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Child of the Drenched: Return to the Depths - Part One


by kristykimmy

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"I want to go home."

     That thought, uttered aloud from sleeping lips, rebounded through her mind as she awoke. Mara looked around the dark room; nothing was out of the ordinary. The Maractite Usul pulled out her watch and groaned. It was only three in the morning. She had only gone to sleep two hours ago. Still, she knew sleep would not come again that night. She pulled on her clothes and boots and ran a brush through her blue-green hair, but didn't bother to tie it up.

     She left her cabin and went up on deck. It was Jacques' turn to man the wheel; he had relieved Mara at one. In the last year, Jacques had given her instruction on how to sail the ship. Now there was nothing Mara could not do when it came to the ship. Mara considered herself a full-fledged pirate now. She walked up the steps and waved at him. He glanced over at her as she leaned against the rail and tried not to look like anything was up.

     "What are you doing up, Mara?" Jacques asked.

     "I couldn't sleep. I thought I'd come look at the waves and maybe practice my magic. My eldest mother wants me to train harder; she says my progress is slowing," Mara replied as nonchalantly as possible.

     A grimace crossed Jacques' face, but he withheld whatever he was thinking about the Drenched for Mara's sake.

     "Is that it, really?" Jacques asked.

     "Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be?" Mara replied, hating how well he knew her.

     "You had that dream again, didn't you?" Jacques pushed.

     "It's not a dream, it's just a weird feeling I have when I wake up sometimes. It's not important," Mara said dismissively.

     "Mara, it is a dream; you just don't remember all of it. I'm concerned about this. It clearly upsets you when you have the dream; you stop sleeping and eating for the day after and look unwell," Jacques replied, refusing to let the topic drop.

     "Jacques, it's just a dream. Dreams can't hurt me," Mara sighed.

     "If it were anyone else I'd agree, but not you. You've had too varied a past, your raw talent for magic is too strong. This could mean something. You should go see Howl," Jacques reasoned.

     Mara smiled at the thought of her uncle. Howl was a Darigan Yurble who was the headmaster of the Royal University of Faerieland, a school for the most gifted faeries.

     She shook her head. "No, Jacques, I'm fine. Really, I am. I don't want to leave. I mean, it would be nice to see Uncle Howl again. It has been nearly a year since I last went back to see him, but you know I don't like leaving the Black Pawkeet. This is home and I don't want to go. No, and that is final."

     Jacques shook his head and decided to drop it. He didn't like to let it go, but he couldn't always be pushing Mara to do things she didn't want to do, even if he did generally seem to be right. Garin came up on deck just then and looked up at them.

     "There you are, Mara! I need your help; the new lad let a Kad escape again. I swear, if he does this again, I'm marooning him. Jacques, remind me again why we smuggle these blasted creatures?" Garin shouted up at them.

     "Because it's good money," Jacques replied as Mara hurried down. "Besides, they've been far easier to handle since Mara joined the crew. Petpets like her."

     Mara followed Garin below decks and Jacques watched her go with a sigh. There was really nothing he could do if she chose not to be concerned by her dreams.

     ***

     The next day they arrived on Mystery Island. Jacques and Garin took off in the sailboat to meet the buyer and collect their money, leaving Mara in charge of unloading the Kadoaties. The once difficult task of loading them into rowboats and rowing them to shore was easy with Mara's water magic. They simply brought the crates of Kadoaties up on deck and Mara summoned water to lift them up and bear them to the shore. This took only minutes, and then Mara sat on the beach and talked to the petpets through the crates to soothe them.

     She looked around the cove and smiled, she liked coming to Mystery Island. The atmosphere of the island, even in deserted places like the cove, was somehow different than anywhere else she had ever traveled.

     She lay on the warm sand with her eyes closed. She focused on the water all around her, feeling it and everything moving in it. There was something swimming towards the beach. She sat up and waited, the aura felt familiar.

     A minute later a beautiful Maraquan Aisha put her head out of the water. Mara hadn't actually spoken with Isca before, but she saw her often enough talking with Garin. Her mind flew back to the first time she had seen her, when Isca had arrived to rescue Jacques from her mothers. It had been a long time since that day.

     "Hello, Isca. Garin isn't here right now. He's at the main port at the moment. He ought to be back pretty soon," Mara informed her.

     "Good day to you, Mara. I'm afraid I'm not here for Garin this time. I need to speak with you," Isca replied.

     Mara's stomach flipped. "Please tell me this isn't about my mothers."

     "No, thankfully not. The people of Maraqua have had their usual run-ins with them, but nothing out of the ordinary. No, it is about something else entirely. I've had dreams concerning you," Isca told her.

     Mara gave an involuntary shudder at the word 'dreams'.

     "What about?" Mara asked.

     "King Kelpbeard is in great danger from something. I don't know what, that is veiled from me. However, if we cannot prevent whatever it is that means to harm him, you are our only hope of saving him," Isca told her.

     "You're joking, right?" Mara gasped in disbelief.

     Isca only shook her head.

     "No, that is ludicrous. Me? I'm a pirate sorceress, not a great hero. How can I do anything? You don't even know what is going to happen!" Mara cried, still refusing to believe what Isca had seen.

