Salt & the Sisters: A Mermaid Fantasy (The Siren's Curse Book 3)

  Salt & the Sisters

  The Siren’s Curse Book 3

  A.L. Knorr

  Edited by

  Nicola Aquino

  Intellectually Promiscuous Press

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Also by A.L. Knorr

  Come a little closer, my dear…

  Prologue

  White gravel crunched under Jozef’s shoes as he strode up the long walkway to his family’s villa. He hadn’t been on these grounds in forty years, and his stomach gave a sickening twist to think of what it meant to be setting foot here now.

  Claudius had found him. Rather, someone in his father’s employ had found him, and delivered the only message that could have compelled Jozef to return to Gibraltar.

  Your father is dying.

  The sea air lifted the curls at Jozef’s temples as he halted in front of the big double doors and closed his eyes. He stopped himself from using the big brass lionshead knocker, but only just. Estranged from his father he might be, but this was still Jozef’s home. After Jozef stepped into the foyer, the door snicked quietly closed behind him. In spite of the gulf that had separated Jozef from Claudius all those years ago, it felt good to be home.

  He half expected the smell of Gabriela’s baking to greet him, to see her sweet, plump face smiling up at him. But Gabriela had died twenty-seven years ago. They’d exchanged rare letters on the condition that she never reveal his whereabouts to Claudius or any of his cronies––until the day when he’d received a letter from Gabriela’s daughter with the sad news that her mother had passed from pneumonia.

  “Master Drakief?”

  It was a brittle, sullen voice he did not recognize.

  Jozef looked up the steps to where a man in a black blazer stood on the landing. The two men studied one another.

  “You must be Mr. Heller?” Jozef guessed.

  Mr. Heller was a tall, spare man with a close-cropped head of snow-white hair. He took the few steps down from the landing to the foyer and extended a hand to Jozef.

  “The prodigal son has returned,” he said in an accent that was pure local. He shook Jozef’s hand but his gaze was pure ice. “Your neglect of your father has not done him any favors, as you’ll see for yourself. Had you come home sooner, he might not be suffering as he is.”

  Jozef released the man’s hand, unsure of whether to laugh at his assumptive insolence, or to make an attempt to defend himself. Instead, he closed his face from all expression. Suddenly, it no longer felt good to be at home. This man may have been Claudius’s caregiver for the past few years, but he knew nothing about Jozef or what had driven a wedge between father and son. He doubted Heller even knew the true biological nature of the man he cared for.

  Upon that thought, Jozef was once again hit with the same cold wonderment which had plagued him on the flight over––why was his father dying? As an Atlantean, Claudius was blessed (if you wanted to look at it as a blessing) with a much longer lifespan than any human. Jozef knew Atlanteans who were three hundred years old. His father was only a little more than half that. Jozef had been born when Claudius was in his seventies and in every memory he had of his father, Jozef remembered Claudius as an iron-hard, vital man.

  “I’ll show you to his room.” Mr. Heller turned and led Jozef up the steps. He paused and sent his frigid judgment over his shoulder at Jozef again, like tossing a bucket of cold water over Jozef’s head. He spoke with a thinly disguised contempt, his upper lip curling. “Unless of course you’d rather take some time to freshen up, have some tea, perhaps?”

  “I know the way, thank you.”

  Jozef passed Mr. Heller, leaving him on the steps with that disgust on his face. The welcome Jozef had received thus far did not bode well for the reception he expected from his father. Claudius must not have told Heller anything good about Jozef for Heller to treat him this way.

  Jozef found himself compartmentalizing as he journeyed through the large villa toward his father’s personal suite. Claudius had been a wonderful father while Jozef was a boy. He’d raised Jozef with a strict but loving hand, and nurtured the young lad into his chosen path of oceanographer. Claudius had curbed his own desire for Jozef to become involved in his investing activities and his passionate desire to find the ruins of their people’s native city. Instead, he allowed his son to pursue his heart’s passion.

  Until Jozef’s heart’s passion took the form of a beautiful siren named Bel.

  Jozef paused outside the door to his father’s bedroom, sucking in a stabilizing breath. He pushed his way inside, walking silently on the thick carpeting toward the four-poster bed.

  Claudius was asleep, and it was a good thing because Jozef could sooner have stopped the tide than kept the shock from his face at the sight of him. How much his father had aged since their last face-to-face encounter!

  Claudius had lost most of his hair. The pink skin of his skull seemed stretched thin over his scalp and the bones of his face. His cheeks and forehead were mottled with age spots and the hands which rested on the red coverlet were bony and beginning to twist with arthritis. His eyes were closed and his face turned slightly away from where his son stood looking down upon him.

  Jozef’s eyes welled with tears and a hand covered his mouth to mute the sound of his ragged breathing. His chest felt tight as a well of grief rose like a bubble in a swamp. His fingers pinched his nose shut against the sob. He made a sound like a choked cough as tears over-spilled and streaked down his cheeks.

