“OK,” Lyle said. “If you’re ready, I’ll tell you everything. And when I’ve done that, between us we’ll try to figure out our next move. How does that sound?”
“Perfect,” I said. My nerves turned to excitement as Lyle began. While we sipped our hot chocolate, he told us his story — his and Lowenna’s story.
“First, some basic facts,” Lyle began — which seemed like a good idea. Basic facts sounded safe, solid, known. Until he added, “Let’s start with Atlantis.”
Aaron’s jaw fell open. I nearly dropped my mug.
“Atlantis?” Aaron asked, almost in a whisper.
“Which is a place that exists?” I queried. “As in, like, in actual, real life?”
Lyle nodded. “It’s completely secret,” he said. “Humans know nothing about it, other than the stories they make up — which are little more than fairy tales.”
“What about merfolk?” I asked.
“In the merfolk world, the rumors about Atlantis are slightly closer to the truth — but even merpeople are a long way from knowing its full story. Neptune ensures that the secret of Atlantis is the best kept one of all.”
“Neptune!” I burst out. “He’s in charge of Atlantis?”
Lyle frowned. “Of course,” he said. “Neptune is in charge of everything having to do with the oceans. Although even he rules from a safe distance.”
“So, how do you know about it?” I asked.
Lyle turned his dark gaze on me. “Because,” he said, “Atlantis is my employer.”
“You work for Atlantis?” I gasped. “I thought you were in charge of this island. Is that just a front?” I could feel my hackles rising. Was Lyle going to turn out to be yet another adult who pretended to be one thing just so he could get away with something completely different? I’d met more than enough of those to last a lifetime.
“No, it’s not a front. It’s part of my job. And it’s a very important part. It’s just not quite as important as the other half.”
“Go on,” I prompted him.
“OK, so half of my job is the day-to-day running of Fivebays Island and looking after visitors, as you have seen.”
I stopped myself from making any comment about how we hadn’t actually seen that much of him looking after the island, or its visitors — i.e., us.
“To be fair, most of the work with visitors is Lowenna’s job,” Lyle added quickly. “My work is mostly in the background.”
“So half of your job is looking after the island,” Aaron said. “What’s the other half? The Atlantis half?”
Lyle’s voice was steady. “I am a Record Keeper,” he said.
“A what?” I asked.
“A Record Keeper — for Atlantis. We keep records of . . . of people. And boats.”
“Which people?” Aaron asked. “What boats?”
“Look. What I’m telling you now is absolutely top secret. I could get into serious trouble for sharing this. Do you understand?”
“Of course we do,” Aaron and I replied in unison.
“OK. So, I don’t know what tales you might have heard about it, but Atlantis is where people and ships go when they are lost at sea. My job is to check them in.”
“Check them in?” I asked. “How do you know when they’ve gone there?”
“Two ways. You’ve already seen my lookout spot. When I went there yesterday, I could tell that someone had been there. I just didn’t know it was you.”
“You mean the Watchtower?” Aaron asked. “That wasn’t just us. Everybody went —”
“Not the Watchtower,” Lyle interrupted him. “The other lookout place.”
“The chair,” I said.
Lyle nodded. “It’s an outpost, a . . . well, let’s say it’s a bit like an embassy.”
“For Atlantis?” Aaron asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s why it’s out-of-bounds,” I mused.
“And almost impossible to reach without half killing yourself,” Aaron added.
“I’d apologize, but, strictly speaking, you weren’t supposed to go there.”
“We didn’t mean to,” I mumbled.
Lyle held up a hand. “I know. And you’re not being punished. I’m grateful. If you hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t be having this conversation — and you have given me my first ray of hope in days.”
“OK, go on,” Aaron said.
“Lookout Reach — the place you found — is where I am based for much of the time,” Lyle continued. “I see boats from there — even ones that are not visible to most people, only to certain types.”
“Certain types?” I asked.
Lyle paused. Then he said, “I am a semi-mer, like you.”
My mouth literally dropped open as I stared at him. “And Lowenna?” I asked.
He nodded. “She was a semi-mer, too.” Then he shook his head. “Is. Lowenna is a semi-mer. I refuse to believe she has gone.”
“Go on,” I said gently.
“So, I was at my lookout post yesterday, just before we met at Deep Blue Bay.”
“Of course! It was you!” I burst out. “I saw you.” I turned to Aaron. “Remember, when we helped the others who were stuck on the ledge? I saw something in the water. You convinced me that it must be one of our friends from Shiprock. It wasn’t — it was Lyle!”
“I’ve been working overtime,” Lyle admitted. “Only, I’m not checking anyone in at the moment. I’m trying to learn if I can check them out.”
“Check them out of Atlantis?” I asked. “Is that possible?”
“Rarely,” Lyle replied in a hoarse whisper.
“So, once people go to Atlantis, they never come back?” Aaron asked.
Lyle shook his head. “Only those with specialist knowledge of Atlantis and its ways stand even the smallest chance of making it. And those who know the ways of Atlantis are unlikely to have found themselves there in the first place. So, no, hardly anyone comes back from Atlantis. In any case, most don’t want to.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Lyle shook his head and half smiled. “It is the most dazzling place. City walls that shine like gold, staircases that take you to the tops of trees where birds sing the most beautiful tunes, rivers that run with the sweetest drinks, and sunlight that warms you all the way through to your bones.”
