Pri darted ahead, her camera rolling. Joe grabbed her fin. Wait, he signaled. But she shook him off and slipped through a gap in the hull.
Pri reached for it.
Inside, the darkness was absolute. Joe’s light found wooden ribs, shattered barrels, and a small, iron-bound chest wedged beneath a collapsed beam. Pri was already prying it open. Inside, nestled in blackened velvet, lay the conch—pale as bone, its silver scrollwork tarnished but intact. It was smaller than Joe had imagined. More fragile.
Pri wrung out her hair. “No. I’m a historian. My grandmother was Afonso Costa’s daughter—Joe’s great-aunt. She never knew her father. I wanted to see his grave before anyone else.” She looked at Joe. “And I wanted to see if you deserved to know the truth.” Saavira Gungali-Pramod Maravanthe-Joe Costa-Pri...
Joe stared. “What truth?”
“It’s not just about finding it,” she said, tapping a weathered map. “It’s about not drowning before we do.”
They descended in borrowed gear, the green water closing over them like a memory. Visibility was poor—shifting curtains of silt and plankton. Saavira led, her hand signals sharp and economical. Pramod followed, a knife strapped to his calf, more for cutting nets than defense. Joe’s heart hammered as his flashlight cut through the murk. Pri darted ahead, her camera rolling
The waves slapped the rocks. Pramod placed the conch in Joe’s hands. “Then it’s yours,” he said. “Family honor.”
“If we’re doing this,” Pri said, her voice low, “we do it my way. No shouting. No heroics. The currents shift every fifteen minutes.”
She gestured to her camera, then pointed upward. I have what I came for. But she shook him off and slipped through a gap in the hull
Joe Costa, the outsider with a diver’s lungs and a historian’s heart, adjusted his mask. He’d flown in from Goa after Pramod’s cryptic message: “The old Portuguese wreck. Your grandfather’s ship.” For Joe, this wasn’t treasure. It was a ghost hunt. His great-grandfather, a ship’s carpenter named Afonso Costa, had gone down with the Nossa Senhora da Luz in 1952. The ship had carried a single, sacred object: a silver-inlaid Gungali —a ceremonial conch—meant for a temple that never received it.
And then there was Pri. No last name, no explanation, just a fierce intelligence and a waterproof camera. She’d joined them three days ago, claiming to be a documentary filmmaker. But the way she studied the wreck coordinates made Saavira uneasy.