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The wind shuffled through Jake’s sea-coloured fur as
he lay on the prow gazing into the distance. It was his favourite place to lie,
just above and behind the wooden Harquin’s head, a place that was both comfortable
and warmed by the golden rays of sun that struck it every morning. He was used
to the motion of the waves by now, and he never lost his footing even when the
seas were more rough than normal. They were traveling eastward.
“Cap’n says that’s where we start lookin’,” Don
had told them. “Most o’ th’ sailors who sighted ‘er ‘ad been either comin’ or
goin’ t’wards the East. We may get a chance t’ see ‘er, ‘e says, but I doubt
it.”
Jake had decided from the first that he liked
Don very much. He was always friendly to everyone, and he seemed to have a special
admiration for him that he had never known from Seth. The Captain, on the other
hand, was a surly fellow who stumped about on the deck, looking forbidding and
scowling at everyone. He muttered to himself sometimes. Had his fascination
with the legendary and mythical denizens of Neopia driven him to distraction?
Jake shuddered at the thought of his own young master becoming like that someday.
Suddenly, he heard a yell followed by a scraping
noise, and with that lightning-quick reflex of all his species, recognized it
as danger and dodged to the side. The next second, a heavy thud shook his perch
violently, making him lose his balance. He slipped, clutched at the figurehead,
felt his paws slide off the polished wood. The next moment he was in the air,
there was nothing around him, weightless…
The next thing he felt the sharp coldness of
the all-surrounding, all-ingesting water.
***
The sea wind blew Seth’s dark hair back from his face as the boy stood at the
rail watching the white-capped surf swirling around the hull of the ship, and
feeling the sting of the salty droplets on his face. Nothing could spoil the
day. He was finally heading out to sea, to search for the pet of his dreams.
There was no doubt in his mind that she did exist, and that if he believed hard
enough he would manage to find her somehow.
The surprised cry of a sailor behind him startled
him out of his daydream. Turning, he saw that some of the crewmembers had been
shifting a crate when a particularly sudden motion of the ship had jerked it
out of their grip. It went sliding down the deck, straight towards the prow,
where a blue-green patch of fur had leapt up hastily at the noise.
The crate slammed into the back of the prow.
In unexpected horror, Seth saw his Acara clutch
wildly at the wooden Harquin’s horned head and slide off, to fall out of sight.
“Jake!”
With an unknown desperation, Seth shot to the
prow and looked over. He could just see the flailing, gasping shape of Jake
struggling in the grip of the churning waters, and then the Acara was gone,
swallowed by a wave.
“Jake!” Seth cried again in shock and dismay,
feeling an unanticipated terror rise within him. He had never given Jake much
thought, but now the very thought of losing him filled him with such dread that
he could hardly contain himself. He couldn’t even see Jake anymore…
“My Acara… he’s in the sea… he’s been swept under!
Stop, stop, we have to go back for him!” Seth was very aware that he sounded
like a child but he didn’t care. He wanted Jake. If he could only have his Acara
back…
“We aren’t going to go back for a lost pet.”
The captain had suddenly appeared, his dark shadow falling across the boy like
a harbinger of doom. His cold eyes swept Seth disapprovingly. “Your Acara is
gone, boy. He’d never have survived, falling in front of the ship like that.
You stop your whimpering now, and get over it. You can get another one when
we return.” He stalked off, muttering.
“But--”
“Quiet, lad,” rumbled a deep voice close to him.
Seth turned his frightened countenance to see Don standing by him.
“But… but Jake…”
“Quiet,” Don repeated, urgently. He turned to
boy to face him properly. “Yer Acara c’n swim, c’n ‘e not?”
“Well… well, yes, but-”
“An’ ‘e knows ‘ow ta take care ‘o ‘himself, does
‘e not?”
“Yes…”
“An’ ‘e’s sea-colour, too,” Don finished. “See
that, lad? Yer Acara’ll be okay, you mark my words. Sooner or later, I’ll bet
you’ll see ‘im again.”
Seth rubbed his eyes. “Well, if you’re sure…”
The sailor nodded staunchly. “Absolutely positive.
There’s no doubt in me mind that he’ll turn up again. He’s a true Sea Acara,
make no mistake. Now stop your crying, try to work and don’t ye worry about
ol’ Jake. ‘E’ll be fine.”
***
Water was everywhere, rushing up his nose, filling his ears, choking him. So
this was what drowning was like. He couldn’t tell which way was up anymore.
He’d closed his eyes once he hit the water, to protect them against the salt.
Blindly he struggled, paws vainly beating at the merciless, engulfing liquid…he
could see his whole life flashing before his eyes…
Then he remembered Don’s words.
“Sea-coloured Acaras … s ‘posed to be wily in
the ways of the ocean, that they ‘ave a real good sense o’ direction. Some even
say they c’n breathe under the water.”
Heart thumping wildly, Jake opened his eyes.
It was amazing. He could see all about him great
expanses of blue-green water just the colour of his own pale teal coat. Light
danced around him in shining gold on every wonderfully twisted rock and coral
formation. Colourful shoals of Primella drifted past him, their iridescent fins
waving gently with the pull of the current, while the playful Pfish darted here
and there, whole shoals moving as a single unit, sending gleams of silver scintillating
through the water. Now and again, one of them leaped into the air above, splashing
back down again in clouds of bubbles. He heard a series of tremulous, mournful
notes below him, and looked down to see a pod of enormous Whalein passing beneath,
the light gleaming along their orange backs. Far, far away he could just glimpse
the sleek, dark shapes of Flotsam and Jetsam… or were there Peophins, too? And
perhaps the smaller outline of a Koi?
