Chapter Three

Earthquakes rolled through the water in peculiar, soft shocks. The sound of them, dim rumblings and muted scraping of stone, was the only sound she could remember hearing, aside from the distorted sounds of her own screams. There was no way to mark how often they passed, in the timeless prison. At junctures they seemed to come often, sending the water quivering over her skin again and again in reverberating series. It wasn't a comfortable feeling, the concussions jarring through her bones and sending chills through her teeth. Goosebumps lifted on her skin, so rare an occasion she felts at them in wondering confusion. Any texture at all came as a fascinating alleviation to the endless litany of despair that was her only company.

The earthquakes provided rare moments of coherency, functionality in a mind that she could recognize as disturbed, if not shattered, in those cognitive minutes. Awareness was not welcome. It made the hopelessness of the situation more pressing. She could hear discordant thoughts shying away from comprehension, thoughts that seemed to belong to someone else entirely.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing in the world but us, our little black room and the water. Nothing but us, nothing to fear here, nothing to hide from, here is home, here is all. Don't think about outside, it's a bad place, it's not really there at all, nothing was ever really there but the dark room and our hair, oh our hair, play with it, keep it from tangling us. Ignore! Ignore the rumblings and the shakings! Nothing is outside! We are everything, all here, all one, all safe. Nothing surrounds us, nothing at all.

She shook her head, trying to clear the frightened little voice away. The water had stilled again, leaving her drifting in smooth silence. Escape, another voice whispered. Someday there will be escape. We'll stay here until then, but someday, someday. We'll kill the one that did this to us, and then we'll make ourselves a home again, safe in Atlantis where the gods will favor us again. Patience. Patience is all we need. Nothing is forever. This is not forever. Smooth and calm, the voice soothed her to sleep.

When she woke again, awareness had slid from her grasp once more. She swam back and forth across the room, followed endlessly by yards of hair, infinitely patient. It might be years before the frightened one emerged again. Decades could pass before she was given another taste of herself, another hour or two of discerning between the patient one and the terrified one, and time to reach for the woman she'd once been.

The patient one didn't mind.

The report of the wall shattering jolted her from sleep, cracking into her bones and leaving her stunned. She hung in the water, bewildered, unable to put a name to what had wakened her. In only minutes there were differences in the water, fine grains of stone floating in the formerly sealed environment. Without comprehension, she reveled in the new sensation, rubbing grit between her fingertips and tasting it against her tongue. She played with it for hours before understanding settled into her. Disbelieving, patient, she began to explore the walls, fingertip by fingertip, as she had done thousands of times before.

For the first time in memory, there was pain from something beyond her own self-inflicted injuries. She doubled over, clutching her toes in shock, a hoarse curse roughing out of her throat. The pain subsided in seconds, and she unclenched her fingers, upending herself in the water to search for the unexpected obstacle that her toes had crashed into.

Eager hands found a stone, settled against the floor as though it belonged there. Wedge-shaped and rough-edged, it was as large as her head, easy to lift with the water's bouyancy. Possessively, she clung to it, folding it between her chest and the crook of her elbow. She kicked upwards, trailing her free hand along the wall in search of the break in the walls where the stone had fallen from.

It began as a crack, almost indiscernible, even to fingertips long familiar with the smooth stone. In inches, though, it split wider, one side of it rising away from the other fractionally. Small as her hands were, she couldn't force her fingers deeply enough into the crack to find an outside edge. After a while she gave up, kicking higher, following the split.

It was at the point that the wall began to curve into ceiling that the precious stone she cuddled had fallen from. The break continued further up the ceiling before fading away again. The divot left by the falling stone was by far the largest breach in the oubliette walls.

With a shout, she smashed her stone against the hole it left, kicking to keep herself aloft in the water. Soft clouds of dust broke free, a tiny release of particles, washing vividly over her face in nearly sensual waves. Again and again, in the darkness, she brought the stone down. Smaller shards of rock splintered away. As her hands grew numb from the repeated shocks, a slightly larger chunk dropped, falling to connect with the top of her foot as she kicked. A moment later it clicked lightly against the floor, leaving a delicious ringing pain in her foot.

Eventually she noticed the dull thud of the stone cracking against the wall was dimmed beneath a high-pitched giggling. It was longer to still before she realized the sound was her own laughter, unheard for centuries, released by the prospect of escape. It would take time to break through the wall. It would take time to make a hole large enough for her to fit through.

Time is not a problem, the patient one whispered.

She couldn't remember how thick the walls had been.

It doesn't matter, the patient one told her. We have time.

But I want to remember! she raged back. It seemed likely that it really didn't matter. The textures of the walls had been changed utterly by the cataclysm that drowned the city; almost certainly the depth of the walls had been changed by the same events.

Neverless, as she scraped and tore away fragments of stone, she tried to remember. As deep as her forearm was long? Leaning in the door, did the stone stretch wider than the breadth of her shoulders, to encompass her safely in the carved structure? Had there been windows she could reach through?

