Chosen
Chapter 5: River Royalty
-o-o-o-o-o-
The Girl: Didn't you just love the picture? I did. But I just felt so sorry for the creature at the end.
Sherman: Sorry for the creature? What did you want? Him to marry the girl?
The Girl: He was kinda scary-looking, but he wasn't really all bad. I think he just craved a little affection – you know, a sense of being loved and needed and wanted.
Sherman: That's a very interesting point of view
- A discussion of "the Creature from the Black Lagoon" from "The Seven Year Itch." 1955, Universal Studios.
-o-o-o-o-o-
They had dinner on the beach again that night, Hayes having picked up some beef and vegetables and turned it into shish-kabobs. And afterwards they sat around watching the moon rise and boats go by on the river.
"Oh God," gasped Burns suddenly.
The others all turned toward where he was looking. Approaching from the town were the figures of Maria Luiz and her grandfather.
"Why can't I escape this?" groaned Burns.
Matt rose from the sand and went to greet them, speaking with the two for a short while before bringing them back to the fireside. Maria walked right up to Burns. "She misses you. She cries because you won't see her."
"What? Why does she want me? I don't want to see her. Tell her that."
Suddenly Maria straightened up with a bit of a surprised look on her face. "She's here. The River Princess is here!"
"Great...now shes stalking me," he grumbled.
"Where is she?" asked Sector. Even if Burns wasn't interested, he certainly was.
"There..." Maria turned and pointed toward the river. "She's right there...in the water...waiting."
"Will we get to see her?"
"You don't want to see her!" snapped Burns, sweeping his hand through the air.
"Perhaps you don't, but I'd like to. If she really is Piscis sapiens..." retorted Alex.
"Well I'd like to meet your new girlfriend too," chortled Dusty. "I'll bet she's a real looker."
Burns glared at him.
"Look!" cried Maria. Everyone turned to do just that.
About twenty feet from the shore a humanoid figure was rising from the water.
"By Jove!" gasped Alex.
"Will you look at that?" exclaimed Julio as the River Princess drew herself up to full height and spread her fins regally, the tawny yellow of the membranes glowing in the moonlight. In one hand hung several waterlilies. "There really is a fishwoman."
"Hot damn!" was all Dusty could manage.
Unafraid, Maria walked down the beach toward the River Princess, walking into the river to greet her. The others all looked to her grandfather, who stood watching as unconcerned as before. "Won't the Princess hurt her? Aren't you worried?" Trakker asked him.
The old man just smiled and shook his head, not knowing a word but understanding what the foreigner was asking.
Maria walked fearlessly into the river and embraced the River Princess. Alex, overwhelmed by curiosity, moved toward the shore as well, quietly watching from as close as he dared. But it was obvious that she had come to try for a visit with Burns again, for she kept looking to him, following his movements. She gave Maria the lilies, turned her around, and the child ran up from the water to him. "Please? Please go to her? She wants to see you again," Maria pleaded, holding the blossoms out to him.
The River Princess shook her fins and spread them again, spines and membranes fanning almost halo-like around her. She opened her arms to him in welcome.
"So this girl loves you and you won't even see her? What kind of a man are you?" teased Hayes smugly.
"Dammit, Dusty! Knock it off!" Burns stalked up the beach toward the cottages, leaving everyone standing around awkwardly.
The River Princess stretched out her arms after him, taking a few hurried steps forward. And then her head sank and she threw herself back into the river and disappeared beneath the water.
"He's breaking her heart," whimpered Maria as she plopped down frustratedly in the sand, pounding it with her tiny fists.
Trakker walked up to Maria and sat down with her. The girl's face was wet with tears. "Maria," he addressed her calmly. "Tell me about the River Princess. How do you know her? How did you learn you could talk to her?"
She sniffled and looked up at him. "I've always been able to talk to her, for as long as I can remember." She picked up the hem of her dress, shook the sand from it, and dried her eyes. "Ever since she rescued me."
"Rescued? Tell me about that."
