“Hurry! I don’t want to miss it!”, whispered Chelsea to her dive buddy, Marcus as he lay in their cabin suite of the 43’ Beneteau Oceanis. They had chartered the sailboat out of Key West to cruise the Caribbean, in celebration of their joint acceptance into their law school of choice, Georgetown. As a quip, and to demonstrate their good humor, they had decided to go to Georgetown, Grand Cayman for the summer, to enjoy the last free days they would enjoy before starting their three-year journey in Washington, DC. Their deep dive into the law would be prefaced with as many deep dives as they could log over the summer, cruising the West Indies. 

They had chartered the boat with two other couples, from the captain, Chaz. Jena and Shari were longtime college buddies, and Kyle and Nicole, their new friends, were locals from Cayman they had met during their annual trip to the little princess isle over their freshman year on spring break. “Come on…then….Kyle and Nikki and Jena and Shari are already up there, waiting, let’s go, baby”, she chided him to arouse his sense of honor and competition and fight off the boozing from last night as they celebrated their arrival at their first destination, Devil’s Grotto. 

Marcus and Chelsea emerged from the companionway to join their friends who were leaning over the bow on the deck awaiting the rising of the sun. Kyle handed Marcus a Bloody Mary to chase the hair of the dog, and Mimosa’s to the girls. As they sat awaiting the rising of the sun, Shari, in her South African lilt said, “I heard that NASA said the reason is because a coronal mass ejection (CME) caused damage to the atmosphere and that is why we can hear the sound of space now as the planets orbit in their cycles, making the sound, the Harmony of the Spheres”. The Harmony was a Pythagorean theory first discussed in Pliny the Elder’s work, Natural History between 23-79 C.E. “No, no, no”, chimed in Jena, “it’s just the sound of the earth as she passes through the satellite belt”, you  know, “all the satellites that were fried during the CME”, Jena confidently stated as a matter of fact. 

     As the rise of the sun began to peak over the horizon, the friends turned their attention to the Universal Om that began resonating at sunrise and could be heard around the globe each day since the CME at sunrise for 33.33 seconds.  The sound was that of angelic notes which inspired the heart and energized the soul. A calling to raise your vibration and attune to it and lift your spirit to soar to new heights…AAAUUUUMMMM. As the Om faded into the full light of day, the Captain offered his thoughts on the sound, saying, “ Some say, it is the sound of Orpheus’ Lyra in heaven, as his heart sings with joy as he was taken by the muses to the underworld to be with his love, Eurydice”.  “Ooh, the underworld” Kyle quipped while holding up his hands in surrender, “right here at Devil’s Grotto”.  The captain, Chaz, smiled his wily smile and winked as he handed Kyle the dive plan and the adventuresome group began to set up for their first dive of the season, at Devil’s Grotto. 

Kyle was a swim coach to aspiring Olympians who himself sported the broad chest of swimmers and lean torso, accented by his auburn curls, and tanned but freckled skin, who met Nikki, his scuba instructor three summers ago, while she was teaching a class with Jena, Shari, Chelsea, and Marcus. They all became fast friends and had been diving together ever since. As the divers dawned their gear and made final checks, they jumped into the water in varying forms and points on the Olympic scale of giant stride’s off the stern of the boat. Chaz leaned over the side to hand Kyle his underwater camera, a Sony Nauticam. The housing unit alone was $7,500 and he didn’t want him to risk losing or damaging it during his entrance to the dive site. After the team was set in the water, Chaz double checked the anchor and asked Kyle to take a look to make sure it was all set upon his descent. Now he just had to wait. 

The dive site was a photographer’s paradise. It had been made famous by the local Cathy Church with her dramatic contrasting shots of the grotto’s secret caverns. The site was only 25’ deep and the light penetrated the shallow water enough to create lighted passageways and tunnels throughout the entire coral reef.  As Chaz leaned over the starboard side of the Sea Dragon, to watch the bubbles of the divers as they made their way over to the site, the muscles in his neck strained against his choker, the choker she had given him, the Manai. She had said, “It’s the head of a bird, body of a man and tail of a fish and will protect you” he reminisced. Well, he was still here and had it on when he drowned, so “maybe…maybe not” he thought. She had been his steady beau who had just disappeared….ghosted him. He never knew what had happened to her or why she just disappeared but thought of her often enough. “She would have loved this site”, he thought as he secured the dive flag to the mast and hoisted it up to alert others there were divers in the water and settled back down into his captain’s chair at the wheel of the stern. Just as he sat and propped his tan legs up on the compass pillar, a glimmer of light flashed off of the compass. The wind had turned them around on the anchor, pointing them Northward, toward the island. As he reached out to see what was causing the glint of light, he found the dime sitting on top of the compass at true north. He picked it up and added it to the Kraken Rum bottle already half full of dimes, hanging just inside the cabin.  “Yep”, he thought…. “she’s thinking of me”. 

He had been bouncing around from Margaritaville to Margaritaville since his surfing accident a few years back. “Nearly drowned”, he thought out loud. “No” his other inner voice in his head said, “You did drown”.  This group had hired him out of Key West with the boat charter outfit he had been running with his boat for the last few years. “Point ‘er to the wind, see where she goes” was his motto, and ‘that’ was currently, ‘here’. The plan was to sail the West Indies, all thirteen of them.  They would start at Grand Cayman and work their way around the Caribbean ending up in Cozumel off of the Yucatan, and then back to the point of origin, Key West. The had sailed out of Key West on Memorial Day Weekend, and that gave them just enough time to hit the dive sites and move on and return by Labor Day Weekend. 

The team came up one by one, and Chaz helped them on board and with docking their gear.  Kyle went forward to the bow of the boat to assist with the anchor, but it wouldn’t budge. After several tries, Chaz, decided to go in to free the anchor from the seabed. He grabbed his mask and fins and dived in to free it up. He often free dove and could last a few minutes at 25’ on one breath hold.

The anchor had wrapped itself around a piece of coral in the shape of a seahorse, and the chain was fully wrapped around it. He used the slack to untangle the line by swimming counter to the winding which had occurred when the wind shifted them northward. As he freed the anchor line, he gave it two hard tugs to signal Kyle it was free. As he turned to look down at the seahorse form one more time, he noticed a glimmer of light flashing near the base, he reached down, waving his hand over the sand over the glint, and exposed a small key. He scooped up the find, shoving it into the side pocket of his board shorts and started kicking toward the surface to return to the boat. 

Once on board, and the anchor now free, they began to prepare to get underway toward their next destination, Turks & Caicos. The route would take them past Little Cayman and Cayman Brac before they skirted between Santiago de Cuba and Porte au-Prince. The friends were busy sharing their dive exploits and digital photos from Kyles camera. They had found a nurse shark, the locals knew as Squeaky, a green sea turtle, a pair of large groupers, and one tiny little tiger tail seahorse, clinging to the sea grass near the anchor. 

