Finding Atlantis - 2. Chapter 2

Krilla was up before dawn, half dressed and rumpled looking. He cleared the boat and galley and finally went back on land around the time the sun started to come up. The market stalls were setting up by the time he reached the main street. Aziz was sitting by the foot of the great stone ‘King’s Tomb’ a twelve foot high relic from the Lycian era. He was smoking long thin brown cigars, and practicing blowing smoke rings.

“Morning!”

“Oh damn Krilla, why are you up this early?”

“Supplies. You?” Krilla sat down next to him and smiled. Aziz, despite his trade, was not a morning person.

“We’re taking the boat to Kalkan, Yusuf has ended up there and says he’s brought back too much stuff to bring back by bus. Allah knows what he’s bought, but a new carpet would be nice. You wanna come?”

“No,” Krilla touched him on the shoulder as he got up, “I gotta go fish. Come with me to market?”

“Alright.”

Together the young men, as different as it was really possible to be, live in the same place and speak the same language, went into the canvas covered market. They emerged half an hour later after much haggling, laden with things for Krilla’s boat. Bread, nuts, dried meats, salt, vinegar, paprika, pepper, fig logs, dried apricots, half a dozen glass mason jars, four terracotta bowls, a plate, a new oilstone and a jar of steel oil, another jar of olive oil, a small lime tree, a basil plant, a big coil of hemp rope to make nets, a bolster of sail fabric, four big plastic water containers, some thread and a book of needles. Krilla generally made his own clothes.

“Self sufficient bastard,” Aziz muttered under his breath. Krilla jabbed him in the ribs, but gently, because he knew the tall Turk didn’t really mean it.

They took everything down to La Belle Mere. Krilla took down the hammock and stowed it in a corner. Aziz helped him cast off and waved as Krilla sailed gently out of the harbour, his deck covered in new goods, and then turned and jogged around the harbour to the Aikaterine.

There were three rooms in the hull of La Belle Mere and a tiny cupboard toilet room that flushed with sea water. The lightly named comm room was barely any bigger and housed all the maps, licensing papers and radio equipment. The one and only life vest, a legal requirement, was kept in a box under a tiny desk behind clutters of important paper work. Krilla’s wet weather sleeping quarters was a fully wooden room in the prow of the boat which contained four bunks that folded down from the walls. The bunks were slim and hard and barely used. With all four down there was barely room to get through the door-less entrance. By far the largest room was the galley which held intricate storage cupboards and shelves with ledges and string retainers. Bowls, plates and tin cups were kept secure with straps, as were the cans of food.

And everywhere were strange under sea objects. A wooden box in the quarters held an ever increasing stock of valuable antique fishing floats and several strings of old beads. On one shelf in the galley was a veritable army of tiny stone, brass, copper and gold statues; men, horses, cows, goats, soldiers. There was even the black and gold head off an Egyptian statue of Anubis and only Allah knew how that had gotten there.

Invariably there were many fishing mementos, weights, hooks, floats and bait fish from new but washed up plastic fly fishing tags to old mother of pearl life like miniatures. What took up most of the space in the comm room were a selection of every coloured pencil imaginable and about twenty different sized sheaves of thick paper. And it seemed, very quickly, to all those who observed, that Krilla was only interested in drawing fish and the sun on the sea. Light on water, perfect serene beauty.

With new supplies on board and stowed away Krilla set the main sail to full tilt, raised the stay sail and guided the beautiful little ship out towards the sea. Soon, with the sails bulging with the strength of the wind, and the rudder set out for clear waters, Krilla abandoned his post and went below, reappearing with the bread, olives, water, the rope for the new net and small stoneware ocarina.

Net making was dull, repetitive, but involving work. And work that Krilla had gotten very good at over time. Each diamond gap had to be of a certain size, so as not to snare the young breeding fish of the future generation. These squares were particularly large, for Krilla was going way out into the deep blue waters to hunt for big flat sided tuna.

