Chapter 3 #2
With his left hand gripping the back of my head and his right one raised to slap me again, Leslo stared straight at me. Eerie red lines lit up his brown irises that didn’t look human at all.
A wave splashed in my face, making me sputter. We were both in the water up to our necks, and I felt no bottom under my feet.
I flinched from his raised hand, remembering his painful blow in the van.
“You...hit me,” I croaked.
“Alive. Great.” Leslo nodded, ignoring my accusation. “Let’s go then. We’re almost there.”
Go where?
How?
We weren’t going anywhere. We were swimming.
Thoughts and questions stampeded through my mind.
How did we get into the water? And why?
He wanted to drown me!
Punic surged in me. I shoved against his shoulders with all my might, but it was like trying to move a mountain.
His giant mitt moved from the back of my head to my neck. It’d take just a squeeze for him to kill me. Yet he seemed to be relieved to have me alive. Killing me wasn’t in his plans then? At least not for now.
“Where are we?” I treaded water, moving my eyes to take in our surroundings since he still wouldn’t let me move my head.
“Almost there,” he repeated, then added with a grimace of disgust, “Let’s get the fuck out of this ocean.”
“Ocean? What ocean?” I croaked in alarm.
What had he done to me?
Switching his grip from my neck to my arm, he swam ahead, dragging me behind him.
“Hey!” I sputtered and thrashed in his wake. “Let go of me! I’ll swim on my own.”
“You can swim?” He glanced at me in surprise, then let go of my arm without warning.
I kicked my feet, realizing that my high-heeled pumps were now gone. I was barefoot, but still in my gray pantsuit and blouse.
The soggy jacket restricted my movements. Treading water, I pulled off the jacket and let it sink. The suit was ruined anyway, and I didn’t care. More important things filled my mind.
I just had to get out of here somehow. For that, however, I needed to figure out where I was.
It was a bright, sunny day, with hardly a cloud in the sky. The water felt warm and looked crystal-clean. Everywhere I looked, the water met the sky at the horizon. There was no shore, except to the left, where something sparkled and shone so brightly it hurt my eyes even to look in that direction.
But that was where Leslo was swimming, propelling himself forward with big, jerky strokes. After a few yards, he glanced over his shoulder and noticed I was still only treading water, not following him.
“Are you coming or not?” he barked impatiently.
“Where are we?” I yelled out to him. “What did you do to me? Where are you taking me?”
“You said you could swim,” he snapped. “So, swim then. Or don’t. Whatever. I’ve just about had it with you.”
He turned around and took off, slicing through the water with more power than grace.
I had no choice but to follow or risk being left alone in the open water. Thankfully, the many years of swimming lessons and summer camps while growing up made me a decent swimmer. I couldn’t quite catch up to Leslo, but I managed to keep up with him, not losing sight of him.
The shimmering light in the distance morphed into a spectacular structure as we got closer. I tried to think of something to compare it to.
A mountain?
A forest of glass?
A cluster of crystals?
Then it dawned on me. This looked like a wave hitting a cliff or a giant splash frozen in time. The structure appeared transparent like a wave too. Rising from the ocean, it sparkled in the sunlight like a precious jewel, each glass prong and crystal branch cut with brilliant facets.
For a moment, I even forgot about all my troubles, mesmerized by the shimmering lights dancing through the glass.
Leslo climbed out onto the beach of shimmering white sand, then pulled me up by the scruff of my blouse before I even managed to gather my feet under me.
“What...is this place?” I panted, catching my breath with my hands on my knees. It’d been a while since I did any kind of swimming, especially a long distance like this.
“Hey! Who are you? State your business!” a male voice shouted.
Leslo straightened, adjusting his belt, and I spotted a leather holster attached to his side—a knife sheath, with the black handle of a weapon sticking out.
A group of four men ran towards us along the beach.
Armed with swords, spears, and arrows, they looked dressed for a renaissance faire, and apparently one that allowed for very little clothing.
Each wore only a pair of loose, pastel-colored pants or a long loin cloth and chest armor made from large, iridescent scales.
They moved gracefully, like gymnasts or ballet dancers, yet looked big and strong enough to break necks with their bare arms.
As they came closer, the menacing scowls on their faces almost made me believe that their weapons weren’t props and that they knew exactly how to use them.