Chaz chimed in, “Hey, I found a cool key at the anchor line”….pulling the treasure from his left pocket, taunting the group with his good fortune. Marcus abruptly stood up, exclaiming, “OH! Wait! I almost forgot, I found this”.  He put out his right hand and waved it in front of the group.  The collective reply, was, “That’s funny, your hand is empty!”. “No, no, look!”, Marcus insisted. He held out his hand again and showed them the ring he had placed on his righthand ring finger. Jena and Shari asked Marcus to let them see the ring and they used a cloth to rub away the encrusted setting to reveal the ring. The band of the ring was in the shape of a horseshoe with tiny, engraved seahorses on either side. From the curled ends, a pin protruded to secure an oval shaped box which turned on the pins and could be spun around. The insignia on the box was inlaid gold over the onyx stone covering the oval about the size of a dime. The insignia was a lyre. “Ooh, maybe the story about Devil’s Grotto is true” quipped Kyle. 

“How does that key compare now”, Marcus razzed Chaz holding up his hand again, directly in Chaz’s face. Chaz replying, “Well, it does say ‘Diebold, Inc., Canton, Ohio. Sounds pretty special.” Chaz wasn’t disappointed and he wasn’t expecting it to be important. He’d found countless dive lights, knives and lost cameras on the seabed and a key was someone else’s unfortunate loss, but useless to him. 

Nikki, sitting with her knees pulled into her chest leaned back against the side railing, exhaled, and quietly said under her breath, “It’s a safe deposit box key”. Chaz, turning it over in his hand inspecting it, saying, “How do you know?”  Nikki showed him her key, strung around her neck. The same key from her bank, Cayman National Bank. They locked eyes, and said, simultaneously, “We have to go ashore!”.

Mark cautiously turned the key in the deadbolt lock on the red door with the number seven directly confronting him as he knocked gently on the door again. He didn’t’ want to wake Amy if she was here at his pied-a-terre in the city. He sometimes stayed here when he was on call at the hospital and had been working double shifts for the last few days and would be on call for the next week and decided to stay in the city rather than travel back up to the north coast to his home in Napa Valley. She had been staying here off and on during her travels as an auditor for one of the Big Six firms, who had sent her here to the city as a home base.

Everything seemed in place, if just a little disheveled. She wasn’t here.  He put the kettle on to make a hot herbal tea before heading upstairs to bed. He sat down at the little dinette between the kitchen and the study, the main room of the loft, and tiredly waited for the piping of the kettle. As he sat at the little table, he saw there were two post card sized envelopes sitting in the basket in the center of the table. Amy would leave her lease payment in the basket for him to pick up once a month when he was in town, which he thought was odd because he had already picked up this month’s payment.

The first envelope was addressed to ‘Mark’.  As he opened it, he noticed the other envelope only had a single letter on it, ‘V’. He began reading the note inside, “ Dear Mark, if you are reading this, something may have happened.  I need to ask you a favor.  I know this sounds strange, but I cannot stress how especially important it really is.  There is a small leatherbound book on the third bookshelf, on the third shelf, the third book from the center.  Please take this book with you next time you go to Cayman, and deposit it in the Cayman National Bank main branch safe deposit box number 33. Mark, said out loud, “ where’s the key, Amy???’ as he picked up the envelope again and turned it upside down on the table, the key which was stamped, ‘Diebold, Inc. Canton Ohio’ quietly clanged onto the wooden surface of the table. He picked it up and examined it and put it back in the envelope. He continued reading the note, … “Once you have deposited the book, please mail the other envelope and the key to my sister Victoria.  I’ve left another envelope in the basket for her, with a note. I know I don’t have to ask, but please do not read the note”. 

Mark ran his hands through his greying curls and sighed heavily as he stood to inspect the bookshelf and find the ‘little book’.  He and Sharon traveled to Cayman every year for Valentine’s Day, and he would be going next month.  As he walked over toward the wall, he saw there was a book laying open on the coffee table. He first checked the bookshelf and saw there was indeed and empty space where she had instructed him, where she had placed the book. 

He sat down on the sofa, sinking into the deep soft corduroy cushions. He and Sharon had picked out the sofa from an estate sale from the private library of a local art collector. He sat back and closed his eyes. He was exhausted, but remembered to open his eyes after a few moments, and reached out to pick up the book. As he leaned forward and picked up the little book, there was an urgent rapping on the door, ‘rap, rap, rap’. He thought, ‘Oh great, the cops are here!” as if he needed more delays before he could rest for the few remaining hours of the early morning. 

He walked toward the door with the little book in his left hand, and opened the door to find a large man, with a thick tousled chestnut brown mop of hair, and scruffy beard waiting for him. He was easily 6’5” and filled the doorway with his large girth. He pushed himself in, as Mark stepped back saying incredulously, “Excuse me! Can I help you?” The stranger looked down and saw the book in Mark’s left hand and reached down to grab it. Mark pulled back the book, and the stranger, who had grabbed the first several pages of the book in his large hands, pulled until the lightly bound pages tore from their threading and were released into his hands. He again grabbed the book, looking through the remaining empty pages, as Mark tried to steal it back from him, pulling on the book, as he pushed the stranger with the big red door, back out into the hallway, where there two hands were all that could be seen between the closing door and hallway, sawing back and forth as they struggled to maintain possession of the little book. The stranger relented, as he once again looked down at the empty pages, and said, “Fine, you can have the empty pages. I have the contents!!!” he said in derision. Mark once again pulled his hand back with the book and was able to secure the door with the deadbolt. He stood standing staring blankly at the blank pages of this ‘especially important’ book.  As the shock of the assault faded from his mind as he stood at the doorway, he could hear the high-pitched piping sound of his kettle piercing his ears as the muted shock fell away. He placed the book on the table, next to the note while he poured his cup of tea. He returned to the little table and finished reading the note, “…don’t worry about the other key. I lost it diving Devils Grotto last year”. Please send the key to “Victoria Theist, JD, Georgetown University 3700 O St NW, Washington, DC 20057”. “Very important” he quipped, “I lost the key, no worries…. ‘Amy’ ” he thought shaking his head as he reached over and absently grabbed a faded red bandana from the pile of napkins next to the basket on the table and wrapped the little book in it before setting it back down.

~

Victoria sat at the heavy mahogany desk in the middle of her office on the fourth floor of Georgetown University, rifling through the stack of mail on her desk. She had only been teaching first year law for two semesters, and it was time for her faculty review. She was anxious to know if she would be invited to return next year. As she thumbed through the stack, she noticed a personal note addressed to her but sent to the undergraduate campus and redirected to her here at the Law Center at Union Station and Capitol Hill 600 New Jersey Ave. N.W. Washington, DC, 20001 in a handwritten correction on the note. The note was from her younger twin sister in San Francisco.  They shared the same womb, and the same placenta, but that was as close as they came to being ‘identical’.  She often wondered if the doctors were mistaken and they were actually fraternal twins, which would explain their lack of ‘connection’.  She was always a wild child and Vikki always the responsible one. 

