Betina Krahn (30 page)

“Prophecies? What prophecies? Nana, what are you talking about?” Celeste felt Titus stiffening beside her and her heart began to beat faster. Union? She made herself look from face to familiar face, and in each she saw that same knowing look.
Joining?
The realization crashed over her like an icy wave: they knew that she and Titus had just made love!

“For a long time now, Celeste, we have known that you were our Sacred Virgin, who would someday become our Woman of Sea. The tablets your grandfather and I translated before he died spoke of the prophecies of Atlantis … the coming destruction of their world and the promise that their knowledge and understanding would someday be resurrected in a new world, a new society. And the new order would begin with the joining of a man of the earth and a woman of the sea. You, Professor, are our long-awaited
Man of Earth
. We welcome you into our midst and into our society.”

Nana came forward and placed one of the wreaths on her head, proclaiming something about the blessings of all creation
being upon her. Then she turned to Titus and stretched up onto her toes. Celeste felt him bending and looked up to see her grandmother settling the second ring of flowers on his head and repeating the same words.

He looked a bit stunned. When he straightened, he looked down at her with an expression of dismay and confusion.

“What is this nonsense?” he uttered. “Man of Earth … prophecies … us joining something together?”

“I’ve never heard any of this before,” she said, alarmed by the way his arm withdrew abruptly from her waist.

“And now,” Nana continued, “Reverend Altarbright will bless and consecrate your sacred union.” She stepped back and the reverend and Penelope Hatch came forward with the large garland, holding it up for all to see.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to celebrate and consecrate your ‘joining’ as man and woman. This garland is a symbol of your chosen union, a blending of the ocean’s marvelous riches and the earth’s magnificent bounty.”

“It’s seaweed,” Titus said, not entirely aware he was speaking his thoughts aloud. “With flowers and stalks of grass tied on it.”

“The flowers symbolize the beauty and fertility and plenty of the land. And the seaweed symbolizes the richness and stability and abundance of the sea. In joining them together, as you have chosen to join yourselves together in body and spirit, we have created for you the sacred Circle of Life.”

The reverend and Penelope placed the garland on the sand in a circle, around Celeste and Titus, then the reverend took his place before them.

“My God—he’s wearing a clerical collar,” Titus said audibly.

Celeste groaned. The good reverend was indeed wearing a cassock and clerical collar beneath his chiton and himation. “Then that means—”

“I am here in an official capacity, as well as an Atlantean
one,” the reverend intoned, having heard their exchange. “For as much as you, Titus Thorne, Man of Earth … and you, Celeste Ashton, Woman of Sea … have seen fit to join your bodies and spirits in holy and blessed union … I can and must, by the authority vested in me by the church and in the name of the Almighty, declare you to be joined hereunto and henceforth, forever and ever.”

Then Nana stepped up and the reverend relinquished his place to her. She raised her hands and smiled radiantly upon them. “As High Priestess of the resurrected holy Order of Atlantis, I bless your union, consummated this night in joy, love, and peace. Through its blessedness the rest of the world will be blessed. I now pronounce you”—she nodded to Titus—“the new Adam”—then to Celeste—“and the new Eve. May the Great Creator give you strength and understanding and courage to lead us well into a rebirth of our society and our natural world.”

Celeste glanced up at Titus, who was scowling, and her heart skipped a beat. Forever and ever? She looked wildly about the group. They were all beaming. They knew she and Titus had made love and were using that as the basis for declaring them to be … joined forever and ever … like Adam and …

“Dearest Heaven,” she mumbled in horror, “they think they’ve just m-married us.” Titus must have heard her, for he grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. His eyes were dark-centered and intense in a way she hadn’t seen in days. “Titus … I … I’m—”

A sudden blast of sound startled them, and they whirled and found Hiram Bass standing at the water’s edge with a huge conch shell to his lips. The old fisherman drew a huge breath and blew again, producing a low, half-musical blast that was loud enough to rouse Poseidon himself. The other members of the society hurried down to the water’s edge behind Ned Caldwell, who was carrying a pole with a dolphin figure on it. He planted it in the sand and stood at attention, steadying it, while the others arrayed themselves
behind him, chanting something about “brother dolphins” and “coming forth from the deep.” They waved their torches and chanted ever louder, while Hiram produced blast after blast.

“This is where it begins,” Nana said reverently, coming to stand beside Celeste and Titus and nodding to the ceremony in progress.

“What the hell are they doing?” Titus demanded. “Singing praises to the fish?”

“Not exactly,” Celeste said weakly, feeling light-headed and a little sick, unable to believe what was happening. This ceremony she did recognize. “I believe they’re calling the dolphins.”

“They’re doing what?” His scowl deepened as his features tightened.

“We’re calling our brothers the dolphins,” Nana reiterated. “Watch.”

Celeste felt a part of her withdraw to a safer, saner place inside herself. The torches, the ceremony, the horn, the flowers and seaweed, the dolphin on a pole … Anabelle’s finger cymbals … all here in the dark, after she and Titus had … She could only hope this was all a bizarre dream from which she would soon—oh, please, let her wake up!

In horrified fascination, they watched as swaying was added to the chanting, and listened to more blasts from the shell horn. After a while she looked up at Titus, reading in his face the tumult in his thoughts and emotions.

“I’ve seen them try to call dolphins before,” she said, forcing each word past the lump of humiliation in her throat. “It doesn’t ever—”

Abruptly, the chanting and horn blowing stopped. The silence over the cove was so profound that the gentle slosh of the waves sounded like storm-whipped surf. Her heart sank at the hopeful way they stared at the water. She should have known it would come to this—should have never let her grandmother’s absurd notions about the dolphins go this far. Her grandmother was staring out to sea, smiling through
prisms of tears. The sight was like a knife in her heart. She had only herself to blame.

