Chapter Eleven
The next morning I decided to go swimming with my friends.
They seemed to have forgotten about Melathiah's conversation.
After about an hour of swimming around with Rufus and Elvira, Melathiah finally walked by the pool and sat in a lawn chair.
Obviously since we were in a cave there was no sunlight, unless you found the small window in one of the big rooms.
"Hello everyone," he said.
"Good morning, Master," answered everyone else.
"Now after hearing the dilemma with you all and Melanie last night, I am quite disappointed in you all," he said.
"We want to know," said Elvira.
Melathiah sighed.
"My time is coming near, Melanie will be your next leader. End of discussion. I don't want to hear any fighting about it," he said.
It was silent for several minutes.
Finally Ephraim started clapping and everyone else joined in.
They appeared to be applauding me.
I smiled.
So did everyone else.
Right then is when I noticed that Melathiah seemed to have been asleep on the lawn chair.
We all rushed out of the pool and carried Melathiah to his bed.
He wasn't dead yet. But he was dying.
When he woke up, I was in the kitchen trying to find breakfast.
Elvira ran to come find me and told me Melathiah needed me.
I ran to Melathiah.
"Melanie," he started.
It took him a lot of energy to speak.
"Yes, Melathiah?" I asked.
He smiled at that for some reason.
"You must lead your friends on in wars. You must continue to be The Seven Saviors. The World needs you all…Please take…this…" he said, reaching for the back of his neck.
He was trying to take off his necklace but Jeremiah had to help him get it off.
Jeremiah handed it to Melathiah, and Melathiah handed it to me.
"Don't ever lose it. It's the key to our World, our lives, and everything we own. If it is lost, so is our lives. Immortality is gone in our home. Please, be strong, have courage, and never lose hope. Now I must move on now. Possibly visit Antarctica and my dearest wife. I do miss her. I'll see you all again, one day," he said.
Then the whole room was silent as our dear friend and leader's life slipped away.
Tears were streaming down all our faces.
Even Elijah and Josiah were crying.
No one said anything for a very, very, long time.
Finally someone broke the silence and I felt a hand on my shoulder.
It was Jeremiah.
"What do we do now, leader?" he asked me in a dry voice.
I didn't smile. I didn't laugh. I did nothing.
"Why did this have to happen?" I asked.
I looked at Melathiah.
Though I didn't know him for nearly as long as the others, he felt like a great friend to me already and a part of me was taken away with him.
"It happens to us all. None of us are technically immortal, just extra long living humans. I know you didn't know him very long Melanie, but I can tell this is very hard for you. Not only because our friend is gone, but now all his responsibility is yours," said Jeremiah.
He knew exactly how I felt.
"Yeah. I don't know what to do," I said.
None of us did.
"We'll be here to help you, Melanie. You can count on us," said Elvira.
Elvira was always a great help to me.
I just had to watch out for her temper.
"Well what do we do with Dad?" asked Ephraim.
I swore Ephraim was an idiot.
He surely wasn't the brightest bulb in the box.
"Well bury him of course! We should go to the cemetery to bury him next to his wife right? I believe that's here in London," said Elijah.
"Right, but how will that work? None of us are even legal citizens anymore," said Josiah.
"I am," I said strongly.
"Yeah. Not to England. You know, most of us here are American anyways so none of us are really allowed here," said Elvira.
"Well, Melathiah was British though he had an American accent. Oh, and that one guy that was here before Rufus," said Elijah.
Did any of this even matter?
"Oh yeah…that Fredrick guy or whatever his name was, poor guy died in battle ya know. Sucks that our cave was discovered," said Ephraim.
Elvira elbowed him in the stomach.
"What?" I asked.
"You see, many years ago, there were seven of us, only instead of Rufus being here we had someone named Fredrick. Well his life was ending. He was nearly a thousand years old and when the mortals found our cave, he had some kind of heart attack. We won the war and the mortal humans never messed with us again. Now none of them even know we exist. Well, now you know our only war we had here. After Fred died, Melathiah saved Rufus from some kind of ship sink or something. What was that called?" asked Josiah.
"It was the Titanic! You see, the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. Melathiah was underwater on his elevator and he found me," said Rufus.