  At the sound, Claudius’s lids cracked open. He turned his head slowly, like it was on a rusty pivot desperately in want of oil. His formerly vibrant eyes were watery, the whites tinged with yellow. But what Jozef saw in them brought another crippling wrack of pain.

  They were overflowing with love.

  “My son.” His voice crackled with age. He lifted a hand to reach for Jozef.

  Jozef came to his knees beside the bed and took his father’s hand, a fresh sob coming at the feeling of the fragile bones. His father had always been powerful, broad-shouldered, and capable. He’d always stood straight with his chest out, shoulders back, and an ambitious glint in his eye. Jozef hardly recognized the wasted figure making a thin lump under the bedding. He put his forehead down on the back of his father’s hand.

  Claudius made a shushing sound and rested his other hand on Jozef’s curls.

  “You came home.” Claudius spoke as if sighing. “I can die a happy man.”

  Guilt flooded Jozef’s body, making him feel tremulous and weak. He raised his head to look at his father and found he couldn’t speak around the tightness in his throat. He’d been wrong to stay away so long. His father had done the unforgiveable and yet, somehow at the bitter end of it all, there was nothing but forgiveness in Jozef’s heart. It was easy to hate his father as long as he’d stayed away, but Jozef had a soft
heart. He’d been told this since he was a boy. He could no longer be angry. The crimes were old, so old, and did not matter in this moment. His father really was dying. Jozef knew it now in a way he had been unable to know it when simply reading the words in the handwritten letter from Heller, when standing in his former office back in Gdansk.

  “You would have made an excellent intelligence agent,” his father said in that papery voice. “You’ve been near impossible to track.”

  Jozef sniffed and found pieces of his voice. “I knew how not to be found.”

  It was only when Jozef had begun to relax and had allowed his name to be mentioned in an article about the salvage of The Sybellen that Claudius’s staff had been able to locate him––now the resident oceanographer of one of the best salvage companies in Europe.

  Jozef had ignored all the attempts Claudius’s lawyers had made to talk to him about his inheritance. But he couldn’t ignore the hand-written letter from Mr. Heller: Claudius was dying and…

  …unless you want to live the rest of your life in regret, you’ll return to Gibraltar at once.

  Jozef had been there the night Mira had gone into the Baltic, leaving her daughter in tears on the beach. He’d watched breathlessly from the scrubby trees where the golden sand met the thick thatch of prickly growth separating the beach from the country road. He’d felt like a criminal. Shame had burned within him for watching the private moment between sirens––between mother and daughter––but he had to know: Was the woman who seemed so physically like Bel, but so different in character, his Sybellen?

  She’d looked like Bel, was the right shape and size, but she was so different in personality. She spoke with a different accent, she claimed to be only in her thirties and––so convincingly––seemed completely without any memory of her life before Canada.

  The first step had been proving to himself that she was Mer.

  She was. He’d seen it for himself, but too late.

  When Jozef had come to emotional terms with the fact that Mira had really gone––probably for years––Jozef ignored the letter no longer. He resigned from Novak’s salvage operation and got on the first available flight home to Gibraltar.

  “If you can forgive your old father,” Claudius was saying, “then he can die with a peaceful ending. Can you do that?”

  Jozef nodded and brushed the tears from his cheeks. “For what it’s worth, you have my forgiveness.” Jozef did not say that it was Bel and her people whose forgiveness Claudius needed to seek. The time for hurtful words had passed. “Forgive me for staying away for so long.”

  Claudius coughed quietly. “It is a good thing we have long lives. If we were human, I would have been without a son for half a lifetime. As it is, I am thankful for the decades of happy memories I have with you.” His father’s fingers grasped Jozef’s with a fierceness that surprised him. “We learned too late, Jozef. You must be careful.”

  For a moment Jozef felt totally lost. Had Claudius also lost part of his mind as his body failed?

  “Father?”

  “Loukas, he…” Claudius paused to take a breath and it was obvious that the talking was tiring him. “He made the discovery so late. Too late for either of us.”

  Jozef frowned at the mention of the researcher and he wondered why they were talking about Loukas. “What did he discover?”

  “It isn’t good for us to live out all our days on land. You must promise me that you’ll swim in the sea. Saltwater, it must be saltwater.” Claudius half lifted his head from the pillow in his fervor to explain.

  “Shh, you’re getting upset.” Jozef put a hand on Claudius’s shoulder. “I do swim, father. I always have. I love the ocean.” It felt strange to be reminding his own father of his passion for the water and all the life within. It was something that had defined Jozef for as long as he could remember.

  “Loukas is dead.” Claudius let his head rest on the pillow again. “And what killed him is now killing me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Loukas called it a wasting disease. A human doctor would diagnose it as MS.”