By lunch he had passed and nearly lost sight of the last of the little islands, uninhabited, small and peaceful. Moving at a fair clip now in the truly open waters, he guided his ship into the current. He dropped the freshly completed net off the back of the boat, tied one corner up on one of the hooks put there for such a purpose, stripped, and jumped into the sea. He swam along with the sailing boat, towards the trailing edge of the net with calm long strokes and hooked it up on the port side of the hull and then took the leading edge in hand. There were fish everywhere, undisturbed by his presence. Krilla stayed under water until he deemed that he had enough for one catch, before fixing the points of the net together at the hook and then leaping on board his still moving ship.

There was another boat coming alongside him, with a wind-roughened man on-board at the helm, scowling. The ship was Greek, a patrol boat sent out from Meis harbour, tiny as it was.

“Ahoy there!”

Krilla went to the stern and lowered one of his big fish boxes to fill with sea water. He raised a hand to the official.

“Drop your sail!”

Annoyed, Krilla brought the box back up and dropped the sail. He left the jib halfway so he could be off again quickly. He roped the net and began to haul up his catch by means of a pulley system.

“You were down a long time,” the patrol man spoke in English, no Greek would speak Turkish, especially not an official. Krilla grunted noncommittally, hauling on the rope.

“That’s a good catch.”

Another grunt. Krilla positioned the net over the box and let the fish go. Then he leapt in and began plucking out all the smaller fish, throwing them overboard.

“Sir!”

“Yes officer?” Krilla’s voice was lazily provocative.

“I’d like to see your papers please.”

Krilla sighed, pulled on a pair of shorts as he got out of the box, and went below. He handed a waterproofed copy of his licensing papers to the man and watched him examine them.

“You’re a long way out from Kas for a single small boat,” he said conversationally, “You’d better turn back if you’re going to take it back before dark.”

“I’m staying out.”

“I see.” He handed the papers back, “It all seems in order. Thank you for your time Captain Desmau.”

Krilla watched him go under the steam of the chuntering little engine, keeping the boat in sight until sure that it was heading unswervingly towards the land. Idly he stroked one of his catch. Under his hand the big flat fish twisted and turned playfully. Krilla sighed and in his mind he asked sorrowfully for the fish’s forgiveness. And the fish gave it, its glassy opal eyes kind and knowing. Krilla smiled and returned to his post at the helm, twisting the boat into the wind. The weather was due to be fair and calm, and as the sun began to dip down towards the sea the wind sighed and swirled about the boat and died. La Belle Mere coasted quietly on borrowed power and Krilla dropped the anchor overboard. Quietly he took down the sails and unhooked the jib from its ropes. He sat on the deck, watching the sun go down, and repaired the sail. There wasn’t much to do, a few minor rips and fixing the eyelets around the edges.

As the sun went down the sea went dark. Krilla’s eyes deepened, the colour slipping from light blue to deep indigo. He sat on the very prow of the boat munching steadily on a clump of dried figs. He took a swig of slightly warm water, having left the bottle in the sun most of the day. Dinner at sea, despite all his supplies, largely consisted of handfuls of snatched food whenever he managed to tear himself from the allure of the sea. Olives and bread and olive oil and fruit if there was any. And now he lifted the ocarina to his lips and began to play to the sea. The little ceramic device had been given to him by Aziz the first year he’d come to the land and he’d learnt to love the object. It was shiny and blue with tiny little swirling patterns of the water imprinted onto it. The sea swirled up to the boat of its own accord, coming like an obedient dog to the hollow and beautiful melody Krilla was making. He played a song he’d known as a child in the deeps where the singing was distorted and made strange by the thickness of the water. Notes of sadness and longing rose and fell with soft movement of the sea, building ever higher and more mournful as the water danced in time. The sea broiled up enough to form the head and shoulders of one of the white horses. It brayed in time with the music and vanished again. Krilla smiled and finished his song.

He checked the boat over and stripped off. Fetching a coil of thin rope from the storage box on deck he wound it around his waist and leapt off the prow of the boat in a perfect swan dive. He entered the water with barely a ripple, mostly due to the fact that the water split and opened its surface to accept him. Below water the phosphorescence sparkled with green fire and streaked along his limbs. Krilla opened his mouth and swallowed the sea. The oxygen was filtered out and sea water came swiftly through the gills that sat behind his ears. He stretched. His spine bones lengthened out of his skin. Fins opened out along his back, at his ankles and his wrists. The webbing between fingers and toes extended. His skin became opalescent and scalene. It shone; he had scales. His eyes opened, and then his second set of transparent lids opened and the sea took on an amazing clarity. Fish vision. Krilla swam strongly through the water.

