‘More fool you then. What do you even expect to find down there?’
Ari frowned. ‘I don’t know.’
It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. But she was certain she would find something. Simon had written the coordinates on the letter, whether deliberately or not. The very last letter he had written to her, the one where he broke up with her. And that was where she’d found the mask. He’d found the path, whatever the path might be, wherever it might lead, and she knew he wanted her to find it too.
Yana glanced at her and then turned her attention back to the horizon. ‘Hadn’t you better get ready? We’ll be there soon.’
And, like that, she was dismissed.
Rafael in the wetsuit was another distraction she didn’t want to be thinking about. As she checked his equipment, she stepped in against him.
‘You weren’t lying, were you? You do know what you’re doing?’ she whispered. She would put nothing past him and, like Yana said, he liked to get his way, no matter what.
‘I promise,’ he assured her, with a soft smile. He knew exactly what she was thinking. Luckily, he seemed to find it amusing. ‘I know what I’m doing. I expect it to be a damn sight colder though.’
She laughed softly. Jason hadn’t been too far of the mark with his tropical destination holidays accusations then. She looked up to see her brother and Nico, sitting at the stern, glaring at the two of them.
‘What do you think we’ll find, Rafael?’ she asked.
He didn’t hesitate. ‘The path to Ys, of course.’
‘Yes, but…then what?’
‘I’m hoping we’ll find a way to break the curse, but as to what that might be…’ He shrugged and gave her a rueful smile. ‘Proof that Ys was real perhaps? Something to save it from being dismissed as merely a tall tale? They don’t call it a mystery for no reason, Ari.’
What would Jason and Nico say if they heard the two of them now?
She had shown them Simon’s map and some of the notes in his diary. Rafael had taken the pages from Fabien’s diary back to the manor, presumably to return them to the book they came from. Or find a conservator to do so. She hadn’t asked. She was too mortified by the thought that Simon would have torn them out and stolen them to begin with.
Jason was still not entirely on board with this, and Nico even less so. And they were right, it could have waited. But then they would be waiting a week or more. They could have waited a month. She had brought up the sea forecast and the window of good weather they’d been enjoying was closing rapidly. There was a storm front coming across the Atlantic and when that hit, they’d be on shore until it passed. The long-range forecast wasn’t looking much better. The tides were suitable today. That was it.
Not to mention she knew that waiting any longer to see if Simon had been right would eat them all up inside. When she’d told Jason the coordinates – 48.065, -4.688 – his eyes had widened. ‘But that’s where the mask was. Are you saying Simon—?’
‘Found it first? Put it there? Maybe. I don’t know. But I need to find out.’
He hadn’t argued much after that.
And as for Rafael, well, he firmly believed that finding whatever remnants of Ys remained would help him to break the curse and save his son. Saving Ys meant preserving its memory, and some physical evidence of it, saving it from becoming just a half-remembered story. That seemed to be what Simon had believed too.
Some of the notes still bothered her though. What was the water path? And when he mentioned ‘she’, who was he referring to? She’d wondered if it was Gwen. But how? He seemed both enchanted and afraid of her.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked and Rafael nodded. ‘Run through the signals with me again, OK?’
He dutifully repeated each and every one.
‘We have mics,’ he reminded her. ‘I got them specially this morning. It’s just a push button and it uses the water to let us talk to each other and the ship.’
Yes, there were advantages to his bottomless wallet. She had to admit that.
‘I know. But just in case, we need old-school signals. I have a diving tablet too.’ She showed him the little plastic pad with the pen attached on a spiral wire.
‘Ari doesn’t trust technology,’ Nico said, finally approaching. ‘Neither do I. Too much can go wrong. Just keep in mind that we were doing this long before wireless mics were invented.’
The system required a different face mask, but it was comfortable enough. Getting into gear without the mouthpiece felt strange. She had no idea how he had managed to get them so quickly, but she was not about to ask too many questions now. Rafael seemed to be familiar with it.
All the same, both Jason and Nico insisted on checking everything again. Every new item was treble-checked. Perhaps they were trying to make her run out of light so she couldn’t go down. Her brother ignored her protests, but eventually cleared her to go.
‘Ari,’ he called as she lowered herself into the water. He leaned over the stern, his concerned expression looming above her. ‘Be careful. Don’t do anything stupid.’