  “Multiple sclerosis?”

  Claudius nodded. “It has similar symptoms but a different cause. Loukas began to study it toward the end but he got too disabled to finish. His early research showed that not enough sunlight weakens our immune system. We felt justified in living like humans. But after…”

  Claudius stopped and took a few breaths.

  “Take your time,” Jozef said, helping his father take a sip from the glass of water on the bedside table.

  When Claudius resumed, he spoke more slowly.

  “After, he learned that not enough saltwater wastes us in a different way.” An airy laugh came out on a cough. “How is that for irony? We used to be so disdainful of those of us who lived entirely in the ocean. Who can be disdainful now?”

  Jozef had an uncomfortable thought. If what his father was saying was true, Atlanteans could never fully live on land, nor at sea, always requiring both—the amphibians of the mammalian world. Atlanteans who spent their lives entirely underwater were known to be sickly, and Loukas had confirmed it while he was still a young man. Jozef could remember the self-congratulatory and superior tones of Claudius’s friends as they lauded Loukas for his findings and settled even more firmly into their land-based lives of opulence and wealth. Jozef wondered how many of those members of his father’s inner circle were now suffering themselves. Or dead.

  “You must rest now.” Jozef squeezed his father’s hand gently. “I understand that you’re trying to tell me to look after myself so that I don’t suffer in the way you are, but believe me father, you don’t need to worry on that account.”

  “I’ll rest soon.” Claudius closed his eyes and when they opened again it was in a slow drift. His fingers gripped Jozef with a new energy and his old eyes burned. “I have better news, my son.”

  “Shall we talk later? After you’ve had some lunch?”

  “There is no later. There is only now. We found it, Jozef.” Claudius smiled at his boy, deep wrinkles appearing at the corners of his eyes.

  “What did you find, Father?”

  “What I’ve been looking for since before you were born! What I’ve been looking for all of my life. We found Atlantis.”

  Jozef gave his father a soft smile, which he hoped didn’t appear too bitter. “That was Okeanos you found Father, or have you forgotten? You already took everything of value from it. There is no orichalcum left. There might not even be much artwork left from what I’ve been told by your lawyers.”

  Claudius shook his head. “I’m not talking about Okeanos. Okeanos is in the Azores, as you know full well. Atlantis is in Africa. It used to be a coastline, but the Sahara swallowed its ruins over the centuries. You can actually see it from satellite!”

  Claudius husked another dry laugh, this one with genuine humor in it. He hit Jozef’s hand with his own, a soft slap of camaraderie.

  He continued, “It was right in front of us the whole time. Right in front of our noses!”

  Jozef’s doubt diminished a little, but not much. “How do you know it’s Atlantis?”

  Claudius gestured to a box on the old wooden desk by the window. “There, my files.”

  Jozef retrieved the leather-covered wooden box and sat on the edge of his father’s bed. Opening the lid revealed a pile of file folders. He picked up the first one and opened it, flipping though the research. It was full of articles, including both typed and hand-written pages. Notes were scribbled in the margins of most pages, and there were photographs of sandy looking stones and broken rubble that didn’t look very interesting.

  “The one of Mauritania.” Claudius gave a low cough but he was smiling. “The Richat Structure.”

  Jozef paused in his rifling through the pages to stare at his father. “The Eye of Africa?”

  He knew this anomaly. Scientists had been trying to figure out its nature and genesis for decades.

  “The very same,”
Claudius said.

  Plucking the satellite image labeled ‘Mauritania’ and ‘Richat Structure’ by hand, Jozef set the box aside and held the image out for both of them to see.

  “You see it?” Claudius asked after a while.

  Jozef’s throat tightened as he stared at the tawny wasteland of the Sahara, and the undeniable perfectly circular structure stamped into the desert.

  “So far from the ocean, though,” Jozef observed, his gaze wandering the wasteland between the ruin of Atlantis and the western coast of Africa.

  Claudius made a sound in the back of his throat which could have been humor, could have been annoyance. “We examined thousands of kilometers of coastline but never thought to look inland, or even in a desert location. A lot can change over so many millennia. Even so, all things considered, it is not so far from the Atlantic—only five-hundred-eighty-five kilometers.”

  Jozef could easily see the concentric circles Atlantis was famous for. It was a shape which did not happen naturally. He could even recall Plato’s description of Atlantis given how often his father had made him recite it as a young boy.

  “Alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another,” Jozef recited. “Two of land, three of water…”

  Jozef and his father finished the quote from the Critias together.

  “Turned as if with a lathe each having its circumference equidistant every way from the center.”

  “Do you see the mountain range on the north side?”

  Jozef nodded. He could easily see the smooth rivulet scars from some long dried up water source. “I can see the evidence of the rivers and waterfalls, too.”