Alessia in Atlantis: The Forbidden Vial: Alessia in Atlantis, #1

1

Alessia slipped her hand into Mr. McCrum’s satchel, fumbled around until she felt three prongs, and snatched back her cherished fork.

Hey, what are you doing back there? Mr. McCrum called out when he saw her behind his desk.

Just looking at this ‘Rules of Poetry’ poster. Sonnets, haikus, cinquains… fascinating, Alessia fibbed.

Alright, class is starting. Back to your seats – all of you, he groaned.

Alessia hid her fork up her sleeve (thankful that this was Scotland, and it was long-sleeve weather in early September) and went to her desk.

It wasn’t ideal to start the year at her new boarding school by lying and stealing from her teacher. But then, it wasn’t ideal that Mr. McCrum was a completely unreasonable teacher.

He’d inspected all of their backpacks and pencil cases for potentially ‘dangerous objects’. And which ‘dangerous object’ had he seized? Not their very sharp scissors. Not their even sharper compasses. No. He’d confiscated her fork.

She’d tried explaining why she needed to keep it with her, but there was no way to convince him that a fork could be her greatest treasure – even if it was prettier than the average fork, with its blue gemstone, and engraved symbol. She couldn’t blame him. It was an unusual thing to treasure. If she could have chosen what one object her late father would leave her, she also wouldn’t have picked a fork, but there they were.

Welcome to secondary school, said Mr. McCrum with the enthusiasm of a cat that’s been forced to wear a party hat. I’m Mr. McCrum, your form tutor and English teacher. I trust you’ve all had lunch, and been shown to your dorms. We’ll spend the rest of the afternoon here for induction.

The sea breeze whistled outside the thin windows. Even though the school had only opened recently, it was housed in an old, gothic seaside manor. The result was a classroom with vaulted, blackened stone ceilings, and tacky teal-blue plastic desks. Alessia glanced around wondering which of her new classmates might be her friend, and hoping they weren’t doing the same. (If they were, it was unlikely they’d pick her – the short girl, with deathly pale skin and roughly cropped mousy-brown hair.)

You may have noticed we’re starting on a Friday afternoon while the other lucky year groups only start next Monday morning. The idea is for you to settle in, make friends, etcetera etcetera, Mr. McCrum continued. And we’ll kick off this hippy dippy extravaganza by making a time capsule. So get a piece of paper and write down your name, and something unique about yourself, like your favorite hobby. You won’t look at it again until the end of the year, when you can marvel at how much you’ve evolved between the age of eleven and the ripe old age of twelve.

He was so disinterested, he couldn’t even bring himself to smirk at his own sarcasm. Alessia decided to keep it short and wrote:

‘Name: Alessia Cogner

Something unique: my favorite hobby is sailing.’

Of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth – her stepfather George would never let her on a boat after what had happened to her mother. He hadn’t even let Alessia go to the town pool to learn to swim.

But she wasn’t about to write the real ‘unique’ thing about her.

Back home in Inverness, Alessia was famous – and not in a good way. She was the running joke of her primary school because of her wild overreactions. She had burst into tears when a boy in her class told her his pet hamster died. She’d have uncontrollable laughing fits whenever she saw classmates laughing, even if she hadn’t heard the joke. And when the class soloist forgot the lines to Silent Night at the Christmas concert, Alessia became so anxious she fainted. She was bizarrely oversensitive, and couldn’t help mirroring the emotions others were going through and making a spectacle of herself.

No need to immortalize all that in this time capsule. This was her new start. She wasn’t going to be a drama queen anymore.

Alessia, your paper? Mr. McCrum stood over her holding out an expectant hand. She froze midway through the fingernail she’d been biting. He was collecting them? Good thing she’d stuck to ‘sailing’ as her ‘unique thing’.

He finished gathering the students’ papers, then turned over the pile and handed them back out to other students.

You’re each getting someone else’s paper and reading it out to the class, so we get the introductions over with too, he announced lackadaisically.

A boy at the back burst into laughter.

Please, sir. Can I start? he said.

Sure, replied Mr. McCrum.

So naïve. It didn’t take a genius to work out that that boy wasn’t giggling with glee at the idea of making a new best friend.

I’m Iain and I’ve got someone called Calum’s paper, the boy started. A boy sitting next to Alessia dropped his pen and his face blanched.

Hand up, Calum, said Mr. McCrum indifferently. The boy next to Alessia raised a trembling hand. The class spun around and stared.

Iain cleared his throat.

So Calum says ‘Something special about me is that I love doing… ballet!’

