Mermaids at the Spaceship of the Sunken City - By Tom Halverson - Riley shot out of the water, still flapping her tail as she soared up into the ...

Mermaids at the Spaceship
of the Sunken City

By Tom Halverson

           Riley shot out of the water, still flapping her tail as
she soared up into the air with her wing fins. She circled then
plunged back into the depths of the blue-green water.

Rachel glided along beside her. When they slowed,
their hair undulated around them. They stopped swimming to
hover over the gigantic statue of a stone foot that thrust
upward from the ocean floor, a relic of a lost civilization.

              Riley looked above them at the beams of golden
light that filtered through the stone fingers of another of the
statues broken appendages as it cast blue shadows upon the
foot below them. It was as if the hand forever reached for the
foot to scratch the itch as they playfully tickled the stone foot
with their tails. All around them a sunken city, resplendent
with castles and walls and monolithic statuary bespoke a
bygone era. It was a wonderful place for an explorative romp.

           Rachel asked, “Do you want to see the space ship I
told you about?”

             Riley said, “Yeah right, space ship under the water.
Ok, I will believe you, but let’s go through that castle. See the
broken tower? We can enter through there.” She grinned back

at Rachel then led the way, flapping her tail enthusiastically.
The tower was much larger than it had looked from a distance.
A giant octopus had wrapped its tentacles around it. Riley was
familiar with this octopus. She knew they need not be afraid.
Often the bigger the creature the more gentle it proved to be.
Riley paused to stroke the tip of one tentacle, laughing as it
responded by returning the caress and giving her tummy a
wrap and a little squeeze. When Riley peeled the tentacle away
the suction cups that lined its underside clung to her at first,
her skin stretched then made a quick series of staccato pops as
the suction was released. It was such a sensation she could not
resist wrapping the tentacle around herself and peeling it off
again. “Poppity-poppity-pop!” “Come try it!” she invited
Rachel her telepathic words transmitted loud and clear this
deep in the water as there was little interference from the busy
world above.

            Rachel let Riley press one of the giant suction cups
against her skin and then helped her pull it free with another
loud, “Pop!” They laughed then followed the largest tentacle
over the lip of the broken tower, gliding their hands along it like
the railing of a stairs as they followed it down, into the cooler
inner water. The tentacle actually lay upon the tower steps
spiraling downward upon the steps all the way to the doorway

inside the bottom of the tower. The octopus’s tentacle
slithered through the barred window of the door and lifted it
free of its rusty hinges giving them passage to the large
adjoining chamber. As they passed through the door they gave
the tentacle a grateful pat.

             Riley said, “He is the guardian of the castle. He only
lets nice creatures inside.”
     The room had a multi-vaulted crystalline ceiling that
allowed light to enter and had survive the quakes of past eons.
A school of bright yellow fish with blue spots zigzagged ahead
of them then surged out a side window. A herd of snails, as tall
as Rachel, raced one another to evade them. Riley laughed at
their futile efforts, swimming lazy circles around them with
ease. She said, “Watch their eyeball stalks. They try to follow
me but they get twisted and have to unwind.”

            Rachel swam up between the two largest snails and
said, “I wonder where they are going. I bet they are why the
interior of the castle is so clean. See you can see wherever they
passed they left a clean spot.”

Riley examined the paths. “See that hole in the wall
where all the stones are piled? The paths all converge into the
hole. Maybe it is a shortcut to the spaceship. Maybe they have
been shining the ship and we will be able to get a better look at
it now.”

             Rachel swam to the hole and held onto the rim of
stone as she looked inside. She said, “I don’t like the looks of it.
It is pretty dark in there. What if something came out of the
ship and is hiding in the dark.”

          Riley wiggled forward into the darkness. “Come on
Mom. Don’t be chicken. Besides the octopus wouldn’t have let
something bad get in. The snails wouldn’t have come out if
something ate them.”

         Rachel followed tentatively saying, “Oh yeah, or
maybe they came out because they were being chased.”

Riley couldn’t help but laugh at that thought. She
said, “Well if it is that slow, I think we will be able to get away.”

            Rachel sighed and conceded, “Ok, ok, I just don’t like
that dark, that’s all.”

           Riley pulled her necklace from her top of shells and
flowers and dangled the crystal she had hidden there. “Look
what the Wizard gave me. Watch what it does.” Riley tied the
necklace so that the crystal was suspended on her forehead.
Immediately it started to glow. The crystal was soon so bright
the passage was lit far ahead. It seemed to sense wherever
Riley wanted to see and extended its glow to illuminate it.