One of the group stepped forward, pointing his black sword at Leslo. “Who are you? And why are you here?”
The man’s long, snow-white hair was braided on each side and hung loose in the back, allowing the breeze to play with the strands.
His pink skin was dusted with pearly shimmer.
The others had their hair and skin painted in even more outlandish colors, ranging from pale turquoise to aqua to dove-gray.
The pearlesque shimmer they had all powdered themselves with was a bizarre choice for a bunch of muscular guys cosplaying as fierce warriors.
Leslo cleared his throat.
“I’m sent by Goddess Ghata to make a deal with your king...or your queen.” He scratched his bald head, looking uncertain. “I mean, who do you have here now? What year is it?”
He didn’t look as utterly confused as me but seemed slightly disoriented.
Another man stepped alongside the first. This one had pale turquoise hair cut to his shoulders and gray skin that complemented his hair color perfectly.
“His Majesty, King Kye, is the current ruler of the Olathana Ocean,” the gray man informed Leslo. “But if you’re here on a state matter, you can request an audience with his uncle, Prince Arnon.”
What was he talking about?
A king? A prince?
I blinked away my stupor.
Surely, there was a very logical explanation for all of it.
If this wasn’t a faire, it had to be a reenactment of some sort.
Or a movie set? Of course, it must be a movie set, the most realistic and spectacularly constructed, but what else could it be?
It definitely didn’t look like some dirty transfer point on a human trafficking route.
Running a hand through my shoulder-length hair, damp and coarse with salt water, I took a step away from Leslo.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your fun, boys,” I said firmly, rolling back my shoulders. “But I have a very important meeting I need to be at right now. So if I could please talk to someone in charge here to arrange for transportation to LA—”
The sound of my own words suddenly registered with me, stunning me into a shocked silence. Cutting myself off, I gripped my throat. I hadn’t said any of that in English. Leslo and the armed men weren’t speaking English either, yet I understood them perfectly.
“I mean...” I tried again. The unfamiliar sounds of the unknown to me language rolled easily from my tongue, as if I’d spoken it from birth.
I made an effort to form English sounds and tried again, “I. Me-an.”
It came out in English this time, but at what cost? Every syllable required considerable physical effort to form, and I had to focus on the meaning of each word, as if speaking a foreign language I’d mostly forgotten.
“What the fuck?” I squeaked in this new language to convey my horror.
The men around me seemed to be largely unperturbed by my struggle. I now had their full attention, but no one bothered to explain anything, including the sudden language switch.
The pink one squinted his turquoise eyes at me.
“Is she...”
“A...a human?” the gray one finished for him.
My grasp on reality was quickly slipping away. I feared I’d lose my mind if I didn’t ground myself immediately.
“You know what? I’m going to find someone in charge here,” I stated, spinning on my heel to head toward the magnificent glass building that towered to our right.
It must be a movie set. The building was a prop, a fa?ade that hid the reality from view. If I could just make it behind all this shine and glitter...
“Hey, where do you think you’re going?” Leslo yelled behind me.
Catching up with me, he grabbed me by the arm again. But we were no longer in his van or out in the open ocean. We were on dry land, with other people around, and I was done with this asshole.
“Get your fucking hands off me. Now!” I yanked on my arm in an attempt to shake his grip, but it was like trying to free it from a vise of steel.
The shimmering warrior quartet flanked us, but none of the four intervened, allowing Leslo to manhandle me.
His appearance made me pause. In addition to the red streaks in his brown eyes, red sparks crackled along the lines of the extensive tattoos on his neck and right arm.
His tanned skin had also gained an otherworldly glow.
It wasn’t as pronounced as the shimmer of the warriors, more luminescent than iridescent like theirs, but it definitely didn’t look normal.
Alarmed, I took a closer look at my own arm, but it remained the same it had always been—covered by beige skin with a hint of bluish veins underneath and without any trace of suntan since I had no time to take a vacation last winter.
My confused gaze fell on Leslo’s massive hand gripping my upper arm and crushing the short sleeve of my blouse. He handled me as an object, one that belonged to him, and he clearly feared no repercussions for his actions.
Red hot anger throbbed inside me.
“This man kidnapped me,” I stated loud and clear, hoping there were indeed some movie cameras around to record my words.