The Lost Ones Ch. 5

The room was filled with a rosy glow as the sun crept up over the sea. Too caught up in each other, in the rhythmic thrust and retreat of passionate lovemaking, it might as well have been pitch black for all the attention Hunter and Miranda paid the glorious dawn. As passion reached it's climax, a breeze blew through the open French doors, bringing the scent of the sea and the fragrant Hibiscus flowers blossoming profusely on bushes below Hunter's second floor balcony.

They had arrived at Hunter's beautiful tropical island home just after midnight. Everyone in the household had been sleeping, and so they had slipped up the staircase and into Hunter's old bedroom, barely taking time to shuck their travel-wrinkled clothes before collapsing into bed in complete exhaustion.

Roused by the stirring of warm air, Miranda slipped from under Hunter's sated body and walked out onto the balcony, unmindful of her nudity. Hunter watched as she lifted her face to the breeze, allowing it to lift her hair and dry her perspiration dewed skin. She looked glorious there, haloed by the rising sun, her soft skin glimmering as if gilded. There were times when Hunter couldn't believe how much he loved this woman. Rising himself, he joined her on the wrought iron balcony, wrapping his arms around her from behind and hugging her close to his chest. "I love you, Miranda," he murmured against her temple.

Miranda smiled, and turned to face him. "Are we safe here, Hunter? I mean, really safe?"

"More than we'd be on the mainland. This is a small island--everybody knows everybody, so any strangers would cause a stir. Your people won't be able to sneak up on us." He looked out over the ocean. "As long as we stay out of the water, that is."

A loud, slightly-out-of-tune whistle alerted them to the fact that they were no longer alone. They slipped back into the shadows of the bedroom as an old man pushed a wheelbarrow full of gardening tools around the corner of the house and across the lawn toward the well tended flower gardens. "You'd better throw on some clothing, darling," Hunter said as he pulled on a pair of well worn denim cutoffs. "If Henry is out and about, it won't be long before his wife, Maria, knocks on the door to see who's bunking down in my bed."

"But I don't have anything to wear, Hunter!" Miranda gasped, realizing that she was literally without a stitch of clothing other than the stuff she'd been wearing while they traveled. Her skin crawled at the thought of putting those dirty garments back on.

Hunter pulled a white dress shirt out of his closet and tossed it to her. "We'll get you some more clothing this afternoon," he assured her as she stepped into the bathroom to wash up and dress. She had just pulled the shirt on and was buttoning it up when there was a loud, female squeal from the outer room. "Hunter! Welcome home, baby!" the woman cried.

Curious, Miranda cracked the bathroom door and peaked out. Hunter stood in the center of the bedroom, wrapped in the arms of a tiny woman who looked like an apple with legs. The woman was probably less than five feet tall, and at least as wide as she was tall. Dressed in a bright red dress and wearing a green hat over her snow-white hair, she definitely looked like an apple. "When did you get in?" she was asking now. "How long are you planning on staying?" The woman cupped Hunter's face in her hands. "Oh, it's so good to have you home, baby. I've missed you--we've all missed you..." her voice trailed off as she spotted something lying on the floor beside the bed. "What's this?" She bent over and picked it up, and it was then that Miranda realized that it was her rather skanky looking dress. "Do you have someone with you, Hunter?" There was no censure in the woman's voice, just curiosity.

Just then Hunter saw Miranda peaking out of the bathroom, and motioned her out. Running a self-conscious hand over her tangled hair, Miranda stepped forward and took Hunter's outstretched hand. "Maria, this is Miranda. Miranda, Maria has been my father's housekeeper since before I was born."

The old woman stepped forward. "It's a pleasure to meet you, child," she said and took Miranda's hands in hers. At the contact there was a moment of...something. Both Maria and Miranda started. Maria studied Miranda for a long moment, and Miranda was starting to feel uncomfortable under her intense scrutiny when Maria turned back to Hunter. "You'll be wanting some breakfast, I'd wager. And someone needs to tell your father that you're home." Maria nodded and, giving Miranda a cautious smile, slipped out of the room.

"I don't think she likes me," Miranda said, crossing her arms over herself. Her hand still tingled from the flash of whatever it was that had passed between herself and Maria.

