Hearken (Daughters of the Sea Series) (17 page)

             
“If we ever get in a fight with an 8
th
grader, I’m calling you guys,” I taunted. 

             
“Laugh it up,” Olivia sneered at us. “You won’t be laughing when we select you for the ten mile marathon.”

             
“Phoebe couldn’t run up the block, and Stasia would have to stop to eat halfway through,” Carmen said snidely; making Olivia giggle. “Avery would stop after every couple steps ‘cause she might get dirty.”

             
“Hey!” Avery frowned. “I don’t care about getting dirty!”

             
“Is that right?” Carmen challenged, before tossing several pieces of bacon at her. Avery twisted and swiped them so hard they bounced across the floor.

             
“You’re wasting good bacon!” Phoebe gasped dramatically, and then threw a boiled egg at her. Unfortunately Phoebe was a horrible shot, and it hit Olivia instead. It landed on the side of her face, slid down her cheek and landed with a wet thud into her lap.             

             
We all held our breaths while she inspected the mess in her lap with a straight face. She slowly looked up at Phoebe with calculating eyes, and I stiffened in preparation of another fight. Instead, an evil grin slithered across Olivia’s face and she grabbed a fistful of pancakes without breaking eye contact. With lethal calm, she lifted her hand and chucked them straight at Phoebe’s face. The pancakes stuck to her nose, cheeks and eyes as syrup began to run down her cheek and mouth. 

             
Seconds later, all chaos unfolded in the cabin of the Sons’ jet. Pancakes, orange juice, waffles, eggs, and everything else that hadn’t been eaten was now covering our clothes, tangled in our hair, and smeared across our faces. When there was nothing else to throw, Phoebe began picking the food from her hair and face and eating it with a giddy grin.

             
“Phoebe?” Carmen plucked an errant piece of egg from her hair. “Be a doll and climb under the plane to get us a change of clothes, would you?”

             
“Nah,” Phoebe chuckled. “I think apple butter is a good look for you. It really enhances the dried pancakes on your nose.”

             
“Nothing like a good first impression, right?” I shrugged. One by one we went to the bathroom and attempted to clean up as much as possible…but butter, syrup, and jelly had a bad habit of hanging on. I pulled my hair up but could do nothing with the oil slicks of syrup throughout. Oh well, at least I smelled delicious. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes.

             
I hadn’t realized I’d fallen asleep until the vibrations of the phone in my pocket woke me up. I had been propping my head up on my hand, which was now glued to my hair with dried syrup. I finally got my phone out of my pocket to see a new text.

             
I’ve arranged for you to have a guide upon your arrival to Atlantis. He will be meeting the plane via boat.

I looked out the window and caught a glimpse of land below that was growing closer by the minute, and took a much-needed moment to come to grips with our final destination. I could honestly say I never thought in a million years I would be on my way to a mythical island thought only to exist in legends and hearsay. I closed my eyes and attempted to still the nerves that boiled in the pit of my stomach. In less than an hour, I would be standing on the very real island of Atlantis.

Chapter 15

Stasia

“Do me a favor and try not to run into the shield.” Olivia eyed the float plane pilot warily. “I can tell you from experience it doesn’t turn out very well.”

We were all squeezed into a plane the size of my pinky finger with our fates planted firmly in the hands of a rugged, bearded man in his fifties. He introduced himself as Celeus, and from his scratchy voice I could immediately tell he’d been an avid smoker for years. The thick mop of black hair on his head, along with his protruding nose and dark eyes gave away his Greek heritage, while his tattered cargo pants and worn out boat shoes told the story of his life as a fisherman and float plane captain. Countless hours working under the hot sun had turned his skin to leather, but his eyes held a spark of adventure that was contagious. 

“I’ve done this a million times, agápi̱ mou.” Celeus grinned; clearly amused by Olivia’s less than flattering comment about his flying skills. Unfortunately his thick Greek accent somehow made him sound slightly drunk to our uninitiated ears, which didn’t do much for my confidence. “I’ve not killed even one soul.”

