Being a prisoner was easier than Alfred expected. The Atlanteans circled the explorers and led them across a rope bridge to the edge of the lake and then along a walkway into the heart of the city. In his excitement to finally see Atlantis with his own eyes, Alfred promptly forgot that he was even being held prisoner.

He craned his neck to take in all of the sights, gasping in awe at the amazing stone architecture. The city spiraled upward, each tier filled with more beautiful designs than the last. With their intricately carved columns, the buildings looked heavily inspired by Grecian styles. Or perhaps it was the other way around. But once Alfred looked past the buildings themselves, he began to see small signs of decay—cracks in the path, broken statues, and vines crawling up the walls.

Atlantis looked like it had been abandoned years ago, but that wasn't possible because he could see people milling all around. Dressed casually in blue and green cloth, they carried baskets of fish and jugs of water. Children approached the path and glanced up in curiosity at the foreigners in their strange clothes before running away when their parents called them back. Alfred itched to write down the observations in his notebook, but the guards had taken his book and clearly wanted them to keep moving along.

They took a turn before reaching the top tier and the explorers found themselves in a large, empty room with no windows. Judging by the lack of carvings and the jugs stacked in the corner, Alfred assumed that it was storage room of some sort. Several warriors peeled off from the group, leaving the rest to stand watch.

Gilbert and Monika had been whispering to each other in German as they walked across the bridge into the city proper. They resumed their conversation in a corner of the room. Suddenly Alfred found that he could understand their discussion even though he didn't speak German.

"...not supposed to be people down here," Monika said softly.

"So what? It changes nothing," Gilbert replied.

The rest of the explorers turned back to look at them in surprise. "Did I... just learn German?" Feliciano asked in confusion.

Alfred remembered something he had read about the mystical power source of Atlantis. "No, Feli, that's not you," he explained. "That's the Heart of Atlantis. It has all sorts of powers: it can translate any language, cure almost any wound, give the power of flight... it's amazing. I bet it took a few minutes to learn the language, but now it can translate it flawlessly."

"Translation, huh? You can have mentioned that one sooner," Gilbert said, a hint of reproach in his voice.

Alfred was too excited to feel guilty. "Atlantis used to be a center for learning," he said. "People from all around the world would come here to study, so they needed an easy way to communicate. I wish I could have seen it at its height."

He walked over to the corner and picked up one of the jugs. He admired the geometric patterns and fish designs, then paused to read the inscription at the lip of the jug. It admonished that knowledge, like water, should flow freely and make the world flourish. Alfred smiled to himself, wistfully imagining what it would be like to live in a society that valued knowledge over physical prowess.

Alfred looked up when he heard someone walking into their makeshift jail and nearly dropped the jug. It was the Atlantean who had healed him on the cave floor. But this time, he wasn't wearing his mask. Now, in the full light, Alfred could see all of the features he had missed before. The young man had pale blond hair that looked almost white compared to his tanned skin. His mouth formed a straight line, and Alfred suddenly wondered what he looked like when he smiled. Most of the Atlanteans had thick eyebrows; this man's eyebrows nearly covered his entire forehead. Caterpillars jumped to mind, but for some reason, so did the words 'attractive' and 'distinguished.'

The warriors seemed to wear simple togas, but this Atlantean had changed into more complicated garb. Blue and green fabric draped over his right shoulder and circled his waist, all of it held in place with a thin golden chain. The toga still ended mid-thigh, but now he wore sandals with leather straps that formed a complicated crisscross pattern up to his knee. Gold bracelets and armbands adorned his limbs. Alfred wondered why he found himself so interested in another man's clothing and suddenly wished he was wearing something nicer himself, instead of a rather dirty shirt, ripped trousers, and a pair of suspenders.

"One of you must come with me to speak with the council," the Atlantean announced. His eyes might have briefly flickered to Alfred, but it happened so quickly that Alfred wasn't sure it had actually happened.

The explorers all turned to look at Gilbert. He smiled and nodded his head at Alfred. "Why don't you go, Jones? You're the one who understands the culture."

"Really?" Alfred asked. "I mean... yeah! I can handle this."

