Brellitine Grever and The Sea of Gelled (The Brell Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  BRELLITINE GREVER

  AND

  THE SEA OF GELLED

  Ruhi Jain

  © Ruhi Jain 2018

  Ruhi Jain has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2018 by Endeavour Venture, an imprint of Endeavour Media Ltd.

  To my parents, Parul and Kartik

  for always being there for me

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Different

  Chapter 2: Missing

  Chapter 3: The Wandering Woods

  Chapter 4: Unfamiliar

  Chapter 5: To the Sea of Gelled

  Chapter 6: Lily

  Chapter 7: Mermaid

  Chapter 8: Unrealistic

  Chapter 9: Shock

  Chapter 10: The Sacri

  Chapter 11: The Talking Map

  Chapter 12: Lukas

  Chapter 13: The Fortune Teller

  Chapter 14: Salamandar

  Chapter 15: New Fish

  Chapter 16: Trouble

  Chapter 17: Practice Almost Makes Perfect

  Chapter 18: Ripples of Excitement

  Chapter 19: The Great Queen Zeldae

  Chapter 20: Unexpected

  Chapter 21: Too Close

  Chapter 22: Break

  Chapter 23: Uneasy

  Chapter 24: Reveal

  Chapter 25: Turmoil

  Chapter 26: Emotions

  Chapter 27: Memory

  Chapter 28: The Garden of Faith

  Chapter 29: The Rescue Plan

  Chapter 30: Friendship

  Chapter 31: Keep Kicking Till the End

  Chapter 32: Do or Die

  Chapter 33: Relations

  Chapter 34: Reality

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  There are many who have made this book possible. It takes a whole community of people to get something to where it is. I would like to acknowledge:

  My parents, Parul and Kartik, for their unwavering faith, support and love. I am blessed to be your daughter. My brother Rohan, for his insightful guidance and technical help. My family, for believing in me through thick and thin, specially Rma and Ajay Chaudhri, Usha and Lakshmichand Jain, Dr. Nidhi Bansal, Ravi Jain, Promilla, Prerana and Dr. Sukriti Issar.

  Matthew Lynn, James Faktor, Rufus Cuthbert and Alex Batty... the wonderful team at Endeavour Media, my publishers, for their passion, patience and belief in The Sea of Gelled. You have directed and shaped this novel into being what it is.

  Cyrus Mewawalla, for being the best mentor one could have asked for and Rohit Malhotra, for introducing me to him.

  Dr. Agnello Menezes, for his support. Mrs. Kotian, for introducing me to the liberating world of writing.

  Uday Vijayan, for his valuable insights and time.

  Tom Benjamin, for his warm and engaging stories of the Cotswolds. Betty Walker, for her endless energy and enthusiasm for life.

  Tanvi Krishnakumar and Ananya K. Moorthy for their motivating confidence.

  My three turtles, for being the inspiration around Ripples.

  And most importantly, you, my dear reader, for deciding to plunge into the Sea of Gelled.

  Thank you.

  What would you do if the one person you loved the most goes missing? How far will you be willing to push yourself to get that person back?

  Prologue

  In the dark of the night, a bright light shone through the water, creating small yellow swirls on the boulders. A second later, a loud hum was heard. It grew stronger by the minute until the whole sea was abuzz with its vibrations.

  The notice rocks suddenly became clear of all messages and words began engraving themselves upon their flat surface. An octopus flitted past one, staring at it with its glimmering, beady eye before going about its own business.

  A couple of hours later, the merpeople awoke with stifled yawns and whispers. One by one, they trickled to the notice rocks. The sole paragraph there elicited a gasp from everybody.

  “Her Royal Majesty, the Great Queen Zeldae, commands that any human found in or around the Seas be captured immediately and handed over to the Queen herself. The captor will be handsomely rewarded with three thousand Shiiks.”

  Seventeen years later… on land.

  Chapter 1: Different

  “Timmy?” Brell jumped out of bed and looked around the attic. Empty. The first thing she noticed was that the light bulb was off. The morning rays had reached her bed, which meant it was quite late in the morning. Why hadn’t she woken up earlier? She never slept in.

  Timmy wasn’t there in the attic. His coat was still hanging on its peg though. Maybe he was already down… which meant that she was really late. Moving quickly, she peered into the little mirror hung on the wall for a fleeting second. A pale face with prominent dark brown — almost black — eyes and wavy black hair framed her face. Quickly grabbing the comb from where it sat next to the sheet-covered hay piles they called beds, she ran it through her shoulder-length waves, wincing as she caught a tangle in her haste.

  The attic where they lived was a simple, grimy place consisting of two rooms and packed with hanging cobwebs. Their closet was nothing but a cardboard box, once containing a refrigerator, which was just large enough to hold three pairs of clothes for Brell, and three for Timothy. Brell had to wear her aunt’s and cousin Lisa’s old dresses and shoes, whereas Timothy had to wear their uncle’s old clothes, rolled up ten times to fit his short, skinny frame. Neither of them had received anything other than hand-me-downs after their mother disappeared.

  She dressed and sprinted down the stairs, nearly crashing into her Aunt.

