Her eyes widened when she saw a colorful kaleidoscope of water swirling in front of her. She barely caught a glimpse of the boy as he passed through it and disappeared. Unsure of what was going on, she gripped the rocky entrance to the cave with one hand while she reached out with the other to touch the colorful anomaly. The moment her fingers skimmed across the surface, she felt her body being pulled forward. A silent scream echoed in her mind as she was sucked forward into the whirlpool of colors.
Chapter Four
Jenny’s body twisted in the powerful rip current that held her. Her lungs burned with the need for oxygen, but she kept her lips firmly clamped shut. Even as her mind began to grow hazy, she fought to focus on finding the calm inside her.
One of her swim instructors had taught her that meditating helped in situations like this by reducing your heart rate and decreasing the need for oxygen. Jenny had practiced the method and increased her underwater time to almost three and a half minutes, but that was in a pool. Her body bounced off of the edge of a rock, and she winced. Her blurry vision was darkening, and she knew she was seconds away from drowning.
Reaching out, Jenny tried to grab the rocky side of the cavern. She was surprised when a small hand wrapped around her wrist. Jenny found herself being dragged forward at an incredible speed. Blinking, she saw a faint light up above her.
Suddenly, she began to rise upward. Jenny fought against the fuzzy darkness and kicked her feet in an effort to help the boy pull her up. Her lips parted against her will as the last bit of oxygen in her lungs coursed through her body. Panic changed to relief when they surfaced into a dim cavern.
Jenny gulped desperately needed air into her starving lungs. She briefly caught sight of another small boy sitting on a ledge before the boy holding her wrist started pulling her toward the sandy shore. The movement caused her to slip under the water for a brief second while her mouth was still open, making her gag on a mouthful of water. Fighting to rise to the surface again, she spat out the water and fought the urge to cough.
She forced her shivering body to respond to her demands even as exhaustion threatened to drag her down. If she gave in now, she would sink below the surface and drown. Forcing her legs to move, she clumsily frog-kicked to the edge of the pool.
“Just a little farther,” the boy’s soft voice echoed in the cave.
Jenny clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. She felt frozen to the bone. She tried to grasp the edge of the pool but couldn’t get her fingers to work. Two sets of small hands pulled on her trembling arms, dragging her out of the water.
Jenny collapsed onto the hard surface and rolled onto her back. As she stared up at the twinkling green lights of the cavern ceiling, several things registered through her mind even as darkness began to spread. The most important was, where in the hell was she? Too tired to contemplate the answer, Jenny felt her body relax as the warmth of the cave surrounded her chilled, exhausted body. Her eyelids fluttered briefly when she heard the sound of voices, but she was beyond dealing with it at the moment. The last of her resistance dissolved, and she slipped into semi-consciousness.
“What is she?” the younger child’s voice asked as a small hand touched the highlights in Jenny’s auburn-colored hair. “Her hair looks like the fire coral mixed with the sun.”
“She’s ours is what she is,” a voice whispered. “I captured her for us.”
“Father–“
“I don’t care what he says. Time is running out. You heard what Kelia and the other servants were saying. If Father does not find a wife soon, the kingdom will be in trouble. We should have some say in who will be our mother. The Goddess said so,” the older boy said stubbornly.
“I know, but the Sea Witch…. She scares me, Dolph,” the young boy said.
Dolph waved his hand in the air. “She was the only one who could help us. This is the one, Juno. I can feel it. She is ours. The Sea Witch promised if I found a woman with hair the color of our fire coral caught in the sun and brought her back, she would be ours.”
“But… What if she doesn’t want to be ours?” Juno asked.
Jenny decided she’d remained silent long enough when she heard the tremble in the younger boy’s voice. Her brain had finally kicked into gear a minute ago as the last of the freezing cold numbness melted away. Her body had remained relaxed as she listened to the two boys’ conversation, even when she’d felt the touch of small fingers on her hair. The gentle, soothing strokes told her that she wasn’t in any danger. She’d lain there trying to establish in her mind what had happened.
She replayed the entire incident from the moment she’d seen the boy with the white hair run past her to the second she slipped into semi-consciousness. Nothing made sense to her. Rolling over onto her side, she bit back a groan of pain from the movement.
The gentle lapping of waves pulled her gaze to the ground. She was lying on a long, narrow stretch of shimmering pink sand. Once again, she remembered the pairs of small hands tugging her exhausted body up onto what turned out to be a small beach inside a cave.
Confusion washed over her, and she curled her fingers in the warm sand. Because it felt so good against her chilled skin, a part of her wished she could burrow down into the silky granules like one of the coquinas she used to play with on the beach when her parents visited Florida. Releasing the powdery particles, she turned her head to look at the boy she had followed here.
“Where…,” she started to say before she cleared her raw throat. “Where am I?”
Her voice was hoarse from the salt water she had swallowed. She struggled to sit up when she heard the sounds of the boys scooting quickly backwards. Pushing her shoulder-length hair out of her face, she blinked several times to clear her vision.
“Where am I?” she demanded again in a thick voice before it faded in stunned disbelief as she got her first good look around the vast cavern where she found herself. “Oh! Wow!”
