Finding Atlantis - 11. Chapter 11

Aleksi yawned hugely, lion like and golden brown on the soft varnished wood of the deck. He rolled over and found the deck warm, baked by the sunlight. The angle was still low, defiantly early morning, a stripe of shade from the mast covered his eyes. He didn’t feel much like moving yet. Lying on his back Aleksi reached out an arm for Krilla’s sleeping form and found the space next to him bare and deserted. Aleksi wasn’t worried, he’d probably just gone to the toilet or for a quick swim to wash off or something. Part of him thought that wouldn’t it be nice if he made breakfast, but since all the food on board was a mystery to Krilla that felt unlikely. Eventually Aleksi could not stand not knowing anymore and went down into the hull. There was no one in the galley and the tiny bathroom door was unlocked, Krilla wasn’t there either. Aleksi figured he’d have heard him swimming, but maybe not.

He went back into the light and looked into the pearl blue water around the ship, fading to greener shades as the sand made it shallow. There was no one on the little beach and no one in the water. He went all around the boat, calling out Krilla’s name. Then he started to get worried. Where was the perfect golden boy he had slept with last night? There was nowhere to go out here and surely Krilla wouldn’t have just left him. He’d been on deck nearly five minutes, surely he’d need to breathe soon. Looking down the curve of the hull he saw a rope against the side of the boat and sinking into the water. He grabbed it and gave an experimental tug, then pulled harder, for no reason he could truly explain.

Then all of a sudden something was rising through the water and then Alek was looking down at a face breaking the surface, a face he half recognised. It was Krilla, or at least, the features were Krilla’s, the shape and set of his eyes, the tonal sea blue of them, the shape of his lips. But his skin was, well, scaly, was the only word Alek could really think of, and greeny blue tinted, same as his long hair. Fins protruded from his spine. All that information took less than a second to process before the Krilla-thing gasped, made a fluted sound and disappeared beneath the waves. Alek stood, staring and dumbfounded as Krilla, looking all wet and blond and tanned, climbed over the rail on the other side of the boat.

They stood and stared at each other, both naked, both blond and tanned, though to different degrees. Silence descended on the little boat like a fog, tension taught and high strung. Krilla felt wetness spill over his face and raised a hand to realise he was crying. That was all it took to break the silence. Alek’s feet against the deck sounded deafening in the unnatural quiet. He scooped Krilla up in his arms, knowing that the older man weighed nothing and buried his face in the golden fall of Krilla’s hair. Krilla was shaking, not cold, but scared to death, and Alek was shaking, confused and worried and hopelessly in love.

“You can hold your breath too long,” Aleksi said, merely to drown out the silence, the words sounding trivial and stupid. Aleksi collapsed, sinking them both down onto the deck, though Krilla remained locked in his arms, clinging to him like some wet limpet. Finally when they’d both stopped panting Aleksi worked up the nerve to speak again. “What are you?”

Krilla began to cry again, harsh loud sobs that wracked him uncontrollably and which Aleksi seemed to be able to do nothing to help smooth away. Aleksi kissed him, Krilla’s tears tasting of salt, his skin of sun and oranges and smelling like the ocean. Krilla curled up smaller than Aleksi thought possible in his arms and cried until he was exhausted. It was a very long time before anyone spoke after that. Eventually it was Krilla who spoke, a voice on the edge of a whisper.

“A merman, a creature of the sea. I came out of the ocean to seek love on land. Can’t sleep there, the weird unmoving land. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. You should never have trusted me. I’m sorry, I had to. To go and breathe under the water.”

“Are there others?” Aleksi kept his voice small too, scared of chasing the explanation away into tears.

“Some. Kinau for one. He is from home, home in the sea. Maybe only a hundred of us left. End of the line. The old stories say our kind was born of love between man and the sea, we evolved from centuries of fish with human fathers. So sorry. Never wanted you to know. Never anyone to know. Never should have left the sea. I hated it there. Dark and cold and lonely. So lonely.”

Alek stood up, still with Krilla in his arms. He went to the edge of the ship and sat Krilla on the wooden rail, then climbed over and sat there himself, both of them facing the sea.

“I want to see you.”

“What?” Krilla’s voice was shocked into a more normal volume.

“I want to see you. Can you do it here?”

“Yes but-”

“No. I don’t care. I want to see you.”