"Don't be silly, Love. Maria likes everyone. She's just surprised. I've never brought a woman home with me before." He took her in his arms and nuzzled the side of her neck. "And not just any woman," he murmured, "but the most special, most wonderful woman in the world. The one carrying my child. The one I love!" Suddenly, with a laugh, Hunter picked her up and swung her around and around, until they were both dizzy and laughing like loons.

* * *

Breakfast was served in a craftily designed room combining the of elegance of a formal dining room with the comfort and relaxed atmosphere of a screen porch. It was a wing extending off the back of the house toward a cliff overlooking the ocean. Three sides were massive windows, open now to the fresh breeze. The table, easily large enough to hold a dozen or more people, was gleaming wood and glass.

Sitting at one end of the table, a plate of toast and scrambled eggs growing cold before him, cup of coffee in one hand, morning newspaper in the other, was a handsome older man. Miranda, holding Hunter's arm in a death grip as he escorted her into the room, suddenly knew what Hunter was going to look like in thirty years. The older man, undoubtedly Hunter's father, was the spitting image of his son, with the exception of wings of silver at his temples, and a few character wrinkles. He glanced up as they entered, and with a smile, he folded his paper and set the coffee aside. He stood as they approached.

"Welcome home, Son," he said.

"Thanks, Dad," Hunter replied with a smile. "It's good to be here." When his father turned to face Miranda, Hunter performed introductions. "Dad, this is Miranda. Miranda, my father, Robert."

Robert regarded the woman on his son's arm seriously. Maria had been troubled when she had come to tell him that his son was home, and with a strange woman. It took a lot to concern Maria, but she was rarely ever wrong. There was definitely something different about this young woman.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miranda. Are you hungry?"

"Yes, sir," she replied meekly. It was obvious she was intimidated by him. Good, he thought. Until he found out who she was and what she wanted with his son, the more wary she was of him, the better. He saw Hunter squeeze the girl's hand reassuringly. Obviously, Hunter was quite smitten.

"Then fill a plate and sit down." He gestured toward the interior wall, where a long sideboard held just about anything a person could want to eat for breakfast.

Miranda felt her mouth quirk at the sight of all that prepared food. She leaned closer to Hunter to whisper in his ear. "No wonder your cupboards and refrigerator were so bare. Did you ever cook for yourself before you left here?"

"Not if I could help it. Compared to Maria's cooking, mine is barely edible."

"I thought Maria was the housekeeper, not the cook."

Hunter grinned. "Maria does everything. I have yet to figure out how she has enough hours in the day, but this place is always clean as a whistle, the food is hot and delicious and my family is spoiled rotten. It was a great way to grow up."

Breakfast was a relatively pleasant affair. Hunter and Robert spent most of the time catching up on their lives. Hunter had been gone from the island for three years pursuing his education, and there was a lot of catching up to do. Miranda sat quietly, nibbling at a selection of fresh fruit and sipping her glass of fresh squeezed orange juice--Hunter had pushed it on her, muttering something about folic acid--and trying not to attract attention to herself. There was something about the way that Robert kept looking at her, as if he were suspicious of her in some way. It gave her the creeps.

Just as breakfast was finishing up, somewhere in the house a phone rang. No one at the table made a move to answer, but the ringing swiftly stopped. In a moment Maria appeared at the door. "Excuse me," she said politely. "There is a phone call for Hunter in the study." Maria beamed at Hunter. "Word of your return has spread across the island. All your old friends are eager to talk to you."

Hunter's eye lit at the thought of talking to some of the friends he'd left behind when he'd gone off to school. "I'll be right back," he murmured. He didn't see the look of panic in Miranda's eyes as he stood and walked through the doors.

Alone with Robert, Miranda stared at her half eaten breakfast. Suddenly what little appetite she'd had was gone. She didn't look up until she felt a hand on her arm. To her surprise, Robert had moved to sit beside her. The serious expression on his face told her that this wasn't going to be the pleasantries of a man getting to know his possible future daughter-in-law. "What are you doing here, Miranda? What is it that you want with my son?"

"I...I don't understand..." she said nervously.

"Oh, I think you do." He gave her a hard look. "I know who and what you are, Miranda. I don't know what games you're playing, but I won't have my son being pulled back into that mess that we managed to escape."

