewhere in time had been like him, a son of the Amazons. I am not unique, he thought. I am not alone.
No, I’m alone, he corrected. More than one person has worked hard to make that the case. Whoever owned this breastplate is long dead, and was just as alone as I am.
A knock came at his door. Artem waited a moment, then opened it. Echo stood outside. She’d changed from her own armor into a loose gown, borrowed from somewhere here much like the pajamas left for him. He held the door open for her and she entered.
“Room with a view,” she said.
“I think every room here has a view,” Artem said. He sat down at a tidy writing desk and spun the chair around to watch Echo, who found a spot on the corner of his bed.
“So,” Echo said. “Going home.”
“Not home,” Artem corrected. “But the place I was born, yes.”
“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Echo said. “I can go on my own. I get the impression if I’m designated as an emissary, they’ll at least let me plead the case for Atlantis without turning me away.”
Artem inhaled deeply, then turned to the watery world outside. Schools of fish darted around the way flocks of birds would on the surface. It’s so alien and yet so mundane at the same time, he thought.
“I have to admit to you, Echo, I’m morbidly curious about going home,” he said. “I really do wonder what they’ll do.”
“You weren’t exiled, right?” Echo said. “You were…”
“Given away for my own safety, they say, but I think I just made everyone too uncomfortable,” Artem said. “I was an aberration. The older I got, the more I might be distrusted. The Amazons are, even I’ll admit, better than the average society, but I was such a strange thing to them, they couldn’t help but be unsettled by me.”
He absent-mindedly released the tie keeping his hair in a coiled knot at the back of his scalp, letting his dark hair fall almost to his shoulders. He tugged at it, brushing out the tangles.
“The assassin talked about how the Amazons threw their sons off cliffs. Do you remember that?” he asked. Echo nodded. “That was true, once upon a time. In a time when everyone was less civilized, Amazon or otherwise. I wasn’t discarded like garbage. The Island of Unwanted Things is not a rubbish bin. It’s a place for people who have no place, and they teach those Unwanted Things how to survive at all costs. It was the best thing my mother could do for me. What else might she have done? Give me to your world?”
Echo grimaced.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think you’d like my world. Sometimes I don’t like my world.”
“So there,” Artem said. “My mother made sure that I would survive. Without her and her people, yes, but she didn’t pitch me off a cliff. She didn’t put me in a reed basket and set me adrift. She gave me to good people.”
“But still,” Echo said.
“But still, my mother gave me away,” Artem said. “It’s a hard thing to forgive.”
“And now you have a reason to go home,” Echo said.
“You know something? I’m a bit envious of Barnabas,” Artem said. “His story isn’t much different from mine. Born in a place where he was not wanted and was not safe, given away to people who gave him a fighting chance, but still, abandoned.”
“You two do bicker like brothers, you know,” Echo said.
Artem gave her a pained smile.
“I know,” he said. “But Barnabas knows his mother. He goes to her. She welcomes him.”
“You weren’t with us the first time we visited her,” Echo said. “That whole island didn’t want him there. I could feel it. The other nymphs were wound up by the very presence of him. I mean those mermaids almost killed Yuri, too.”
“And here’s the odd thing,” Artem said. “The place Barnabas was born would have been a source of perpetual risk to him. Every day, some supernatural creature would have wanted to spill his blood. And he’s almost clever enough that he would have survived, or at least would have after learning all he did on the Island of Unwanted Things. But it would have been exhausting. You can’t live that way.”
“No,”
Echo said. “But the Amazons aren’t like that, right?”
“My life would not have been under constant threat,” Artem said. “I simply would not have been looked upon as a real person. I was a reminder of a mistake. Barnabas was given away for his physical safety. I was given away for…”
“Shame,” Echo said.
Artem held his hands out at his sides.
“Maybe. Or maybe someone would have tried to goad me into a fight and put an end to me. I’m not the easiest person to get along with. It wouldn’t have been hard.”
“But now you’re grown,” Echo said. “And everyone we’ve ever met says you’re the greatest swordsman they’ve ever seen.”
“None of them have seen Amazons fight,” Artem said. “I’m chasing an ideal I may never be able to reach.”
Echo squinted at him.
“Are you really sure you want to go back there?” she said.
“I absolutely do not want to go back there,” Artem said. “But I know in my heart I need to.”
Chapter 17: Weird little town
Simon Yee had no idea what he was getting himself into when he moved to Fogarty’s Folly. It was a quiet town built around an old fishing village that had expanded into a hideaway where bluebloods with old New England money mixed with suburban social climbers with aspirations of wealth. Woven throughout Fogarty’s Folly were the townies, the folks who were born here, working the sea or managing any of the quaint, rustic businesses that dotted the downtown and hooked tourists in during the summer.
Simon Yee moved here because it was a beautiful place, the old seaside buildings blended into the hilly, rocky coastline that gave the town its name, aging farmhouses refurbished by the wealthy into high-end single-family abodes that seemed to rise up throughout the tree-lush hills. From the water, it looked like a bit of a fairytale town, and it was easy to fall in love with.
Simon moved to Massachusetts from the West Coast, and he very much wanted to live on the ocean as he had back home, though New England waters were an entirely different creation than Californian. He moved here to help open a new office for his work, a government gig for a department that had very nearly been shut down years ago and only recently been refurbished.
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