Krilla gulped and closed his eyes and Aleksi stared as the change washed over him.

It began as just a quick flicker, like coloured lenses over the eyes, starting at Krilla’s own closed features and sweeping across him. His skin went green and blue and crackled onto smooth scales. His hair went thick, like narrow reeds, and green as well. Fin bones began to grow out of his spine, then his wrists, then his ankles, coating themselves with scales and semi transparent webbing as they grew. His toes were webbed, his fingers were long and supple and equipped for swimming. His sex withdrew into him, like a fish, kept inside some sheath built only for that purpose. Alek Watched in fascination, then Krilla opened his eyes and slipped into the water.

Aleksi didn’t really think about following him, but he did, slipping into the water scared that he was going to find Krilla gone. But he was there, waiting with his head just below the surface. Aleksi found it hard to propel himself downward to look Krilla in the face. He was swallowing water, faint little bubbles rising from behind his ears. Aleksi put a hand out and found Krilla’s own covering it, the scales smooth and shining like marble under his hands, guiding his fingers behind the pointed ears to feel, very gently, smooth slits opening and closed with the rhythm of breath.

Krilla spoke, or at least, that was what Aleksi assumed it was, for the sound that reached his ears after he’d gone up to take breath was like listening to some nameless instrument, some combination of flute, ocarina, harp and the whole of the woodwind section of the orchestra. He didn’t know what Krilla said, but the looked in his narrowed, sea coloured eyes was pained and guilty and desperately needing forgiveness. They both rose above the water together for a moment.

“I’m so sorry,” Krilla said, and the tones were musical like his under water voice before he sank again beneath the surface of the sea. Alek went under too, and before the fish-man could react he grabbed him and kissed him hard on the mouth. Krilla kissed him back, nearly desperate for want of contact, and just as Alek felt the need to break the kiss and come up for air, he felt a warm surge of oxygen in his mouth. Wide eyed he stared at Krilla’s face so close to his own. Krilla was breathing for him. Aleksi exhaled experimentally and found Krilla strangely accepting, filtering out the unwanted gases through his gills.

Then Krilla was pulling at him, dropping through the water and Aleksi, finding that his natural buoyancy was no match for the underwater strength of this man, this creature, let go of his ties to the surface and let them sink deep below. When Krilla released his lips he panicked, trying to claw up to the surface, but a moment later Krilla kissed him again, blowing air to him, and Alek understood, it was like how divers sometimes had to share a mask, only a lot more personal.

Alek was fascinated by the look of this strange new Krilla who held him close and dragged him under the sea. He wanted to tell him so, but when he tried to speak all the air rushed out of him and whole lot of seawater rushed in. For Krilla it was the work of one kiss to get the water out of his lungs and give Alek a deep breath of fresh air. Then he felt Krilla’s lips moving, heard his voice through their locked together mouths.

“I’m so sorry.”

Alek needed another breath before he replied.

“You’re still beautiful.”

They continued on into the deep and suddenly Aleksi couldn’t see, it was so black, the water above shining faintly, and cold, strangely bitterly cold. Warmth flowed through from Krilla scales, comforting to Aleksi who a scant few days before hadn’t been able to swim and was feeling about as much out of his element as it was possible to be. And then suddenly there was light, green blooming all around them wherever they moved through the water. It was shining and confusing and then Alek’s knees bumped a soft surface and he realised that they’d reached the sandy bottom of the ocean floor. The phosphorescence spread out along the sand and Alek was surprised by the rolling shapes of the ocean floor. Then the sand shook just in front of them and a mantra ray, smooth and sleek rose and turned to face Krilla, its fins rippling slowly. The musical sounds emerged from Krilla mouth again, though he broke off talking to inject more air in Alek’s lungs. He bowed to the creature and they watched it flap away, seeming as if it was flying, weightless in the sea.

Krilla gave him another breath and let go of him and Aleksi suddenly had to cling onto the rocks he found beneath the sand to stop from floating. And Krilla was turning and twisting in the water, imperceptible flickers of fins to change direction, all the time talking, or singing, Aleksi could tell, in his musical voice. He came back just as Aleksi was running out of air and kissed him. It was rush like nothing Aleksi had even known, tongue and lips and oxygen and breath, and this time Krilla didn’t break the kiss, he deepened it, wanting Aleksi. And Aleksi surprised himself by his lust for this new version of Krilla, stone smooth and glowing in the dark water.