"You know what I am?"

"Of course I do. I'm not a fool, child. While our clan may have left our aquatic life behind, we are still very much Aquians. We can sense each other." Talk to each other, he added in the Aquian's nonverbal manner.

"The Lost Ones," she breathed, momentarily forgetting to be intimidated by Robert. "I knew it wasn't just a story!"

"Not by a long shot."

"I have so many questions! My people...our people need your help!"

He gave her a wry look. "So, it has finally come to pass, has it?" Miranda blinked, surprised by the rancor in his voice. "We warned them. Five hundred year ago we warned the clans that our people were going to become sterile sometime in the next millennium. We weren't believed. We told them that something in the sea was causing this and only by leaving behind the underwater world and coming above would we be able to avoid that fate. We were called heretics. And now they have the gall to ask us for help?"

"No!" Miranda gasped. "It's not that way at all. My people don't even believe you exist. They thing the Lost Ones are just a legend. I'm the one who wanted to find you, to ask you to help us."

"I don't see why we should." They both looked up as Hunter walked back into the room with a big grin on his face. "He doesn't know. I don't want you saying anything to him."

"He's going to find out eventually," Miranda murmured.

"I'll tell him in my own time."

This time it was Miranda who gave Robert a hard look. "Make it fast. Time isn't something we have a lot of."

"Sorry about that!" Hunter laughed as he plopped down beside them at the table and took a large quaff of his now cold coffee. "Toby could talk to ear of a statue. I hope you two kept each other entertained."

"Of course, son. Miranda is a charming young lady. I hope I have the opportunity to talk to her at length some time before you two leave." It was a subtly disguised hint, Miranda knew. They would talk again.

* * *

The next couple of days passed almost idyllically. Miranda spent most of her time with Hunter. She almost fanatically avoided being along with Robert. She knew, when the time for that conversation came, it was going to be rough. From his earlier reaction, she doubted he was going to be as overjoyed at her pregnancy as Hunter was.

The moment of truth came late one evening. Henry has asked Hunter to give him a hand out in the gardens with something or other. Miranda strongly suspected that whatever it was had been fabricated by Robert so he could get her alone to finish their talk.

"You've done a good job of avoiding me these last couple days, Miranda. Makes me think you have something to hide."

Determined to stand up for herself, Miranda gave him a hard look. "I'm hiding nothing that is mine to tell."

"You never did tell me what it was you want with my son, or why the two of you are hiding out here."

"I met your son, quite by accident, almost four months ago. We began a...relationship...almost immediately. We had one beautiful day together. And then I went home. It's a long, complicated story, but our people..."

"Your people, Miranda. We don't claim them."

"Okay, my people, are trying to repopulate. All women of childbearing age are impregnated, in hopes that a fertile male child will be produced. I returned home for my impregnation. Only, surprise, surprise, it was too late. I was already pregnant." She paused, giving that information a moment to sink in. Before he could say anything, she continued. "When I explained that my baby's father was a Human, or so I thought, my clan leader demanded that I bring this Human below so he could be tested to see how it was possible that he'd fathered the child. I decided not to do so. I wasn't going to turn Hunter over to them to be used like some sort of lab animal. I came above, managed to shake my pursuers, and went to Hunter. He brought me here."

Robert looked ready to blow a gasket. "You dragged my son into this mess you've gotten yourself into? How dare you!"

"How dare I? I didn't even know Hunter was Aquian until you told me! I was trying to protect him, and he, me, and both of us, our child. This sure as hell isn't something either of us planned." She lowered her voice. "Maybe, if you'd told him about his heritage from the beginning, instead of letting him believe he was Human, we wouldn't be in this situation now!"

"If he hadn't run off to the mainland like a child, he would have been told by now!"

"What the hell is going on here?" Miranda and Robert turned to find Hunter, his hands and knees stained with soil and grass, standing in the doorway. "Dad? What does she mean, tell me about my heritage?" Robert looked at a total loss for words, so Hunter turned to Miranda.

"This is something for your father to tell you, Hunter," she murmured. A cop out, she knew, but she didn't know what to say to him right now that would make sense. And it really wasn't her place to tell him about being Aquian. "Excuse me."

