Secrets of the Deep (28 page)

Tyndaris nodded. “Jones thinks that if he can use the orb to create another great flood, he can enlarge his territory. Claim the dry land for his own once it’s underwater.”

“Sir, you’re needed in the field!” a merman shouted, wheeling by just then on a large armored seahorse.

Tyndaris glanced toward his fellow warrior. “Coming!” But he turned to them once more, hesitating. “I must go. You lads, take the princesses to land. Where can we find you when all this is over?”

“Taormina.”

“Good.” Tyndaris nodded. “Protect them in your world, and King Nereus will owe you a great debt of gratitude. We will fend off this attack, but for now, you must not let the orb fall into the wrong hands. And be careful!” he added as he swam away. “Jones has spies throughout the sea.”

“We will,” Jake murmured.

“Good fortune, Tyndaris,” Sapphira offered, lifting her hand in farewell as he whooshed off through the water to join his troops.

Sapphira watched him go for a second, clearly distraught, but at last, she turned to face them.

Both Jake and Maddox glared at her.

“You lied to us. You knew all along why Jones really wanted that orb,” Jake said, unable to hold his tongue even though he knew she was already upset. “You were willing to hand that thing over to him even if it meant millions of my kind dying. How could you? And you call me a thief? I’ve never been happier about stealing something in my whole life!”

Maddox just shook his head at her in disgust. “Let’s get out of here.”

Though Sapphira’s cheeks had colored with shame, she lifted her chin as she turned away, giving them both a haughty look, as if to say,
I don’t have to explain myself to you.

But Jake’s opinion on that was very much otherwise—as Her Highness would discover, just as soon as they were all back safe on dry land. If they had to put up with her indefinitely for the rest of their holiday, then at the very least, she owed them the truth.

PART III

CHAPTER 14

The Rest of the Story

“I
can’t believe you lied to us.” Nixie wasn’t one to mince words.

Jake fully agreed with her statement, but all of them were glaring at Sapphira as they sat around later that evening on the rooftop patio back at the Villa di Palma.

“How could you let us get involved in something so serious without telling us the whole truth?” the little witch demanded.

“But I never
meant
for you to get involved! The boys were the ones who insisted!” Sapphira cried, gesturing at them.

“That’s because you used your sea magic on them,” Nixie said, unmoved.

“Well, I can’t help that! It just comes out,” the mermaid said with a pout.

“Ha, well. Good thing it didn’t work on me!” Archie declared.

Nixie sent him a smirk that made him blanch.

Jake, meanwhile, rubbed his forehead, agog after everything Sapphira had finally confessed.

As if Davy Jones wanting to cause another Noah’s Flood wasn’t bad enough, Jake was baffled by the mermaid’s account of rock monsters marching down into Calypso Deep to retrieve a whole treasure trove of Atlantean artifacts. No wonder his head was spinning.
What a day.

His balance still felt strange after spending so long in the buoyancy of the sea, and every time he shut his eyes, all he saw was the big, angry face of that bizarre algae creature he had disturbed in the Seaweed Forest.

After Nixie’s potion had worn off earlier, both princesses had endured the painful Landwalker’s spell. Once they had recovered from the ordeal, they joined Jake and his friends in human form on the breezy rooftop patio to discuss the momentous events of the day.

Thankfully, Aunt Ramona was none the wiser about their daylong absence, and when Miss Helena stopped by to inquire about how they’d been entertaining themselves, they merely said they’d gone swimming in various coves around the shore.

The governess seemed content with this, approving of a day spent sea-bathing as a healthy and fun activity for a group of highly energetic youngsters. She reminded the girls to protect their complexions in the sun, but as long as they promised they were all looking out for each other and not misbehaving, they were old enough now not to need
constant
supervision.

Nobody liked lying to Miss Helena, but Jake justified the half-truths with the fact that the governess was already worried enough about her twin brother and her beau. Neither she nor Aunt Ramona needed anything more to fret about.

Of course, Jake didn’t fancy getting in trouble either, so that might’ve had something to do with his insistence on silence about their activities.

