Chapter 1

I was drowning in space; then space became water.

Okay, at least drowning in water was logical.

Of course, logical wouldn't matter much if I were dead.

Dead?

I opened my mouth to scream in protest, only to gag on the aforementioned water. Light surrounded me, blue to one side, pink from the other. Which direction was up? I kicked reflexively, propelling myself toward the pink, away from the blue.

I broke through a salmon-tinted glass ceiling, gasping for air, swallowing huge lungfuls of it. All around I saw rosy water, ruddy sky. What on earth? Then I felt it, throbbing through my bones and blood: recognition.

There are few places one knows instinctively; this was one of mine. I had played in these waters on almost every coast: Turkey, Greece, Italy, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco. The colors were unmistakable, the taste unforgettable.

I was in the Mediterranean. Sunrise was embracing the now blue black sea with fingers of rose, gold, and lavender.

I wasn't drowning.

Nor was I comforted to find myself in the middle of the Med, with neither land nor ship from horizon to horizon. My legs hadn't stopped moving, keeping me afloat. Shivering, I moved through the water, looking for a warm current. I passed through one, then turned around to return to it.

"Dagon be exalted!" I saw them at the same time I heard them. Before I could kick away, a wide, flat thing flew at me, covering my head, my arms, imprisoning my movements. I flailed, tried to get free, but I was caught. I cursed as I went under, able to use only my legs to surface again. In the back of my consciousness I heard a chant,

"Dagon, Lord of the Sea, we bow to thee." My brain was refiring the image I'd seen: a canoe carrying four bearded men in dresses. The thing tightened around me, slipping lower, stopping my legs from paddling.

I really was going to drown.

"Dagon, Lord Dagon, we bring—" The rest of it was submerged with my ears. Water burned in my nostrils, familiar briny Mediterranean seawater. How could I have ever known it would be my last—my thought was interrupted as someone yanked my head above water, his hands in my hair, half ripping it from the roots.

"She is beautiful as benefits thee. Take her, Dagon—" The chorus continued as I shrieked, then inhaled, desperately forcing myself to not fight off my pseudorescuers. Some factoid in my military training reminded me that more people drowned while being rescued. Don't struggle, Chloe. Don't. I was coughing up water, my eyes streaming, blurring the world around me.

Arms grabbed me as I was going under for the third time. A hand covered my mouth, another voice crooned for me to be quiet and still, they had caught me so that I could be honored. I didn't want to be honored, I wanted to be free!

It took every ounce of effort not to scream as they pulled my head again, using my hair as a handle. Then they grasped me around the elbows and hefted me into the canoe.

"Ha der-kay-toe glows with the beauty of Lord Dagon's love," they sang. The vibrations of landing hard on the wood resonated through my body, knocked the wind out of me, left me motionless for a moment. I couldn't see because my hair, wet and heavy, covered my face.

"HaDerkato delights the heart of the Lord of Corn." I coughed up more water, spewing it through the—net?—I was caught in. I was outraged. I was snared in a net? Like a fish? "Dagon, Master of the Sea . . ." I fought to catch my breath. I twisted within my bonds, then stopped for a moment. Nearly drowning was hard work. I was exhausted.

I sneezed.

"HaDerkato blesses us," they said. "Lord Dagon embraces her." Quickly I did a body inventory. Everything seemed to work—arms, legs, torso, neck. Though my head felt disconnected, still I understood the words of the . . . sailors?

"Dagon, Lord of Corn, this gift we bring to thee. . . ."

Daybreak had turned the sky blue, with misty clouds above us. Through squinted eyes I saw that I was dumped in the back of the canoe—but it wasn't really a canoe, it was more like a skiff—and I was lying across a plank in the back, my feet trailing an inch above the water. Strapped as I was in the net, I saw only my legs, the sky, and the odd sandaled foot.

Sandals, dresses on men.

"We implore thee to accept this propitiation."

My eyes popped open at that.

"She's waking!" someone shouted.

