Written in the Stars

Above my head, thousands of stars wink and twink, clustering together in the familiar constellations I’ve known since I was small. Beside me, my mother points them out, telling me the same stories she always has done, her voice calming and hypnotic against the sound of the ocean in the background.

“See that large star over there? And the three smaller ones that form a diagonal line running down to another larger one? That’s The Hare – see? His head... and his back... and his haunches. He was a trickster, but he was also the cleverest animal in the forest and he helped the foolish king defeat an army of invaders. And over there, you’ve got The Dolphin – you used to love that when you were little. And then shift your head ever so slightly so you can see the Candlestick...”

Her words wash over me, weaving together all the old legends so that my mind spins me into another realm where the world is bigger than this small expanse of land around us.

For us long as I can remember, it’s been just the two of us. Once, my mother says, she lived in a palace on the other side of the world; but when her father realised she was carrying me, he locked her away in a chest and had it thrown into the sea. I try to picture my mother’s terror as she floated along in her wooden coffin, expecting never to see the light of day again. By the time the chest washed ashore on the island where we now live, her belly had swelled so much that she couldn’t get out. One of the local fishermen had to fetch an axe to splinter the box around her. She says the man rescued her just in time because I was born the following day.

Sometimes, I think I like the closeness I have with my mother: it feels safe to know that she is always there, always has been, always will be. At other times, I think of the wistful look that comes into her eye when she mentions the old world and the life she once had, and I wonder what happened to my father and why he didn’t prevent my mother from being treated so badly.

*

One night, we are sitting on the sand as usual, looking up at the stars, when I become aware of someone else’s presence. I sit up quickly. A tall man is looking down on us both, his face wearing a look I recognise: it’s the way so many of the fishermen look at my mother, wanting something they know they can’t have.

“Isn’t it rather late for two women to be out on their own?” he says.

Confusion reigns as I realise he is calling me a woman. To my mother, I am still a child – even though I am now thirteen summers and bled for the first time several months ago.

“We were just going inside,” she says quietly, rising from the ground and hauling me up to join her.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” How can a voice so soft hold so much menace?

My mother maintains a calm tone, but I know her well enough to detect the panic in her eyes. “You are Rivkin,” she says slowly, “the Master of this island, and you take whatever you want.”

Rivkin’s lips curve into a smile that makes me shiver.

“It appears you know me better than I know you. How is it that a beautiful woman can live on my island, hidden away in the fishing community, without my knowing?”

“Perhaps I did not want to be found, my lord.” My mother’s words are polite, but I hear her unspoken message: leave us alone.

“What you want is not important.” His softness is replaced with steel as his fingers close around my mother’s wrist. “You and your daughter will accompany me to the other side of the island – NOW. My wife has recently died and you will make a good replacement for her.”

We have no time to call for help as half a dozen armed guards step out of the shadows and surround us with spears.

*

That night, neither I nor my mother manage to sleep. Instead, we huddle together in the large, chilly bed in Rivkin’s guest room. “It could have been worse,” my mother murmurs.

I know she is relieved that the Master did not take her to his chamber as soon as we arrived at his dwelling.

           “What are we going to do?” I ask practically as the sky splinters into sunrise outside our window.

           My mother looks at me, struggling to find the words she needs.

           “I want you to go and find your father,” she says at last. “Tell him what has happened and that he needs to rescue me.”

My heart stands still. She has never mentioned my father before. I have lived for thirteen years thinking that he might be dead.

“How can I find him?” I argue. “I’m locked up here with you.”

“I will tell Rivkin that I need you to return to our hut on the other side of the island to fetch the things I need for our wedding. He dragged us away last night without giving us the chance to collect any of our possessions.” She takes a deep breath. “Under my bedroll, you will find a tiny casket carved from whalebone. That casket was a gift from your father – it contains a single pearl. He told me once that if I was ever in trouble, I should throw the pearl into the sea and he would answer me.”

I gaze at her in shock. “How long have you had this pearl?”

She lowers her eyes. “He gave it to me the last time I saw him – before I knew I was expecting you.”

“So why didn’t you tell him about me before now?” I almost yell at her in my frustration. I could have grown up with a father instead of being stuck on an island with a bunch of old fishermen.

“It’s complicated.” Her words don’t help. She tries again. “Your father’s not... Not like other men,” she finishes. “And all those years ago, I was put in a chest and tossed into the waves before I had a chance to let him know what was happening.”

