Finding Atlantis - 7. Chapter 7

Krilla sat on the jetty near his ship, watching the water by his feet. The edge of the sea swirled and bubbled playfully, swelling up to meet him like an expectant puppy. Wanting his company, his blessing. Krilla let his feet fall into the water and the tiny sea currents tickled the soles of his calloused feet. He felt like he was breathing through his ankles. He let the webbing of his feet creep out, just a little. But he snapped it back just as fast when he heard his name called out in a cool foreign toned voice that made his heart shudder in a way he thought he’d long become immune to.

Turning he saw Aleksi coming towards him. His tan was a shade darker than it had been two days before and he was noticeably more haphazard and untidy. His shirt was rumpled, his jeans still damp at the seams from their washing the previous day. His ice blond hair was ruffled and Krilla longed to find out how those messy spikes felt against his hand. Alek dropped his pack with a soft thump and came to sit on the little jetty with Krilla, dusting imaginary splinters off his hands. He didn’t put his feet in the water.

“You’ve been gone a while.” He said; his voice fine and clear as a dose of morning air.

“Went fishing with Aziz,” Krilla said in a slightly clipped voice, “Good catch. Spent a while in Meis.”

“You went to Greece?” Alek’s voice was amazed, his eyes round circles of pale jade.

“Yeah. We go sometimes when we’re bored.”

“I’m jealous.”

“You want to go have breakfast?” Krilla said evenly, one golden eyebrow half raised.

“I got no money.” Alek patted empty pockets; one clinked, revealing on further inspection a one lira coin, a small pebble, and a dry olive pit.

Krilla stood up and reached a rough hand down to his foreign companion.

“My treat, let’s go.”

The two young men walked along towards one of the smaller, more homely cafes. Hardly anyone was up this early and there were no tourists around at this time of day. Krilla went barefoot, not seeming to notice the rough stone. He was strange and angular on land, walking with an uneasy gait, always on the balls of his feet, ready to run. Dressed only in linen shorts and a cheesecloth shirt he was very different from Alek’s heavily clad form. Krilla never carried anything it seemed, all his wealth in one pocket, a sheaf of rolled notes.

He and Alek sat cross-legged on the carpet outside the café, raised up on a wooden platform from the road by two feet or so. Alek’s sandals, and his pack, were placed at the edge of the roadway, hopefully where no one would step on them. On one side of the café was a man who sold rugs and cushions and all manner of woven textiles, on the other, a thin old woman arranged copper lamps and coloured glass baubles outside her shop front, and then sat with a glass of strong tea and nodded to them before dozing against the white painted wall. They drank tea from small glasses and Alek yelped as he burnt his mouth. Between them they polished off bread and fresh honey and a platter of water melon and grapes. It seemed to take forever to pay, the money part of a whole different transaction to the actual ordering of food.

“So, you speak any Turkish?” Krilla inquired over his final glass of tea.

“Enough to get by,” Alek answered in the native language, “But you guys speak so fast, it’s hard to follow. And…” now he lapsed to English, “What is it? Your accents are very different.”

“Fair enough,” Krilla thanked the café owners and stood up, hopping down from the carpeted platform, and waited for Alek to shuffle into his shoes, “You speak clearly enough though. You must be a fast learner.”

“I’ve been here six months. And I’m good at languages. I speak four now.”

“Four, why do you need so many?”

Alek laughed.

“Well, Finnish is native, but no one else speaks it, so I have English. And I have Turkish now for here, and German, because they teach it at school and that’s where we used to go on holiday when I was young.” They began wandering, automatically, towards the harbour, following the slope of the streets, “What about you?”

“Just two,” Krilla lied, “English and Turkish.”

“You learn before you came here?”

“No, but I’m a fast learner.”

“I’ll bet.”

They’d reached the dockside now and the sun was beating down, it was beginning to get into the true heat of day, slightly uncomfortable for everyone who hadn’t lived in it. Krilla stared out to the sea. The wind that came this close to land lifted his hair, tugged a few strands playfully. He could smell the sea, the salt air, the hot bitter taste of land mingling with the cool scent of water. He could smell himself, salty and clean, and the scent of Aleksi, earthy and damp and somehow tempting and strange. The boat creaked against its mooring and Krilla was lost.