He was free. This far out, his worries about other boats and the chances of being seen floated away as he swam. Here he could finally breathe again. He’d never realised that land could sap you so much of your vital energy. Life on a boat was good, but nothing compared to life at sea. The sea was beautiful, cool, and empty. Not as of full of life as expected, for there were a thousand types of fish, a million tiny creatures, corals and seaweeds, but but spread out over the vast cubic volume of ocean all of them seemed too far apart. Krilla swam down, as the water got darker the green glow of the deep grew and Krilla swam down to the ocean floor. He sat on the sand, the world flickered green and blue about him, illuminating the world. His slim fingers explored the sand and found the smooth oval shape of a carved gem set into leather that had eroded long ago. Today was not the day to go away into the deep. But Krilla, like all his kind knew the stories, the histories. Atlantis, the ancient city of blue and gold, no longer inhabited, its throne waiting for a new king.

He sat on the ocean floor and played with the gem for a while. Slipping it into the little bag attached to the line he flittered through the weeds and came upon a sleeping shoal of tiny silver fish. He darted around them, his movements subtle and strong, propelling himself through the dark waters with almost no movement. He came to rest in a little hollow of sand and lay on his back blowing bubble rings, watching the shifting waters above him. From close at hand there was a barely audibly hiss, a rustle of sand, as a huge manta ray came to rest on the white sand with him.

“My Lord.” It’s voice was slippery and strangely bubbling. Krilla reached out a hand and stroked it’s soft under belly carefully with his hand.

“Oh great one of the deep, to what do I owe your pleasurable company?” Krilla underwater voice was languid, fluid and slow.

“It is rare to see one of your kind here. You have brought your family to these warmer climates?”

“Alas no, I alone have come.”

The manta ray flipped a fin.

“You have come to take seat in Atlantis?”

Krilla shook his head.

“My Lord, that news saddens me. We need a King of the Sea.”

“It is not my place,” Krilla flicked his fingers towards the surface, “I am a creature of the land now.”

“Surely not?” The great flat fish sounded mortified.

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“To seek companionship. Life on the surface is, so vast.”

“But dry.”

“Indeed. Thank you for your company, but I must go, my boat is waiting.”

Krilla stroked the manta, bowed a twisted good bye and shot off into the waters like an eel, strong and fast as he climbed through the waters towards the sky. Swimming was like dancing, an almost total weightlessness, a freedom of movement not governed by gravity. Krilla rejoiced as he swam.

He broke the surface not twenty yards from La Belle Mere, sitting bathed silver in the moonlight. He hooked his line to the ship and then tied one end round an ankle. Floating in the water below his hull, Krilla sighed to himself and flicked an ankle fin idly. He breathed the cool water, let the sea slide into his lungs and fell asleep, tethered to his boat, and from his boat, to the land.

*

The water was white all around him and the youngest member of the Desmau family swum with all the grace and ease of his ancestors. After all, he was Prince. By right the Throne of the Sea was his to take. And he had not taken it. The white water clouded, became chalky. Krilla closed his inner lids, protecting his lucid eyes, but the grit was in his lungs now, scraping the tender flesh of his gills. Blood blossomed around him. A thousand tiny cuts adorned his scales.

He couldn’t breath, his gills wouldn’t open. Wouldn’t work. Suddenly he was thrashing about in the cool clear blue ocean. He couldn’t swim. The pressure was immense, he was still human shaped and too far down. He tried to change, to relax, to let his watery self overtake the human skin he wore. But it didn’t work. It wouldn’t go back. He was stuck.

His mother had said when he was little, that if you spent too long pretending to be a man you lost the ability to become a fish. But it was just a story they told to small children.

But it was true.

He’d lived so long on land he’d forgotten what the sea was really like. He was drowning. A fish, drowning in the sea. Krilla tried to call for help, the sea rushed down his throat. And no one came. The darkness crept up upon him.

“Wake up.”