The Veil of Atlantis

The day his father died Elias Ansel didn’t cry. Death couldn’t make the hole of his father’s absence any wider or deeper than it already was. His mother came home with the plain urn and said nothing of it. There was no funeral, no proper mourning, just an ending.

His father, Barclay, had never been caring or attentive. For most of Elias’s sixteen years of life, his father had not even been in it. He’d gone with the first fleets to the hidden land, through Poseidon’s Veil to Atlantis when Elias was merely seven. He’d come back two weeks after Elias’s thirteenth birthday.

Elias tried to stand tall. He wanted his father to know that his son had become a man. He wouldn’t have paid any attention to the grisly man in torn clothes who plodded down the gangplank unless his mother had pointed him out. Barclay’s rough, graying beard and wiry hair reminded Elias of the drunks who slept half the day under the high piers.

He held out his hand to this stranger who was his father, greeting him as he thought a man should. Barclay stared at him for a moment, an empty stare. Then he took Elias’s hand, which seemed suddenly smaller, shook it once, and nodded to him. “Elias,” he said, his voice gravelly. Then Barclay turned to his mother. They embraced with no more warmth than the sea.

Elias followed them back to their cottage, burning with questions, but daring to ask none of them. It would have been easier to talk to one of the drunks under the pier. He’d imagined his father carrying priceless treasures, sacks of gold, and artifacts, but he had nothing except a small and mostly empty coin purse and a heavy lockbox.

One night, a few weeks after his father’s return, they sat down to a meagre dinner of hard bread and thin stew. Elias finally worked up the courage. “Father, what happened in Atlantis? Did you bring back anything?”

Barclay stared at him with dark, red-rimmed eyes, face flat as if he hadn’t heard the question. Elias looked back earnestly, hoping the brightness in his eyes might shine through his father’s endless stupor.

Without speaking, Barclay lifted his heavy mug of ale and took a deep swig, some of it running through his dirty beard. The mug thunked back down on the table, the only answer to Elias’s questions.

“But you did have amazing adventures, right?” Elias pressed. The desperation for his father’s story, for any sort of life to brighten the man’s face, turned Elias’s words into a squeak.

Barclay’s lips moved, and for a terrific moment Elias thought he’d succeeded, yet no sound came out of them. His father’s face twisted into a grimace. He took another swig of ale, spilling even more than previously. The mug slammed down on the table so hard Elias was afraid it would crack.

“More ale, woman,” Barclay rasped.

“I’ll get it,” Elias offered. Maybe if he pleased his father somehow, he would get an answer.

When Elias reached for the mug, Barclay gripped his wrist hard enough to make the boy flinch. “Not you, boy!” he barked. “The woman fetches drink and food.”

Elias looked at his mother. The woman’s eyes were nearly as dead and empty as his father’s. Wordlessly, she rose from the table, went around Elias, took the mug and filled it from the nearby barrel. She didn’t bother keeping the barrels in the cellar anymore.

Elias blinked to keep the tears from filling his eyes. He went off to his room and knew he still had no father.

The following years did not loosen his father’s tongue or his heart. One day, the man went down to the docks. He came back carried between two dockworkers on a bloodstained litter.

“Started a knife fight at the tavern,” the harbormaster explained. Never did see a drunk man fight like that. He gestured to three other litters.

His mother did not cry, either.

A week later, Elias came home from his job at the dock warehouse to find her on the floor. Her skin was clay, her eyes staring and empty. Vomit trailed from her mouth to a pool around her head. In the shattered teacup beside her lay the soggy remains of the strange herbs and mushrooms she’d gone off to pick the day after Barclay’s cremation.

Elias didn’t cry for his mother, either. The emptiness inside him was now so vast it seemed to swallow his tears and all his other feelings, leaving only a sinking coldness behind. He was alone now. He didn’t make enough money to upkeep his parents’ home, shabby as it was, and he knew the loan sharks would soon descend to take it all.

His mother had kept up a garden surrounded by a crooked, moss-covered fence behind the house. That night, Elias buried her in her garden beside her husband’s urn. He figured it was the last place she really loved, considering how she’d tended it when everything else in their life had gone to crumbles and mold. He told no one of her death, hoping silence might hold off his grim future a while longer.

The next day, he went to find Raphi. Raphi, who didn’t even know his own last name, was Elias’s best friend, maybe his only true friend. He was Elias’s age, but his mischievous grin, bright green eyes, and playful demeanor made him seem younger. Elias had never known Raphi to be sad, and when he told the boy about his mother, Raphi’s angular, freckled face remained bright, and he immediately had the perfect plan. They went to the Leering Siren, the busiest tavern in the docks. They had no money to buy drinks, but that never stopped Raphi.

