The Cultivated Girl

Chapter 37 - Rygon

Nada was crying quietly. She didn't want to make a noise in case it drew too much attention to her - attention from this motley lot was the last thing she wanted. She peeped through the bars of her shell-encrusted prison, humiliated beyond belief.

If she had been a child of the ocean rather than that of the desert, Nada would have known that this was a brig, pilfered from one of the many shipwrecks littering the ocean floor. The Bermuda's triangle effectively sucked travellers into a portal between Gaia and Rygon, leaving them fair game for the nomads' pirate ways.

But she didn't. All she knew was that her chest hurt, the air down here tasted bad, like a cave that had been blocked up during a sandstorm and that her safest position was to sit very still and quiet in the very centre of the brig where it was harder to poke her.

"My Lord Regent". One of the young Dolketians that had lured her here was addressing a stocky, scarred figure astride a vicious looking moray eel. A v-shape of similarly scarred, powerful looking dolketians flanked him on their own steeds.

"I bring you a gift, an offering for the gods." He gestured grandly at Nada, bowing to his leader at the same time.

"This is not the offering I seek," he replied. "Where is the daughter of my sister?"

The young dolketian, whose name was Patrice, trembled. His single tattoo crawled across his skin to his back to escape the withering stare of Lord Regent Rogan. Nada had overheard him boasting to his friends how her capture was sure to earn him his second tattoo. She hoped he lost his head first. Nada would have been terrified if she hadn't already seen Joli's tattoo slither across her olive skin.

"I am sorry my Lord," he stammered. "This one reeks of her blood and we found her in the waters you advised. We thought she would be of value to you. The other was too swift - we could not track her".

Nada stared at him curiously. As Patrice became more nervous, his voice cracked and got higher and Nada could swear she saw two mounds growing where his chest was.

"Settle," growled Rogan. "Get out of my sight until you decide what you're going to be". Patrice shuffled away, head bowed in shame.

"Bring me food." One of the many grovelling servants scurried away. The Lord Regent set his jaw. His mount's velvety leopard print tail swished from side to side, quickly copied by his followers.

Nada peered through her tears, trying to get a measure of her surroundings as she had been taught. They appeared to be in, of all things, a ballroom, although with all the moisture in the air and on the floors, it felt more like a bathroom in a little cleaned service station. The servants seemed to do more fawning than cleaning.

Above her a chandelier hung off kilter, the roof and barnacle-encrusted black and white floors slightly tilted. Her sharp eyes could just make out the words on a rusting gilded sign; the SS Queen Mary. Nada could breathe but a combination of dull thuds and the constant moisture made her feel she was deep under the ocean.

The room, although large, was filthy. A host of strange creatures lounged around in various stages of transformation. She couldn't help peeping at one. His powerful moray was sprawled out behind him with him leaning against its solid back, his muscled thighs drawn up, loincloth barely covering his slim hips.

She blushed as she felt his slanted eyes sliding over her body. He ripped into a lobster with his sharp teeth, the juices running over the paui shell tattoos on his face and bare chest - they seemed to writhe and drink it up as he swallowed.

He slapped the rump of a servant as she walked past and tossed a comment over his shoulder at one of his henchman which made them all laugh uproariously. Nada didn't want to know what they found so amusing, although her gaze returned again and again to the scarred and tattooed dolketian they called Slayde. She found him curious, his well set face didn't have an arrogant cast although it was clear from his actions that he was.

Nada shivered. She told herself it was damp in the vast room, despite the numbers in it. She didn't recognise half the creatures, some were familiar from Joli's projects about Rygon - every new initiate at the Sanctuary had to add to the store of knowledge on cultures, fauna and flora from the different worlds - so she knew octopuses, flocks of miniature seahorses, starfish and the like.

There was nothing else for Nada to do but watch everyone and pray Joli would come for her. At the port side of the ballroom she could see a semi-circled array of steps going down into a sunken orchestral area. This was full of pets and dolketians frolicking in a pool of sea water. Small dolketians ran rampant around the ballroom, morphing from male to female to dolphin (necessitating a leap into the pool). No one seemed to control them, and their parents were absent. They harried servants, stole bits of food from those who were sleeping off their meals and drink and received the occasional clip on the ear if they ventured to close to full-blooded males.

From what she could see the servants were mostly mermaids who would occasionally get pulled into the pool and ravished. Nada gulped, she didn't want to go anywhere near that pool, having made it this far she had no desire to drown. She looked in the opposite direction, to where a fleet of what had been marbled stairs swept grandly into the ballroom - there had been a steady stream of people arriving since Nada had been brought there.

No matter how hard she looked, no one came to rescue her. For the first time in her life, Nada was completely alone.

Will anyone come to help Nada? We're almost at the end of the book! 

Please remember to vote and/or comment if you like what you're reading and thanks for joining me on this ride.