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The other sailors called him Old Emmett, and he let them. Emmett Rhys wasn’t quite his real name, but his real name wasn’t exactly a common one these days, and he wanted to stay as inconspicuous as possible. Getting the important things done required not being observed too closely. As the fashion had changed, Old Emmett’s long white hair and beard had become quite distinctive enough. Once more he wondered briefly if he ought to cut them off.
Over time he’d come to love both cooking and the sea. He’d worked officially as the mess hall cook, and unofficially as jack-of-all-trades, on this charter boat for many years. No one on board, not even Mac the captain, knew that Old Emmett actually owned the ship. He’d made sure he looked different and used yet another name when he’d interviewed and hired Mac, and feigned a rich absentee business owner’s indifference to the ship’s operations, as long as they went smoothly and made money. This way Old Emmett could quietly arrange a few additional cargo transport or salvage jobs here and there that would take them anywhere he needed to go whenever necessary. The invisible rank of ship’s cook also allowed him to come and go as he pleased when they docked, and always returning with a stock of exotic local foods for the kitchen prevented anyone from inquiring what he’d been doing.
Mac had proven a good captain and a kind man. He treated everyone on board well. He’d always been an honest employee to Merrill Lin the ship’s owner (though that wasn’t quite the name Old Emmett used to go by long ago either). He’d even become something of a friend to his eccentric ship’s cook. Sometimes it gave Old Emmett a pang to know that he could never confide any of his myriad secrets to the captain. The kind of life he led often did get lonely.
The cleanup after supper done, Old Emmett shuffled from the mess hall to his cabin. His knees ached, so settling into the chair in front of his tiny desk felt good. He turned on his laptop and was about to open the email account he had established as Merrill Lin, but caught himself in time. He hadn’t locked his door, and he shouldn’t chance someone opening it before he could answer a knock, and accidentally seeing too much. Old Emmett winced at the thought of getting up again. His knees still hurt. He was, however, unobserved, so he decided to take a shortcut. He stared at the door latch and whispered a few words in a language no one else on the ship would have understood. His dark brown eyes flashed gold for just an instant, and the door latch gave a metallic scrape as it locked itself.
Old Emmett turned to his email. Most of what he had received as Lin was spam, but an unexpected message from Mac also waited for him.
He learned that Mac once had a good friend named Aidan, who had died twenty-some years ago in a submersible accident, leaving behind a very young son named Jason. Mac had become a father figure to the boy. Jason was grown now and a newly fledged marine archaeologist, and he wanted desperately to visit the site of his father’s accident, to try to understand what went wrong. When they were done delivering their current cargo, might Mac take the lad out there as a short detour along the route for their next job?
Once he’d read the message, a familiar sense of need came over Old Emmett, with a rare urgency. Ah. Something about this situation wasn’t what it seemed and needed sorting out in a way only he could do. Old Emmett grinned in anticipation of a new adventure. Occurrences like this were exactly what he was living for while he awaited the return of his own lost friend.
Lin approved the trip.
Mac soon replied with a simple “Thank you.”
Old Emmett liked it when people said thank you.
The moment Old Emmett met Jason as Mac introduced him around, he got quite a shock. On the surface there seemed nothing unusual about the lad; he was tall and trim, with dark curly hair and hazel eyes and an easygoing, genial manner.
However, Jason also didn’t belong in the twenty-first century. He was a man trapped in the wrong era of time. An ancient aura surrounded him, much older even than Emmett himself.
How interesting.
As the ship got underway, Old Emmett prepared a special luncheon for the captain, his protégé, and himself. It wasn’t too hard to get Jason to talk as the three of them ate together. He was amiable, professionally knowledgeable about many ancient cultures, and passionate about social justice. The only awareness he showed of being out of his time, however, was a searching restlessness in his body language and his words. If he’d been in the wrong time nearly all his life, as Old Emmett suspected, no wonder he’d been drawn to archaeology.
This was getting even more interesting.
The next day, as they approached the accident site, Old Emmett grew increasingly aware of something in the water, powerfully calling both Jason and himself to it. Frankly it would have scared him if it didn’t feel so benign.
When the call grew strong enough, Old Emmett paused in the middle of repairing some tools and closed his eyes, concentrating on the magical presence, trying to learn its nature.
“Are you all right, Emmett?” a voice at his side asked, and he felt a hand on his shoulder.
His eyes snapped open. Mac stood by him, looking concerned. “Oh, yes, captain. I’m fine,” Old Emmett replied. “Just my age showing, I guess.”
“Why don’t you go and rest, then, until supper?”
“Thank you, Captain.”
Old Emmett watched Mac go. He noticed Jason standing at the other end of the deck gazing out at the sea. As the captain approached his protégé, Old Emmett could just hear what he said: “You look just like him… your dad. He’d stand there just staring at the ocean...” Mac paused, then added, “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of going down there?”
“You could try,” Jason replied, “but you’d be wasting your time.”
Old Emmett slipped away. He’d heard enough: Jason planned to use the ship’s submersible to explore the wreckage of his father’s vessel.
Upon that realization, Old Emmett felt the mysterious call from under the water again – and now knew what was making it. It was a portal to Jason’s true time and place.
Jason needed to go back to his true home, Emmett knew with sudden certainty.
Jason didn’t seem to understand any of this though; he only knew that he was drawn to this place. He also couldn’t actually open the portal even if he knew it existed. He didn’t have that kind of magic.
Old Emmett, however, did.
This was going to be difficult for both Jason and Mac, Old Emmett reflected as he stood at one of the lower deck’s observation windows, waiting for Jason’s sub to appear. He didn’t like doing this to either of them. Jason would have to adapt to a very different time and culture, and Mac would mourn his protégé’s presumed death. Old Emmett didn’t have a choice, however. Jason had never belonged here in the first place, and his own era needed him.
The sub chugged into view. Old Emmett checked that he was alone and no one would interrupt him, then steeled himself for a more complex magic spell than he’d cast in a good while. He held out his hands, fixed his eyes on the sub, and began to chant, his voice rising and roughening with effort. Then his eyes flashed gold, and a swirling white light out in the water appeared. It brightened and grew until it engulfed the sub completely.
Then the light vanished, and the wrecked sub sank toward the ocean floor.
Old Emmett entered the eerily silent bridge of the ship. Mac sat alone in the captain’s chair, his head in his hands. He looked up as Old Emmett approached. “I heard,” Emmett said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, Emmett.” Mac then shook his head. “I should have tried harder to keep him from going.”
“Would he have listened to you if you’d said more?”
“No, I suppose not. He always was a headstrong boy.” He let out a sigh. “I should never have brought him out here.”
“I think he would have found his way here anyway if he wanted to so badly.”
“He might still not have died down there, just like his father… just like his father.” Mac began to cry.
Old Emmett reached out and patted the captain’s back. “Perhaps at least now Jason has found what he was looking for,” he said.