They introduced Sapphira and Lil as locals from a “fine family” who had spent the day showing them the best spots the tourists didn’t know about. The mermaid princesses managed to curtsy to Miss Helena without tipping over on their new legs. The governess gave the two newcomers a quick, assessing glance, in turn, and must’ve concluded from their bearing that they were acceptably highborn.

Thankfully, she didn’t notice that the girls were wearing borrowed clothes from Isabelle and Dani. Small as she was, Nixie was closer in size to Liliana, but the little pink mermaid refused to don the witch’s gloomy black garb. Dani had offered her a lavender dress instead, which had made the little blonde happy.

When Jake asked Miss Helena if they could dine on the patio that night, wanting to continue their conversation in private, she said that would be acceptable. Their supper would be sent up.

After that, they were left once again to their own devices.

Dani brought Teddy over to meet Liliana, and that also helped cheer the younger mermaid up after being held hostage, seeing her home bombarded, and then having to endure the painful Landwalker’s spell. Lil had screamed and cried piteously as her tail had changed into legs, but meeting Teddy had fascinated her. She’d never seen a dog before.

It also seemed to give the younger princess some comfort that her seahorse had remained close by, swimming around the cove. Wallace was clearly quite curious about Archie’s submarine moored there. He kept nickering to it, as though he expected the metal “whale” to say something back.

Still, Liliana could barely walk on her new legs, so Maddox had given her a piggyback ride up to the villa, and this had amused the girl greatly. As the kids had gathered on the rooftop patio at sunset, Red had also joined them, flying down from where he had been napping in the garden trees.

The visiting mermaids cried out in amazement at the sight of him. Jake had greeted his large pet warmly, an arm around his neck as he introduced him. Both girls had stared, slack-jawed, at the Gryphon.

But while Liliana held Teddy on her lap and stared at Red, Jake had set the Atlantean orb on the center of the table in their midst and then turned to Sapphira.

“Out with it,” he had ordered. “It’s time you finally told us the rest of the story and whatever else you’ve been hiding. The truth this time, if you please. I think you owe us that much.”

Sapphira had glanced around at them uneasily, but seeing that her and her sister’s safety depended on them now, she let out a large sigh and finally gave in.

For the next half-hour, they listened intently as she described her confrontation with the rock monsters, her tutor’s reaction to the orb, her decision to hide it in the sunken temple, all the way to the arrival of Davy Jones.

Isabelle in particular watched her like a hawk; she gave Jake a subtle nod when Sapphira was finished, signaling that this time, she had sensed honesty rather than deception from the princess.

For a long moment, everyone was silent, mulling her story.

Jake’s mind churned.

But Izzy couldn’t hold her tongue. “So,” she said coldly, “this object could’ve caused millions of people and animals to drown, and you were just going to let Davy Jones have it?”

“He took my sister! What would
you
do if he had kidnapped Archie?” Sapphira shot back.

“Ladies, please,” Maddox said, apparently unaware that he was a large part of the reason the two older girls seemed to have decided they didn’t like each other. “Fighting amongst ourselves isn’t going to solve anything. We need to figure out what to do. Besides, the important thing is that Liliana’s safe now.”

“But we’re not,” Dani said quietly. “Truthfully, I’m still in shock to hear that Atlantis was actually real!”

“Me too,” Jake agreed. “But my question is, who could’ve known there were Atlantean artifacts hidden away at the bottom of the Calypso Deep in the first place?”

Sapphira shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“Well…the rock monsters sound like some form of golem or servitor to me,” Nixie said. “But it takes a wizard of considerable power to create and control multiple servitors like that. Which way were they going?”

“Before they started chasing me, they were headed toward the Greek islands. After they tried to kill me, I didn’t stay to find out which one, and since there are six thousand of them, that doesn’t help us much.”

“I should think their maker built them out of rock so they could endure the massive water pressure at those depths,” Archie mused aloud.

“Yes, but like Jake said, how did this wizard even know that the artifacts were down there?” Maddox persisted.