He eagerly followed his guide, climbing the stairs that led to the rotunda at the top of the island. A circle of tall, stone pillars held up a golden dome. The spaces between the pillars gave a breathtaking 360 degree view of the city and water below. Alfred paused to admire the sight before his guide nudged him forward. Turning to the center of the building, he saw a round pool directly underneath a circular hole at the very top of the dome. The light from the strange sun-like object in the sky illuminated the pool, making it look like it was glowing. Seven Atlanteans waited for them, sitting in a half-circle of chairs. This had to be the council.

"Uh, hello," Alfred said, waving his hand and smiling cheerfully. "It's nice to meet you. I'm Alfred F. Jones," he said, remember his manners. He tried to relax. Really, this was just like asking the funding committee for money to launch an Atlantis expedition. Except that the funding committee had changed the meeting time without telling him, explaining later that they didn't want to listen to any more of his 'crazy ramblings.' Since he actually had an audience this time, he was already doing better.

"What is your purpose here?" the woman sitting in the center chair asked. He knew that she was speaking in Atlantean, but he also understood her without having to translate the sentence in his own mind. It was like the meaning was being sent directly to his brain. The Heart of Atlantis was amazing.

Alfred ticked off his goals on his fingers. "Well, find the lost city of Atlantis, for starters. So that's one mission accomplished! And then learn everything there is to know about this place, write down a lot of notes, take it back with me, publish a big book, prove my gramps right, and reintroduce the world to Atlantis. Uh, if that's okay with you." He gave them his widest smile. "I can't believe I'm actually here! It's just... wow."

"Who sent you?" she asked, leaning forward.

"Oh, well, I tried to get funding from the Smithsonian Institute, funny story there, they ended up saying no, but eventually an eccentric friend of my grandfather stepped in and provided most of the money. Something about a lost bet..."

She gave him a puzzled look. "A smith named Sonian?"

Alfred realized he needed to provide a little more background. He coughed, rubbed the back of his head nervously, and started over. "I'm from the United States," he explained. "America. It's across the ocean." He pointed in the direction that he thought was west. "The Smithsonian is our national museum and it's supposed to increase and spread knowledge. And you can't get a place more knowledgeable than Atlantis."

The council members shared confused looks. "I would have expected an envoy from Crete or Sumer," one said. "Perhaps even Egypt. Were they destroyed as well?"

"Egypt? It's controlled by the British now." He wasn't surprised that the Atlanteans wanted an update on the past three millennia, but geography and international politics had never been his strong points. "I'm not sure about the other two," he admitted. He tried to answer their questions about other ancient empires as best he could.

"We'll need to think on this," a third councilor said, after they finished picking Alfred's brain with questions. She turned to face the Atlantean warrior who stood behind Alfred. "Make sure our guests are treated well."

Alfred grinned, pleased to learn that they weren't prisoners, they were guests. His fellow explorers were going to be so impressed with his diplomacy skills.

His fellow explorers were impressed... by the food that the Atlanteans brought to them for lunch. Several young women set a number of heaping platters of food on the small plaza outside the storage room and then left. Francis looked sorry to see them go. Two guards stood nearby, making it clear that they didn't want the foreigners to wander around the island without an escort, but they otherwise ignored the group. It was hard to consider the group a threat when Alfred was its representative.

"Is this an octopus?" Feli asked, lifting up a purple squid with a lot of legs. He delicately nibbled the edge. "I think it'd go well with pasta."

Antonio laughed. "You think everything goes well with pasta."

"I'd pair it with a white wine," Francis suggested.

"This fish is amazing!" Angelique gushed, finishing off her third whole fish. "I should see if they'll lend me a spear so I can do some fishing while I'm here."

Antonio poked some of the food with a stick. "What's this strange burnt pile?" he asked.

"Some tribes offer weird foods as a test. Maybe it's something like that?" Alfred suggested. He gave one of the burnt pieces a cautious bite and then spit it out. "Ugh, whatever it is, it's terrible."

One of the guards rushed over and took that platter away. "Oh, this isn't food. It's... uh... coal. It got here by mistake." He handed the plate to another guard to throw away and whispered, "I thought they banned him from the kitchen!"

Gilbert carefully watched the guard leave to dispose of the inedible food. "Feli, I think you're absolutely right about the pasta. Why don't you talk to the guard to see if you can make it for dinner? We should share what we have," he suggested.