Had there been windows at all? The wedge of stone slipped from her hands as she drifted in the water, struggling to bring the memory of the original room to mind.

No doors! No windows! Always smooth, always safe, keeping us here inside! the frightened one insisted. Always here.

No. She shoved the voices away, trying desperately to focus. She curled on her side, catching her hair over an arm to prevent it from wrapping around her face. Had there been windows? The wide floor she could envision, from eons of testing it with fingertips. The walls, she knew, had never been so smooth, but they had curved into the arched roof in the same essential structure of her prison.

The door had been deliberately simple. The memory came back to her in a rush, and faded away again into fog. She pressed her eyes closed, trying to rebuild the vision. Wide, a double door, it swung inward, and was carved along the inner edges with symbols of thirteen Houses. The idea teased her, first with the belief that the door had not been deep enough to outstretch her shoulders, other times asserting with an almost physical shock that she'd fit neatly between the sides of the doorjamb.

It might be a childhood memory, she realized after hourless drifting. Perhaps the door had surrounded her when she was smaller, but time had shifted her perception.

Time. She laughed into the faintly gritty water. How much time had passed? How long had she been damned to the watery hell already? How much longer would it be until she broke free?

It doesn't matter, the patient one whispered again. What matters is release. We'll have release soon.

She uncurled, angling towards the floor, to collect her hammer again. Stone chips lay scattered around the room, providing texture she reveled in. Small fingers lifted a sharp stone, and slid it across her cheek. The pain was thin, fading almost before she tasted the blood in the water. With a giggle, she let the piece go, searching for her wedge.

Finding it, she pushed upwards again, feeling for the hole she drilled with mindless perseverance. She could fit her whole head in it now. Eventually she would break through to the other side. In time, there would be freedom.

In time, the patient one promised, there will be revenge.

The rock made a different sound when she snapped through the final layer, a thin report that echoed into other waters, no longer contained within her prison. A few more frantic blows gave her an opening large enough to stick her fingers through. She flailed them against the water outside, shouting at the top of her voice, as if someone beyond was waiting for her in the drowned city.

Withdrawing her hand from the hole brought fresher water into the room, a wash of salt much heavier than she was accustomed to after the long years. It tasted wonderful. With renewed energy, she swam for her wedge, and began again to pound at the rock.

It seemed to go faster now, with the greater circulation of water and the taste of freedom. Stone cracked away, bigger pieces knocking out to fall to the floor of the oubliette. Only hours had passed before she was able to push her whole hand, all the way up to her forearm, out into the water beyond.

It seemed no time at all until she had a hole big enough for her head, then her head and one shoulder, and, finally, both shoulders.

It was not until then that panic struck. She knew she would fit through the hole, visible only to impatiently seeking fingers. What was on the other side? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing is there, all is here, here is safe, here is where to stay.

She curled into a small ball again, hair drifting around her as deadly as a jellyfish's tendrils.

What was on the other side? Drowned Atlantis, the shell of her home. The sea, and eventually sunlight. She remembered the idea of sunlight, the brightness that colored the world, but the world itself, those colors, were gone, lost in thousands of years of darkness. Would she be able to see at all, or had her eyes atrophied entirely, leaving her blind to the world she had once known?

Blind, the frightened one encouraged. Blind, we'll be blind, stay here where the blackness can't hide anything from us. Stay. Stay. Stay. There's nothing left of the world we knew. Nothing's there. Just the sea, just the water, just blackness forever.

The thin wail that escaped her was a sound unlike any she had made in hundreds of years. It vibrated through her, forcing tears from her eyes as she shivered, clutching her knees closer to her chest. Changed, all changed utterly, the frightened one chanted at her. Nothing recognizable. Our people drowned, our language lost. No one to talk to, no one to understand our words. Stay in the safe place.

She lay in the nest of her hair for three days, images of a world she could not fathom holding her captive in the prison that was her home.

We didn't choose prison, the patient one whispered eventually. Sea and stones, captured forever, captured because of his actions, his inactions, not ours. Outside is different. Outside is frightening, the patient one agreed. Outside is freedom.

Strands of hair drifted across her face, brushing her mouth and nose, and the patient one made her shake her head at the feeling. Outside is better than being mummified by our hair. Languages can be learned. Give us the chance. If we stay, we accept his prison. If we stay, we can't make him pay.

The wash of courage was tenuous, at best. She twisted free of her hair, the strands unwinding in graceful slow motion. She dove again, a final time, and located her wedge of stone, dulled now to a much smaller size, but familiar in her hands. Clutching it one hand, she pushed up to the wall, and through the hole as quickly as she could, before her grasp of boldness eluded her again.

Several feet beyond the wall of her prison she stopped. Yards of hair billowed out after her, clouding around her like a blanket of fog.

The blackness was still completely. She could not even see the ruins of the city, and realized she'd expected to be able to. For a while, she drifted in the darkness. Then, tentatively, she tilted her face up, and began to kick towards the surface.