“And what about after I was born? Why didn’t you try to contact him then?”

I know I must sound petty and childish, but this is my father we’re talking about. At the very least, I have a right to know who he is.

“Because once I had you, I didn’t need anyone else,” she says simply. “You were enough. Besides, I think maybe a part of me was afraid he would want you to grow up with his own people. It wasn’t a risk I was prepared to take.”

“Are you sure he’ll still remember you after all these years?” I demand next.

Sadness fills my mother’s eyes. “He’ll remember,” she says. And after that, the matter is closed.

*

Rivkin is more accommodating than I had expected him to be when my mother asks if she can send me back to our hut for the things she needs for their wedding. He insists on sending one of his guards with me – a huge, burly man whose eyes are sharper than the dagger at his side. At first, I am worried that I won’t have the chance to retrieve my mother’s pearl, but a noise outside distracts him and in the brief seconds I have before he looks at me again, I manage to open the casket and secrete the pearl in my hand.

Gathering together the few bits of clothing my mother and I possess, I tie them into a bundle and we begin walking back to Rivkin’s house. Although the way is shorter if we make our way through the markets that throng the middle of the island, I plead a headache, asking if we might walk along the seashore instead. The guard grunts his acquiescence and we set off, my bare feet welcoming the comforting softness of the sand.

We have walked only a little way when I start to fidget. The guard watches me curiously and asks what’s wrong.

“I need to go,” I tell him.

“Find a rock and be quick about it!” he snaps.

“I’ll go in the sea,” I call, darting into the waves.

Once I judge I am far enough out, I drop the pearl into the watery depths, wondering how long it will be before my father answers.

*

Just as I am turning to wade back to shore, the water ripples and a large head with two intelligent eyes pokes itself out of the water. Although I’ve never seen a dolphin in real life, I recognise the shape from the constellation and something thrills inside me. For some inexplicable reason, I feel I have come home.

What do you want?

Words form themselves inside my mind and I know that the dolphin is communicating with me. Meanwhile, on the beach, the guard waits, his expression growing increasingly more angry.

“My mother sent me to ask for help,” I reply. “You gave her the pearl.”

I feel the dolphin sigh and it’s a sensation that’s full of regret and longing. I thought she had forgotten me long ago, he says.

And I may be only thirteen but I suddenly understand my mother with a wisdom beyond my years as I reply, “She tried to forget you, but it didn’t work. She sent me to find you today because she needs your help.”

Climb on my back, my father says, and I will take you with me.

By now, the guard is striding towards the sea, cursing out loud as the salt water ruins his boots. Ignoring his anger, I clamber onto the slick, wet skin and the dolphin dives under the waves with me on his back.

*

My mother never taught me how to swim: it was something I could do instinctively from a young age. I never questioned the fact that I could breathe so easily underwater when the other children I knew coughed and spluttered after less than a minute; and now, as we plunge deeper and deeper, I realise there’s a part of me that isn’t human and I know why my mother was afraid of losing me.

As my eyes greedily take in strange and exotic sights – fish in all shapes, colours and sizes; delicate corals and fronded seaweed – I notice that we are approaching a huge subterranean structure. Stone walls stretch as far as the eye can see, full of archways and apertures. It’s a sunken city, an ocean-dweller’s paradise.

Swimming up to a pair of ornately wrought gates, my father wriggles me off his back.  I turn gracefully in the water, watching him carefully.

Are you ready? he asks.

I’m not sure what he’s referring to, but in the recent past I’ve discovered my father’s a dolphin so I don’t think anything can surprise me now.

But it does.

As my father passes through the gates, his dolphin skin shimmers and fades away, leaving a curly headed man in its place. Reaching out his hand, he wraps his fingers around my own and we walk into the city together.

“I brought your mother here once,” he says as we stroll along, walking and breathing as naturally as we would on dry land. “She wasn’t much older than you are now and she’d fallen from a boat into the water – she told me later that she wasn’t supposed to leave her home without guards, but she and one of her friends had sneaked away and stolen a boat to go to a nearby island for a picnic. She must have hit her head because when I found her, she was lying quite still in the water. At first, I thought she was dead.” He pauses. “Has she never told you any of this?”

I shake my head.

