Finding Atlantis - 4. Chapter 4

Aziz was sitting on the quayside with Aslan; there was the clink and clip of little stone tabs against inlaid mother of pearl and polished wood. Aslan was winning the game of backgammon, he almost always did. They drank tea out of tiny curved glasses and Aziz watched the seagulls swirl while he contemplated his move. And then there was a yell from the direction of the harbour entrance. La Belle Mere, with only the stay sail still up; Krilla leaning out from the prow, hanging on the headstay.

“Ahoy on shore!”

Aziz and Aslan both leapt to there feet.

“Krilla!”

Krilla threw the rope out to Aziz and let down the sail. He leapt out onto the land and swayed a little, his land legs had deserted him. He grinned at Aziz.

“Is it the weekend yet?”

Aslan nodded.

“Kril how long have you been out there? You look, er…dishevelled.”

“Three days, I think.” He yawned widely, his hand jumping up to his mouth too late, “Sorry. You guys want to help me with the load?” Krilla was dressed in loose shorts and a shirt with one sleeve missing. The boat was still very neat, but when Aziz put his head below decks he saw that there was no food in the galley and no water. The men from the fish market had arrived on the dock. There were five full boxes of fish, three of giant flat sided tuna and two of lovely sleek looking rainbow trout. They got all the boxes off the boat and then the haggling began.

The fisherman didn’t want to pay the price that Krilla was demanding. He showed the quality and size of the fish, but the men shook their heads. This was all for show. Aziz knew that they would eventually give Krilla the price he wanted, his fish were the best, were always the best, even if his deliveries were a little random. After a lot of wild gesticulating, the men started to take the fish out of Krilla’s boxes and putting them into their own, which were void of water. The lead man began counting notes out into Krilla’s hand. Krilla smiled.

“Pleasure doing business with you.” They shook hands and the fish men left.

Krilla turned to Aziz and his brother.

“Anyone fancy a swim?”

Aslan shook his head.

“Nah, I’ve got to get back, Dad needs me today.”

So Aziz and Krilla leapt back on board the ship, cast off and sailed out of the harbour. They sailed out for a while, coasting on the cool sea breeze before weighing anchor in the deep. Krilla fetched the lines and rods from the cabin and the two young men sat on the back of the boat and fished.

“So what were you doing out there so long?”

Krilla sighed and flicked his rod.

“Fishing mostly, and just lying around in the sea.”

Aziz picked up the little ocarina that was sitting on the deck.

“You still play?”

“Oh yes, the fish seem to like and it fills the silence when the sun goes down.”

“Krilla,” Aziz’s voice was low and worried, “I worry about you y’know when you go and vanish like that.”

“Aziz…”

“No Krilla, just listen to me.” Aziz’s tone was firm; his line taut as he reeled in a fish of decent size. “You didn’t take enough fresh water with you. Again. And you were a mess when you turned up, clothes all over the place. Did you even eat anything yesterday?”

“I had a fish.”

“Raw?”

“Umm…”

“Krilla!”

Krilla reeled in a fish.

“Aziz, you worry too much. I’m not going to vanish without warning. I wouldn’t do that to you.” He stroked the surface of the ocarina gently, “You need to trust me.”

“I still worry about you, what if you die out there one day.” Aziz sounded annoyed, “Just, be more careful alright?”

“OK, you win.” Krilla leant over and bumped him on the shoulder, “I’ll be more careful. After all, Shalla might be upset if I die.”

Aziz laughed.

“Yeah, no more presents and no more body guard. Do you really think Captain Ali thinks that you’ll marry her?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure,” Krilla sighed, “I don’t think he’d be pleased with the truth though. No one would.”

“I was.”

Krilla grinned.

“Yeah, that was lucky. I swore that you were going hit me.”

Aziz thumped his arm.

“Why did you come here Krilla? There are plenty of better places for you to be. I mean, somewhere you could get a boyfriend.”

“I like it here.”

“And I’m glad of that my friend, but if father, or Ali, ever find out, you can bet that La Belle Mere won’t be welcome in the harbour anymore. The old generation is still so old fashioned.”

“They are going to think something’s up when you finally ask Shalla if she likes you.”

Aziz blushed darkly. And Krilla grinned.

“Am I your cover, or are you mine? She knows you like her; you’ve got to stop biding your time.”

“I know, I know.”

*

They put into Kas with a good catch and Tamil greeted them on the jetty. Krilla presented him with the fish and was instantly invited to dinner. And so they went up the hill and back to the Shad household.

“Mum! We’re home!” Aziz called as soon as he’d got through the door, “Krilla and I caught fish!”

They went into the kitchen. Aika’s kitchen was old fashioned and beautiful, the stove was an ancient cast iron affair with four doors and a large grill on top on which a saucepan sat bubbling away. The rest of the kitchen was a wonderment of fresh ingredients, strange things in jars, bottles of spices and herbs and shiny copper pots, pans and ladles hanging from the ceiling and trying to give Krilla concussion. A lump of dough was rising in a tin on top of the over, curing and filling the room with a thick yeasty smell.