     "Mara, I'm sorry, I only know what little I have seen in my dreams. However, I am never wrong. I don't know what it is you will need to do, but I need you to be ready if something does befall King Kelpbeard. Maraquan relations with the surface have finally become stable again and because of that, we don't have to fear Scarblade at this time. However, if something were to dramatically shift the balance of power, such as losing our king, he might attack again. If he prevails, it would be bad for everyone, especially Garin and the crew of the Black Pawkeet. You also would suffer. You've angered him greatly by siding with Garin instead of him and attacking his ship."

     "Scarblade wouldn't harm me. He'd fear the retribution my mothers would inflict upon him if he did so," Mara replied. "He might be powerful, but against their pure magical might, my mothers combined could easily destroy him."

     "Perhaps that is so, but there is no safety guaranteed to the Black Pawkeet. Fear of your mothers would not stop him from making you watch as he destroyed the Black Pawkeet and her crew," Isca reminded.

     "Jacques..." Mara paled at the realization that Isca was right. "Isca, what do you want from me? I don't know what is going to happen. I don't know how to help!"

     "At the moment, nothing. Talek and the guard are working around the clock to protect the king from whatever is coming. I just need you to be ready to deal with the situation should we fail," Isca explained.

     Mara nodded. "All right."

     Isca thanked her and then dove back into the sea. Mara dropped onto her back and rubbed her forehead. She felt like Isca's dream of the coming disaster had something to do with the dream she had been having. She wanted more than anything to avoid that dream, and yet she couldn't figure out why. She tried not to worry about what had just happened. Isca's dream would be enough. They would be able to prevent this disaster and Mara would be able to go on with her life uninterrupted.

     "Mara! Come on, we're back and it's time to go!" Jacques' voice called out.

     Mara opened her eyes and looked out towards the ship. Garin and Jacques were in their sailboat only a few yards from the Black Pawkeet. Mara whispered some goodbyes to the petpets and dived into the ocean, taking off like a rocket towards the ship. Garin and Jacques were just climbing up the rope ladder when Mara reached it. She shot up past them, propelled by the water, and landed on the deck first.

     "Slowpoke," Mara teased as she pulled the water from her clothes and hair and dropped it back into the ocean.

     "Show off," Jacques laughed as he leaned down to give Garin a hand over the rail.

     "I need to talk to you and Garin when you have a moment. It's nothing important, so it can wait," Mara said as evenly as she could.

     Garin started to speak but Jacques cut him off. "No time like the present, Mara. Come along with us."

     Mara followed Garin and Jacques to Garin's cabin. She closed the door behind them. Garin headed over to the safe to put the money in it as Jacques rounded on Mara.

     "You're a terrible liar, and you know it, so why do you even try it with me anymore? What's wrong, and why are you trying to downplay it?"

     "Why do you always assume Mara has bad news and is trying to pretend everything is okay?" Garin sighed as he shut the safe. "You're a really worrywart, Jacques."

     Mara giggled nervously, wishing she didn't always have to prove Jacques right, especially in front of Garin.

     Garin gave her a sour look and said, "You know, I'm just going to stay out of this from now on. He's always right and you don't help anything, Mara."

     "I don't know that anything is wrong or gone bad or anything yet. I was just trying not to make a big deal out of something that might not be anything," Mara insisted.

     She told them about Isca's visit and what she had told her. Garin and Jacques were both wearing frowns by the end and they looked at each other with troubled glances more than once during her tale.

     "Please don't look like that. Surely they are overreacting," Mara said when she had finished. "It can't be that bad and they should be able to stop it, right?"

     "Isca's dreams are usually spot on. I hope they can prevent whatever is going to happen to King Kelpbeard, but I doubt it. You'll have to be ready to go with Mara to Maraqua whenever this comes to pass, Jacques. I'll have to stay with the ship and proceed as normal. We wouldn't want to do anything that could clue in Scarblade that Maraqua is in trouble or that we are involved in trying to help. This won't be the first time you two have gone away together," Garin told Jacques.

     Jacques nodded.

     "Oh, come on! You don't really think that this is going to happen?" Mara cried in frustration.

     "I'm afraid we do. We've been through this before, Mara. You're just going to have to go along with this and figure out what they are asking of you when the time comes," Garin said.

     Mara groaned and rubbed her forehead. "Oh, lovely, Maraqua."

     "What's wrong with Maraqua? It's lovely there," Garin asked.

     "So I was told. I went there once on one of my days off. Lovely place, nice, friendly people. I ended up fleeing for my life. Apparently someone knew of my connection to the Drenched. They don't like me there and as a whole, I don't like Maraqua. I guess some of my mothers' feelings for the place rubbed off on me. I can't say I'm particularly thrilled to have to go back there."

     Jacques frowned. "You didn't tell me about that."

     "Yeah, because you worry too much. I didn't think I'd ever be going back," Mara replied.

     "I think my worries are well founded this time, Mara. This is not going to go down well."

     Mara bit her lip, trying to fight back the fear that was creeping inside. The worst couldn't come to pass, it just couldn't.

To be continued...

 
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