Feliciano nodded eagerly. "Pasta, pasta, pasta," he murmured happily to himself. He walked over and began talking to the guard with loud, animated gestures.

Gilbert immediately turned his attention to Alfred. "It seems a shame to sit here when all of Atlantis is around us, waiting to be explored," he said, gesturing to the buildings all around them.

The American slurped up his octopus dish and nodded. "Yeah, I think I'll ask for a tour once lunch is over. I really want to look at some of the these places more closely!"

"Oh, I'm sure they wouldn't care if you took a peek right now. They were friendly when you went to speak with them earlier. Perhaps you'll even have a chance to study the Heart of Atlantis."

"Do you think so?" Alfred asked eagerly.

"Absolutely! Thanks for volunteering," Gilbert replied with a smile. Alfred suddenly found himself pulled to his feet, frog marched to the edge of the clearing, and pushed through a gap between two bushes. He opened his mouth to complain that he hadn't finished eating lunch, but Gilbert was already gone. The entire escape had taken fewer than five seconds and had involved no effort on Alfred's part.

The American thought about going back and finishing his meal, but the allure of Atlantis called him forward. He walked along a narrow gap and tried to stay hidden amongst the rocks and plants, though he mostly just succeeded in tripping over his own feet. Alfred stepped out of the corridor and then realized he didn't have a single clue where he was going. He wondered how long it would take him to find the one Atlantean who had seemed a bit helpful earlier. Then he caught a whiff of cooking food and decided the best place to start would be the kitchens.

As it happened, the young man found him. One second Alfred was walking along carefully, trying to be sneaky as he studied the murals and writing on the walls, the next he felt his body pulled back and a hand clasped across his mouth.

"How did you get out here?" a voice asked sharply in his ears. "Come on, follow me before someone else sees you."

Alfred nodded and tried to keep up as the other man led him to a small grotto, hidden from view by a luxuriant curtain of vines. At the other side of the alcove, a gap between two moss-covered rocks offered a view of the waves crashing below. He could even see fishing boats in the distance.

"I was just looking for you!" Alfred said excitedly. "I've got so many questions about this place. What was that crystal you used to heal me? How long were you tailing us? Have you ever found a way to the surface through the volcano? How do you have such a nice tan when there isn't any sun down here? Actually where does all of this light coming from? Does it dim at night? Why is the—"

The young man pressed his finger against Alfred's mouth to get the American to stop talking. Alfred promptly shut up and started wondering why his heart was beating so rapidly. His brain kept bringing irrelevant details to his attention—like how close the Atlantean was standing and how nice the light dusting of freckles on the young man's nose and cheeks looked. The man nudged Alfred deeper into the grotto, where prying ears couldn't hear them, and didn't seem to notice the American's close scrutiny.

The Atlantean examined Alfred from his head to his toes, sizing him up. "You're a scholar, correct?" he asked. "Judging by your diminished physique and large forehead, you're suited for little else."

"Uh... yes?" Alfred replied. He was pretty sure he was being insulted. He just hoped that the Atlantean wasn't planning on giving him a wedgie.

"Good. I have questions for you too," he said. "I propose a trade: my answers in exchange for yours."

Alfred nodded. The trade sounded fair to him and he did owe the other man for healing him. "Okay, can I go first?" He thought through his previous list of burning questions and realized there was something he wanted to know even more. "What's your name?" he asked.

The Atlantean blinked, and gave Alfred a strange look. "Arthoúros," he replied. "Although in your language it would be Arthur." He walked over to the cave wall and pulled the Shepherd's Journal out of a hidden corner. "I wanted to ask you about this."

"You found it! I was wondering where it had gone!" Alfred cried as he grabbed the journal and clasped it to his chest, pleased that his grandfather's work hadn't been lost. He'd been worried about the book ever since it had been confiscated.

Arthur crossed his arms and gave Alfred a searching look. "Did you use those maps to find us?" he asked. "Why are you looking for Atlantis?"

Alfred clasped his hands together and grinned; he was always excited to talk about his academic mission, so he didn't care that Arthur had technically asked two questions. "The Shepherd's Journal says that your city possessed a power source of some kind, more powerful than steam or coal or even the internal combustion engines. Shepherd called it the 'Heart of Atlantis.' If I could study it and duplicate it, there'd be enough power to do... just about anything!" he explained, eyes glittering in excitement. "Everyone could have electricity, we could cure disease. I think it might actually be a solution for world peace."