Hunter watched Miranda slip through a side door and disappear into the darkened gardens. As soon as she was out of sight, he turned to his father. "What did she mean about you letting me believe I am Human?"

Robert decided to say it quick. "You, we, are like her, Son. We're Aquians."

"What are you talking about? She told me about some of the things she can do, showed me others. I can't do any of those things."

"You could with training. Ordinarily, we would have told you, explained things to you and begun teaching, when you turned thirty, but you were away from the island at that time."

Hunter had a slightly glazed look on his face. He sunk into a chair and gazed blindly out a window at the moon, which was just rising out of the sea. "The Lost Ones..." he breathed, stunned. Then he looked up at his father. "We are the ones that Miranda spoke of."

"Yes. Our clan left the sea and our totally aquatic lives behind five hundred years ago, to avoid what's happening to the Aquians now."

Finally, Hunter stood. "I have a lot to think on." He looked around. "Where did Miranda go? I need to ask her some questions..." His voice trailed off as a scream split the stillness of the night. Hunter bolted out the door Miranda and exited earlier, Robert a step behind.

The gardens were deeply shadowed and mysterious, but not so dark that the men couldn't see what was going on in a darker shadowed corner near the head of the path that lead down to the beach. Three figures wrestled there; the smaller one, moonlight flashing off her gold hair, was obviously Miranda. The other two were unfamiliar to Hunter and his father. The two strangers quickly overwhelmed the struggling Miranda. One held her in a fierce bear hug while the other attempted to bind her wrists behind her. Miranda wasn't making it easy for them. One of the strangers yelped as Miranda sunk her teeth into the palm held over her mouth.

Hunter was about to launch himself into the fray when he heard a soft click from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see his father pull a small device the size of a car remote from his pocket. When he pushed the button on the top of it, the garden was suddenly flooded with light, and an alarm began to sound.

The three figures froze. "I'd recommend that you release Miranda immediately," Robert said in a booming voice. The two strangers, women themselves, didn't obey. The taller of the two gave the men a scathing look.

"Stay out of this. It has nothing to do with you. This woman is a fugitive, and we are here to take her into custody."

"No!" Miranda shrieked.

"That woman has asylum on this island. I don't know who you are, or where you come from," a lie that Robert told without batting an eye "but she's not going anywhere. Release her." The final command was punctuated by a group of well armed men stepping out of the bushes surrounding the garden and aiming their weapons at the three women. Robert gestured at the guns as the women attempted to pull Miranda in front of them as a hostage. "Tranquilizer guns, ladies. Harmless, but they'll drop you in about two seconds flat, and you'll be out for hours."

The women looked at each other, and then slowly raised their hands, releasing their prisoner. As soon as she was free, Miranda dashed across the lawn and into Hunter's arms. He held her close as he could to him, burying his face in her hair. The two of them didn't see Robert's guards lead the two Aquian women into the house. They just held on as if they'd never let go.

"They found us," Miranda murmured against Hunter's chest. "They were going to take me back, and wait for you to come outside, ambush you."

"It's okay, baby. Father will take care of them, I'm sure. He's our, how did you put it? Clan leader. I get the feeling that your clan is going to be thinking twice before trying a stunt like this again."

"They don't know you're Aquian. They think you're just a bunch of Humans."

"Well, shall we go inside and see what my father is telling them?" Miranda nodded, and arm in arm they walked inside. The two women were sitting at one end of the long table, flanked by guards. Robert sat at the other end. It was obvious that they had been waiting for Hunter and Miranda to arrive. As soon as they were seated, Robert turned to their uninvited guests.

"You said she is a criminal. What are the charges against her?" he asked.

"She's wanted for kidnapping," the taller woman, whom Miranda recognized as Adria, said. "It's a very serious charge."

When Miranda would have protested, Robert touched her hand to stay her words. "We agree it's a terrible charge. But she came here alone. Who is she accused of kidnapping?"

Adria gave Robert a superior look. "She is with child. That child is the property of our people, and she had no right to take it from us."

"I don't think so!" Hunter growled, drawing the women's attention to him. "That child is the property, as you so kindly put it, of it's parents, Miranda and myself. If you think we're going to just turn our baby over to you so you can do God only know what to it, you'd better think again!"