"Where is her tail?" another male voice asked.

"Get her before she returns!" The net was ripped off, my wrists and ankles tied, despite my silent struggling.

Too much of a battle and I would find myself overboard, definitely drowning. "Don't look in her eyes," one of them said. I opened my mouth to scream.

"Silence her before she calls to Dagon," someone said. They gagged me with salty rags.

"Keep your ears blocked, beware of her gaze!" said another, the chanting to Dagon uninterrupted throughout.

"Why does she have legs?" one of them asked. "As a consort of Dagon, should she not have a flipper, or fins, or a tail?"

A tail? I stopped struggling and trying to gnaw through my gag, I looked around, wincing as the gag tugged at my hair. I saw them, upside down.

Men in dresses, colored and embroidered dresses with sandals. Short hair. Beards. Swords at their sides.

Okay, men in dresses. However, my mental processes didn't say,

"Okay," they said, "B'seder." Were they equivalent?

"Dagon, Progenitor of the Fields . . ."

Who was that? Where was Cheftu, my beloved husband, the reason I was here to begin with? I was here with men in dresses. I sneezed—no mean trick with a gag—then looked up again, bewildered.

The sky was suddenly tinted red; when I looked down at my legs, the water beyond them, it was also red. Then I realized my hair, which was framing everything I saw, was red.

"Dagon, Rapist of the Rivers, creator of the seamaids . . ."

My hair was red?

My world rocked, canted at a definite forty-five-degree angle. My hair was red! Omigod.

A shudder coursed through me as I tried to look at my clothes, at my body. Then I felt them—signs of the twentieth century in this obviously ancient world: the rayon miniskirt drying in the December breeze, the edge of a push-up bra digging into my ribs. Straps around my ankles attached to a ridiculous pair of sandals. The edge of a Day-Glo necklace gleamed spectrally in the morning light. 

Around my neck! On my body!

I forced myself to breathe slowly, tried to still the racing of my pulse. I was a redhead with parchment pale skin—again—dressed like a cheap hooker. And only my thoughts were in my brain!

Another Dagon verse. Dagon. Dagon. A king? A god? A priest? I was drawing total blanks. Fear bottled in my throat.

Where was Cheftu?

The skiff began cutting through the water at a fast clip. I get the world's worst motion sickness on small vessels. Being petrified didn't help my stomach, either. Dagon's praises continued, like Muzak. I took a firm grip on my mind.

No Cheftu and you're a redhead: the rules have changed.

I bit back panic again and reasoned with myself. One, you woke up in the Mediterranean. Literally in the Mediterranean. Then it struck me: They hadn't been surprised to find me, they'd apparently been looking for me.

"Dagon, Showerer of the Plains, thy—"

Dagon. Dagon. My thoughts derailed as we pulled up to a big ship, complete with sails, oars, and cast of hundreds. More men in dresses. More Dagon verses. I'd been rescued by some type of sailor. An ancient sailor. I was thrown over a man's shoulder like a catch of tuna, and I bumped against him as he braced himself in the skiff. My head was pounding with all the blood flowing to it. After a few shouts, a rope was thrown down.

"Is haDerkato secure?" one of them asked.

The oaf carrying me patted my thigh and shouted back, "Ken! She is secure, but if she falls, haYam will provide another."

The muscles beneath my stomach shifted as the man began climbing up the rope hand over hand. "You are a weighty goddess, haDerkato," he huffed.

I had gone stiff as a board to stay over his shoulder: he certainly wasn't holding me! I tensed my legs and tried desperately to keep from swinging out. He grunted and groaned as he pulled us up the ship's side. Beneath me, the sea, the sailors, and the boat grew smaller and smaller. Suddenly a cold breeze blew across me.

"Watch out for her gaze," the climber gasped out as he tossed me down on yet another wooden deck.

© 1999 by Suzanne Frank

Excerpted from Sunrise on the Mediterranean © Copyright 2012 by Suzanne Frank. Reprinted with permission by Warner Books. All rights reserved.