Autumn Mermaid (Mermaid Series Book 4) Page 4

  With a few simple modifications, the anti-gravity craft that had brought her here would take her farther... much farther, if she had the courage to face the unknown that loomed over her head every night.

  Ena decided she would stay in Toulon, for now. Soon, though, she would be leaving this world behind. Something horrid was brewing inside the densest dark where her prescience had no reach and try as she might she could not kindle the light of intellect. Only a vague sense of unease reached her, a disquieting foreboding of a future that could flow two ways: either to paradise or straight into hell.

  Chapter 8—Memories

  He needed no one.

  Alone with an entire continent at his disposal, Kāne had no urge to return to his former life. Indeed, the memory of those days had faded into a dull blur that only surfaced when he chanced across a faint odor of lilacs.

  Ena loved lilacs.

  The remembrance of the girl brought both a smile to his hearts and a deep-seated sense of angst to his psyche. He called her Daughter but she had been much more to him. She had been a life line to a world he would have never known if she had not been there for him.

  He rarely dwelt upon memories. They were troublesome creatures best left to the foraging beasts in his mind that devoured them as soon as they sprouted. He had sailed half way around the world in an effort to finally be free of those nagging mayflies of malice that both haunted his dreams and excited his waking moments.

  The years beneath the Lake had taught him many lessons, not the least of which had been that of love. It was best left to the women, to the witches that prowled the depths seeking to lure him into their abodes and despoil him.

  "Don't go away, Father. I'll miss you. Please... if you must leave, choose a home close by where we can visit."

  Ena had tears in her eyes as she pleaded her case. She nearly succeeded in changing his mind, especially those tears that tasted of salt and lent her the appearance of a lost fawn searching for someone, anyone, to take care of her.

  "I won't go far, Daughter. When I'm settled, I'll send word of my whereabouts so you can visit when you've a mind to."

  He had lied. He'd grown good at telling those that loved him what they needed to hear if not what they wanted to know. He could see it in her face. Ena knew he was lying yet she went along with the ruse. Still, as the kilometers drifted past and the time away from her grew long, she never came after him.

  Shifting constellations overhead told him that the passage of time had stretched beyond any meaningful reunion with her. She had undoubtedly let him go, even as he said his goodbyes.

  "How could you just leave her behind like that? Don't you care about her?"

  The stranger appeared in his dreams more often than he would have liked. The man wasn't exactly a stranger, however. He knew him from somewhere in the hourglass of time that had trickled by as he sunned himself on the beaches of old France.

  His name was Kirk.

  They had never talked much if at all. Rather, Kāne recalled telling the man stories of what was and of what would come to pass, seeking to warn him somehow, though he knew the music once set in place could not be unplayed.

  He found him on the beach. Kirk was sitting in front of a fire. The ocean seemed particularly unruly that night, as if a far off storm might be brewing far out at sea. He could smell it in the air as overhead the stars were gradually blotted out and lightning danced the sky with thunder roiling amid the words that Kāne spoke.

  Kāne spoke without looking at Kirk in a sort of iambic pentameter and though he'd never been prone to giving long speeches the words once they started seemed to follow one another naturally to the end. Something in his demeanor pulled the words from Kāne even though Kirk clearly had no idea of what he was talking about. Perhaps if he had been more in tune, Kāne thought how he might have helped to avert the disaster which was sure to follow yet he knew once the rhythm of the music had played there was no altering it.

  "Once there was a man who thought he could rule the world. He was wrong. Though he learned the lesson the hard way, he didn’t appreciate the moral to the story. Instead, he sought to further his ambitions by more furtive means.

  "This man hurt everyone that loved him and indeed, everyone who he loved. Still, that did nothing to dissuade him from his cherished goal of becoming master of not only his world, but the world of all life.

  "He didn’t understand where the thoughts that excited his mind came from but neither did it occur to him that they were placed there by malignant forces bent on a destruction set in place eons ago. He claimed the thoughts as his own. And in doing so became his own undoing.

  "Many people attempted to rescue this man, especially those who cared for him and treasured his presence. They all failed, not on account of any weakness of their own but rather because the strength of the demons that drove this man to distance himself from anyone and anything that might come between him and his desire.

  "They all thought he'd been lost. But he'd been found all along. His purpose slowly became clear as the tides of time washed away the memories of the love that once succored and protected him from not only the elements of danger but from the hordes of want that raged within his mind.

  "He had died and yet he still lived. He often thought of his youth, of how he was bullied and badgered not only by strangers but by everyone he knew... even those he loved The hatred that had been sown in those long ago days still simmered and it took only a breath to send the flames of loathing shooting up through his brain and out into the world once more to devour all that was good and wholesome and free.

  "His tormentors were there to do his bidding. In his naïveté he believed he was the one in charge, that his orders would set the world into a new direction, one of purpose and strength. In time, however, he began to suspect his own weakness was far greater than any of the others whom he sought to usurp.