“Yet…” I heard Avery mutter with eyes squeezed shut and fingernails digging into her knees. As the plane pitched and rolled violently, my stomach grew more and more queasy, and I could only guess at the frightening images of death and destruction running amok through Avery’s mind at that moment.

“Just make sure you don’t kill
us
!” Olivia screeched and grabbed onto anything nailed down. “And don’t call me ‘your love’.” I found myself staring at her with renewed fascination as I realized she had understood his Greek. He let out a loud guffaw and angled the plane downward sharply. I grabbed the back of Carmen’s seat and held on for dear life. Beside me, Avery was almost to the point of passing out. Or puking.

Celeus continued the sharp descent until I saw the outlines of fish in the pristine turquoise water below. I was completely certain we were about to join them under the surface until he cut the engine and pulled the nose up one last time. Avery shot a desperate hand over the seat and onto my arm, and I grabbed her hand and tried to ignore the loss of blood in my fingers. The three seconds before we hit the water were filled with sheer terror and screams as we all prepared
to die. Thankfully the next sound we heard was the splashing of the pontoons on the surface and the plane coasting to a less than graceful stop.

“You call that not killing us?!” Carmen screeched, eliciting another loud chuckle from our pilot.

“Oh my God,” Phoebe choked out with wide eyes. “I think I just had six heart attacks.”

Afraid to look anywhere else, Avery stared at me with wide blue eyes and a calm panic in her voice and asked, “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“I think we made it,” I comforted her with a tilt of hysteria in my own voice. “I don’t know how, but we did.”

“
Trelo koritsia,” Celeus chortled to himself in Greek. “Trelo koritsia.”

I glanced out the window when I heard another sputtering engine approaching. A small inflatable boat was making its way towards us with only one passenger aboard. I gazed out toward the horizon in all directions in search for the island that the boat had surely just come from, but all I saw was endless sparkling blue water. 

Celeus hopped out of the plane and helped us unbuckle from our harnesses before retrieving our bags from the underbelly. I climbed out and carefully stepped onto the right pontoon as the small white boat made its way over to us.

“Welcome
Theá.” When I realized the deep voice coming from the boat below was addressing me, I twisted around in surprise. “Uh…my name’s Stasia.”

“I know,” he stated simply, but offered no explanation. “My name’s Sebastian.” An amused grin brightened his face and made his blue eyes sparkle with a joke I clearly wasn’t in on. I had a feeling the entire bottle of syrup clumping my hair together and the strawberry jelly stains on my shirt didn’t meet his expectations of a sea Goddess. I was going to need a shower and a change of clothes as soon as possible. For a long, uncomfortable moment he studied me with quiet fascination. The confidence he exuded was staggering, and his strong posture hinted to the fact that he was of importance in
Atlantean society.  

After several more moments of awkwardness, I tried to avert my eyes to the wooden floor of the boat but found they had decided to settle on the golden skin of his bare chest instead. Looking elsewhere would have been a monumental task for any woman with a pulse. His only piece of clothing was a pair of loose white linen pants that hung dangerously low on his hips. A copious amount of what appeared to be tattoos spiraled down his muscular arms and over his
right shoulder. His shaggy blonde hair matched the bronze of his skin and curled up slightly at the tips; giving him a California surfer look.  

As my eyes drifted upward and back to his face, I noticed his curious gaze had been replaced with something resembling insecurity. Before I could figure out why he would be even remotely intimidated by me, I noticed his outstretched hands waiting to help me into the boat. His hands were warm and steady as I put my weight into them and stepped downward. Unfortunately for me and my dignity, my right ankle became twisted in an expertly placed, rogue piece of rigging on the side of the boat. He easily held me upright until I untangled my legs and was able to stand on my own. I could only hope that he didn’t know exactly who I was yet. This was
not
the first impression I wanted to give the people of Atlantis. Thankfully, Olivia was always waiting in the wings to throw me under the bus in case I didn’t do so myself.