“Come sailing with me.” He looked at Alek, his blue gaze penetrating, forceful.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

They jumped aboard. Krilla took Alek’s pack and shoes and stored the stuff in the cabin. Then raced back up the companionway and started up the little motor to get them out the harbour. He cast off and leapt onto the deck as the little boat began to drift away. Alek stood in the stern, trying not to get the way as Krilla turned the boat around, killed the engine, and let her drift while he yanked up one sail after another. The wind caught, the sails filled, and Krilla gave a triumphant shout as they sailed smoothly out of the harbour. On the wall, Tamil watched them go, and called out something, but it was lost in the wind before it reached them.

The ocean was an incredible deep blue as they sailed out into the wide expanse of water that Krilla privately called home. He set the tiller and approached Alek who was standing by the rail, looking wary and scared.

“What’s wrong?” Krilla kept his voice low, despite the wind, standing closer to the younger man than was strictly necessary.

“Nothing,” Alek blushed a wonderful pink under his tan, and Krilla suddenly found that this inspired a lovely addictive feeling in his chest. He liked seeing Alek blush like that. “I just don’t want to get in your way.”

Krilla lent with his back against the wooden rail, his posture angled towards the foreigner.

“Just duck when I yell ‘boom’ so you don’t get thrown overboard, and we’ll be fine.”

“Oh god.”

“What?”

“I really don’t want to get thrown overboard.”

“No really?” Krilla feigned surprise.

“I can’t swim.”

Krilla blanched.

“You what?”

“I can’t swim.”

The prospect was practically unknown to Krilla. Everyone he met could swim, or at least, he assumed they could swim. Not swimming was alien. After all, he was a creature born of the sea. How curious, someone who couldn’t swim.

“How? I mean…why not?”

“Never learned.” That too was a strange prospect, you didn’t learn to swim. It was, surely, the same as breathing.

“No worries,” Krilla’s borrowed Turkish-relaxed nature kicked in and brought an end to his questions, “I’ll teach you.”

So they sailed out towards the beach of the smooth white chalk rocks where the bay was shallow and blue and there were no nasty things to spike the feet. Alek lay on the prow wearing a borrowed pair of linen shorts, working on his tan as Krilla steered the little craft out into the blue. He weighed anchor and leapt into the clear water in a smooth slick movement. Alek watched from the deck, pale despite his tan.

“Come on Alek.”

“I can’t.” Alek gripped the railing, “Krilla…”

Krilla loved hearing the boy say his name.

“Come on Alek, come swim with me.”

“I’ll drown.”

“I’ll save you.”

Tentatively, Alek swung one leg over the railing, then the next. Krilla tried to drag his eyes off the planes of sun gleamed body. Swimming would be a good idea; he’d get a chance to touch Alek like he’d been wanting to all day. Alek let his feet fall out from under him, now simply clutching onto the railing for dear life.

“Alek,” Krilla said in a rounded, sing-song voice, “Alek…”

Alek let go.

The next two minutes were a mess of shouting and thrashing, until Krilla slipped under the water easily as a fish and came up underneath Alek, arms tight around his waist.

“Stop panicking. You won’t drown. If you relax you’ll float and then everything will be fine,” Alek’s skin was smooth and soft under his hands, “Just relax now and let yourself go.”

Inch by careful inch, he let go of Alek and was pleased when the foreign boy didn’t try to right himself, just let his limbs drift out from him so that he floated just below the surface of the water. And so Krilla taught him how to swim as best as he could, mostly by gliding around in the water, Alek trying to copy him, and by giving reassuring strokes and words and tempting the boy to come and reach him. He started out by taking Alek under the water, just so he then wouldn’t be scared of it later, and then Krilla couldn’t bear to stay near the surface and made straight for the sea bed. He came up smiling, his hair plastered to his skull. On the surface, Alek was panicking and Krilla silenced him with a smile and a hand on his arm. In his other hand he held out a beautiful, intricate piece of bright green coral, long dead and broken off from it’s original structure.