“Krilla!” Aika turned and hugged him, leaving floury handprints on his shirt, “You’re staying for dinner aren’t you?”

“And somewhere to sleep if there is anywhere.”

“Of course! Aziz, get this boy something to wear and something to drink, you look like you’ve been out at sea for weeks.”

Aziz grinned and pulled Krilla along with him up the stairs. It had been this way for ages. Krilla had turned up seven years ago, and for the last seven years Krilla had eaten at the Shad household nearly every day he was on land. In return he brought home gifts, fish and food stuffs. In Aziz and Aslan’s room Krilla was kitted out with a pair of linen trousers and a well cut cotton shirt in several shades of blue. When Krilla folded up his other clothes, they jangled.

“Oh! I have something for you,” and Krilla pulled from his pocket a string of little coins. Each one was green copper with a square hole in the centre and they were all tied one after the other on a silken cord. “I found it wrapped round one of the big tuna I caught. I think he was quite glad to be rid of it, I threw him back.”

“It’s lovely,” Aziz grinned, “Thank you Krilla. Now come on, let’s go and be useful.”

*

Aika made him up a bed in the main room out of a futon, several long cushions and two big woven throws. He thanked her and waited until he heard her begin to ascend the stairs. Then he stripped off his borrowed clothes, folded them up and slipped below the covers. In his fingers he swirled the beautiful flat stone he’d found on the phosphorescent sand at the bottom of the sea. He touched it to his face, it was cool, and cold as the sea floor against his sun warmed skin.

Aziz was right about him, he never made plans because he wasn’t always certain that he’d come back to the harbour. There were no permanent ties for him on land. He didn’t need the money if he didn’t have to pay the harbour fees. He didn’t even need the boat, although to leave La Belle Mere would be painful. He was in love with the little boat; she was pretty and golden and he’d got her just the way he wanted, what with the blue and white sails and his beautiful collection of underwater relics. But he always came back. He always came back for the same reason that he had left the sea. The truth was that it was lonely in the vast deepness of the water. The seas were endless, far larger than the amount of land and even larger than the amount of inhabited land where he could live, close to the sea. And the numbers of his people were dwindling, had been for a thousand years. To be fair, Krilla knew that his orientation didn’t help the matter, but that was hardly his fault. The chances of finding someone you liked were slim, which was why there seemed to be a lot of arranged marriages, and why, despite the huge amount of sea available, everyone lived on the eastern edge of the mid Atlantic ridge, deep in the cold sea. Krilla couldn’t see why. Why live so deep and so lonesome? No one knew if there were others of their kind, living further north or further south. So Krilla had come here, and now his was, by and large, a fish tied to the land.

*

He was being watched. That in itself wasn’t unusual. But he was being stared at from all angles. Unseen eyes were everywhere around him. Krilla twisted and turned and realised that he couldn’t move. Not far. Panic struck him deep in his chest. He tried to get up but glass held him in. His breathing became shallow and fast and now he realised he was in a tank. A tank of sea water barely bigger than he was. He thrashed and banged his arm on the glass. People were staring at him. Of course they were staring at him, he was a freak, non-human, a thing with fins pressed against the glass, his gills filtering out the little air there was. He was gasping, dying, there wasn’t enough to breathe in. People were pointing, laughing. He was a freak, a creature of fairy tales and myth.

Krilla tried to scream and his voice failed him. He saw familiar faces in the crowd. Aziz was there, laughing just the same as everyone else. Yusuf looked aghast, pointing at him. Tamil was there, and Ali and Shalla and everyone else he knew. Krilla fought against the glass, thrashing around in panic. The glass smashed, pain sliced into him, splitting his scales, blood flowed out onto the cobbles of the road. And Krilla was lying there amongst the broken glass in the street, his fins sagging, his scales broken and bloodied. No one was laughing now. Distain smeared their features. Krilla was choking on the air and the pain. He couldn’t turn back. He reached out to Aziz for help, but his friend turned away into the crowd. Krilla choked.

*

Krilla woke the next morning to the homely smell of baking bread. He rolled over in his twist of sheets and stretched. There was a knocking on the door frame. Opening one bleary eye he could see the figure of Aika, turned away from him. He grabbed his trousers and pulled them on quickly.

“I’m decent.”

She came in.

“You’re far from decent my boy,” she said, handing him a comb and a glass of water, “Go on, get in the bathroom before they all wake up.”

All around the house were the sounds of people waking up and groaning. There was a tangle of half dressed boys outside the bathroom when Krilla emerged, looking neat if not fully awake, and Aziz nipped in quickly before he was even out, evading his groaning brothers.

Finally all awake and dressed and clean, they sat down for a breakfast of fresh bread and fruit and water. Krilla had slept well enough, though being on land always made him unsteady in the morning. He thanked Aika and walked down to the dockside alone. His boat was just how he’d left it. Krilla leapt up on board and surveyed the harbour quickly, looking for the shadow of Tamil. But there was another figure sitting on the harbour wall.