Her given name was Violet. She hated it. “What kind of name is Violet?” she thought. She was more refined than that, ‘Violet!’ she contended. She saw herself more akin to Queen Victoria, so she had changed it before law school to Victoria.  She wondered “what did Amy need now?” Amy, who aimlessly wanders” she thought as she dropped the note in her attaché case and headed to her morning class. As she cascaded the stairs in fluid motion, careful not to bounce her head up and down as she had learned in John Robert Powers finishing school, she reminded herself, “words have meaning and consequences, as do names, and she was going places. Well defined places. She would not be aimlessly wandering around from job to job like her sister Amy” she huffed, smoothing her feathers as she flew through the classroom door to a roomful of first year law students. 

~

The crew of the sailing vessel Sea Dragon finished securing the anchor and motored over to the shore to Calico Jack’s, dropped the anchor again and launched the dingy to take Chaz, Nikki, Kyle, Marcus, and Chelsea into town. Jena and Shari opted to stay behind and tend the boat. The Little Sea Dragon dingy pulled up on the shore at the popular bar and the sailors eyed the outdoor showers secured behind the green and blue wooden stalls and decided to take a quick wash before heading out.  Meeting back at the bar before heading out, Marcus and Chelsea said, “We’re going shopping”, and in reply, Kyle said, “Me too, gotta pick up some real Cuban cigars”, as they each loaded into the local taxi minivan and paid their KYD Cayman dollars for the ride into town. The driver stopped on Church Street, the main tourist area where the high-end shops courted the tourist from the cruise ships and Raleigh’s Cigar Store rolled cigars right in front of you. The friends piled out of the van, and Chaz and Nikki headed to the bank down the street on foot. 

Chaz and Nikki joked about what they would find in the contents of the box. Chaz saying, “We’ll probably be arrested on site, for trying to open it!” and Nikki playing along saying in her quick-witted reply, “The Russian Drug Czars, are here!”, echoing what she thought the bank guards would say when they entered the building. The building was a three floored stand-alone building with drive through cashiers and full-service banking inside, including several armed guards who monitored your every move. Nikki approached the customer service banker and asked to be shown her safe deposit box. Once inside, the clerk assisted her with opening her box as each turned their separate key simultaneously on the double lock box. She watched Nikki remove the box and sit at a table there in the room as she left. Chaz and Nikki quickly started trying every box to see if the key fit one of the secured boxes. They found one, box 33. They had to ask the clerk to return to assist, Nikki saying, “oh, we have two boxes”, and she obliged without questioning their identity. 

Once the banking clerk left the room again, Chaz and Nikki pulled the box from the safe and sat at the little table to open it and reveal its contents. Chaz didn’t waste any time inspecting the contents and grabbed it and put it in the pocket of his board shorts, along with the key. They returned the box, and Nikki, looking at her box’s contents briefly, hurriedly returned her box to the safe before Chaz could see what she had hidden away in the safety of the banks safe deposit box and they exited the bank. 

They had prearranged to meet back up with the gang at Calico’s for drinks before returning to the sailboat and were greeted with warm smiles at the bar as they sat down with their friends. “Shandies!” announced Chelsea, “Another round!”.  The lemonade laced beer quenched their thirst from the tropical heat and humidity and bolstered their good cheer. As the sun was setting across the water, the team headed back to their little dingy, and motored over to the Sea Dragon, just in time for dinner. They smelled the grilling tuna steaks from a hundred yards away and were famished. 

The tuna steaks were the result of the hard work fishing in route to the little princess island from Key West. While Shari prepared the evenings meal, Jena stayed busy refilling the tanks from the onboard air compressor, and staging the gear for their next dive, tomorrow, off of Little Cayman, a short day’s sail from Grand Cayman. As Jena worked the compressor, she mused, thinking they all had assigned duties, and Jena and Shari were on tank duty every three days, and “it was their turn to stay behind….this time”.

Shari greeted the returning sailors with a gregarious smile and welcome wishes to her abode, “Come aboard the Sea Dragon!”, she shouted, “you scallywags!”  She helped Chaz secure the dingy to the davits and they all gathered around the table secured to the compass pillar at the  helm and set their places for their meal at sunset.  Shari dished out the tuna and rice while Jena poured the wine and as the crew began to indulge in the meal and fill their bellies, their exploits on the island began to spill from their mouths as Kyle said, “Check it out, see wha….” “But wait!” halted Chelsea to the gang, “First, a toast, to good friends, good diving and great adventure!” “Here. Here.”  The collective group agreed, clanging the plastic wine cups, and raising the libations to the god of pleasure, Bacchus, and to the sunset. 

“So, how was the island?” asked Jena. “Come on, we’re dying to hear what you found!” Kyle pulled his bounty of a box of Cuban cigars, from his drybag, and pulled one out and ran it under his nose to taunt his friends. Prompting Marcus to reach out to grab one, and Kyle pulling back and saying, “After! With the proper drink!” and shaking his head and as making the tsk tsk sound to express his feigned displeasure. Chelsea proudly pulled out the little ukulele she had found. Sold to her by a local Caymanian, whose weathered smile broke free from under his graying beard in response to her interest in the instrument, he sat playing near the shore. It was a used Luna with a tribal design, and as she handed him the 25KYD he had asked for it he said, “Que ta umiere shine”, “ Let your light shine” she translated. Impatiently, “Chaz?” Jena continued, “did you find the safe deposit box? Was it the right key? What was inside?” “I have Whisky…” she lured him in, and as she poured the whisky’s, Kyle passed out the cigars and Chaz shared the contents of the box. 

He reached down into his pocket and pulled out the contents. It was a leatherbound book, wrapped in a faded red bandana. He laid it on the cleared table, and they sat looking at it. “Well, someone open it”, whispered Shari.  Chaz unfolded the bandana to reveal the leatherbound book. It was small, about the size of a cell phone, 3”x 5”, and its pages were uncut. As he opened the book, they could all see the first several pages had been ripped out. “Hey!” “Wait!” Jena erupted, “Did you do that?” “Rip the pages out?” Chaz and Nikki glanced at each other and shook their heads, “No” in tacit agreement. As he fanned out the other pages of the book, they could all see the pages were blank. It was an empty book. Each of the friends, who had been leaned into the table, collectively exhaled, and sat back. Kyle took another sip of his whisky and dragged on his cigar. “What the hell?” he thought. The team each expressed their disbelief. “Who would take the time and trouble to get a safe deposit box in Grand Cayman, to hide an empty book and lose the key?” asked Jena. “Someone who has been here obviously, you know a diver, or sailor or even someone hiding out here, but why?” argued Shari as she stood to begin clearing the rest of the table. The girls set about cleaning up the remnants of their ‘exquisite meal’ as Shari liked to think of it and joined each other in the cabin while the guys remained on deck. 

It was nearly midnight as they guys sat smoking their cigars and drinking their Jameson and making plans to pull anchor at sunrise, after the Om, of course, no one wanted to miss the Om,  and head out to Little Cayman. They joined the girls around 2AM and each settled into their cabins, except Chaz. He remained on deck, sleeping in his hammock strung from the mast and the furled jib at the forestay. The book, wrapped back in the faded red bandanna, was secure in his pocket as he drifted off to sleep under the stars. In their aft cabin on the starboard side, Kyle and Nikki shared a pinch off of the block of hashish laced with opium and the pipe they had stashed in her safe deposit box, with their friends and drifted off to dreamland. 