Nobody had an answer; the patio got very quiet, except for Liliana murmuring to Teddy in delight.

“Hmm.” Dani stared off into space for a moment. “If the orb can be used to start a second Noah’s Flood, maybe we should talk a bit about the first one. What do we know about that? Aside from the ark, I mean, and two of every animal.”

Nixie snorted. “That’s just a story.”

“Hardly,” Archie countered in a grim tone.

Even Jake was surprised to hear this statement from his scientific cousin, of all people.

“There are some three hundred Flood accounts from ancient cultures around the world: China and India, Egypt and ancient Babylon, and on the other side of the Atlantic, as well, the Mayans, even the native tribes of North America. What most of these stories have in common is the notion that the world before the Flood had grown extremely wicked, and when the waters came, it was divine retribution that wiped out the evildoers, sparing only a virtuous few.

“It was the Greek philosopher, Plato, who brings the Flood together specifically with Atlantis in his work called the
Critias
, written about 300 BC,” Archie continued. “Plato heard the story from
his
teacher, the famous philosopher, Solon, who had learned it from the priests of ancient Egypt when he traveled there to visit the Great Library of Alexandria.

“The priests respected the famous old Greek teacher, so they shared a secret papyrus scroll with him, one of the oldest they possessed. The scroll claimed that Egypt itself had started out as a mere outpost or colony of a far vaster and more sophisticated seafaring empire with worldwide reach. It even hinted that the knowledge they had inherited from Atlantis enabled them to build the pyramids in the first place.”

“Really?” Isabelle murmured, staring at her brother in fascination.

He nodded. “Certain pharaohs get credit for the pyramids today, of course, and they claim they’re supposed to be tombs, but the truth is, nobody really knows for certain who built them, or why, let alone
how
.

“One thing is certain, though. If the tale is true, and pyramid-building was this lost civilization’s calling card, it would lend credence to the notion that Atlantis really did wield global influence, for we find ancient pyramidal structures literally everywhere.”

Dani looked perplexed. “But—I don’t understand. How could people who lived thousands of years ago be smarter than us? We have trains, telegraphs, gas streetlamps, vaccinations! The grownups are always talking about Progress, that mankind keeps getting better all the time.”

Jake snorted. “Doesn’t look like it to me. Does anybody actually believe that?”

Maddox rose to pace. “Never mind the philosophical questions. I’d be happy with a few basic facts. Who made these rock monsters? How did they know the artifacts were there, and what do they want them for?”

“It makes you wonder what else they made off with,” Jake murmured. “If one little orb can cause a whole Noah’s Flood, and these rock fellows carried off two sacks full of Atlantean gadgets, I shudder to think what the other pieces in the collection are able to do.”

“Not good,” Dani mumbled, shaking her head.

A silence followed as they pondered ominous possibilities.

“Let’s take this in order,” Archie said in the same professorial tone he used when teaching their lessons. He pushed his spectacles up higher onto his nose. “First things first. Maddox is quite right: the maker of these golems. How could he or she have known there were Atlantean artifacts waiting to be collected in a place that is currently inaccessible to man? Ideas?”

Sapphira shook her head. “The information couldn’t have come from my world. It’s too deep for merfolk. We wouldn’t have known it was there. The whales can’t even see to the bottom.”

“Well…you know,” Nixie said, stroking her jaw, “it could’ve come from supernatural sources. Remember, it was a demon who snitched on Jake, after all, and told the Dark Druids it was he who killed Garnock.”

“You killed someone?” Sapphira exclaimed, turning to Jake in surprise.

“Eh, he was dead for centuries before I met him. All I did was make sure he stayed that way. Me and Isabelle.”

“And Dr. Celestus,” Izzy reminded him with a smile.

“Right.” Jake smiled back at her, for it was quite true. “Had a little help at the end there, finishing the job.”

“Hmm,” Archie suddenly said, furrowing his brow.

Jake looked over sharply at his cousin. Such
hmm
s from the boy genius usually proved portentous. “What?”