Arthur snorted. "I doubt it."

Alfred frowned slightly. People often called him naive and idealistic, but he liked to think of himself as believing the best in other people. "Anyway the maps and directions in here are pretty good," he said, flipping open the journal to the page that showed the path to Atlantis. "So long as you hold it the right way," he added under his breath. He looked up to find Arthur gaping at him. He ran his tongue over his teeth to make sure he didn't have octopus tentacles stuck somewhere.

"You can read it," Arthur said, his voice almost reverent.

"Yep!" Alfred smiled, always pleased to have a chance to show off his knowledge. "My grandfather was the one who discovered the translation key, and I've been improving on his work ever since." He pointed to one of the pages near the beginning. "See, part of what the Shepherd wrote down was the same inscription in both Atlantean and Ancient Greek. From that, it was just a matter of work."

"Theodore Shepherd... yes, I remember him." Arthur glanced up at the grotto ceiling, his gaze distant. "We found him raving about falling through a crack in the earth about two years ago. I had wondered what became of him after he slipped away."

Alfred gaped. "T-t-that's not possible," he stuttered. "He wrote this journal more than 300 years ago! How could that be possible? He has to be dead by now."

Arthur sat down on a stone and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Interesting."

The American shook his head, refusing to believe something so outlandish. "Maybe it was someone else?" he suggested. "Or maybe his ghost?" Alfred shivered. No one had warned him that Atlantis might be filled with ghosts.

Arthur chuckled at Alfred's frightened response. "He seemed real enough to me."

Alfred sucked in a breath as another idea occurred to him. "Perhaps... the Heart of Atlantis controls time too?" he suggested. Given what he'd read of the Heart's immense power, it seemed possible. He knelt down and scratched out some numbers in the sand that covered the cave floor. "Okay, 300 years, so a little under 2 years would be a factor of 150. Which means... no, that can't be right." Alfred frowned, willing the calculations to make sense.

"What can't be right?"

"For every two days here... a year passes in the outside world," Alfred replied. He did a bit more math on the floor and came to a shocking realization. "But if that's right... the eruption that sank Atlantis was only 20 years ago here." He glanced up in Arthur in shock. It was hard to guess the Atlantean's age, but he definitely looked older than that. "Do... do you remember it?"

At first, Alfred didn't think that Arthur would answer the question, and he wished he hadn't asked. The Atlantean fell silent, seemingly lost in thought. Still gazing into the distance, he began to speak quietly, "I was three when the cataclysm happened, so I don't remember much. I do remember a flash of light so bright it was like being inside the sun. And then... well, this was the only island that survived. The Empire of Atlantis used to be an archipelago. This was just a simple fishing village at the edge. We... we lost so much."

"I'm sorry," Alfred replied. He didn't like seeing that unhappy look on Arthur's face and this was clearly an unpleasant memory. Trying to comfort the other man, he scooted closer, and patted Arthur's knee. For once, Alfred didn't feel the need to fill the air with the sound of his voice. He'd always known that something terrible had happened to Atlantis, but it was one thing to read about it in a book, and quite another to see the sorrow of someone who had experienced it firsthand. "Is there anything I can do to help?" he asked.

"Yes," Arthur said. "Teach me how to read."

At first Alfred had assumed that Arthur wanted to learn how to read English, but Arthur immediately corrected him. Before the cataclysm, only priests, scholars, and the royal family learned how to read. None of them had survived, leaving the remaining Atlanteans with no knowledge of their own written language. All of that knowledge... locked away because no one could read it. Trying to uncover their secrets, Arthur had spent years staring at murals, attempting to puzzle out the system. Those efforts served him now: he was already familiar with all 29 letters of the Atlantean alphabet.

Fortunately, Atlantean was a truly phonetic language, making it much easier to learn. After Alfred spent an hour drawing letters in the sand and teaching Arthur what sounds each represented, Arthur felt ready to test his knowledge. They snuck out of the grotto and Arthur led the American linguist to a particularly verbose mural in a secluded area.