  “Good heavens! What were you doing? Can’t you see?” Aunt Lucy said crossly, straightening her own dishevelled hair.

  “Sorry.” Brell said, not feeling sorry at all.

  Her aunt was as fat as a pig; two double chins protruded from a squashed face, with small beady eyes and almost no eyelashes. Straight, sparse blonde hair hung down in loose wisps around a large oily forehead, and her hands were always clammy. She constantly wore a blue robe with a black string around her waist and changed this outfit very rarely. Her husband, Sam, always spent his days in his study and was rarely seen around the house except at mealtimes.

  “Go at once and milk the cows! Why are you so late? Do you know what time it is?”

  Brell ignored her aunt’s nagging. “Have you seen Timmy?”

  “You should never answer a question with another question!” her aunt snorted.

  Brell rolled her eyes. She’s definitely not going to help me. She strolled outside to the cow shed; milking the cows would help her to get her mind off things a bit. After taking care of two of the cows, she heard rapid footsteps behind her and a second later the large form of her aunt barged into the cowshed.

  “Where is that grubby brother of yours?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see him in his bed in the morning and so I went to ask you, but you said …” Brell trailed off as her aunt eyed her suspiciously. Lucy suddenly stuck her thick, pointy nose just inches from Brell’s pale one.

  “He better not have run away. He can’t survive all by himself. And if that scoundrel has fled, he should have thought of you because your work doubles up.”

  Brell tamped down her frustration. “He’s just a little kid. He can’t escape by himself.”

  Aunt Lucy’s eyes shined cruelly. “If he doesn’t show up in the next half hour there will be no lunch or
dinner for you both.”

  “Should I go look for him?” she offered hastily. “I’ll be back before lunch with him.”

  “Yes, go. And if you’re even a second late you know you’ll go hungry for the whole day.” She tapped her wristwatch sharply.

  As Brell hurried to the attic to throw on her too-large overcoat over her worn dress, she felt yet another twinge of frustration with how her life was turning out. When Brell was seven and Timmy just a year old, her father David had been killed in a fire. Orphaned as a child with no other relatives to go to, her mother had had no other choice than to go to her brother-in-law for help. In the words of Lucy, Brell’s mother “ran away because she didn’t want the responsibility of looking after her children” four years later.

  Six years had passed since her mother had disappeared, and each and every single day Brell believed that her mother had not left them willingly. There had been so many sweet memories with her mother that she was sure there was more to the story than Lucy was letting on. At night, when she couldn’t sleep, she dreamed up plans to go find her mother. She shook off the daydreams and grabbed the chipped watch that once belonged to Lisa before searching every nook and cranny of the house to make sure her brother wasn’t hiding anywhere.

  Where was Timmy? Why did he leave? Maybe he went to Nina. She fastened the top two buttons of her black overcoat and was out of the cottage in a jiffy, running towards the stables. But Timmy wasn’t there. The two horses didn’t even notice her and she searched their stables but when she reached Nina, she felt something was wrong. Nina seemed restless. She kept moving and neighing, looking at Brell with urgent eyes.

  “What is it?” she asked, running her hands up and down Nina’s neck. She didn’t seem hurt. She was not a very pretty horse; big, brown and bulky but Brell had played with her ever since she was a little girl. “Did something scare you?”

  Nina looked at her with unblinking eyes, as if she wanted to say something. She was unusually restless today. The only other time she had acted this way was when an intruder had broken into the house.

  “I’ll come back, okay?”

  Wandering outside to think of where he would have gone, she had to admit to herself that the farm itself wasn’t bad. Seated at the edge of Snowshill in the Cotswolds, the neat cottage was surrounded by a line of trees whose leaves turned a fiery red in autumn, and wildflowers thrived at the edges of the fence lining the fields. It was that time of the year where the scent of trees and flowers were in the air, and there was something almost magical about the weather. She rubbed her forehead, trying to shake out thoughts of magic. She had to realise she was no longer a little girl. Magic didn’t exist. If it did, she wouldn’t be stuck here with her aunt. The cows and horses had places to sleep that were bigger than the attic she shared with her brother.

  What she didn’t understand was why he would leave the cottage in the first place, especially without his coat. It was May but it was still a bit chilly. She left the stables, running as fast as she could to St. Barnabas Church which stood at the centre of Snowshill.

  Right outside the church was a graveyard, with crooked tombstones that tilted in various directions. He loved to hide here, although it was right in the centre of the village.

  “Timmy!” she called, cupping her hands to her mouth. A gentle breeze pushed her hair in front of her face and carried her voice away. She stood on top of the bench that was next to the graveyard fence and called him again. He wasn’t anywhere nearby. “Where are you?”

  Dread started to seep down her spine. After their mother was gone, Brell and Timothy had just each other for emotional support. She tried her best to fill the vacuum in her brother’s life that was caused by their parent’s absence. She remembered teaching him everything he knew, right from reading and writing to tying his shoelaces. She had even tried to teach him a song on Uncle Sam’s piano. The tune, which was always stuck in her head, had a haunting melody, with highs, lows and dramatic turns in the pitch. The strange thing was no one else seemed to know where the song came from, and Timmy never could seem to pick it up.