Chaz arose before the crew and walked the boat checking that everything was in ship shape before they pulled anchor and set out. The friends emerged from the gangway, just as before, with Kyle bringing Chaz his signature Bloody Mary, and Mimosa’s for the girls. The sun was rising fast, and as they gathered near the starboard side of the Sea Dragon, Kyle handing the drink to Chaz, said, “ Hey brother, let me see that book again”, Chaz pulled it from his pocket and held it out in offering, for Kyle to remove from the bandana. Kyle fanned out the pages and stopped holding it open, to look up at the rising sun and pay homage to the Om, and Nikki saw the dancing light move on the pages, revealing the contents. “HEY!” she shouted, “LOOK!” pointing to the page. Chaz quickly moved in to see the page, “They’re coordinates, longitude and latitude”, “And musical notes” added Nikki. “What?” asked Marcus, “write it down, write it down!”, saying with a sense of urgency to capture the message before the Om ended. Chaz grabbed his chart book and scribbled the coordinates and the notes, making a notation of the date, and day of the week and time, good captain that he was. 

They all ran down into the cabin to check the coordinates on the GPS, “Well, where is it?” asked the group of Chaz as he verified the location. “It’s Turks Caicos, right where we are heading”.  They all glanced at each other in dumbfounded disbelief. “Whaaaat??”, was their joint reply. 

Chaz secured the little book again in the bandana and placed it in his pocket. The crew began questioning who should hold the book, and maybe it should be in a drybag. Chaz, disagreed, and said, “ I’ll keep it. Right here”, as he tapped on his left thigh. Chelsea ran and grabbed the ukulele to sound the notes the page revealed, it was a B Minor.  Again, they all looked dumbfounded. What did it all mean? They questioned each other with their eyes. 

They decided not to alter their plans and continued on through Little Cayman and Cayman Brac before navigating through the straights between Cuba and Haiti toward Turks Caicos. “Come on” said, Chaz, “Let’s get Kraken” he winked at the crew, to get underway. 

After getting underway, Chaz set up the deep-sea fishing gear to angle for some Yellow Fin Tuna, Wahoo, and Mahi-Mahi while they cruised. The deep-sea fishing near Cayman was world class, and they would enjoy the bounty tonight over wine and shandies.  Off in the distance, he heard the faint shriek of  seagulls, and casting his eyes back toward the island growing smaller as they sailed away, he saw the pod of dolphins in the distance following the Sea Dragon. 

They arrived in Little Cayman by midafternoon and set about to dive the phenomenal local site of Bloody Bay Wall with beautiful coral and swim through’s before sailing the hour-long trip to Cayman Brac and Anchor Wall and the Russian Destroyer, Tibbets. The sun was beginning to set at Cayman Brac, so they anchored up and settled down for the night before their long sail to Turks. The trip was just over 500 nautical miles, and if they had wind and tide and a following sea, they could make it in as little as three days if they sailed straight through. They had the crew to do it, but had planned for at least seven days, just in case they ran into weather or cross currents.  

Chaz was checking the conditions on the chart plotter through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, were the Easterly Winds prevailed. They looked to have smooth sailing if the weather held, and they didn’t run into a cold front, they’d arrive in Turks by early next week. He was reassured as the warm gentle breeze rocked his hammock as he lay staring up at the star filled sky. He suddenly remembered Amy, his lost beau, and her coveted faded red bandana that she never removed. “Probably a coincidence”, he thought to himself, “there are millions of these things”….he murmured out loud as he faded off to sleep. 

The anxious crew gathered in the early hours of the morning to witness the rising of the sun and to hear the Universal AAAAUUUMMM and see what the book would reveal in the light of the sun and the sound of the Om. Their rituals all performed and drinks in hand ready to be amazed, Chaz held the book open, the Om came and went, and nothing happened. No new coordinates, or notes…nothing. They continued to perform the daily rituals, quickly growing tired of the disappointment, and returned to their new Om reality whose novelty quickly wore off and they shrugged and went about their business of sailing to Turks. All of the successive days produced the same result, nothing. None the less perturbed, they kept checking in on the little book at sunrise each day, like searching for a long-lost friend.  Nikki and Kyle had wondered if they all had imagined or even hallucinated the entire event surrounding the book. During the morning sunrise, she said, “Hey they had all smoked the hashish, and maybe they all just wanted to believe in something magical about the book”. Chaz was quick to remind her, “Not me”. He hadn’t partaken, and he saw it too. 

Besides an occasional visit by seagulls and dolphins playing in their rushing wake, the passage was uneventful, and even became tense at times, with the crew starting to divide and take sides over minor offenses and duties assigned. “Why do I have to keep watch tonight? I’m tired and didn’t sleep last night! Can’t someone else do it for me tonight, please”, pleaded Chelsea.  The group was unmoved, but Chaz, gave in to her pleading and said he would take her watch….this time, “but she’d better get with the program, little missy” he retorted. “Better to take the watch himself, than for her to fall asleep at the helm and run them aground”, he thought to himself. 

They were five days into their journey to Turks, and the weather was starting to chill with a storm brewing off of the Sahara in Africa and bringing a hurricane from the Easterlies. It would probably miss them by a few hundred miles to the south and come up the Caribbean side of the Atlantic. The season was from June to November and Turks usually got hit every seven years or so. The last big one to hit her, was Ike in 2008.  That was fourteen years ago. There was a strong possibility they might get caught up in this storm, but they were safe for now. But that didn’t stop the swells from hitting them or the cooler temperatures. The swells served merely as a nuisance and made the crew nauseated. But by day seven, just outside of Turks, the crew perked up, and began making their dive plans for the local sites. 

“So many dive sites, so little time” quipped Jena to Shari as she handed her dive computer from their dive bag.   They had been lovers since high school and even went off to college together. They were inseparable. “Tanx Mon”, Shari winked teasing Jena with her play on words. Shari had been born Harry Richards, and beyond hating the connotation of the name of ‘Harry Dick’ she hated being in a man’s body. She was biologically a man, but her soul and her mind were a woman’s and she only loved women.  It was a hard road for her, but she had decided to take the hormone replacement therapy and had completed her gender reassignment surgery just after high school. She loved Jena and knew every day how lucky she was to be here with her by her side.  

It was early morning before sunrise as they sailed into the shelter of South Caicos Island at the Cockburn Harbor, just east of the capital city of Cockburn, Grand Turk Island. They quickly set about to perform their new rituals of Bloody Mary’s and Mimosa’s as they opened the ritual object and waited for the AAAUUUMMM to sound it’s call of the Universal Om.  This time, as the sun rose, crossing the horizon, the little book sang out in fiery numbers and musical notation the Latitude 21º 24’18.0”, Longitude -71º, 8’ 16.09” and the musical notation for the chord formation of G.  “I don’t’ understand”, said Chaz. “Something’s not right. This is where we are, and not where we are going”.  “Well,” said Marcus, shrugging his shoulders, “at least we have the next notes”, as Chelsea played them on the ukulele. The ritual observers had learned not to get their hopes up about any revelations from the little book and shrugged off the perceived error and took to prepping for their dives.