“For me?”

“Of course.”

“Oh Krilla.” Alek stared at him, round eyed, “You went so deep, and so fast. Could I do that?”

“Only if you learn to hold your breath for a long time.”

“You trained yourself?”

“Something like that.”

“I want to go down there with you.”

“OK,” Krilla took Alek’s arms and wrapped them around his neck, “Just tap my shoulder real hard when you think you’re running out of air, only a few seconds to the surface, you’ll be fine.”

Krilla took a deep breath he didn’t really need and let them fall into the water, kicking hard he got them to the sea floor in record time, his hair like golden reads swirling in the water. His fingers swarmed over the smooth white sand and he dug in, coming out with a shiny round shell about the size of a large olive. There was sudden thump on his shoulder followed by the pain of Alek digging short but sharp fingernails deep into his flesh. He sprang for the surface. Aleksi was coughing and spluttering when they emerged, steadying himself on Krilla's shoulder.

“Sorry.”

“Am I bleeding?” He meant it as a joke, and was surprised when Alek answered with an affirmative. Sea-watered blood streaked the hand he put over his shoulder to feel the wound, four half-moon cuts in his flesh. Tendrils of blood swirled in the water below them.

“There aren’t any sharks right?”

“No. It’s OK Alek.” He handed him the polished shell, “Presents from the deep.”

*

Alek helped Krilla winched up the anchor, despite the fact that Krilla could do it fine himself. Krilla hauled up the main sail and the staysail and turned the wooden craft out towards the sea. He vanished into the gloom below and came up with fishing lines. He baited the hooks with little slips of shiny mother of pearl and dropped them off the back of the boat. They trailed the lines, Aleksi sitting with them wrapped around a finger to feel the pull and not too long after they’d left the bay Krilla hauled two big sea bass out of the water. They dropped anchor again in a cool patch of water and Krilla set up the over-water grill. He set about preparing the fish in the usual way, giving Alek free range of the galley to find whatever he liked to go with it. Aleksi brought up lemon and olives and chilli and took over the cooking with a certainty that surprised the merman. He went to go sit on the railing amidships and watched the blond boy work.

Aleksi was thinner than he was, narrower built, bird boned, but he moved unsteadily around the boat, walking flat footed, grabbing for all the handholds he could. Krilla could see half his ribs, which was vaguely worrying. The boy was a little too thin but he could see the shape where his muscles used to be rounded. There really wasn’t a spare scrap of flesh on him. Krilla was largely the same, though his muscles were more rounded, but he knew in abstract, if not in plain view, there not being a mirror on board, that he was built tall and thin. It went with his natural habitat, streamlined. It was only life on land and work on boats that had given him his muscles.

Krilla was pleasantly surprised when Alek wafted a plate of good smells under his nose and Krilla came to sit with him. He ate his food, not quite as fast as he usually did, and discovered that not only was Alek a confidant cook, he was a good cook too. Krilla ate with his fingers, not minding the heat, and polished off everything well before Alek had.

“You’re good.”

“Thanks.” Alek ate with a fork, picking apart his fish with delicate movements, “You catch good fish.”

Krilla gave a wry half smile and lowered a bucket over the side into the sea. He washed his hands with the water and splashed his chest where he’d managed to leave oily finger marks. Belatedly he realised Alek was watching him, and the boy blushed as he turned back to his food.

Krilla found a woven cotton throw from below decks and spread the clean white fabric over the prow. Alek watched him curiously.

“Swim, eat, siesta.” Krilla lay on his front, arms made into a pillow and yawned magnificently.

Awkward and slightly hopeful, Alek lay on his back on the throw and watched Krilla through half closed eyes. The blond Turk looked even more tanned against the white cloth and Alek watched him guiltily. He was still uncertain whether he had any hope of getting closer to the older man. He still wasn’t sure. He was still scared. The sun warmed his skin and his heart and almost despite himself, Aleksi drifted into dreams. Krilla had been holding out for that last relaxed breath, and now he too dived into the swirling realm beyond the dark.