            “Wow!” Rachel said. “I am really glad he gave you
that. Look now we can see the snail trails. The crystal makes
the paths glow.”

“Yeah,” said Riley, “they are blue.” She glided
forward following the snail trail fingering the stone wall. “The
stones here are bigger than other places. And look at all the
sconces. That is what they used to light the place long ago.
They filled them with oil and lit the wick on fire. Wherever this
passage leads to it must have been an important place if they
were going to spend that much oil to light the place.”

            Rachel paused before a tall statue of a soldier with a
shield and a spear recessed into the wall. A crawfish sat upon
the soldier’s helmet with its pincers hanging down protectively
on either side of the soldier’s eyes.

           Riley returned to see what Rachel was studying and
the glow of her crystal illuminated the crawfish. The pincers
snapped at them in warning and the crawfish scuttled back
over the helmet until all they could see of it were the tips of the
pincers and two long antennae poking up like needle thin rabbit
ears.

The girls looked at each other and smiled.
Riley said, “One thing I like about the boat portal is that there
are so many interesting creatures whenever we come here.”

           Rachel asked, “You mean the picture the Wizard
drew of us is what you call the Boat Portal?”

             Riley explained, “Yes, the boat with the rope and
the roses is a portal to this part of the inner kingdom.
Whenever the Wizard draws someone by that boat they
emerge here near the sunken city, the giant octopus and the
space ship. There are other places I want to explore also, but
we can’t get there until he draws us again, with a different
portal, but I doubt if any of them are as cool as this place. Let’s
see how wide it is. Can we reach?”

           Rachel took Riley’s extended hand.

Extending their free hands they could just
touch the walls on either side. Silently they swam forward
feeling the walls as their tails moved them up and down in the
water. “Grab the stones and pull at the same time you kick
with your fins . . . Yes! Like that! Now we are really going fast.”
Their hair streamed behind them.

          Rachel suddenly pulled up short, “Whoa, a big
door!” She hauled back on Riley’s arm.

             Riley said, “You saved me. I was looking at the snail
trail on the floor. I would have crashed into the door. See the
trail goes under the door. But who opened the door for the
snails?”

         Rachel rolled her eyes around and around saying,
“Maybe they turned the knob with their eyeball stalks.”

“Mom, these are ancient castle doors. They don’t
have knobs.”

            Rachel responded by crossing her eyes at Riley.
“Well maybe they grabbed the handle with their eyeballs and
pulled it open.”

             Riley laughed then thought for a moment and
feeling slightly disturbed at the image that popped into her
mind of snails pulling on a door with their eyeball stalks, she
said, “I wonder if they could really do that.”

           Rachel shrugged, “Let’s see if we can get it open.”
She took hold of the doors latch and pulled. It moved slightly
and the hinge squeaked. “Help me out. I can’t get any leverage
without my legs.”

           Riley said, “Sure you can. Just pretend your fins are
your feet and pretend you have legs inside your tail and bend it

the same way.” She braced her fin on one door and helped pull
on the other door. The hinges groaned and squeaked as the
door gave way but only just far enough to squeeze through.
Riley wiggled her way in then turned to pull Rachel after her.

           Rachel commented, “It’s a lot darker in here. I’m
glad you have that crystal.”

            Riley said, “Sometimes the Wizard draws people
with extra-large eyes so they can see in the dark and there are
certain things he can draw, like stars in the eyes so they can see
farther. But I don’t think he did anything to ours. I guess
because it could change who he summons into the inner
kingdom if he makes they eyes too big. There are planets out
there with dream travelers who have big eyes. If one of them
looks more like the sketch than you do, I could have emerged
here with an alien for my dream travel companion. Look at all
those weapons! The passage led us to the armory!”

          Rachel moved forward fingering the sharp tips of
spears and other medieval looking weapons. “Maybe we
should take something with us for protection just in case. See

the snail trail goes out those other doors and those ones are
still open. It makes me wonder if whoever closed the first
doors was just here and didn’t even have time to close the
second ones before we came inside.”

            Riley said, “Right! I like spears best because I won’t
have to get so close to anything and it is hard to swing anything
under the water. It is much easier to jab.” She pulled a spear
from a rack and started swimming toward the exit door.
Beyond the door another passage led down a step taking a
bend to the left. Now windows appeared in the walls on the
right hand side of the steps at every landing. They paused to
look out the first window. “There it is! The space ship! Wow, I
didn’t imagine it would be so big. How did you find out about
it?”