 They all especially wanted to traverse the sand bar over to Dragon Island at low tide, and dive close to the underwater plateau where the drop off is over seven thousand feet deep.    There were so many sites to choose from, they’d have to prioritize which sites had the best access for the sailboat, or the dingy, and decided to hit the top three most popular first. Most of the diving is from only three of the eight inhabited islands, not including the three boutique private resort islands. The Providenciales, or “Provo’s” for short, is in the Caicos Islands, while Salt Cay and Grand Turk are in the Turks. There were another forty uninhabited islands and cays to choose from as well. 

They had missed the humpback whale migration season, which ended in March, so they decided to pass on both Silver Bank and Mouchoir Bank. French Cay and Molasses Reef looked promising as it was near Provo, due west from where they were currently anchored. All along the six-mile wall of West Caicos which was bordered by a barrier reef, the dive sites went from 40’ to over 6000’ and were the home to eagle rays and hammerheads and was near the shark breeding grounds of reef sharks and nurse sharks. The group all enjoyed diving with the big fish and formed their first dive plan around Provo and the wall. 

The first site was French Cay, and they’d have to motor for three hours south east to reach the little cay. Once there the dive plan was to dive three sites a day over the next three days, hitting all nine sites. They anchored near Dewey’s Delight nearest to the protected cay and would take the dingy over to Lion’s Den and Nightingale. The next day, they’d hit Quarter Mile Reef, Mike’s Reef and Jules Junction. The last day they’d hit G Spot, Rock ‘n Roll and Double D. 

With the dive plan set, and Chaz at the helm, Kyle set about pulling the anchor, while Jena and Shari tended the fore and aft lines, and Chelsea and Nikki hoisted the mainsail laying folded in the lazy jacks. They were going to motor sail and hopefully, pick up a few knots on the short cruise. The Sea Dragon’s running speed in the Caribbean where sea conditions were flat, was between 6.5 knots and full bore up to 9 knots. Chaz kept her at three quarters full speed and would average 7 knots, with the added lift of the sails. 

They arrived near the little French Cay close to noon and were already behind schedule. If they took the dingy over to Lions’ Den and Nightingale, by the time they returned, they’d have to do Dewey’s Delight as a night dive. So, they adjusted fire, and revised the plan to add in the night dive. The team prepped all their gear, setting up one tank on their rig and one spare. The 12’ zodiac dingy with the little kicker was fully laden with six people, twelve tanks, six rigs and 100 pounds of weights, 8-10 pounds for each diver and a few extra in case anyone lost their weights and a 100’ line for the anchor. Little Sea Dragon housed the group with three on each side sitting on the edge, their gear in front of them, along with the extra tank laying at their feet. Kyle double checked that the batteries in the two-way radios were good to go, “Sea Dragon, this is Little Sea Dragon, check?” Chaz, replied, “check” to confirm the two ways were ready to be used to communicate with Chaz back on the Sea Dragon if anything went wrong and they needed him to pick them up.  Chaz lowered the dingy with the gear into the water. The team, geared up with only their mask, snorkel and fins, each jumped in the water, doing their individual signature stride. Marcus performing his one-of-a-kind, Charlie Chan heel taps, amid others cannonballs and belly flops. They swam over to the Little Sea Dragon, tossed in their personal gear, and climbed aboard, and carefully so as not to upset the balance, one on each side at a time, mounted the sides and set about motoring over to the first site, Lion’s Den, with Kyle on the throttle. Kyle pulled the Little Sea Dragon alongside the Sea Dragon so Chaz could hand him down the Nauticam, hearing him say, “I want some mermaid shots” winking. Kyle, knowing he meant shots of the girls, jested back, ‘Yeah, right”. 

“Hey, Nikki, drop the anchor” said Kyle. Nikki looked over the side to see into the clear blue Caribbean Sea where the anchor would fall before, tossing it over into a sandy area, careful to avoid the coral reefs. The team set about helping each other dawn their gear and agreed to dive no deeper than 100’ on their first dive, their successive dives would have to be less, 80’ and 60’ as a precaution to avoid taking a decompression sickness hit. Each couple would dive together and turn around at the halfway point on their air supply. Everyone did their predive checks and had at least 3,000 psi in their 80 cubic foot aluminum tanks. “We good?” asked Kyle. “Yep, we are good to go, replied the group” and each began their roll off into the water. 

Their descent was easy as there was little to no current and they all regrouped at the sandy bottom near the anchor where Nikki who had gathered some rocks to secure it laid them across the Danforth anchor, “just in case”, she thought to herself. The group, who had entered the water a short 20 yards from the reef and in pairs of two, set their compass heading and swam over to the reef to explore and find the wall.

They meandered along, finding the wall, and delighting in the abundance of colorful sea life from purple and lavender sea fans, to blue tangs. The brightly colored damsel fish hovered over their private abodes on the reef, fiercely protecting the stake in their claims. Goby’s shot in and out of their secure sand tunnels on the seabed like whimsical prairie dogs keeping watch for predators who may invade their territory. Jena and Shari had been captivated by a hunting green moray eel a ‘greenie’ and commenced to following him along the reef. Occasionally, the massive 6’ eel would turn and face them, opening and closing his mouth to breathe, all the while threatening them not to get to close. His massive jaws housed a double set of razor-sharp teeth lined jaws, that could extend like the predator in  the movie The Alien. Jena and Shari, continued to follow him, and just as they got a little closer, two large grey and yellow Queen Angel fish flanked him on either side, as he swam behind them, creating a defensive line. He turned and looked at the divers from behind the defensive line and knew they now understood to leave him alone. The symbiosis of the ocean creatures amazed them, and they decided to head back toward the area where they first started following him and pick up their exploring where they had left off. 

Marcus and Chelsea had found a bashful sea turtle munching on the coral and brilliant orange sponges, and a cuttle fish hovering nearby. The reef was teeming with fan fish and blue ringed flounders, and trumpet fish, who were actually a genus of pipe fish like the seahorse. The fire mollusks lined the sea grass and brain coral. Marcus spent a few minutes playing with a Christmas tree worm, who lived in a large brain coral, in his little tunnel house. The little worm’s fans reached out over the tiny tube creating what appeared to be a colorful tree swaying in the breeze of micro currents as they passed him by. A swifter current alerted him to danger as Marcus waived his hand over the little creature, causing him to retreat into the tiny tunnel. Eventually, after several minutes, he began to reemerge and peeking out of his home, slowly, and began to expand his feathery branches and leaves once again. 