A foreigner, someone a little like himself, pale skin showing the early stages of a tan, short spiky ice blonde hair, half his face was cast in shadow from the low angle of the sun, but that which Krilla could see was smooth and sharp featured and handsome. The stranger raised a hand in a salute as he cast off and began to sail out of the harbour. Krilla waved back slowly. The young man stood as Krilla past him where he waited by the light house.

“May the wind go well with you.” He called out in clear unbroken English, his accent strange to Krilla’s ears.

“With you also.” He replied, turning to watch the figure out of sight as he sailed away. He nearly called out again. Who are you? But the words failed on his lips as his heart leapt with the image of the stranger and in his gut he felt the tide swirl with the winds of change.

Krilla sailed out into the blue. The fish boxes were cleaned and stacked, strapped to the front of the cock pit. Krilla stood at the prow of La Belle Mere and adjusted the set of the staysail by hand. The sky was clear and the sea was blue. He heard a call, a high pitched sound over the side of the boat. A porpoise was swimming along with him, its shining skin smooth as glass as it humped in and out of the water. The beautiful mammal leapt into the air and Krilla called out to it in the bubbling language of the sea. The animal, its greeting done, swam away fast as an arrow to join the rest of its family.

Krilla liked all the sea dwelling mammals; they were more like him, a creature of both the air and the sea. He smiled as he remembered his one and only run-in with a whale. It had been a blue whale, larger than anything Krilla had ever seen. Its fins made the water around it churn; you could not swim placidly alongside such a beast. And he heard its song, a slow and melodious tune, and within the tune, a hundred conversations, many of them older than the whale itself. He’d called out to it, his fast moving voice leaving spiky wave patterns in its great brain and he’d heard the beginning of an answer, but the voice had been too slow, and then he was too far away. The huge whale continued on its journey, one more stream of thought added to its song because of him.

He spent the day sailing out around the islands for nothing more than the joy of the salty wind. He ducked when the boom swung across the boat and hurried to the other side to lean way out over the water, keeping the little vessel at a steady angle, scudding across the wave tops. He raced his own trails around the smaller islands, playing with the sea and the wind for the sheer joy of the matter, pleased that he needed not to fish nor run any sort of errand, pleased just to play with the waves. But eventually the wind began to simmer and roll lazily and Krilla set the ship towards the sandy little bay of one of the largely uninhabited islands. This side of the island was totally choked by trees and no one came over the ridge. The bay was a white stripe in the glowing red sunlight. He dropped anchor and let down his sails, carefully packing them away for the next day.

Krilla peeled out of his clothes and folded and stored them below the deck, they were borrowed after all, and then leapt into the sea. He was fluid in the water as he swam, still human shaped, but filtering the water through his gills as he went. It wasn’t hard to catch fish like this; he just simply swam towards a fish from behind, grabbed and killed in one swift motion. Once he had two he went back to the boat and hauled himself and his catch back up on deck. Krilla took a short sharp knife from where it was kept lashed in its sheath to the mast and split the fish apart. Heads fins and tails he tossed back into the water for other bigger fish to gobble up. Carefully splitting the fish down the centre he removed the back bones. A little pepper and a bit of garlic and Krilla ate the whole lot raw; it was often too much fuss to start up the griddle and cook when the flesh was perfectly tender raw, at least for him anyway. The people of the under water didn’t cook, fire was totally against their nature. Half of them didn’t even know what it was. Krilla had a boat equipped with under water flares. Fire in the deep, who would have thought it.

The sun was down and Krilla considered it to be a good day, he had eaten well and sailed well and now he was moored in one of the most beautiful little bays along the coast. He hung the hammock out and lay in it, curving to its shape, draping a blanket over himself. He remembered the stranger on the shore that morning. May the wind go well with you. That was a saying he hadn’t heard in full for a very long time. Everyone just said go well. Go well. He remembered the shadows that meant he couldn’t see the boy’s eyes and wondered how old the stranger was, and where he had come from. The accent was weird, northern. Some reach of Eastern Europe perhaps. Krilla didn’t know. He’d seen the jaw, the man’s height, his slimness of form. And why had he been out and about so early? Not a tourist then, something else, something better. Krilla’s slim hands stroked himself under the covers. Handsome, paler than he was, he wondered what those open pink lips would taste like. To kiss someone after so long. Too long, to feel hands caress his skin, to find someone to wake up with.

Krilla stroked himself faster now, images blurring in his head, the hammock swung and creaked gently on its hooks. He imagined peeling the boy out of his clothes, the fabric just drifting away into the clear water, kissing his chest, following gravity down to caress him through his clothes. He heard that strange accent voice saying his name.

Krilla. Krilla. Krilla.

Krilla gasped for air as he came, flowing into his own hands. His face was hot in the darkness, knowing no one had seen, but feeling slightly shamed by his illicit thoughts of the man. He lowered a bucket into the water and washed off before returning to his hammock. And unsurprisingly tired, he slept peacefully after that, untroubled by any dreams but the rocking of the water beneath him.