The water did all their work for them, eased Aleksi’s entrance to the slender scaly boy he held in his arms, one who was kissing him relentlessly, pouring oxygen into his lungs. Alek hung on tight, scared that Krilla might slip out of his grasp, but found the older man secure in his arms, grinding down against him, wanting him just as bad. They had sex in the deep waters, bodies shining with green phosphorescence instead of sweat, gasping into each others mouths and out through Krilla’s gills. Afterwards, still kissing, they rose to the surface and Aleksi was almost surprised to see Krilla change back into the form to which he was long accustomed. The both broke the surface at the same time, gasping deeply, to realise that it was dark up above and the sun was sinking into the sea as they left it.

“You’re beautiful,” Aleksi said quickly, before Krilla could get a word out. They trod water, staring at each other, and then Krilla smiled. “The sea is so,” he waved an arm in a sort of all encompassing gesture, “Why’d you leave?”

“So I could meet you.” Krilla said, his voice only now fading back to its syrupy richness.

“You waited six years for me?” Aleksi laughed and splashed him.

They swam back to the boat, Krilla slipping fishily under the water and beating Aleksi by a mile. But he helped drag him up onto the deck where they both lay, panting and staining the blanket dark with sea water. Krilla went below and got fresh water which they tipped down each other’s throats, trying not to laugh, trying not to drown.

“Hungry?” Krilla asked.

“Starving.”

Neither wanted to spoil the mood by cooking and in the galley they ate olives and peach segments straight out of the tin and the jars. Salted meats made their mouths dry and Krilla found a bottle of wine in a back cupboard. They tore meat apart with their fingers and drank the rich red wine like it was water. There was one fish left in the bucket and Krilla killed it fast and picked out lumps of clean white flesh to feed to Aleksi with his fingers. Raw fish was not something the northern boy had ever really had and he was delighted with its texture, the smooth flavour on his tongue. They both got fairly covered in fish oil.

Aleksi used fish oiled fingers to draw patterns on Krilla skin then delve into the heat of him drawing a sharp gasp from the golden fish-man.

“Fish oil for a fish,” he said in an evil voice before laying Krilla down, easing over and into him. Fingers entwined against the wooden boards, all was in shades of brown and gold, silver highlights where the moon began to rise. Krilla’s voice twisted from English to the cool musical language which he supposed was the talk of the deep and then he was crying out, those two words, kitta sona, his body tightening around Aleksi and the human could stand no more, flooding this man, this fish, who was his lover.

Neither could fight off the sudden tiredness, the exhaustion that overtook them, and they fell asleep, still entwined upon the deck.

*

The city was bright, shining white and gold and blue and it was easy to see why no one would ever want to leave. Aleksi stood by the open gates, leaning against them, relaxed, knowing the sky was dark with water. He did not question how he could breath, or that the light coming up from the sand was white and gold light daylight, but stayed, reposed, where he was the let the music fill him. It started out low, on the edge of hearing, and strung right through to the very core of him, twisting his heart, making him want to run for its source. It was music, or song he wasn’t sure, just high and fluid and beautiful and amazing.

Aleksi became aware of the approach of another figure, moving in the distance, dancing on the white sand. He left his place at the blue gates and began to stroll over the sea floor towards the figure. The dancer was golden brown, beautiful, with long flowing hair down to his hips. Wound round his waist was a simple skirt of white cloth, lined with the most fantastic blue. The dancer’s eyes were closed, swaying religiously to the music as though some aspect of life and sanity demanded that it be translated into a physical thing. Another man was watching the dancer.

He sat on a throne of white stone atop a five-stepped dais. Aleksi went to the foot of the dais and knelt before the man he knew to be a king, dressed as he was in shining robes, bands of gold and blue around his arms, and a bangle on his wrist, white and blue and gold and so incredibly familiar that Aleksi forgot himself for a moment and tried to speak. Water rushed down his throat and he choked, not spluttering, for that was impossible, there was no air. The dream vision wavered before his eyes; the dancer had stopped, staring at him in earnest want of action, unsure, for his king had made no movement. Aleksi reached out, but there was no one to kiss him, to breathe into his lungs and he was drowning in the beautiful city, drowning because Krilla was not there to help him. And in the clearest thought of his whole life, he saw now, lying dying on the white steps on the king’s throne, how he relied so much on the love of another.