“It sounds amazing,” Aaron said.
“Yes, it does,” Lyle answered. “But it is not all that it seems. And it doesn’t last.”
“So you want to get someone away?” Aaron asked.
I swallowed. “Lowenna,” I put in.
Lyle glanced at me and nodded. “Lowenna and I work for Atlantis from this island. I check people in, but she helps keep them from ever getting there in the first place.” Lyle paused. “You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“I . . .” I hesitated.
“Atlantis is where those at sea go when they are lost.” He emphasized the last word and waited for us to register what he meant.
“Lost?” I said eventually. “As in . . .”
Lyle nodded slowly. “As in gone. For good. Think of it as a holding place — a last stop between life and death.”
I let out a breath.
Before either of us could say anything, Lyle continued. “Lowenna is one of the most highly skilled Way Makers there is.”
“Way Maker?” Aaron broke in.
“She guides boats through difficult passages, helps to keep them safe. You already know that this island sits in one of the most dangerous parts of the ocean. Well, unseen by the ships or their passengers, Lowenna swims ahead of them and helps them through channels they don’t even know exist. Atlantis has a sort of magnetic pull. The Way Makers use this to make alterations to a ship’s course without its occupants even knowing they are doing so. That’s what Lowenna did — does. She keeps passing boats safe from a journey that no one wants them to make.”
“A journey to Atlantis,” Aaron finished.
I started to make connections.
“Guiding Prosperous II,” I muttered. The ship had been due to pass here last Friday. “That was her job, wasn’t it?”
Lyle tried to reply. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. So I continued instead.
“Lowenna was supposed to help keep Prosperous II and its passengers safe. Am I right?”
Without lifting his head, Lyle nodded. For a moment, no one spoke. What could we say?
Eventually, in a soft croak, Lyle went on. “We had lunch together. The ship was due to pass at four in the afternoon. It’s been past before, many times. There has never been a complication. Lowenna went off to work with a smile. I can see her now — her eyes sparkling, her hair . . .”
I reached a hand out and touched his arm. Lyle let my hand rest for a moment, then moved his arm to swipe a hand across his eyes. “She had something to share with me — said she would tell me after work. She was going to make us a special dinner.” He paused for ages, before adding hoarsely, “She never came back.”
“Oh, no. That’s awful,” I said.
“Do you know what happened?” Aaron asked.
“I didn’t at the time. I watched the ship from Lookout Reach — smiled to myself as I saw it weaving through the channels. I knew Lowenna was steering it along. And then . . .” He stopped.
“And then?” I nudged him.
Lyle shook his head, as if he were trying to deny the truth of his own words. “And then it went,” he said finally. “Disappeared. I saw it go.”
“Go?” I asked. “How did it go?”
“Straight down. As if it had been sucked under and swallowed up by the sea in one mouthful. All that was left behind was a line of giant bubbles across the surface of the ocean.”
Memories of the kraken came into my head — a huge, fierce sea monster that stole treasure and gold from ships that strayed into the Bermuda Triangle. But even the kraken couldn’t gobble up a ship of that size in one bite.
“It was an earthquake,” Lyle said flatly. “Happened out there in the channel. Two plates under the earth shifting right beneath the boat. Add that to the high tide and the magnetic power from Atlantis that Lowenna was exerting to keep the boat on track, and you have a powerful combination.”
“What happened?” asked Aaron.
“In short, the earth opened up beneath the ship, sent a rocket of bubbles and air shooting upward, hit Lowenna’s magnetic force, and sucked the boat right out of the sea and down into the vacuum below. Earth, air, water, tides, all mixed together with the ship stuck in the middle. Ten seconds it took — and it was gone. The ship. The people. My wife.”
Suddenly, everything made sense. This had all happened on Friday — the day before we’d arrived. No wonder Lyle had been in such a state the whole time we’d been here. A bunch of visiting kids was hardly going to be his priority when his wife had just gone missing.
“Why didn’t you say something?” I asked. “Why didn’t you cancel our trip?”
Lyle almost laughed. “If I’d had enough spare thoughts in my head to do so, I would have,” he admitted. “But all my thoughts were on Lowenna and the ship. I had completely forgotten you were even coming till your teacher called from the beach to say you were here.”
“I’m not surprised,” Aaron said. “Jeez. We were the last thing you needed.”
Lyle hesitated before replying. “Maybe,” he said after a while. “Or maybe you were exactly what I needed.”
“Really?” I asked. “Why?”
“Look. Here’s what I know . . . The ship went missing and the earthquake took Lowenna down with it.”
“You know that for sure?” Aaron interrupted. “I mean, there isn’t any chance that she just got stuck in the rubble of the earthquake but is out there somewhere now and will be home soon?”
I envied Aaron’s innocent hope. He hadn’t seen the woman in the porthole. He didn’t have the panic in her eyes burned into his mind.
