“Yes, yes, where!” he said, clapping the old fellow on the shoulder. “Where you found the merfolk skull. You’re a linguistic genius, my good man!” He turned, intent on telling Jacky and Rad the good news—and his eyes widened in amazement.

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

MARTY

They returned to the Oannes just past six o’clock in the evening, as the sun was dipping beneath the horizon. Pip and Elsa had been relieved to find them none the worse for wear, though Pip let loose on Marty for causing them to worry. Yet her anger quickly gave way to fascination as he described their time at the tribal village and the discovery in the lava tube.

“There were cave paintings on the walls?” Pip said.

Marty nodded. “Petroglyphs too, though not nearly as many. It was remarkable, Pip. There must have been over five hundred paintings. Geometric, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic. Some appeared to be symbolic—”

“For heaven’s sake, speak English, Marty,” said Rad. To Pip and Elsa, she added, “Most of them were silhouettes of people hunting and dancing and mating. A lot were of animals too. Deer, big birds, fish. And most notably…” She looked at Marty.

He grinned. “Merfolk.”

“Merfolk!” Pip exclaimed. “Are you pulling my legs?”

“Pulling my leg, Pip. Singular. And, no, I am most certainly not.”

Elsa was regarding him skeptically. “Are you sure the representations you saw were merfolk, Marty?”

“Upper body of a human, lower body of a fish? What would you classify that as?”

“I assume the paintings must have been old and degraded by the elements?”

“Old, yes. I can’t say how old, but some were created with bat excrement and were extremely simplistic. Bi-triangular females, T-shaped males, figures with raised and rounded arms. But degraded? Not at all. The cover of the dense vegetation and overhanging rock protected them well from nature’s vagaries, it seems.”

“And the merfolk, mon capitaine?” Pip pressed.

“They were often depicted standing side by side with the humans with no discernible connection to each other. However, in some scenes they were in swimming positions, facing away from the humans. Fleeing from hunters? Many prehistoric cave paintings depict animals in the running position for just that reason. Prehistoric hominin bragging, I suppose you might say. Then again, there appeared to be ritualistic scenes in which the humans were worshipping the merfolk. So did the people who created the paintings consider the merfolk spirits that needed to be appeased? Or prey? I can’t answer that. I wish one of us had brought a phone to take pictures. But no matter. I’ll be returning first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow?” Rad said, surprised. “You’re going to hike all the way back there tomorrow?”

“Of course! A discovery such as this needs to be thoroughly documented.”

“Good luck finding the entrance to that lava tube again,” Jacky said.