She stared up at the ceiling in amazement. It was stone, but it was glittering like a million stars that were captured in a huge net. Her eyes ran down the wall, stopping at a shallow ledge on the far side where a dozen small creatures with dark green scales and large black eyes stared back at her. The species looked like a cross between a seahorse and a frog. Several of the creatures jumped off the narrow shelf and disappeared beneath the water. Turning her head, she stared into the vivid green eyes of the older boy she’d seen back on the beach.
“Where in the hel– heck am I?” Jenny growled in a low voice filled with unease. “What are those things?”
The boy stood up. She studied him more closely for the first time. His hair was white-blond and cut short. His eyes were a bright, vivid green with specks of forest green. She had never seen such a beautiful shade of green before. She slowly ran her gaze over him. He had put on a brown shirt that hung down over his dark green pants, both made of some kind of fabric that she had never seen before. The clothes looked as if they might be water proof. His feet were still bare. He had long toes that curled in the sand when she gazed at them.
Was that webbing between them? she wondered as she returned her gaze to his thin face.
“They are young sea dragons,” the boy replied. “You are on the Isle of the Sea Serpent.”
The boy’s voice was polite, but there was also a hint of determination in it that far exceeded his age. She could tell by the way his jaw was thrust forward that he was used to getting his own way. Personally, she didn’t give a damn. She dealt with twenty-four third graders in one of the toughest schools in Portland. Raising an eyebrow, she stared back at him in silence.
It took a few seconds longer than it normally did, but she saw a shadow of doubt come into his eyes, and he glanced at the boy next to him. Jenny waited as they engaged in a silent argument. Finally, the second boy shook his head and shifted uneasily in the sand.
“We are going to be in so much trouble this time,” the boy muttered, glancing at Jenny again. “So very much trouble when Father
finds out what we have done.”
Jenny couldn’t quite stop the reluctant smile that tugged at her lips. The younger boy looked so despondent that she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He was several years younger than the boy from the beach, but he had the same white-blond hair and piercing green eyes. Jenny shook her head and released a deep sigh as she shifted until she was sitting cross-legged. She reached down and cupped a handful of the pink sand in her left hand. Tilting her hand, she watched as the granules flowed back down to the ground to form a small, sparkling pile.
“Isle of the Sea Serpent, huh?” she asked, looking up at the boys with a crooked smile. “Do you boys have names?” she continued when they both gave her a sharp nod.
The younger boy’s smile was hopeful, and he glanced at his older brother. The older one stepped forward and bent at the waist in a stiff bow before straightening. He gave her a mischievous smile before answering her. Jenny couldn’t help but be enchanted by his debonair behavior.
“I am Dolph,” the boy said in a voice that belied his age. “And this is my brother, Juno.”
Jenny’s lips twitched when the other boy imitated Dolph. “I’m Jenny,” she replied, glancing back and forth between them. “I’m not sure what happened, but something tells me I’m really not supposed to be here, am I?”
A flash of guilt crossed the boys’ faces. Their expressions were enough to answer her question. They both had a pensive look mixed with unease, hope, and determination. She’d also heard enough of their earlier conversation to realize that there was some important information that she needed to understand everything that was happening.
“No,” Juno muttered before he grinned. “But, I’m glad you are. How did you get hair the color of the fire coral? Did the Sea Witch cast a spell on you? When I touched it, it did not burn me. How can that be?”
Jenny reached up and touched her hair. “I was born with red hair. Haven’t you ever seen anyone with red hair before?” she asked, shifting so she could stand up.
A wrinkle of surprise creased her brow when she noticed that instead of being sandy like she normally was after a visit to the beach, the pink crystals fell away from her damp clothes. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her waist. Her gaze locked on the young sea dragons on the far side of the cave.
“Is there an adult nearby? Someone who knows where you are?” Jenny asked, turning back to look at the two boys.
“Of course! We have a nursemaid. She will eventually catch up with us,” Juno assured her with a grin.
Jenny smiled wryly at that and shook her head at Juno’s happy, innocent expression. She couldn’t leave them unsupervised.
“Listen, I need to get back home. Before I do that, we should find your nursemaid,” she said in a firm tone.
“But… You can’t go back!” Juno exclaimed with a vigorous shake of his head. He stepped forward and grabbed her hand as if to make sure she didn’t suddenly disappear. “Dolph said you would help us.”
When she heard the note of panic in his voice, Jenny knelt down and gently squeezed Juno’s small hand in reassurance. “Why can’t I go back? Are you in danger? Has someone hurt you or your brother? If you need help, I can contact the authorities. I heard you say your father would be upset. If he has hurt you, that isn’t right,” Jenny explained.
“Father would never hurt us,” Juno replied, “He gets exas… exas-gurated because our nursemaid loses us,” Juno glanced at his brother with a wry smile before turning to gaze at Jenny again. “But he never gets angry. He just says he has to find a nursemaid who is smarter than we are.”
Jenny chuckled. “Then what is it?”