“She went down with the ship,” Lyle said. “I know it. I tried to tell myself otherwise at first, but it’s been gone for three days and she hasn’t returned. She’s gone. Even if I had wanted to hope, wanted to tell myself that the ship had simply changed course and Lowenna had stayed out at sea for some reason, I couldn’t. See, when a ship and its people are lost at sea, the other place I see them is on my radar in the Watchtower.”
“We didn’t see a radar,” Aaron pointed out.
I remembered the locked door with the PRIVATE! NO ENTRY! sign. I guessed the radar was in there.
“We don’t include it on the guided tour,” Lyle answered.
We hadn’t had much of a guided tour, but I wasn’t going to call Lyle out on that right now.
“I avoided going to the Watchtower for hours, telling myself that the ship had just changed its course and Lowenna would be home soon,” Lyle went on. “But by nighttime, I knew I had to face the truth, and I went to look. I could see then that the ship had been lost, Lowenna with it, and I had to check them into Atlantis.”
“So that was when you gave up?” I asked.
“Well, yes, but only temporarily. Because on Saturday, something extremely unusual happened. Something I have never seen before — not once a ship has been recorded as entering Atlantis.”
“You saw it,” Aaron said.
“I did. I saw it for the first time late afternoon on Saturday, shortly before you arrived. I was at my lookout point. It was twenty-four hours since the ship had disappeared, and I was waiting there, hoping for . . . I don’t know what I was hoping for. I was almost beyond hope, but then I saw it! Just for a matter of minutes — but it was there.”
“Like when we saw it the next day,” I murmured.
“Sunday, yes. I had a lot of catching up to do, organizing your week, so I couldn’t get back there again till later in the day.”
“Which was when I saw you.”
Lyle nodded. “I figured if there was any chance of seeing the ship a second time, it would be on the high tide again, and from the same place — Lookout Reach.”
“That was why you said to meet after high tide,” I concluded, suddenly remembering Lyle joining us with wet hair. He hadn’t showered especially for us; he’d been in the ocean! “So you could go back to Lookout Reach to search for the ship first.”
“Exactly.”
“And did you see it that time?” Aaron asked.
“Clear as anything.” Lyle smiled gently, as if seeing his wife in front of him and smiling just for her. “The ship was out there, heading this way. Fifteen minutes, I had, before she was gone again.”
“Have you seen it since?” I asked.
“I glimpsed it this morning. But barely. It was fading. She’s going from me.” His voice broke on the last words.
“Can’t you go after it?” Aaron asked. “You work for Atlantis — can’t you just go there and bring her back?”
Lyle almost laughed. He shook his head. “Believe me, I would if I could. But Atlantis is not a place you can just go to. It is a place where you find yourself — if you are very unlucky. My job is on this side. It is a numbers game. I am more or less an accountant, keeping track of losses and gains.”
“So no one can go there,” I said. “But how come we can see the ship? And why is it fading?”
“I’ve been asking all the same questions myself, and studying the answers using every bit of knowledge about Atlantis I have,” Lyle replied. “I’ve been up day and night, puzzling over every detail. To my knowledge, this has never happened before in my lifetime. You understand? Never.”
“Seeing a ship after it’s gone to Atlantis, you mean?” I asked.
“Yes. It’s virtually unheard of. I mean, there are rumors. I’ve read the writings of the old RKs.”
Aaron frowned. “RKs?”
“Record Keepers. The ones that went before me. I’ve been studying their stories, their experiences, to see if I could find anything that would help.”
“What did you discover?” I asked.
“Not much. Some wr
ote of occasional sightings of ships that had returned. Others talked of portals between this world and Atlantis. But it was all conjecture. There was no hard evidence. None of them could prove anything. To be honest, there wasn’t much I hadn’t heard before, and I’ve never believed any of it — till now.”
“Till you saw the ship with your own eyes,” I said.
“Exactly. Since then, I’ve been unable to think of anything else. The sightings gave me a shred of hope. The fact that you saw it, too, has doubled that hope. But dashed it at the same time.”
“Dashed it?” I asked. “Why is that?”
“The sightings meant that those on board the ship were trying to come back — to leave Atlantis.”
“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Aaron insisted.
“That is, yes, but they are fading — which means that the attempts are failing. Each time they try and fail, the chance of a successful return gets slimmer. And each day that goes by takes them farther and farther away. As a Record Keeper, I know that it takes six days from when a ship passes through my radar before it’s gone for good.”
I sipped my drink. It was almost cold now, but the chocolatey taste was still good. “What do you mean?”
Lyle sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Try us,” Aaron said.
“Well. Time works differently in Atlantis. When a ship enters, the first day there is the same length as a day here. On day two, it begins to change.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“Time passes strangely,” Lyle replied. “On the second day, twenty-four hours in this world is like a week in Atlantis. Day three is like a month. Day four is six months. On day five, anything can happen. Time just goes wonky. It could pass like a normal day, or it could be a year — or anything in between. Everything is kind of skewed until day six . . .” His voice faded away and he looked down at the floor.
“What happens on day six?” Aaron asked.
Lyle spoke to the carpet. “At the end of day six, it’s over. The ship is gone forever. There have never been any tales of a ship returning after day six. Not even rumors.”