  She was more parent than her aunt ever was. When Timmy scraped his knees terribly while playing, it was she who had cleaned and bandaged the wounds. Aunt Lucy didn’t even care. And over the years, the dependence they had on each other had grown deeper and deeper. He was the reason she felt like waking up every morning. His smiles gave her hope and his tight hugs, all the strength she would ever need.

  She climbed down from the bench and moved to the front of the graveyard, vivid memories of the previous day flooding her mind. Timmy, who was only eleven, had been frightened when they woke because of some wailing and howling noises he had heard during the night. He claimed that the window of their attic had creaked open and that he had seen a person outside. She had reassured him that it was nothing, that it must have been Uncle Sam out in the garden. However, he was still scared. She leaned on the gate, mentally reviewing the previous day to try and figure out what had spooked him so bad.

  *

  After feeding the horses, Brell washed and milked the eight cows, pouring their fine creamy milk into marked glass bottles. “At least two things done!” she thought.

  As Brell started loading the milk into a cart, she noticed Timmy pulling out weeds in the back garden. He seemed very nervous. He kept looking over his shoulder and jumped at every insignificant sound.

  She furrowed her brow and leaned on the cart handle, calling out “Timmy, are you okay?”

  He took several seconds to reply. “Yeah… maybe.”

  She nodded. “I’m just taking the milk into town, but I’ll be back soon, don’t worry.”

  She started pushing the cart up the hill towards the neighbouring Chipping Campden. A bead of sweat rolled down from her forehead and ran between her eyes to her chin before dropping to the ground. Although the air was cool, she was puffing and panting as she finally reached Chipping Campden.

  She walked down the High Street, past the oldest house there - the Dragon House, the tree that had been standing outside the Market Hall for ages and the quirky Frankie Doodle shop, until she reached the aptly named ‘The Milklady’. Jane, the owner of the shop, was a kind old woman who seemed to have discovered the recipe for happiness, and she greeted Brell when she entered.

  “Oh, hello dear.” She smiled, bustling around the tiny shop that smelled of milk. It had little lanterns hanging everywhere and ceramic cups glowing with fire in them, lending a warm feeling to the quaint room. “Just drop the bottles in that corner there. They’ll be processed in no time.”

  It was so much more than a shop for Brell. It was almost like a much needed therapy session every time she walked in.

  “I wish I would get a holiday from all this, the way other people do on Sundays,” she said, plunking herself down onto the soft chairs that were lying in the corner — her usual place. “So, how are you?”

  “Good, good dear. Today all the ladies were talking about the cheese rolling and shin kicking competitions. Can you believe that no one has ever won the cheese rolling competition?” The older woman, soft and slightly rotund with age and a happy life, the very picture of a village grandmother, gathered empty milk bottles to prep them for the day’s exchanges while they chatted.

  “I don’t think anyone can run as fast as cheese rolling downhill.” Brell smiled. The yearly cheese rolling competitions in Cotswold were always an exciting event.

  “Would you like some pie that I just made? I made this one vegetarian, so don’t you worry.” Jane said with a wink, offering her a slice of apple pie.

  Brell broke it in a rough half and wrapped the larger one in a tissue paper for Timmy. The other half she finished even before she realised it.

  “You know, I think you and your brother are the only vegetarians I have ever met in this area.” Jane smirked. She had coffee-coloured hair with a single streak of white that started in the hairline above her right eyebrow; a fashion statement, she said.

 
“It’s just a personal choice because my mother was one.” Brell glanced at her watch and jumped up. “Anyway, thanks! I better get going.” Just before leaving, she turned and said. “You’re really dear to me.” She fidgeted uncomfortably, hoping that her words could convey everything she couldn’t say.

  Jane smiled knowingly. “I know, honey. You’re very precious to me too.”

  Before heading back, she walked down High Street to the thatched cottages at the bottom. The most beautiful one had the model of two birds facing each other on the patterned thatched roof, a stone dog at the entrance and wisteria growing over the windows. She would come and see it every few days or so. She hoped that someday she would live in a similar house.

  Picking up her cart from Jane’s place, she began to go down the hill when she heard a pitter-patter of footsteps ahead of her. To her utmost astonishment, it was Timmy who came running towards her.

  “Timmy!” she cried, alarmed by the look on his face. She left the handle of the cart and half-ran towards him. “What’s the matter?” Why had he run all the way up the hill?

  He was dripping, the sweat soaking through his baggy clothes, and as he reached her, his face was red and he was gasping for breath.

  “Come in the shade.” She grasped his hand and led him to the Market Hall where they were sheltered from the sun by the old rock structure.

  “I’m not going to work on the farm!” he burst out. “There are always these strange noises and sounds… I’m scared!” He twisted his clammy hands, and looked in every direction except Brell’s eyes, which searched his in a perplexed manner. This had never happened before.

  When she finally realised Timmy was utterly, entirely scared stiff, she tenderly took his hand and gently said. “Timmy honey, you and I together will go to Aunt Lucy, okay? And I’ll ask her if we can do our chores together, like sharing them. You won’t be by yourself. Are you all right with that?” She handed him the piece of apple pie.