Iain’s squeaky pantomime imitation had the class roaring with laughter. Calum’s face strained to attempt a smile. Alessia winced.

It makes me feel light and free, Iain continued reading, getting onto his tiptoes and making a mock spin.

Alessia’s throat tightened and her cheeks burned. She tried to swallow back the sensation. She wasn’t going to create a scene on her first day. She had to stop thinking about how Calum felt.

I hope one day I can be in Swan Lake! Iain continued in a falsetto voice, holding his arms up and wiggling his fingers.

Calum buried his face in his hands and Alessia felt like a load of bricks were crushing her chest.

AREN’T YOU GOING TO STOP THIS?

Silence fell. Alessia was standing, shouting at the teacher like a lunatic. She’d done it again.

Uh... Mr. McCrum seemed startled. I beg your pardon! No shouting at teachers!

Alessia turned to glare at Iain. "And what’s wrong with you? Do you like making people feel bad?" she said, hating how shaky her voice sounded.

Lighten up! Can’t you take a joke? Iain answered. Then, he gasped and swooned to imitate how melodramatic she was being, and laughter rippled through the classroom.

Now, now, children, said Mr. McCrum, exasperated.

Iain took a bow and sat, a wicked smile curling his lips.

So much for new beginnings. Alessia had barely made it twenty minutes before getting back her old reputation. Mr. McCrum weakly shushed the sniggering students. Thankfully he collected back the papers and moved onto explaining dinner logistics, so she was able to make it through the rest of class outburst-free. As soon as the bell rang for break time, she dashed out before anyone had a chance to badger her about her display.

She raced out of the building and across the vast moorland school grounds towards the shore, wet mud flecking up her legs. She stopped at the edge of the metallic grey sea, panting.

Maybe she could still leave this school. She could call George from a payphone and ask to move to Germany with him. George was the one who’d raised her, since her mother had died when she was a baby, and her father had died before she was even born. And George wasn’t a bad stepfather, just a little distracted. More ‘kooky scientist’ than ‘caring homemaker’. In their house in Inverness, the roof was leaky, the window frames were rotting, and her bedroom filled with smoke every night for some reason they’d never understood. It was kind of a miracle that she’d survived, but she had. She could definitely move with George.

But even as she thought it, deep inside she knew she wouldn’t. Being here was about more than the boarding school. She finally lived in South West Scotland, next to the village her mother was from – and, for all she knew, where her father was from too. This was her chance to find her roots. That’s why she’d found this boarding school in the first place when George announced he’d gotten a job abroad.

She stroked the prongs of her father’s fork under her sleeve and looked over the edge of the small cliff at the thrashing waves. Even if she didn’t make any friends here, she would stay and find out about her parents – and she’d start by taking the bus to her mother’s village that very weekend.

Rain began drizzling and she was about to head back to school, when she heard a whisper. At first, it was just a faint murmur, buried in the husky laughing sound of the waves rolling in and back out. But then, it seemed to float up from them. It tingled her ears, like a fly brushing past. She rubbed them but couldn’t get rid of the sensation.

She started distinguishing words. Blown into her eardrums. A strange voice saying: ‘Come – something – seven child’?

A shiver crawled down her scalp. She turned to leave, then froze.

There was someone behind her. Or rather, something. A frog-like creature the size of a man.

It lunged at her. She leaped out of its grasp just in time, and fell back on the cold, wet ground. 

She screamed, but the crashing water and howling wind swallowed the sound. The creature turned to her. It was a tall green-skinned man, with webbed feet, bulging orange eyes, and an eerie smile permanently traced on his face.

He bounded towards her, stretching out his long scraggly fingers so they looked like two enormous spiders. She rolled out of the way, jumped to her feet, and sprinted as fast as she could away from him when something wet and spongy hooked around her face.

She tried to pull whatever it was off, but it was drenched in a thick glue. She tried to run on, but the thing on her face held her back. Then, it started drawing her towards the frogman. She dug her heels in but they just dragged through the mud.

Viscous treacle covered her hands as she kept trying to wrench the blob off her face. It was so soft and flabby. Yet powerful enough to pull her in. Almost like…

Nausea clutched her throat. The blob around her face was the frog monster’s tongue! Frogs caught flies with their tongues, and now, she was the fly.

2

Alessia jerked and thrashed, and tugged with all her might at the tongue. But it stayed stuck to her, and slowly reeled her in.

Then it dawned on her. If this was his tongue, that meant he could feel it.

She let the fork under her sleeve slip to her hand and stabbed it into the tongue. There was a pained squawk and the tongue was yanked off her face. Mr. McCrum was right about the fork being sharp after all.