Kyle and Nikki had found a pillar coral raising thirty feet up from the seabed from 100’, where there were endless swim throughs and secret tunnels. As they followed the tunnels the rest of the team fell in behind them as they traversed their way through the underwater playground to a deep cavern opening, the Lion’s Den. Just inside the deep cavern created by the pillar corals, were a pair of Goliath Groupers, easily 6’ in length and over three hundred pounds. Their enormous size filled the cavern. As the group gathered near the Lion’s Den, they all did their air check, now at varying degrees of the halfway mark, and Kyle signaled to turn the dive and head back to the dingy, by swirling his hand in a counterclockwise motion, to turn around. Kyle and Nikki moved out the space to allow the rest of the team a chance to view the Goliaths and continue on their ascent back through the pillar coral’s swim throughs. The sides were lined with nudibranchs and anemones of brilliant yellows and greens dancing in the soft swell of the sea. The light from the surface begins to fade color from red through violet starting at forty feet and Nikki kept her wrist mounted light shined on the wall to expose the true colors of the reef as they arose up through the pillar. 

They arrived back at the anchor line with about 800 psi in their tanks and began their ascent, stopping at the 15’ mark, taped in red on the line, for their three-minute hang time. Their blood had absorbed the compressed air at depth, and if they ascended straight to the surface without allowing their bodies time to ‘off gas’ the tiny bubbles, their blood would begin to turn to a foamy mess of bubbles. Like the nitrogen bubbles in a beer when you shake it up, exploding with suds. So, one by one, the team returned to the line and did their ‘shake it off’ dance on the line, before surfacing. 

Getting back into the dingy was a little harder than when they rolled off. They had to remove their gear first. Kyle dropped his gear first and jumped up in to the dingy to help the rest of the team by pulling up their gear and staging it. He reached out his hand to Nikki first and then one by one helped pull them into the boat one at time. They had brought water and oranges to snack on during their surface interval. The surface interval would be an hour before they could dive again. They motored over to the next sight, Nightingales. While they couldn’t dive on SCUBA, there was nothing stopping them from free diving and snorkeling, which they did during the wait. This time, Chelsea set the anchor, by hand on a breath hold. She popped up from the sea, exhilarated by the 60’-100’ visibility, exclaiming, “It’s amazing! The water is so clear! It’s just gorgeous!”

Back on the Sea Dragon, Chaz had been about tidying up the boat and checking the engine and equipment. The radio had crackled from the Eagle Ray II anchored to the southwest that there was a school of hammerheads nearby, on Double D, near the wall. Nowhere near where the team had gone. 

All of French Cay was a bird sanctuary, and nowhere more so than Nightingales. There were Kestrels, Nighthawks, Hummingbirds, Frigates, Brown Noddy’s other common island birds; Cormorants, but not one Nightingale could be found on the little cay as the team explored during their surface interval.   Nikki joked, “The site must have been named after Florence”, as they were lost as to why the site was called Nightingales. “Oooh”, chimed in Chelsea, “Maybe, there are Gales at Night?” The team joked around, intoxicatingly high from their elevated levels of nitrogen bubbles silently escaping their bodies as they relaxed. The nitrogen composition of air is around 79% and breathing it under pressure, the compressed air, induced a narcotic effect on the brain, and they could easily get, ‘narced’ while diving, especially at depths of 100’. 

They continued to explore the site underwater, this time pulling their gear off the boat and into the water to dawn it. The teams each descended toward the reef and wall, staying less than 60’-80’ deep to ensure they didn’t violate their dive profiles and blow their computers. If they did, the computer would freeze up and lock them out for 24 hours while they were to stay out of the water for the preset mandatory time. They made sure to keep within their profiles, so they didn’t have to blow off any dives. The dive was much the same with the exception of a few diving cormorants and a lone tiger shark cruising past them over the top of the reef at 20  miles per hour. 

The team finished their dives and piled back into the Little Sea Dragon and headed back to the Sea Dragon just as the sun was about seventy-five degrees on the horizon, near six o’clock. They made it back to the boat leaving the gear in dingy tied off to the boat where Kyle and Nikki handed the tanks up the Marcus and Chelsea loaded them onto the aft tank racks and refilled by Jena and Shari for the night dive. The finally settled in around 7PM and got set for the final dive of the night, at Dewey’s Delight, where they were anchored. 

“Nighttime is the right time”, sang out Kyle, chanting to himself as he strung his spear gun and prepped his lobster bag. He hoped to snag some dinner while down on the night dive, and knew it was completely against the Nature Preserve rules, but, hey, “who would know?” he mused to himself. Chaz caught wind of what Kyle was up to and interrupted his deviant plant. “Hey, brother, lobster season is from August to March, and we are in a no take preserve. So, nix the spear gun and lobster bag. We’ll get some on another dive”.  Kyle, reluctantly acquiesced, and stowed his fishing gear away, for now. As it turned out there were dozens of lobsters out on the dive, and octopi hunting their dinner, and Kyle still managed to snag several lobsters and cleaned it right there and shoved the tails in his pockets. He held them with two hands, did a simple twist of the head away from the carapace, and ‘bada boom bada bing’ he had a lobster tail.  He used the antennae to clean the spine by inserting it in the spinal canal and its barbed acted as a natural brush to remove the vein running the length of the tail. He had collected six tails in all, and thought, “Screw him” about Chaz and didn’t care if he missed out. 

Chaz had hung a light off the port side of the boat dangling in the water to help the divers find their way back after their adventure.  The night was clear with the exception of the cumulonimbus thunderstorm clouds brewing on the horizon bubbling up in pinks and blues as the sunset below the 90º horizon.  Chaz checked the GPS and noted the location of the longitude and latitude. He questioned the reasons why they were being guided to certain GPS locations, and wanted to know, ‘who’ was behind the little book. He reasoned in his mind, that any kind of special ink could have been formulated, like invisible ink to reveal their marks when the sun warmed them, or the radiation from the light. He didn’t think this was a ‘mystical’ journal at all. He thought, just maybe, there was a real human behind the secret locations and possibly the intended real possessor of the book would not be too happy to discover they had stolen it from it’s safe keeping at the bank. He tried to remember if there were any other boats around when he had found the key. “Who had been there just before them?” he questioned himself. He pondered these thoughts under the scintillation of the stars above as the boat rocked him gently to sleep, swaying in his hammock. 

When the team returned to the boat, around 9PM they quietly pulled themselves up on the platform and loaded the tanks to be filled in the morning and left the gear in the dingy. Kyle set about grilling up the lobster while the rest of the team showered before dinner. He finished grilling them up and snuck down into his cabin and joined Nikki in the shower. She welcomed him in, only after chastising him for taking the lobsters, “Chaz is gonna kill you if he finds out”, she scolded him. “Well, he’s not going to find out now, is he?” Kyle retorted. The team quietly ate the lobster and drank Chablis and pinot grigio before cleaning up and retiring for the night. 

As the crew settled down, Marcus, laid awake in his cabin, subconsciously twirling the ring on his finger he had found at Devil’s Grotto. He started to feel something emanating from the ring. Something, cool. He felt the cool tingle crawling up his right hand into his right arm and pulsing toward his heart. It felt alive. 