Jake gasped in astonishment and wonder, and realized
that he no longer felt like he was drowning. In that instant that he had discovered
the truth of his powers, he had become wholly one with his element. But Seth…
he was still on the ship…
The Acara paddled up and broke the surface. He
looked wildly about. Yes, there was the ship, a fat dark shape fast disappearing
into the eastern darkness. No… He took off after it, swimming with all his strength.
But the wind was on the ship’s side, and though Sea Acaras could breathe underwater,
and see under it too, they apparently couldn’t swim very fast. As Jake halted,
fatigued from his exertions, he seemed to have made no progress at all, while
the ship kept on sailing merrily into the gathering dusk. Jake watched it forlornly,
carrying his boy with him. The euphoria of discovery was fast dissolving into
the pain and desolation of loss.
Still, perhaps he could still follow it. He knew
that they would be traveling in one direction: towards the Eastern Sea. He could
follow using the sun and the moon for guidance. And he could rest on a rock,
perhaps, when he was tired, like now perhaps. The sun was starting to dip in
the sky, trailing a path of gold across the bobbing waves. Jake submerged and
began to search for a place to rest.
When Tirra awoke, the sea was bright outside
the coral formation. She shook herself to get rid of the sand that had settled
over her in the night with the movement of the tides, and looked about.
The sleeping forms of Cowrie and the Jetsam lay
dark and quiet on beside her. Cowrie had still been wary of the young creature,
despite her admittance that he didn’t look as murderous as she had imagined,
and after much persuasion had been talked into curling up on the other side
of her mistress, keeping a suspicious eye on the Jetsam while she settled down.
The Jetsam-Dagger, he had said his name was- was stretched out, his yellow eyes
closed, his pointed tail and fins moving in his sleep. He had to keep moving
something, even when he was sleeping, he had told her. It was something all
Jetsams did. Asleep as he was he looked more vulnerable than ever. Tirra still
couldn’t believe she was actually allowing one of them, whom she had heard so
many bad tales about as far back as she could remember, to travel in her company.
But she did, and despite all the stories of the evil scourge of the seas, she
had also been taught to trust her instincts. And that was what she was doing,
even though her brain warned her that she was being foolish.
Yawning, she flipped her tail and swam out into
the brightness of the sea. The patch of bright water sparkling far, far above
her told her it was noontime. She turned her head to look at the coral fortress
that had been their sleeping place and stopped in astonishment.
The coral was towering and a vibrant deep blue
in colour, bluer than anything she had ever seen before, with a tiny hint of
sea grass green in it as well. But the thing that struck her most was not its
colour. Those twisting, curling tendril-like forms rearing up into the water…
she had seen them before!
“Cowrie! Dagger! Wake up, come out here!”
The Jetsam and Koi, rubbing their eyes sleepily,
rippled out to join her. Tirra pointed an excited fin at the coral.
“Look, look!”
“Wow… never seen one quite this colour before…”
“I think it’s mighty pretty, Princess, but what’s
your point?”
“The patterns, Cowrie, the patterns. They’re
the ones the Flotsams were making in the sea, in my dream! We are on the right
track, oh, we are!”
***
Jake yawned and stretched out on the little rock, sticking up from under the
water. The sun was fast climbing up the sky and the seabirds were crying and
circling above him. The Acara shook out his salt-encrusted coat hurriedly. Time
was wasting. How long had he been asleep? He had to keep traveling eastward,
towards the sunrise…
He dived into the warm water and struck out strongly
for the bright golden orb. Somehow, some way, he had to find Seth and the Harquin.
His master’s words rang in his ears, even submerged beneath the roar of the
current.
“I think that if you really want something, you’ll
go to any lengths at all to get it, even if it seems impossible…”
***
“Princess…”
“Yes, Cowrie?”
“We’ve been drifting for hours… when can we stop
to rest?” The Koi’s tone held a plaintive, pleading note.
The Flotsam shook her head firmly. “Not yet,
Cowrie. Not for a long time…we have to find that second route marker.”
She heard a soft, resigned sigh from her handmaiden.
“If you wish it…”
They had been drifting with the current, barely
moving, for what seemed like a million days and nights to each of the three.
Golden light was spilling over the waves far above, telling Tirra that the late
afternoon had come. Though they had seen corals and creatures of all shape,
size and colour, they had seen none that resembled the enormous Koi she had
described.
Dusk was beginning to trail its velvety cloak
of darkness over the sea. Tirra’s eyelids were drooping… she was so tired… could
hardly--
She hit something head-on with a hard smack and
a sharp cry escaped her. Cowrie was immediately at her side. “Princess? Are
you alright?”
“She’ll be fine once she sees this,” came Dagger’s
voice.
Feeling hope and wonder burst through her slender
frame like joyous bubbles, completely blotting out the annoyance and pain, Tirra
sought out the Jetsam with her eyes, swam over to him, and turned to scrutinize
the object she had collided with.
It was a colossal rock, large enough to have
fitted quite snugly into the palace dining room. But from its shape, one could
easily mistake it for an immensely large Koi. Tirra could even pick out some
sea grass growing where the translucent fins would have been, and some tiny
shellfish on the ‘head’ that could have been mistaken for a face. Suddenly the
tiny mollusks opened their shells, releasing pearly bubbles. Tirra turned happily
to Dagger.
“We’re two-thirds of the way to finding Harquin!”
The Jetsam smiled at her warmly, genuinely. “Yeah,
I’m glad.”
Cowrie tapped Tirra with a fin. “ We should be
bedding down for the night. There’s a sea grass bed near the stone Koi I thought
would do nicely.”
To be continued...
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