Alessia didn’t wait to see how long it would take the creature to recover. She ran and ran across the moor, trying to wipe the frog monster saliva off her face and hands.

Yech!

She only turned back when she’d finally reached the main building. He’d vanished.

Rain poured in thick sheets and she took shelter under the front door awning to catch her breath. This may have been a different area of Scotland than she was used to, but one thing was sure: that was not a normal moorland animal.

She went inside and called, Mr. McCrum! Mr. McCrum!

He was going up the staircase with a group of boys crowded around him. Get out of my way, he grumbled at them. I need to put these in the lab for the S3 Science class.

Mr. McCrum! Alessia shouted.

What now? he said, turning to her.

Alessia’s blood ran cold. In his arms was a terrarium full of frogs.

She backed up against the wall to steady herself. Questions tumbled through her mind. Was it a coincidence? Did he set free the frog monster? Was he the frog monster?

What is it, Alessia? Mr. McCrum repeated, as about ten pairs of globular frog eyes blinked at her from the tank in his arms.

Erm…Just… wanted to say hi, she said. He groaned and continued on his way up, and Alessia bolted back out the door.

Time to panic. None of the other teachers would be in before Monday. If Mr. McCrum couldn’t be trusted, what was she supposed to do until then? Quietly wait for another attack?

The bell rang but she didn’t move. She needed to think. The rain had slowed and the low trundle of a distant bus came within earshot. That was it! If she could only work up the courage to run to the bus stop, she could go to her mother’s village. Surely she’d find a policeman there, or someone with a phone to call George.

She took a deep breath, steeled her nerves, and sprinted.

She spent the bus ride preparing her story for the police so it sounded believable, and then lapsed into daydreaming about her arrival at the village. She couldn’t help it. Despite everything else going on, the excitement of going to her mother’s hometown still simmered inside her. She’d been imagining the scene all her life. How she’d arrive and walk by a group of villagers and see the recognition of her mother strike their features the moment they laid eyes on her. ‘You must be Cecilia’s daughter! You’re exactly like her!’

She’d tell the police her story, and while they went in search of the monster, she’d meet her mother’s childhood best friend. She’d hear about all the adventures the friend and her mother had growing up, and find out whether her father had been from the same village, and how her parents had met and fallen in love. The friend might even have pictures of them!

George had known Alessia’s mother for such a short time that Alessia had quickly reached the limit of his knowledge. He’d told her that her mother was charming, that she loved jacket potatoes and that she had a funny accent (though the latter, George said about everyone that wasn’t from Inverness – which wasn’t promising for how he’d fare in Germany.)

Mostly George had told her about her mother’s passion for boats. Even after she went blind following Alessia’s birth, Cecilia had continued to go out sailing with whoever would take her – and it was in a sailing accident that she’d eventually lost her life.

The bus pulled over with a hiss in the tiny hamlet. And ‘tiny’ was no exaggeration. The entire village was made up of two rows of white cottages with dark grey slate roofs, nestled between a rocky outcrop and the seashore. So much for finding police here.

But as Alessia walked down the empty street, she almost didn’t care. To think she might be walking in the exact same spot where her mother walked when she was her age; that that house with the green door might have been her mother’s childhood home! Her blood tingled in her veins. She’d go knocking on doors to find help about the monster in a bit. Right now, she wanted to explore.

She reached the end of the street, and a tinkling sound chimed. Up ahead, behind a small knoll of dark rocks and short grass, the top of a sailboat mast was rattling in the wind.

The docks! If her mother had been such a fan of boats, that must have been her favorite spot. Alessia ran past the last house of the village and over the knoll, stones crunching under her feet. A white ladder on the other side led her down to a narrow beach from which a weathered wooden pontoon stuck out into the sea. A sailboat and a few rowboats were tethered to it with mooring lines covered in seaweed and mold. Faded paint flaked off the boats so Alessia could barely make out their names, ‘The Diving Belle’, ‘The Yellow Submarine’...

Alessia had never been on a boat, let alone one that might have been her mother’s childhood play den. There were probably rules against climbing into a stranger’s property, but the temptation was too strong. She walked down the pontoon, whipped her head around to check the coast was clear, and lowered herself into one of the rowboats (that seemed less intimidating than the sailboat). 

The bottom rocked beneath her as she put down one foot, and then the other. She felt like a fizzy drink that had just been shaken. But before she even sat, a glimmer caught her eye and she froze. Something about the sea had her mesmerized. Glints of pink, gold and blue from the fluttering surface competed for her attention, like fireworks at the end of a display. It was too much for her eyes to take in, yet she couldn’t detach her gaze from it. She couldn’t even blink. 