*

The water shone around Krilla’s sleek underwater frame. His scales glimmered with the phosphorescence, it swirled around his fins as he struck out into the deep. A shape floated there, ten feet above the shining white sand. A figure curled in upon itself, stable and enclosed. Krilla darted closer. It was the figure of a man, young, smooth skinned, and with a silent bubbled cry Krilla shot back a few feet in the sea, recognising those comatose features. Aleksi looked like he was sleeping, his eyes closed, eyelashes incredibly long in the shifting green light. Krilla swam around him, curious, not daring to touch the shining shape of this beautiful thing.

“Kitta sona,” he whispered, “Oh holy creature in the deep.” His voice, speaking his native language was soft, musical, and he reached out narrow webbed fingers to touch the skin of the boy who rested in the deep.

It was as though the touch awakened the land dwellers senses. He unfurled like the opened of a delicate anemone, and for a moment everything was beautiful. He opened pale jade eyes to look at Krilla, took a breath to speak his name, and began to choke.

Krilla panicked, he was a creature of the sea, unknowing of what to do with one who wasn’t. He wrapped his arms around the spluttering shining boy, trying to calm him. He began to drag them up to the surface, but the silver under surface of the sea was so far away, too far, and the light of Alek’s body was fading. Krilla swam faster, but it was no use, the shining boy was dying in his arms.

Krilla cried tears that were lost to the sea, and kissed the slack lips of the land dweller. He breathed into his mouth. Breathing air for both, his gills worked fast, opening and shutting behind his ears. He breathed life into the boy. It wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough. Alek was dying. Green eyes turned dull as Krilla held him, and the light went out.

Krilla screamed. Aleksi died. And in his heart the bright stirring hope went out.

*

He woke with a start on deck, a quick convulsion of his body whacking his elbow hard against the wood. His spine hurt from too long in one position and his eyes stung in the light when he opened them. Alek was sitting up, rubbing his eyes, obviously just only woken from a dream of his own. Krilla gave a half aborted cry in his native tongue and wrapped his arms around the boy. Startled, Aleksi simply sat as the fisherman buried his head in the curve of his shoulder.

Afternoon sun gilded them both into shades of gold and bronze. Krilla’s hair was spun sugar, his skin cast and glittering. Alek shone; his eyes half closed, struck by the sun. Krilla’s skin was warm against him, his grip hard and certain and fierce. He said something that Alek didn’t understand and his grip tightened, crushing his lungs.

“Krilla?”

“I thought you were dead.” Krilla loosened his stranglehold just a little, “I was…dreaming. You died.”

“I’m fine Krilla,” Alek dared to run his fingers through Krilla’s cobweb fine hair. “It was just a dream. I dreamed too.”

Krilla let go of him, recovering himself, his composure.

“What did you dream of?”

“A city in the dark, lit with green,” his voice was soft, lucid, remembering something happy, “Everything was white and blue. There was someone there. A man.” He shook his head, “I can’t remember.”

“Oh…” Krilla got up, and began moving away, his head felt hot and numb. That dream had been all too real. He could still feel Aleksi’s slack lips against his own.

“You said something,” Alek was rolling up the throw in his arms, “When you woke, it sounded strange. Kitta something.”

“Kitta sona,” Krilla replied before he could stop himself.

“Yeah, what language is that?”

“An old one,” Krilla replied, his tone hollow. His voice said not to question more. Somewhat satisfied Alek said nothing, just allowed himself a dream at the lingering touch of Krilla’s skin, the dampness of his voice in the hollow of his throat. The wind was soft against his skin, too soft.

“Do we sail tonight?”

Krilla stood tall in the very prow of the boat and sniffed the wind.

“Not all the way home. Not enough wind for it. We’ll sail out to the far bay of the gold sands.” He grabbed the headstay and began hauling up the sail, “We need to catch the wind to be there before dark. All sails up. Start winding up the anchor.”