            Rachel swam out the window and turned to face
Riley, holding her spear at the ready as she looked this way and
that, then she explained. “The last time we came, I saw a map
in the boat, with a picture of a space ship. I think it was left by
another dream traveler.”

Riley followed her out the window with her own
spear in hand. “You mean you never actually saw the ship
yourself?”

           “How could I? I am never here by myself, because
the Wizard drew us at the Boat Portal together. We only come
here when we are both asleep, dream traveling.”

           Riley gave her a frog lipped expression and said,
“You could have told me about the map.”

           Rachel wiggled her shoulders teasingly, “I would
have if you hadn’t swum away and left me last time.”

            “Well, why didn’t you check out the space ship
while I was gone?”

Rachel put one arm around her, and said, “Then how
would you have felt, if you came back to the boat and found
that I was gone somewhere? I waited there for you all night.”

            “I’m sorry Mom. It’s more fun to explore together
anyway.”

            Rachel pulled her in the direction of the space ship.
“Well, let’s check it out together then. Besides, I’m too chicken
to go alone.”

           “Yeah right, hey, look down there, the snail trail
comes out at that draw bridge and goes right up to the space
ship.”

                   They swam down to the draw bridge where
statues still intact knelt on one knee on either side of the road
linking themselves over the road with arms on shoulders. It
appeared that the shields in their other arms formed an

external gate that could be dropped down with the pull of a
lever or the turn of a wheel to block entrance to the draw
bridge. But for now the elbows remained up and the shields
spread wide to allow visitors to cross over the mote on the
drawbridge to visit the castle freely.
     The glowing snail trail passed under the soldiers crossed
arms and followed the road until it veered off in the direction
of the ship winding between boulders and coral formations
that towered everywhere right to the place where the space
ship was wedged into the side of the mountain upon which the
castle and city were built. It was so big the city itself could have
been built inside it, but the castle and mountain were still big
enough to conceal it from sight. They could see that, indeed,
the snails had been exercising their obsession by scouring the
outer surfaces of the space ship, which was shaped like two
long necked, robot dinosaurs bound together by a row of
turtles.

                 They swam wide eyed, ever nearer. The closer
they got to the space ship, the larger it appeared to be. It
towered over them, parked at the base of the mountain on
three legs, each as thick as a castle tower and muscled by
hydraulics with toes as big as tanks. The dinosaur shapes were

bigger than any battleship, and the turtle shapes that linked
them bigger than any super dome.

            “Wow!” said Rachel. “Who knows what is inside
that thing. Shall we see if we can find a door? I wonder if it is
open and full of water to swim through. But a space ship would
have something like a decompression chamber. You know, a
room that fills with air before the inner doors open. I can’t
recall what it is called. It would be hard to explore if we can’t
swim inside.”

            Riley nodded, “Mom, this might be a good time to
tell you something else I learned about the Wizard’s mermaid
transformations.”

          Rachel’s eyebrow shot up quizzically. “Oh? What is
that? Are you admitting you have kept secrets also?”

               “Well, the Wizard wrote about it. I guess, the thing
is, our tails aren’t just tails. They are some strange kind of fish,

that swallows our legs, and if we leave the water the fish…sort
off, you know…”

           Rachel beckoned with wiggling fingers for Riley to
explain saying, “Come on child, spit it out!”

              “Exactly, it spits us out. So we could walk around
inside if it has an atmosphere.”

          Rachel looked down at her tail and said, “Ewe!”
Then she gasped in dismay. “And what am I wearing inside
there?”

            Riley shrugged, “There is only one way to find out.”
She led the way to the space ship. “Let’s hope the Wizard has a
good sense of fashion.” They followed the snail trail to a drop
down platform beneath one of the stadium sized turtle shapes
that now jutted over them obliterating the surface light. It
looked like a scoop made to load and unload large equipment
or materials. The snail trail stopped upon the scoop.

Riley grinned mischievously, “Look, a button to
push. Shall I push it?” Before Rachel could respond, Riley’s
finger seemed to poke forward with a mind of its own. An
encasement dropped down around them enclosing them, and
the sound of huge machinery engaging began to rumble. The
scoop began to rise into a dark space in the underbelly of the
ship. Riley looked in shock at her offending hand. She wiggled
her fingers to see if she was still in control of them then she
looked to Rachel apologetically and said, “Woops.” She
chewed her finger nail, laughed somewhat sheepishly and said,
“Well, I guess were going inside.”

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