She forgot about her parents, and the frog monster, and school, and ambled to the front of the rowboat in a daze. The soft movement of the wavelets was hypnotic, continuing into infinity until the surface appeared flat. 

Then, the murmuring started. Like what she’d heard on the cliff at school. Whispers. Hushed voices speaking over each other fast, tickling inside her ears. She tried to understand what they were saying, but it was useless, like trying to hold on to the fragments of a dream just before waking up.

It grew louder, more rushed, more unintelligible. A salty sea mist sprayed her face. The whispers sounded like hissing now. The hypnotic wavelets of a few moments ago had become ferocious waves, torn with great white slashes. Was it normal to have waves like this in a marina? 

Without knowing exactly when it had started, Alessia realized she was now hearing distinct words through the hissing:

Come to us, oh Selvan child, to waters calm, to waters wild. Hear today the Sirens’ Song, in Nethuns deep do you belong.

It jolted her back to her senses like a cold shower. They were the same words she’d heard that morning.

Come to us, oh Selvan child, to waters calm, to waters wild … 

What did it mean?

"Hear today the Sirens’ Song, in Nethuns deep do you belong."

The sight of the endless sea was suddenly overwhelming.

Come to us, oh Selvan child…

The chanting was clear – coming faster, and more forceful. The sea was even choppier. 

to waters calm, to waters wild…

She had to get out of there. 

Hear today the Sirens’ Song…

She stepped back from the bow.

in Nethuns deep do you belong!

A flash of green caught her eye, appearing for just an instant as the sun vanished below the horizon. And then – without knowing if she’d tripped in her distraction, or been pushed, she tumbled overboard.

3

As she sank into the water, everything fell silent. The world slowed. Water enveloped her body. This was it. She didn’t know how to swim. She was going to die.

She kicked her arms and legs ferociously, in all different directions. It was completely futile. For all her thrashing about, she stayed wrapped in the water’s soft indifference.

The sinking slowed. For a moment she hovered. Then, like a gentle trampoline, the ocean released her back up.

Her face broke through the surface. The noise of her wheezing and the smashing waves crashed into her ears. Water slapped her face. Then, her head was back below. Everything was muted again. Her nose and mouth were full of salty water.

Kicking and beating her hands, she burst through the surface again. She moved frantically to stay above as the waves charged at her. She looked around for something to float on.

Suddenly, she was engulfed in darkness. The rowboat had flipped over her.

The chant sounded again, clearer this time, spoken aloud in a woman’s voice: "In Nethuns deep do you belong."

Suddenly, the overturned rowboat plunged underwater. It happened so fast that the upside-down boat remained full of trapped air, and she was thrown up into the bottom of it, facing straight down into the abyss.

She screamed, but it was useless. The boat was somehow powering on, as if it were being propelled across the ocean and down to its floor.

A shimmering cloud of fish dashed out of her path. A huge brown spotty sea trout further ahead stopped in its (swimming) tracks and gawked at her wide-eyed and open-mouthed. And she just kept plummeting through, completely helpless, tucked up into the boat’s air pocket.

She passed schools and schools of every color and shape fish imaginable, for what felt like an hour, until she came face to face with the lifeless eyes of a woman’s statue, staring at her in petrifaction. The statue belonged to the prow of a sunken ship on the sea floor: a giant voyager, no doubt once destined for greatness, now laying forgotten in the dark, seaweed fuzzing its shape.

Alessia seized up. If she was seeing this ghostly ship, it meant she was reaching the sea floor. She was about to crash into it. If that didn’t kill her, drowning would – when water finally filled the pocket of air trapped in the rowboat around her.

And there was nothing she could do about it! The rowboat soared forward at full speed. She winced in anticipation of the impact. She was about to become a shipwreck herself.

4

The hard thud against the bottom sent a flurry of sand and salty water into her face. The boat ricocheted off the ocean floor and zoomed away, and the last of the trapped air bubbled out. Water wrapped her instantly. It was much colder here, and her eyes stung from the salt, and ears and nose throbbed from the pressure.

She kicked off the ground in panic. She had to get to the surface. She tried to pull down the water around her in some semblance of swimming. If she ever got out, she’d have a great I told you so story for George not letting her take lessons.

Luckily, her random water-pulling moves were kind of working. She was rising alongside a towering coral outcrop. She pulled and pulled. She didn’t have much control over her movements underwater and kept bashing against the coral, scraping her legs