Suddenly, Nana began to walk toward the others, and as Celeste followed the old lady with her eyes, she glimpsed a disturbance in the water at the center of the cove. It was almost as if the water were boiling. It took her a minute to realize that it wasn’t water at all, but
dolphins
… wriggling, sliding over each other in a tightly packed group. The hair on the back of her neck prickled.

Suddenly, up out of the water rose a dolphin, onto its tail flukes. Her jaw went slack. Prospero? Hiram sounded his horn again and another dolphin, and another rose up out of the water on its tail flukes, “walking” on the water.

She blinked and shook her head to clear it, but they were still there. Now there were at least a half-dozen dolphins “walking,” more with each passing second. Soon there were a dozen dolphins, all mostly out of the water, moving along the surface on their flukes … then a dozen and a half … then two dozen—all doing what she had always believed she taught to her one special dolphin, Prospero.

Finally, one by one, the dolphins sank back into the water. Even as they disappeared, she was already beginning to deny the reality of what she had seen … making excuses, conjuring logical explanations.

Hiram sounded his horn once more. They rose again … one by one … answering that call with a behavior whose significance was known only to them and the Creator who made them. After a long walk, they sank back into the water again, a few at a time. Only, this time, they swam
en masse
for the beach, making caws and screeches and all manner of vocal sounds. They were in grave danger of stranding themselves on the wave-washed sand when Celeste realized they were too close and charged into the water to herd them back to safer depths.

Frantically, she called to Titus and the others to help. Titus came running from the beach, and soon he and the society members were helping to push the determined dolphins
out of the shallows and back into deeper water. But even when they were back at a safe depth, the dolphins continued to linger, screeching, singing, and giving barklike yelps.

The noise was horrendous. Celeste put her hands over her ears. Titus stood not far away wearing a pained expression. Just when they thought they couldn’t bear much more, the dolphins began to slip away. As suddenly and mysteriously as they had come, one or two disappeared back into the water at a time. Before long, there wasn’t a dolphin in sight.

Silence descended once again over the beach. Celeste looked warily over at the Atlantean Society, standing in the shallows. Suddenly, as if someone had snapped fingers to end their trance, they all began to shout and hug each other, bobbing about like children.

“We did it!” Nana cried and the others echoed her joy.

Only heartbeats later, the celebration halted as they turned to look at Celeste and Titus, who were wading in from the waist-high water.

“Well?” the brigadier demanded. “What did they say?”

“What did who say?” Celeste asked.

“The joining ceremony changed everything,” Nana said excitedly. “This time when we called them, they came and they spoke. Oh, do tell us what they said!” She grasped Penelope’s hands and together they fairly jiggled with excitement. “What are we supposed to do?”

“Yea,” Ned Caldwell spoke up. “Ye heard ’em roight enuff. We all did. Now, tell us wot they said.”

“I haven’t a clue what they said,” Celeste said, shaking her head.

Titus stared at them, seeing only a group of daft old-agers wrapped in droopy bed linen, running around in the dead of night performing mystical rites of some sort … declaring that he was a second-generation Adam because he’d made love to … Oh, God.

He was reeling; he hadn’t a clue if he was dreaming, feverish, or just plain delusional. None of it made any sense.
And he was a man who needed things to make sense … had to make things reasonable and logical and …
safe
.

“You’re mad, the lot of you,” he said, coming to life, “conjuring up a herd of dolphins, expecting them to bring you the secrets of Atlantis and the answers to mankind’s problems … with me as go-between.”

“But it’s all in the prophecy,” Lady Sophia said, wading toward him. “After the Man of Earth and the Woman of Sea ‘join,’ their ears will be opened to …” She looked from him to Celeste with the realization dawning. “You mean, you didn’t understand what the dolphins said?”

Confusion broke out in the Atlantean Society ranks and Lady Sophia found herself beset on all sides. The members were still under the spell of the startling response of the dolphins to their call and couldn’t understand how Celeste and Titus could have missed hearing the dolphins’ message. It was plain as day, they declared. They all heard it; they just needed to know what it meant.

Titus watched it all from a small island of reason in his reeling, unreliable mind. At that moment, in that place, he could scarcely have told anyone his entire name, much less make sense of what had just happened to him. He looked at Celeste, who seemed equally bewildered, and his gaze caught on the garland around her head. Reaching up, he felt the flowers of the matching ring of vegetation on his own head.

“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded of anybody who might be listening. Dragging the garland from his head and staring at it, he heard echoes of “forever and ever” in his mind. His mouth began to dry and his heart began to pound.

Throwing the garland onto the water, he stalked up onto the beach, past the arguing Atlanteans, past the place where he and Celeste had lain together, and straight up the path along the cliff. He didn’t stop until he reached his room and slammed the door.

•        •        •

C
ELESTE WATCHED
T
ITUS
charging up the path along the cliff and felt the fragile trust they had built over the last several days falling to pieces around her.

Feeling like a stranger in her own body, she crossed the same beach, picked up her robe and the shirt he had left behind, and climbed up the cliff. Once in the house, she went straight to her room and sat in the window overlooking the cove.

How much time passed, she wasn’t sure. But eventually the thoughts circling in her mind began to settle and she realized that more than anything else, she had to talk to Titus. Slipping down the hall, she knocked on his door.

“Titus, I think we need to talk.”

The looming silence from the other side of the door sent her back to her room with dragging steps. She collapsed on the window seat, wrapping herself in his shirt and drawing her knees up under her chin. She stared down at the cove and let the tears come.