  "Like being attacked by invisible swarms of biting mosquitoes this man was subjected to an eternal torture as everything he thought was his was gradually stripped away leaving behind a shell of emptiness. Once he was bereft of all that he had ever treasured, his mind began to be filled with odium and revulsion for anything alive.

  "If he could not feel the sun upon his skin or the breeze ruffling his hair, why should anyone or anything partake of that pleasure? The world was better off being a dead place, a graveyard full of darkness. Life gave the impression of hope. Death was final and in the end far more powerful than the living could ever hope.

  "This man of shadows assembled his army with care, biding his time while hiding in plain sight. He used everyone who he encountered all the while plotting his coup. Time was on his side and when all his machinations ripened he unleashed his attack.

  "He was thwarted in the end by a sacrifice unheard, a pause in the music, a lull in the rhyming rhythms of time. His intended target was missed. Instead, another was ensnared within the maze of the mystery that grew inside the darkest of nights deep beneath the good earth."

  "It's me."

  Kirk's two simple words startled Kāne out of his trance. He didn’t know what he had said to trigger the man's response and though he searched his mind for what had just occurred, it was a blank slate.

  He had gotten up to walk away. Leaving Toulon the next day, Kāne had never seen Kirk again... not until now. Daughter was in danger and he sensed somehow the man he hardly knew and only spoke to once was the cause.

  Ages had passed him by and suddenly the words were once again emerging from his memory like silver coins stashed away in buried treasure chests and forgotten. The haunting melody of the music had returned with those memories, however, and he knew what he had to do.

  He had taken care when dry docking the felucca in which he had sailed to Australia knowing that he might need it again some day. If he made haste, he could reach Toulon in less than thirty days. From there, if the music was with him, he could take one of the new flying machines Daughter had introduced him to and be in old America wit
hin minutes.

  As he unfurled the sails he looked back at his castle knowing he would never see it again. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he caught movement but put it off to the play of the sun upon the water.

  Chapter 9—Doubts

  He had doubts.

  Though his father and Mr. Pete were both confidant with their equations and calculations, and even Karen was wildly enthusiastic, Maon couldn’t quite grasp the idea of actually traveling to nearby stars.

  "I hate to hurt my father's feelings, precious Sileas, but I don’t think he understands the intricacies of interstellar travel. That star ship they are building will likely as not be their deaths if they ever attempt to take it into space."

  He had heard the stories. He understood the earth would one day become enveloped within the expanding atmosphere of the sun, its oceans would boil, and all life would perish. That day was billions of years in the future, however, and there was no guarantee that any of them were truly immortal. He had once expressed his concerns to his grandmother.

  "Everything born contains the seeds of its own demise, my darling mother."

  "Those words sound as if they were written by a human being, precious Maon."

  He had to admit she was right. Still, it had always been hard for him to grasp the concept of eternity. If they were all destined to live forever, what of their environment? Not only earth, but the stars themselves might slowly fade away. Would they be the only ones left, floating a barren universe with no hope of a future?

  Maon was excited at first when his father told him of the plans to send a probe to a nearby star. It seemed a grand adventure. But when the probe failed to send back the expected telemetry, a stark reality seemed to set in.

  "I don’t understand what could have gone wrong, Mr. Pete. Is it possible the probe exited the wormhole inside the star instead of orbiting it as we planned?"

  "I suspect the difficulty might lie in the matrix of the wormhole itself, Mr. Nate. We may have inadvertently powered this side before the connection was firmly established. It's something we need to address before we try again."

  There had never been any thought of giving up. After the first probe failed, another was sent, and then a third. Instead of arriving at their predetermined destinations, however, they all seemed to vanish into nothingness.

  Still, the work on the star ship continued. Though it seemed useless, Maon couldn’t bring himself to refuse to help when asked. He had even accompanied his father and Pete on a trip around the moon and back though they were too apprehensive to fully engage the warp field and attempt faster than light speed.

  "When are we taking this ship to one of the stars, father?"

  "It appears the wormhole we established to Barnard's Star is still intact, Maon. I'm not sure what effect that will have on our own trip so I think we're better off not going to trans-light speed until we can figure out how to close it."

  Though he often sat in on discussions between his father and Pete, Maon knew nothing about the complex equations and complicated equipment that dominated the workshop behind the villa at the Isle of Sky. As time went by, it appeared to him that neither of them knew all that much either.

  "I don’t understand, Pete. We've shut down the generator that is energizing the wormhole but it will not collapse as our forecasts predict. Even so, we should be picking up telemetry and we're not."

  "I think something is powering the other end of the wormhole, Mr. Nate. We may have opened up a rift in time and our probes are functioning but they've been flung either into the future or into the past where we cannot pick up the signals. I wish Ena was here to consult."

  Sending out the unmanned probes had turned into a fiasco. When the first wormhole had been established, the second and third probes seemed to have been sucked into it as well. It remained open until they could eliminate the forces that held it into place despite their best efforts to close it up.

  A steady stream of probes all seemed to go to the same graveyard, wherever it was, and promptly cease sending any signals whatsoever. Not knowing where the wormhole opened up on the other side made it too dangerous to chance a trip through it in the star ship.