“I brought her down here to Atlantis. I knew I would have to breathe air into her lungs and I needed my human form to do that. The inhabitants of the city are under a curse: if we leave Atlantis, we must take on other forms. That’s why I couldn’t leave my people to be with your mother. She’s the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

The sadness in his eyes mirrors that in my mother’s when she talked about him last night.

“Couldn’t she have lived down here with you?” I ask haltingly.

“She wouldn’t have survived,” he says. “You’re part-human, part-Atlantean; but your mother’s not like that. She only survived the journey here because she was half-dead already: her lungs were so waterlogged they didn’t register the difference in being far below the sea’s surface.”

“How did you revive her?” It’s a fair question: we’re surrounded by water in this strange, ancient city.

“Come,” he says, “I’ll show you.”

We’ve reached a large, important looking edifice with marble steps leading up to a grand entrance. Statues of dolphins and sea horses abound, but my father pulls me past them and towards a narrow corridor with a door at one end.

“This is our laboratory,” he says, leading me inside. “I took her into the pressure chamber and let our scientists replace the water with air.”

He’s using words I don’t understand and maybe he notices my puzzled expression because he sighs. “I keep forgetting that you earth dwellers don’t know as much as we do. Suffice it to say that I managed to get your mother breathing again. She was fine as long as she stayed in the pressure chamber, but she would have died if I’d taken her into the city. I knew I’d have to work out a way of getting her back to her own people safely: it wasn’t fair to keep her locked up in a cage, even if it was for her own protection.”

He points to a strange garment hanging on the wall. “I made that suit for her – it’s like a mobile pressure chamber and can store just enough air to get to the surface. When I gave it to her, she cried.” His face clouds with the memory. “We’d grown fond of each other – more than fond; but I couldn’t ask her to spend the rest of her life in a box underwater, and I couldn’t join her on land. We had to part, but she took it hard. I’m not surprised she chose not to see me again.”

“She’s asked for you now,” I reminded him, “and she taught me about dolphins when I was little, although I never understood why.”

“Perhaps she’s forgiven me then,” he murmurs. “She didn’t throw away the pearl I gave her.” He laughs suddenly, turning to look at me as if seeing me for the first time. “She’s given me a daughter! And I still don’t know your name.!

“It’s Ariana,” I tell him, searching his face to see if I’ve inherited his eyes, his nose.

At this, he smiles. “Then I’m forgiven,” he says simply. “She named you after me. I’m Arion.”

*

I’d like to spend much longer speaking with my father but I know we’ve come here for a reason and it’s not just to see the suit my mother wore or the chamber where he brought her back to life.

“She needs your help,” I say again. “She’s been kidnapped by a man who’s forcing her to marry him.”

He nods. “I read it in your mind in my dolphin form. That’s why we’re here now: to fetch Neptune’s battle conch.”

He unlocks a glass cabinet with a small, gold key that hangs on the wall. Amidst the array of strange objects inside the case is a large, spiral shell that glows blue and green. “Tell your mother to put her fingers in her ears,” he says, “and then blow into the conch. You will be immune to the sound yourself for you have Atlantean blood although you are not bound to this place as I am. Come, I will take you back to the place where I found you and you can go and rescue your mother.”

We leave the impressive building and make our way back to the gates, a thousand questions burning in my mind. “Can I come back again?” I ask. “Not just to return the shell – to see you “

“You’re a half-daughter of Atlantis,” he says, hugging me tightly. “You will always be welcome here.”

As we pass back through the gates, he returns to his dolphin form and I clamber once more on his back. It seems no time at all before we are back on the surface of the sea. I scan the beach for the guard who accompanied me, but he is nowhere to be seen. I need to hurry.

I kiss my father’s dolphin nose as he deposits me near the shoreline. “Thank you,” I say, clutching the shell tightly and beginning to run towards Rivkin’s house.

The wedding has already started. Rivkin must have been worried by my absence because he hasn’t bothered with pomp or ceremony: instead, just he and my mother stand by the olive tree while the priest pronounces his blessing.

“Put your fingers in your ears!” I roar at my mother.

Startled, she does as I ask, just in time before I put the conch to my lips and blow. A strange and terrible sound fills the air and Rivkin and the priest crumple to the ground, dead.

*

Above my head, thousands of stars wink and twink. My mother and I sit on the sand, staring up at them, and in the ocean, just out of reach, my dolphin father joins his thoughts to ours.