Raphi undid the top two buttons of his shirt and told Elias to wait for him. Then he headed into the throng of smelly, raucous sailors. Elias knew how Raphi was and what he meant to do. Raphi was a pretty boy, and he knew it. As the town’s dancing star, Raphi naturally drew eyes to him. Elias didn’t like it. It twisted his stomach to watch his friend smile and move provocatively around the drunk sailors. Most weren’t interested, preferring to slap and pinch the barmaids, but Raphi knew the ones he could target.

Minutes later, Raphi returned with two mugs of dark, frothy ale and handed one to Elias with a grin. They went to the beach, away from the docks to a rocky cove where only the sounds of lapping waves waited for them.

Raphi slung a slender arm around Elias’s shoulders, and they drank in silence. The void inside Elias filled a bit. Raphi’s warmth and the ale banished some of the chill.

“I don’t know what to do now,” Elias said. “It won’t be long before they come for the house and everything I own.”

“We should stash stuff somewhere,” Raphi said at once. “They can’t take what they can’t find.”

Elias grimaced. “There’s not much to stash. My mother kept a set of fine silverware. My father. . .he didn’t have anything. But even if we stash the silverware, it’s not enough to buy a house. I don’t even know where I’ll live. I’ll end up like those wretches that sleep under the docks at night.”

“Come with me,” Raphi said. “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

Elias’s stomach turned. It wasn’t because of Raphi. He would love to live with his best friend, couldn’t imagine living with anyone else, but Raphi didn’t live alone. He’d been orphaned at seven years old, his parents taken by fever. In the low districts of Brightport, a pretty face like Raphi’s was too valuable to waste. Madame Salona, owner and manager of the town’s best pleasure house, the Rose Moon, had quickly found him. Given his age, his jobs had been mundane.

The thought of joining Raphi at the Rose Moon twisted Elias’s stomach into knots so tight his whole abdomen ached, and he began to feel queasy. He was no dancing star like Raphi and not half as attractive, but his work at the docks had given him a body lean with muscle and he was at just the right age. The life awaiting him in the Rose Moon was too terrible to contemplate, and he knew Raphi didn’t understand this. Somehow, his friend remained innocent, blind to those kinds of truths.

“I can’t, Raphi,” Elias whispered. “I just can’t.” His voice caught and no other words would come.

He felt Raphi’s arm tighten around his shoulder. “I know. Forget about that. We’ll figure something else out.”

Then a sudden idea came to Elias. It sparkled in his thoughts like the first stars on a clear night, tantalizing and bright. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before.

“Maybe we can have the money,” he said. “Maybe we can have all we need—enough to keep the house and buy what we want. We can even pay off Madame Salona so you don’t have to work for her anymore.”

Raphi laughed. “Are you wacked, El? Your mum must have had a lot more silverware than you let on.”

Elias shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s my father’s old strongbox. It’s locked, and Barclay never opened it or talked about it, but what if there’s something in there?”

“I’ve heard of people selling artifacts from Atlantis. Even dumb, useless trinkets get a bag full of gold.” Raphi slugged Elias on the arm playfully. “Why didn’t you say this before?”

“I guess I just didn’t think about it.” Elias shrugged. “We shouldn’t get our hopes up. There’s probably nothing inside. If there were, then surely Barclay would have sold it before now. Barclay hid the key, and my mother never knew about it, but I know where it is.”

Raphi pulled Elias to his feet. “Well, come on then. What are we waiting around here for?”

Back at the house, Elias climbed down to the cellar. Elias had spied on Barclay whenever he went down to the strongbox, hoping it might be the day he would open the thing. A few times, Barclay had gotten as far as putting the key in the lock, but he’d always stopped and just stared at it for a while. Then he’d put the key away and go back up to the kitchen. That’s how Elias knew the key was behind a loose brick in the cellar wall. He took the box and key back up to the kitchen and set it on the worn dining table.

“Here goes,” he said to Raphi.

The key was oddly shaped and much more complex than a normal key. Instead of regular teeth, it ended in three overlapping, star-like patterns. The keyhole was deep enough that all three vanished into its black recess. Elias turned the key slowly, half expecting the lock not to open. There was one click, then another, and finally a third as each star pattern fit into its place. With a final, heavy clunk, the lock released, and Elias opened the box.