"I don't remember it. I was too little. But my family told me that when I was two, we were on the night ferry coming back from a shopping trip to Macapa. I fell into the water and they could not find me. They thought I was dead and drowned. But the next night, when they were on the beach praying for my soul, the River Princess came, and she gave me to the priest. He was the only one brave enough to go into the river to her. I was not drowned because she rescued me. They said I was holding onto her like a little baby would."
"She brought you out of the water?"
"Yes. And after that I would talk to her. And sometimes in the night or at sunrise she comes to visit me. She is very lonely."
"And she talks to you? Inside your head?" Sector asked.
"That is the only way she talks to me. She cannot make words." And then she giggled. "She makes noises like a catfish."
"And you speak English very well. Where did you learn it?"
"At the missionary school. The teachers come as volunteers from the United States to teach. They taught me English." She looked around at the four men. "You are from the United States, right?"
"Yes. We are here for a special job," said Trakker, picking up the conversation again.
"The Princess said you were in the water in boats. But the Beetle-Guide...he was in a boat underwater. That's why she loves him. Because he was underwater."
"Does she talk to anyone else?"
"Just me, and sometimes this old lady in town. But the old lady lives far from the water and does not like the river or the Princess. And once a fat man came from another country, and she could talk to him as well."
"Maria," called her usually silent grandfather, who had been helping himself to the last of the rice in the pot and had finished it. He spoke to her in Portuguese, and it was clear that he wanted to go home.
"I must go now," said Maria somewhat disappointedly. "If you want to talk to me again, my family lives along the river in the orange and blue house." Her grandfather began walking away. "Goodbye," she chirped and ran off after him.
-o-o-o-o-o-
The team set out in the boat again the next morning hoping to get in as much searching as possible that day. And within a couple of hours of resuming the search pattern, the sunken VENOM boat was found. Hayes immediately marked a big black 'X' over the spot on his chart, and then sketched a little pirate flag and a treasure chest next to it.
"According to this, that boat's just over two hundred feet down," said Trakker, studying the monitors.
"The chart says the same thing. That's a long way to dive," said Hayes "And I don't think our gear will even take us that far."
"You're right, Dusty," said Sector. "That puts it in the range of a technical dive, and our equipment isn't designed to go that deep. And none of us even have that kind of diving experience."
"Raven's only good to forty feet, and Shark's seals are only good to about a hundred," continued Burns.
"I guess it's up to the pro's then," said Trakker in defeat "I knew this was a possibility. But at least we know where to send them looking."
"Unless..." Sector said, his arms crossed but his eyes on the ceiling.
"Unless what?"
"How deep do you think the River Princess can dive?"
A choking sound escaped Burns' throat.
"I don't know. I'd expect she can easily go deeper than we can."
"Yeah!" said Hayes enthusiastically. "We could get Calhoun's girlfriend to go grab those crates for us and bring them back up."
Burns shot Hayes an evil look but held his tongue.
"We could ask at least," thought Trakker aloud. "Even if we could get her to take a line, and hook it to each crate. Then we could simply haul them back to the surface."
"You're all crazy," hissed Burns. "Why would some overgrown fish...fish thing want to help us?"
"It's certainly worth asking, I think," said Sector.
Burns shook his head, but Trakker agreed with the Brit. "We'll go back to town and see if we can find Maria and her grandfather."
-o-o-o-o-o-
Trakker and Lopez walked into São Miguel, headed for the orange-painted house on the riverfront that Maria had mentioned as being home. It was not difficult to find—a small, weathered house partially on stilts, painted a gaudy orange with fading blue trim. The grandfather sat on the porch alone, half-dozing as usual, but when he saw the two foreigners approach he waved, beckoning them forward. "Mr. Luiz. Could we talk to Maria? We have a favor to ask her," Trakker began, fumbling with his handheld translator.
"Um favor? Maria?"
"Por favor."
The old man creaked to his feet and called to someone inside the house, and a small boy emerged, and he spoke to the child in Portuguese. The boy leapt off of the porch and skipped down the slope to where Maria was playing at the riverside with her mermaid doll. He spoke with her, and then she came up from the waterside to Trakker and Lopez.
She looked up at them, and as he often did when speaking with children, Trakker squatted down. "Maria, we have a job for the Princess. And we will be happy to give her some sort of reward for her help."