Very gradually, she became aware of light. It stopped her where she was, hovering in the water, trying to define the nebulous changes in the sea around her. Only when a fish darted by her face, a shadow in the shadows, did she realize vision was beginning to return.

The next fish that swam by brought to her attention a sudden, vicious hunger. For time unknown, she hadn't eaten. Further thought was delayed until she chased down one of the slipper animals, smashing its head in with her stone. Floating in the water, she gobbled it down, sucking blood from her fingers before it had time to wash away.

For days she stayed at the faintly grey level, drifting where the current took her, chasing fish with wild shifts and twists in the water. She snatched them by their tails, bashing her stone into their brains. While she ate she sat in a protective, cross-legged position, her stone resting between her thighs. Fish of all sizes where her prey, and, indiscriminate, she left only bones for the water. Eventually, her body stopped demanding food, and she was able to think again.

The nutrients in the water must have been bare, she realized. Long, blank periods of time ending in pain were many deaths and rebirths. Her Immortal body must have taken what it could out of the waters, over years of time, recreating life out of death. Hunger was such a way of life that until food was presented directly to her, she had not recognized the sensation.

Waking memory was far too long. If immeasurable time had been spent dead, trying to gain life-sustaining nutrients from the water . . . how long might it have been? With a shudder, she pushed the frightened voice away, holding her stone tightly enough that her hands cramped. Still clinging to it, she began to kick upwards again.

It took longer than she expected, partly due to convulsive hunger pains that would send her after schools of fish. The water became less murky only very slowly, and in time she was able to see that fish seemed to like nibbling on her hair. She started drawing them in that way, sitting silent in the water, rock in her lap, waiting until she'd pulled her hair close enough to bash a fish's head in. It was more effective than chasing them. She knew that she slipped deeper into the water, and was carried where the current would bring her, but the journey to the light was secondary to feeding five thousand years of hunger.

When it became bright enough, the light slowed her. The gradual increase never quite pained her eyes, but she realized abruptly that she could see herself when she looked down. It was a young woman's body she saw, painfully thin. She was relieved she hadn't seen herself before days of gorging in the deeper seas, before her body was able to add and redistribute some of the weight that had wasted away over the years of captivity.

She hung in the water, studying herself. Her fingertips were scarred, which surprised her. Perhaps the healing skills of her Immortal body had their limits. Certainly the trauma of scrabbling at the stones in futile attempts to escape had left their mark. The bronze of her skin had faded to pasty white, emphasized by the dead-colored scars.

Even as the light grew brighter, she could not really see the end of her hair. It drifted too much, and seemed to fade into the water instead of ending. The vague plan to sell it formed in her mind. In Atlantis, wig-makers created wigs out of real human hair. Surely the world would not have changed so much that she could not find someone to buy the masses of endless hair that was her legacy of imprisonment.

It could have changed so much, the frightened one whispered. She thrust it away, and kicked upwards.

Not until the sea lit blue with the sun's light above did she suddenly appreciate the visual acuity Immortality had granted her. She had no idea what depth Atlantis had descended to, but her vision had begun to return at a level she was sure no ordinary human would have been able to see in. To discern such detail in such complete darkness was a marvel; what would full light bring? She looked up at the sun, visible through twenty yards of sea, a distorted ball of white fire that colored the ocean and her hair. Schools of fish flitted above her, shadows against the blue.

What kind of world am I returning to?

She kicked upwards. Only seconds later, her head broke the surface and she inhaled, fresh sea air, for the first time in centuries. Instinctively, she squinted her eyes shut against the light bouncing off small waves, wincing with anticipated pain. It wasn't as bad as she feared. She could still see, the light coloring her vision crimson until she dared peek through lashes pushed almost all the way closed.

Wherever the currents had brought her, it wasn't close to land. Quiet, open sea filled all the horizons, brilliant white and vivid blue, the sky scarred with thin, idle clouds.

Nothing at all, the frightened one hissed. Go home. Go back to Atlantis. It's safe there. Go back. There's nothing here.

We're in the middle of the ocean, the patient one said. Of course there's nothing here. Swim. We'll find land and people again. We'll rebuild a life and then we will find the one that did this to us and we will have revenge.

Go back to Atlantis, the frightened one said plaintively.

Revenge, she thought, and then Atlantis reborn. That would be the way of it. She lifted her stone, her single legacy of her drowned home, out of the water to inspect it.

It was quite ordinary: white and wedge-shaped still, and scarred around the edges, much as her fingers were. She hugged it to her, then turned around in the water, her hair tangling about her body. A second inspection of the horizons provided her with no landmarks, and so she glanced at the sun, judging which direction land might be. She had never visited the lands to the north of Atlantis. To the south and east, though, lay Egypt. Surely Egypt had survived. The Sphinx must still be there. It would be a beginning, even as it had been in her mortal life.

She turned on her back, her stone resting protectively against her chest, otter-like, and began kicking her way south.

A few hundred miles to the north, Europe went to war. They called it the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, and, in time, World War I.