Aleksi did as he was told, and soon the sails billowed a little with the wind and Krilla set them moving away from the mainland, toward the last island out to sea. Alek remembered his job and threw himself flat to the deck as the boom creaked. They rounded the corner of the uninhabited island and the wind died. La Belle Mere drifted into the bay and Krill dropped the anchor over the side. Here the sea floor was sandy and fine, the bay a beautiful green, only fading into indigo this late in the day.

Krilla watched the fish flood out of the bay as the sand billowed around the anchor chain. He cursed himself silently in his own tongue. Falling for a land lover. But wasn’t that what he had come to land to do, to find someone with whom he could share his strange life. The sea had been empty for him, he, an invert, the death of his line. The last of his blood line apart from his mother, and she was too old now to have another child. The shadows lengthened over the island and dripped down, inky black, into the sea and over the boat. Krilla’s eyes flared blue once and dipped to the same deep indigo as the sea. Depressing thought really, that he was the last of his line. One of a few left of his kind. And he’d chosen to live on land, and now, through no true volition of his own, to love a creature of the land. Now he could never go back, could not abandon this shining boy.

Alek put a hand on his shoulder and Krilla warmed to the contact, the intimacy he’d thought that he’d forgotten.

“We’ll stay out here tonight,” Krilla said, “Have you ever slept at sea before?”

“No,” Alek wondered how Krilla could think it possible that he had, “Krilla I’ve never been at sea before.”

“Oh…” He stared over the side, then up at the star speckled sky, “The boat moves with the sea. It’ll feel strange, worse than in the harbour, there it just rocks, here the sea will dip and swirl. It gets weird below decks.”

Aleksi looked thoughtful for a moment as full night fell upon them both.

“Where do you sleep?”

Krilla did not answer, but he led the younger man to the prow, to the blanket they had lay on before, spread it across the deck and led him down onto its folds. They lay close together and Aleksi reached out a hand and pressed it over Krilla’s heart. The muscle leapt under his hand.

“Krilla?”

The blond man smiled and his hand pulled Alek close, fingers cradling the back of his head and kissed him. For a moment Alek was so surprised he was still, and then the warmth of Krilla, the salt taste of his lips sank in, and he kissed back for all he was worth, a hand tangling in Krilla’s hair, tilting his head back to kiss down the column of Krilla’s throat. Krilla let out a deep moan, wanton lust in his voice, thrumming through his body. He tensed as Alek kissed him, realising, that despite the other being younger, he knew far more of this art of seduction than Krilla had ever been taught.

Soft warm hands caressed his body, sliding over his skin. Deft fingers undid the cord of his slacks and crept inside. Krilla hissed, wanting more and pulled Aleksi so hard up against him they both lost their breath. They were kissing again, and Krilla didn’t think he’d ever tasted anything so good and sweet in his whole life. Alek was whispering his name into his neck and Krilla almost lost it at the sound of his voice. Aleksi’s voice was gravelly and low as he stripped them both out of their fragile clothes. He rolled Krilla underneath him and the merman melted against him, all tension gone. He could barely think; he just ran his fingers through Alek’s short hair, making the other groan. He hitched his hips, his breath catching in his chest. It had been so long, so long, since anyone had touched him.

Alek lifted his long legs over his shoulders and paused, tense and wanting and suddenly unsure.

“Krilla?”

“Ungh…do it.” Krilla let out a groan at how desperate he sounded and then gasped as Alek sheathed himself within his body. He opened eyes he didn’t know he’d screwed shut just in time to see Aleksi go gold. He shone, brighter than the sun, more compelling than the sea.

“Oh Krilla, my Krilla…”

He couldn’t keep to any one language as Alek thrust into him, endearments and commands in three tongues and suddenly he peaked; the world went white and he let out a long musical cry of pleasure. Alek thrust hard and stilled inside him, whole body tense and unmoving as he took his pleasure.

They collapsed against each other, suddenly exhausted. Alek had just enough presence of mind to drag the rest of the cover over their entwined bodies. Krilla murmured something, a scrap he didn’t really hear, and fell asleep on his shoulder. Aleksi stroked his hair, eliciting a sleepy sound of pleasure and gave up his body to sleep.