Chaz was aroused by the sound of the ukulele and arose just before sunrise and poured himself out of his hammock onto the deck of the Sea Dragon. Looking over to the port side of the boat, he saw Marcus, leaned up against the railing, feet dangling over the side of the boat, playing the ukulele. He seemed to be playing the same notes over and over again, the B Minor and G revealed from the little book. Chaz walked over to him saying, “ Hey buddy, you’re up early” as he looked at him awaiting a response. Marcus, just continued to stare off into an eastern direction, plucking the strings over and over again. Chaz repeated his greeting, “ Hey Buddy?”, and then snapped his fingers in front of Marcus’ face twice, jolting him out of his half trance like state.  “You alright, man?” asked Chaz.  Marcus, looked up, still strumming the little ukulele, saying, “ Oh hey man, yeah, I just couldn’t sleep”.  He had been sitting there since just after midnight, watching, and waiting for his next note. He needed the next note he kept thinking… “please, I have to have then next note, send it to me” he pleaded in his heart. Chaz walked over to the edge to relieve himself and could see the lobster carapaces and antenna laying on the bottom of the sea at 25’, six of them. He knew what Kyle had done, but hey, “it would be him on the hook, not me” he tried to argue with himself in his mind. 

The rest of the team piled out the companionway and began performing their morning rituals to prepare for the rising of the sun. As Kyle handed Chaz the Bloody Mary, Chaz snubbed him off, and returned his attention toward the sunrise. The Universal Om began its chant with the rising of the sun and remained with the crew for the expected 33.33 seconds. Marcus played along with the Om on the ukulele hoping to jilt the unfeeling beast of the sun into action and reveal the next set of notes, to an unobliging blinding light.  “Anything?” asked Jena of Chaz as he held the little book. “Nope, not a thing” the response murmured from under his five o’clock shadow.  Feeling his rough face with his other hand, Chaz headed down to the cabin to shave. As he stepped into the companion way, Kyle said, “hey man, do you want to go over the dive plan?” Chaz shrugged, “do you think you can do it without killing a few lobsters?” Kyle knew then that he was not as stealthy as he had thought and replied in an attempt to cure the breach in trust with his new friend, “ Hey. I’m sorry man. I couldn’t resist the temptation. I won’t do it again”, he offered in sincere apology as he realized what an ass, he had been to endanger everyone’s trip with jail time and a big fine on Caicos and the impoundment the boat.  “I screwed up”.  Chaz gave him a double take and silently accepted the apology, but it would be some time before he could trust him again, if ever. 

The next three dive sites were close enough to motor to in the Little Sea Dragon, Quarter Mile Reef, Mikes’ Reef and Jules Junction.  The following day they would have to pull anchor to make it down to the last three sites, G Spot, Rock ‘n Roll and Double D before heading into the Columbia Passage between Turks and Caicos for the next leg of their journey.  They were hoping to see some bigger fish, since the sea life they saw at the Reefs and Junction were mostly smaller reef life. The prize of the hammerheads did await them on the last dive over at Double D near the sheer wall drop off. The massive 15’ hammers were schooling in the hundreds just below the 100’ depth at about 150’. The divers hovered over the edge, watching the giant school as it passed by in route to their mating grounds. The depth of the dive didn’t’ allow them to stay long and they only had about 10 minutes to watch them before they had to return to the line for their hang time. Nikki liked to do deep water stops to off gas during her dives. The team followed her as she ascended the wall and hung out at 60’ for a few minutes, then, 30’ for another few minutes on top of the reef and the final stop at 15’ for the three-minute safety stop where they chatted with hand signals about the stellar dive with the hammerheads. 

While the team was diving, Chaz had already secured the dingy to the davits with the onboard hoist to prepare for the passage.  They couldn’t avoid the Columbia trench passage, as the mile-long limestone filled embankment, ‘the causeway’ connected the two islands of North Caicos and the Middle Caicos by roadway, blocked the leeward route.  The windward planned route would take them through the Columbia Passage which lay between the two islands of Turks and Caicos and had a notorious reputation for its ripping currents, and he wanted to make sure everything was nailed down.  They would hit the Molasses Reef Wreck site on the way. The shipwreck lay just off of the southwestern edge of Caicos Bank in about 20’ of water. She was a three masted, square rigged wooden ship from around 1490 where she laid scattered across the bottom of the seabed, vulnerable to the weather, other shipwrecks, and treasure hunters alike. According to the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, she was of Iberian descent and was of Basque construction in the era of early Spanish exploration. On the other hand, they think she may be either the Pinzón lost near the Bahamas in 1500 or the Ponce de León lost in 1513. She was one of the earliest wrecks and before the age of the Spanish Treasure Galleons and has remained a mystery. A mystery covered in coral reefs and teeming with sea life. 

One by one, Chaz watched as their bubbles rose to the surface as they hung on the line off gassing before breaching the surface and pulling themselves along the drift line. The line ran from the stern of the boat to the anchor set off from the bow at the mooring ball of the dive site. The line was set to assist the divers in the event of a strong surface current, which was the case out here in the unprotected waters off French Cay. Nikki broke the surface first and waited for Kyle and they pulled themselves along the line to the swim platform.  “Wow!” “Oh my god!” he could hear them saying. They yelled up to Chaz, “Hammerheads! An entire school of ‘em!”. The divers were exhilarated from the thrill of the dive. One by one, Chaz helped them aboard with their gear  until the last diver joined them, Marcus, dreamy eyed and distant, as though he had never really returned. 

As the team got settled, Kyle worked with Chaz to pull in the lines and the anchor, while Chaz motored up.  Kyle set the jib and they began their motor sail through the 22-mile long, and 8,000’ deep Columbia Passage between Grand Turk and South Caicos. This route kept them on the exposed windward side of the island. The route would take them around the eastern shore of Middle Caicos, where they would emerge just south of Dragon Cay, their next destination.  It was mid-morning, and they should reach the mouth of the passageway by evening and would need to hit the local Seaview marina at Cockburn Harbor to resupply and refuel before cruising up the coastline of Middle Caicos the next morning. There weren’t any marinas there and it was protected by the barrier reef, so they would have to anchor out beyond the reef and use the dingy to explore the island. 

The cruising was smooth sailing, and they were able to conserve their fuel as the wind was captured in their sails, lifting them toward their destination as they skipped across the crystalline azure waters. They skirted the coast of the island along the fifty miles from the harbor to the northern tip of Middle Caicos, as the crow flies, or the Frigate as it were.  It was near sunset when they reached the tip of Dragon island, where they anchored for the night. 

As they finished securing the anchor just outside the barrier reef east of Middle Caicos, Chaz was taken by Marcus, leaning into the wind on the starboard side of the Sea Dragon, lost in a distant and longing stare at the eastern horizon. As he passed him going aft from the anchor line to the stern, he knighted him on the shoulder and replied, uncharacteristically compassionate, “The sun will rise again tomorrow”, receiving a momentary break in Marcus’ seemingly transcendental state in response as gave a single nod in affirmation.