Juno looked down and tears glittered in his eyes for a moment before he furiously blinked them back. Jenny turned to look up at Dolph who was staring back at her with that same determined look he had before.
“Dolph, what is going on?” Jenny asked in a calm voice. Something in his eyes suddenly made her feel just how small they were within the vast cavern, and her gut instinct told her she really wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear. She dropped her left hand and carefully pinched her leg to see if she was really awake. The sharp sting told her that she was. This was definitely not a dream.
“Dolph! Juno!” A woman’s voice called frantically in the distance.
Jenny turned to look toward the sound. It took her a moment to notice the shadowed opening in one recess of the cavern. She almost fell forward when she felt Juno pulling anxiously on her hand. She stood, still grasping his hand.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“Kelia,” Dolph replied, looking apprehensively at the entrance to the cavern.
“Dolph, Juno!”
Jenny could hear the exasperation in the woman’s voice. It looked like the boys were going to need a new, smarter-than-them nanny soon. She jerked forward when Juno pulled on her hand.
She cast a quick glance at the large pool of water behind her. The sea dragons were crawling up the far wall again and settling back on the dozens of narrow ledges. For a brief second, Jenny could have sworn they were watching her with gleeful eyes. Unable to resist, she stuck her tongue out at them before turning back to watch where she was going.
If someone had told her this morning that she would be taking a fantastic and bizarre journey to a mystical world, she would never have believed them. She stumbled when it suddenly dawned on her that maybe Carly wasn’t killed by a serial killer like the police thought after all. Maybe, just maybe, she had been swept away here. Carly had been in the park when she disappeared. If it was possible for Jenny to find a way to a different world, perhaps Carly had too.
“Dolph,” Jenny called, hurrying after the older boy.
Dolph paused and turned at the entrance to the cavern to look back at her. Once again, she saw an expression in the young boy’s eyes that spoke of a maturity that was unusual in someone so young. He gazed at her in silence.
“Did another woman…? Do you know or have you heard of another woman like me, only with brown hair, that might have come here? She would have been about this tall, with brown eyes. She… It would have been a couple of years ago,” Jenny asked, holding her left hand up in the air to show how tall Carly was.
Dolph shook his head. “No. We would have heard if there had been another from your world. The Sea Witch helped me create the portal to bring you through. The water told me where I had to open it,” he replied with a shake of his head.
“Oh,” Jenny said, disappointed. “Well, perhaps someone else may have heard something.”
She wasn’t quite ready to give up. If there was one way into this place, there might be another. Perhaps one of the adults had heard something. It couldn’t hurt to ask around, maybe do a little exploring. Honestly, what did she have to lose?
Excitement began to build inside her the more she thought about it. She was in another world—or at least she was pretty sure she was from the little she had seen so far. Those creatures back in the cave didn’t look or move like any animatronics she had ever seen. Besides, it wasn’t like there were any pressing reasons for her to rush back. As long as she could find her way back to the cavern, she had a way home. She had hoped for a change in her life, maybe this was her chance.
Chapter Five
Dolph led the way out of the cavern along a narrow, winding path. The pink sand gave way to stones worn smooth over time. Each stone contained more of the green lights, creating enough ambient glow to light their way. Jenny had to resist the urge to stop and touch the specks of light. As they walked, she could see more of them reflecting off the rough, rocky walls all the way to the entrance. The dark gray walls curved to the left, blocking her view of what was beyond until she stepped completely out of the cave.
Jenny jerked to a stop and blinked when they emerged into a lush, thick garden. She had expected the cave to open out onto a beach. Her eyes swept over the brilliantly colored plants that looked more like the coral found along the Great Barrier Reef than something you
’d find in a garden above the sea. Heck, some of the vibrant plants even moved like the sea anemones she had seen in fish tanks and on television. Her eyes followed one stunning orange, red, and purple plant that rose up toward the….
“Oh, my!” she whispered, staring up at the large, crystal clear dome that created a ceiling. Sunlight filtered through the lavender colored water on the other side of the dome. Large fish, some the size of a blue whale, swam overhead. “This is unbelievable. I really am in another world!”
“Dolph, Juno, where have you two been?! I’ve been looking all over for y… ou.” Kelia’s voice faded as she stared at Jenny in stunned disbelief. “Oh my! What have you two done now? Oh, Dolph, your father will.…”
Pulling her gaze away from Kelia’s shocked face when a shadow passed overhead, Jenny looked back up at the dome as a group of large sea dragons swam past. Her loud hiss echoed through the air when she saw the riders on the creatures’ backs.
“What in the hell is this place?” Jenny whispered in awe.
Orion swung the staff in his hand and fired a burst of energy from it. The force of the powerful charge hit the twenty foot Megatooth shark in the side, forcing it to veer off to the left and disappear into the murky darkness. Adjusting his grip on the power rod in his hand, he kept a wary eye on the beast to make sure it didn’t reappear. His other arm was wrapped tightly around the limp body of a warrior who had been injured during their mission. With a growl of frustration, he turned and watched as a group of his men appeared out of the deep purple abyss not far from where he had originally emerged with the wounded warrior.