"A job?"
"A boat sank in the river near here. That is why we are in São Miguel. We know where this boat is, but it is in very deep water. There is something on that boat that we are trying to get. If this princess could help get it for us, it would save us a lot of trouble."
"Something you need out of the water?"
"May we ask the River Princess this favor?"
She looked out over the river again. "She is here. She waits for the Beetle-Guide to change his mind." Maria braced her hands on the fence and closed her eyes. After a couple of awkward minutes in which the men stood about waiting for the response, she opened her eyes again. "The Princess will help you. She says she will watch for you on the water."
"When?"
"She is watching now."
-o-o-o-o-o-
Burns had found his way to a local bar and was on his second caipirinha, a Brazilian drink he had discovered that was sufficiently strong enough to dull his frustrations. He so wanted to give Dusty a good slapping. No...not a slap. A good punch in the mouth for his stupid teasing.
He sighed and sipped the cocktail, savoring the tartness of the lime and the sweetness of the sugar.
There were too many why's here at play. Why did Matt keep going back to that monstrosity in the river? Why couldn't they just wait for the PNA to send real divers? Why couldn't they just leave that stupid boat and its stupidly valuable cargo at the bottom of the river to rust away? Why had he been the chosen one? Why couldn't it have been Sector that the fishwoman wanted?
He snickered, imagining Alex and the River Princess locked in an embrace, her cold lips pressed against his, her wet body soaking his clothing and her webbed hands clutching him around the shoulders. That pervert would probably love kissing this Piscis sapiens, as he called her.
And then he shuddered, and quickly downed the rest of his drink. That monster was probably imagining the same scene, but it was him in her clutches. For a moment he placed himself in the same scene, wondering what it would be like to be held by the cold and wet Amazonian fishwoman, and then he dashed the fantasy to pieces when she began to French kiss him, her fishy tongue slipping into his mouth. Disgusting! Quickly he tried to conjure images of women he would actually like to be in that scenario with...his college girlfriend, his neighbor's pretty blonde wife, his fellow agent Gloria, that girl at the coffee shop in town, that woman he'd seen on the bus years ago.
He sighed and the bartender waggled a bottle of cachaça at him. There was no language barrier here. Burns nodded, and the bartender made him yet another drink. Matt might chew him out for getting soused, but it wasn't like he was needed right now. They could go get that stupid cargo without him, and especially without him if they managed to gain the help of their precious river monster.
But it was not to be. Just as the bartender set down the drink in front of him Lopez and Trakker marched in and flanked him. "C'mon, Cal. We've got our salvage team," said Trakker.
"You don't need me," Burns excused himself. "Besides, I'm still running away. Didn't you see the sign on the door? It said 'no non-humans allowed' so I'm safe from her in here. And besides I just got a fresh drink."
"Here, I'll help you." Lopez grabbed the glass and drank the top off of the cold cocktail. He smacked his lips and made a face. "You won't be able to walk away, let alone run if you have too many of these," he said, lifting it up to eye-level to scrutinize it.
Trakker had his wallet out and was paying the bartender. "What's he been drinking?" he called back over his shoulder as the bartender went to the register for change.
"Something the locals drink. I don't remember what the barkeep called it. Mashed lime wedges, sugar, and some kind of local rum with a weird name." He took the glass back from Lopez and drank the rest in one go. "See. I'm not fit to join you. In fact you should probably just send me home. I'll catch a plane tonight."
Trakker laughed. "C'mon. You've not had that much. I remember how you used to drink back in college. You'll sober up on the ship, sailor." The two marched him off and down to the port where the boat waited.
"Shanghaied..." Burns moaned.
-o-o-o-o-o-
Chosen continues in Chapter 6: "Found and Lost"
-o-o-o-o-o-
M.A.S.K. and all related concepts, characters, worlds, and events are property of DIC Enterprises, Inc and Kenner Toys. Original characters and story elements are property of E. Potter, writing under the pen name of Miratete.
This fic is dedicated to Ben Chapman (1925-2008), Ricou Browning, and Tom Hennesey (1923-2011)
-o-o-o-o-o-