Arthur stared at the writing on the wall and delicately traced the Atlantean letters with his finger. He'd learned the letters in his own name incredibly quickly—leading Alfred to suspect that someone had taught Arthur how to spell his name at some point. Which likely meant that he was the child of priests, scholars, or the royal family.

"The... hart..." Arthur said, moving his finger below the words as he sounded out the letters, "of... The Heart of Atlantis."

Alfred smiled and nodded. "You're just guessing that second part," he teased.

"These are the letters?" Arthur asked intently as he turned to face the American. "If I found these letters in other murals, you could translate the nearby words for me?"

"Of course," Alfred readily agreed. He stepped next to Arthur, pressing their shoulders together, and read the rest of the sentence. "The Heart of Atlantis rests in the arms of her king." He tapped his finger on the final word. "See this cartouche? This word means 'king' instead of 'leader' because it has the marking of the royal family next to it."

"The three vertical lines?" Arthur asked.

"Yep."

Alfred was going to make a joke about how the symbol sort of resembled Arthur's thick eyebrows, but he found himself distracted by an image on a nearby frieze that showed two men kissing. "Is that, uh, normal here?" he asked.

Arthur followed his gaze. "Kissing?" he asked in a puzzled tone. "Of course."

"No, I meant, um..." Alfred stumbled over his words and blushed. A thousands thoughts whirled through his mind, peculiar desires that he had long suspected but could never quite name. He found himself unable to finish his question. "Never mind."

Arthur shrugged and glanced up at the fake-sun. "I'd best return you to your group before the guards notice you that you're missing," he said.

Alfred slipped through the gap in the bushes and joined his fellow explorers. He suddenly understood why no one had come looking for him—Francis had pulled out a deck of cards and convinced the group and the guards to play a game of strip poker. The game was going well for Monika, who still had on all of her clothes, although one tank-top strap had slipped down over her shoulder. When the other players tried to call her bluff, she calmly laid down a flush consisting of five hearts.

The others groaned. Angelique tossed in a sock and Antonio took off his shirt. The guards added sandals to the center pile of clothing. Francis, the one wearing the least amount of clothing, frowned. He stood up and slipped off his trousers, revealing the rose-print briefs underneath. It was his only remaining article of clothing.

While the group was still distracted, Alfred ducked into the storage room and leaned against the wall. He mindlessly paged through the Shepherd's Journal as he tried to process everything he had learned from Arthur. Alfred had studied Atlantis for years, and yet the lost city still continued to surprise him. He hadn't expected people, and he definitely had not expected to meet a person who had been alive when Atlantis sunk beneath the sea. He hoped that he would have a chance to speak with someone older, someone who might remember more. Thinking about the cataclysm provided a good distraction from his other thoughts. Alfred had always known he wasn't like the other boys, but he was starting to think that it was more than just his desire to bury his head in a book. He felt like he had been handed the key to a treasure chest he hadn't even known existed.

Alfred looked up when he heard Gilbert approach. "Did you have a chance to study the Heart of Atlantis?" the Prussian man asked with a friendly grin.

"Of course!" Alfred lied. For some reason, he didn't want to tell Gilbert about his enjoyable afternoon with Arthur. "Uh, I think it has some sort connection to the royal family," he extemporized. "They keep it near the royal chambers, but they didn't want to tell me more. Also, there was something else that I learned..."

"Not now, Alfred," Gilbert said, waving away the American's next comment. He rubbed his hands together and called to Monika as he walked outside. Alfred shrugged and turned back to his journal. The next day would be soon enough to tell Gilbert about the island's odd time effects. It wasn't as if they were in a rush to leave.

Alfred had a lot of thinking to do, and for once his thoughts didn't involve the lost city of Atlantis...

. . .

Author's Notes

I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep this story in 1914 (because I'm not clearly bothering with historically accurate dialogue), but I decided that I liked the idea of Alfred being incredibly clueless about his own sexuality. I don't like in-denial Alfred, but I do kinda like I-didn't-even-know-gay-was-an-option Alfred.

Also, first major plot change! Atlantis is in a pocket dimensions where time flows at a different speed. I think it makes more sense than having the Atlanteans sit around and not do much for several millennia. (In the theory of relativity, the concept is called "time dilation," although it also involves near light-speed travel.)