  Now that Ena was gone the dream of traveling to the stars was fast diminishing. She had been the glue that held everything together. Without her prescience it became increasingly clear that none of them knew how to rectify the problem.

  "She predicted we would fail."

  Maon had blurted out the words one night while the three of them were making final adjustments on the star ship that might never see the stars. He'd had been feeling dejected all day long and though he told himself she had been wrong, now he couldn’t seem to shake the feeling Ena was right.

  "Let us attempt to send something mundane through the wormhole this time, Pete. I'm wondering if the electromagnetic discharges of the probes we've sent are somehow disrupting the warp field."

  "What do you suggest we send, Mr. Nate?"

  "How about a journal... I've always kept a daily record of all the happenings at Orchardton Hall, Toulon, and here at the Isle of Skye. Perhaps by sending something inert through the wormhole we can better gauge our success, or lack of it."

  "We don't have anything to lose, Mr. Nate... other than your journal."

  "I don't care about that... it's all nonsense anyway. I still think we need Ena's help but until we can induce her to travel back here we'll muddle along on our own the best we can."

  Maon noted how the girl had been morose lately ever since Alpin had made it a habit to spend most all his time in the wilds of the Grampians. Though Ena wasn’t his biological daughter he had always thought of her as such, at least until Kāne showed up.

  It was clear that after meeting her real father, Ena had begun putting up a sort of shell around herself and her adoptive parents. Sileas said she noticed it too but like him she had no answer as to how to remedy the situation.

  "I always dreaded this moment, my darling Maon. I do not wish any harm on Kāne and it is wonderful that Ena can connect with her true father, but she seems so distant of late. She no longer calls me mother. She told me today that she is leaving the Isle of Skye to live in Toulon."

  Maon's hearts began to break as he listened to his wife's tender words of lament. He had never been one to express emotion... his father had always expressed his belief that while women could afford to show their weaker sides, the men of their species were so few that they couldn’t allow themselves to give in to tenderness.

  "We could go there as well, my precious Sileas. There's nothing holding us here."

  Though she hadn’t answered him, he somehow knew those were the words she was longing to hear. They'd often visited the south of old France and though he knew he'd miss the cold oceans off the coast of old Scotland, he couldn’t wait to swim again in the warm Mediterranean and make love on the beach under a warm sun.

  Still, he had his doubts.

  Chapter 10—Waking Up

  The whispers kept him awake or perhaps he was asleep but the dreams all ran into each other.

  He couldn't decide which was worse: the incessant cold or the granite-hard slab upon which he lay. When he attempted to rise he was held back by bonds upon both his wrists and ankles with straps across his chest and stomach tying him down.

  The constraints forced him into reconsidering his predicament. He had heretofore thought he was asleep in his bed in the loft of the decrepit cabin where he grew up. The people of Kurgan ignored him for the most part even though he walked through the village streets daily sporting bruises and an occasional broken bone, courtesy of his drunken father.

  He had spent his childhood in a haze. To alleviate the malaise of waking each morning to another day of pain he had taken to drinking liquor from bottles he found around the house, all of them nearly empty but containing enough booze to satisfy the cravings to forget if only for a moment.

  He had a habit of sleep walking. In order to quell it, his loving mother decided it was best t
o tie him onto the bed each evening. Many nights he remembered waking with an intense need to urinate and though he called out softly and then consistently louder until he was shouting at the top of his lungs no one came to untie him.

  Eventually he wet the bed and lay there the rest of the night shivering on cold sheets smelling of urine. In the morning when his father stumbled into the room to remove his bindings he would inevitably see the stained sheets and fly into a rage that his one and only son was incapable of holding his bladder through the night. While he was still tied spread-eagled to the bed he would be whipped until his blood mingled with the pungent aroma of stinging piss.

  He'd been dreaming of revenge, of tying the old man down and pummeling his body with the ball peen hammer he had stolen from the garage of one of the neighbors who was a mechanic. Buddy was the man's name. He walked with a limp from a motorbike crash he'd suffered as a boy.

  It was easy to break into Buddy's garage. An unlocked window provided access and he was able to sell many of the tools he pilfered to the black man who ran the only body shop in the poor section of the next town over and who often times would buy stolen cars from Kirk when he grew older.

  He kept the hammer. He dreamed how it felt solid and alive in his hand and when he swung it at his father's toes hoping to smash them and so keep the man from chasing after him he missed and instead struck the iron bed railing. He knew the noise would awaken the old man but he couldn’t help himself. He struck the hammer upon the metal over and over until the resultant gongs rang together as one long noise.

  The prone figure on the bed began to rise only it wasn’t his father. It was something metallic and cold like the Iron Maiden the kids at school once locked him inside of when they took a field trip to a nearby museum in Aberdeen. He had screamed for help but no one heard or if they did he was ignored. Each time he tried to move the prickly pointed knives sticking out of the Maiden's innards gouged small nicks into his flesh until blood pooled at his feet squishing in his shoes as he rocked back and forth sobbing.