The group dined by moonlight as the full moon rose over the sea while they indulged their senses in wine and opium laced hashish. Their conversations vacillating between deep intellectual contemplations of the sun, the moon and the stars and adrenaline laced retellings of their dive adventures of the last few weeks. Chaz, laying in his hammock running from the mast to the jib, rocked in the warm tropical breeze, listening to the white noise of the crew as he drifted off to sleep. It was Chelsea’s turn for the midnight watch, and he had asked Jena to keep an eye out as well, as Chelsea, currently leading the libations and toasting the god of Bacchus was probably not going to make it until 4AM. He had wanted to ask Kyle as he knew he could rely on him  but would need him to be alert tomorrow as the storm was heading right toward them. The thoughts running through his mind began to trickle off into the pond of the white noise of the group as they began to quiet down and speak in hushed tones and whispers. Chaz closed his eyes and faded into a deep dreamless sleep. 

~

            Marcus had arisen just after four for his watch, and hurriedly rushed through the companion way to first see if he had missed the rising of the sun, and second if they were being overtaken by a barge or ship in his absence during his assigned watch. Jena, seeing his head pop up out of the companionway, greeted him, “Good morning, Sunshine! It’s about time you took your duty seriously!” she jibed, passing as they did through the small entrance, so she could get some shut eye. “Don’t you want to see the sunrise, and hear the Om, and see the book?” he asked her in disbelief at her desire to go below and rest. Tossing her hands down as if to throw the idea away, she retorted, “yeah , yeah. Let me know if I miss anything” as she went below, where Chelsea had retired to her bunk two hours ago. 

            Marcus moved directly to the same spot he had been knighted by Chaz the night before and waited. Sunrise was at 6:02 AM, and he stood near the edge of the railing, waiting, and checking his watch as every few moments passed, in anticipation, knowing each moment brought him closer to the song and the next note in the sequence. He didn’t even care if there was a destination, his sole desire was to hear the music and have the note revealed to him. 

            At 5:45, promptly, he rang the ships bell to arouse the crew, who slowly piled out of the cabins below and sat at the table near the helm.  “What the hell, where’s the coffee?” asked Chelsea, as she knew the 4AM watch was assigned to brew the coffee and scramble up some eggs. Kyle, set about preparing the ritualistic Bloody Mary’s and handed her one in lieu of the absence of her morning joe. The group sat waiting as Chaz rolled out of his hammock and cleaned up below before sitting at the table with them, book in hand. He unwrapped the book and fanned out the pages, as the Universal Om began to sound across the water, emanating from the east. The pages began to reveal their fiery coordinates, and the team studiously wrote them down. They sat waiting for the notes as the 33.33 seconds passed, but nothing else happened. 

Marcus was incensed, grabbing the book from Chaz’s hand, and desperately searching for the notes. “Where are they?” he gasped under his breath, speaking not to his long-time friends, but to the book itself. His glance returning to the group and back to the book several times, feeling betrayed and dishonored as he was the one, the only one who truly understood the meaning of the notes. “They couldn’t possibly get it” he thought to himself. The notes were the sounds that moved in his heart, and made it beat, the very essence of who he was….becoming. 

The friends sat watching him as his anxiety crushed him, unnerving their resolve to tell him ‘everything was ok”, “it’s just a book” or “hey, come on, we’ll get a note next time”. They sat silently, waiting for him to return the book to Chaz. After several moments, Marcus looked up and eyed Chaz with contempt, and then, realizing his friends where sitting, waiting, and watching his bizarre behavior with bewilderment, embarrassment flushed his olive-skinned cheeks and he hesitantly returned the book to Chaz’s open hand, laying it once again in the veil of its red bandana. 

The frozen moment was broken by the excited screech of a seagull, and the team was released from the pull of Marcus’ orbit, and once again remembered the GPS locations they had written down. 32.3820° N, 64.6770° W.  Chaz, returning the book to his pocket, took the scribbled note down below to the chart table.  The team followed and watched as he traced the coordinates out on the chart. “Bermuda” he announced pensively, “It’s halfway to St. George, Bermuda”. 

“Ah, no way”, said Kyle. “We are not going”. “I am not going. There is no way I am going there”, he repeatedly exclaimed his position to the open air and every eye he saw. “I’m not going there”, he doubled down, confidently, ardently, assuredly as his own doubts welled up in his mind to match his resolute stance. The crew began kicking the idea around, the logistics, their planned trip, and squashed plans, as the fledgling storm, nesting on the eastern horizon off the coast of Africa, began to gather speed, taking flight across the Atlantic. 

“Alright!” Chaz’s loud voice thundered over the groups incessant chirping.  “First, let’s find a sheltered cove to anchor and go into town on Dragon Cay, to ride out the storm” “So, let’s get to work and we can cross that ‘sea’ when we get there, if you will”.  He chided himself for sounding like Blackbeard, but knew he had to maintain control of the crew, and now, their fears were mounting and rising to the level of hysteria. “Everyone get to your stations, and let’s get moving”, his final commanding order, sounding a bit less like he was addressing a mutinous crew as they filed out of the companionway in single file order. Their demeanor falling in line with the desired effect of the command, to maintain order.  

 It was nearly 7AM before they had pulled anchor and began to traverse the deep passage.  At their current rate of speed, the 22-mile passage and the 50 miles along the eastern coastline of Middle Caicos, they should arrive at the northern protected cove between the Northern and Middle islands, by late afternoon. And now, they would be sailing against the current, the rising wind, and the tide. 

As they rounded the southern tip of South Caicos, bearing Northward, Jena and Shari tended the jib and kept a lookout for sand bars and reefs on the starboard and port side the Sea Dragon. She began picking up speed as the wind whipped around the sail being caught in the loft, lifting them ever so slightly in the water and rushing them forward. As she skipped along, Kyle tended the main, and Nikki and Chelsea the aft lines. Marcus sat with Chaz, near the helm, keeping a weather eye on the vane, and a watchful eye on the book. The vane was mounted on the top of the mast, at 43’ 4”.  Chaz had told him, the idea was to keep them pointed into the wind, and the arrow moved from left or right with each adjustment of the sails. Occasionally, when she heeled more than 45º to the port from the southeasterly winds, Chaz would call out to Kyle, to “Ease the main”, allowing the wind to spill from the sails, and righting them back to their desired point of sail. The wind speed had picked up from the steady 8-10 knots to over 16 knots and Chaz, knew they were racing the storm and there were no marina’s or safe harbors at Dragon Cay to shelter them from the oncoming storm. 

As Chaz manned the helm, he pondered the coincidence of the legend of St. George the  Dragon Slayer and their newly revealed destination from the book.  His thoughts were interrupted by the beeping sound of the weather radio alerting them to a newly forming weather system heading toward the eastern Caribbean, hurricane Draco, ‘ the dragon’. Chaz pulled up his hat and smoothed his hair, in a subconscious act of preparation, before returning it securely on his head, bracing for the rough seas ahead. For now, there was clear skies and smooth sailing, and they should reach the other side of the island in time to find somewhere to ride out the storm from Dragon Island.