“You’ll have to ignore our ever-graceful, food-coated Leader,” I heard her voice chirp from the pontoon above. “She had one too many on the plane, if you know what I mean.” She made a drinking gesture with her hand and raised a judging eyebrow. I rolled my eyes at her and found a relatively sturdy seat in the boat behind Sebastian. 

“I see. So tell me - what would
your
excuse be?” I heard Sebastian say with a smile, and had to stop myself from laughing out loud. Olivia attempted to retaliate, but was too shocked to say anything. It was the first time I’d ever seen her rendered speechless. I instantly liked him, but wondered if he knew he would forever be on Olivia’s shit list. It was only until I watched him lower each of the other girls into the boat that I realized something was missing amongst the strong shoulders, powerful presence, and confident smile. His essence. 

No matter how hard I tried, I felt absolutely nothing coming from him. Considering he was about to ferry us back to Atlantis, I couldn’t imagine he was human. Or maybe it was possible that I couldn’t actually feel the
Atlanteans’ essence. Maybe I wasn’t attuned to theirs, considering they weren’t descendants of the sea. That thought formed an uneasy ball of anxiety in the pit of my stomach. Up to that point, I hadn’t realized how much I’d come to rely on my sixth sense. Or was it my eighth sense? Tenth? At any rate, the new hole in my defenses was disconcerting, to say the least. 

Once all our luggage was lowered onto the boat from the plane, we said our goodbyes to Celeus and held our ears as he powered up the plane and floated farther away in preparation for takeoff.

“Hold on kyríes,” Sebastian instructed with an easy smile. “I’d never forgive myself if I lost one of you to the karcharíes inhabiting the outskirts of the aspída.”

“Nobody’s impressed by your Greek, show off,” Olivia shot at him with a deadpan tone. “Stasia could make every single one of those sharks eat you for lunch before you could say
skatá.”

“Olivia!” I hissed at her. Apparently making it onto the island before annoying the
Atlanteans had been a pipe dream.

“What’s ‘
skatá’ mean?” Avery whispered innocently to Carmen.

“It means
shit
in Greek,” Olivia answered for Carmen; her steely gaze still on Sebastian. Beneath her obvious dislike for Sebastian, I noticed a satisfying gleam in her dark brown eyes. I had a feeling knowing the Greek language might not be the only thing in Olivia’s bag of tricks. 

“Now who’s the show off?” Sebastian rivaled with a smug grin. Unfortunately, her next comment reminded me why I constantly wanted to tape her mouth shut. 

“…and pompó̱di̱ kó̱lo means
pompous ass
.”

“Olivia!” I scolded her again. Not to be out-done, Sebastian placed a menacing hand on the throttle as he calmly held her challenging gaze.

“Tétoia áschi̱mo lógia, den prépei na proérchontai apó éna tóso ómorfo stoma,” he purred in a low voice meant only for her. Her jaw set firmly with deviance and her face reddened, but before she could even utter a comeback in his direction, Sebastian pushed the throttle down and the boat lurched forward; sending her tumbling backward. I didn’t miss the satisfied sparkle in his eyes as he turned his attention forward and swept the water ahead. A less concerned Carmen and Phoebe couldn’t stop laughing, but still helped her back into her seat. She commenced to glare at Sebastian as he turned the boat to the right with finesse.

I would need to have a long talk with her when we reached the island. Disrespecting our hosts was absolutely out of the question. I sent a stern look in her direction, but she stubbornly looked away as we continued on to the invisible island. I closed my eyes and breathed in the energy I felt coming off the sea at my arrival. I leaned over carefully and dragged my fingers across the surface lightly. Energy sizzled up my arm into my heart, and I smiled widely. The turquoise water’s clarity revealed the colorful reef and schools of fish living within, and I pushed my own essence outward and into the water below as a respectful greeting. I felt a spark when my essence left my fingers and rippled outward from the boat.