Child of a Hidden Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

engine.
    Across the water in the direction the boats were taking, the sun was just clearing the horizon. Sophie turned her back on it, studying what she could see of the darker sky to the west. The sun was just high enough to have blotted out the stars.
    But it had been light last night; Sophie remembered wondering about the moon as she hauled Gale through the waves.
    As if they’d caught her thought, the thinning clouds separated, revealing a pale, familiar disk.
    Tears pricked her eyes. “There’s the Sea of Tranquillity.”
    However far off the beaten path she’d come, whatever magic had been used to move her here, she was still the same distance from the moon. The thought was comforting.
    â€œI wish Bram was here,” she whispered.
    The baby had drifted off. She returned it to its pallet. Ralo was plaiting dried seaweed into rope.
    â€œI could help with the roof,” she said.
    He shook his head; why would he believe she was capable when nobody else did?
    â€œJust watch them.” he indicated the little ones, who were running up and down the beach turning over branches and scooping up the occasional mollusk.
    Sophie opened her camera case. It was shockproof and waterproof: a fine scratch marked the path of one of the daggers across its surface, but smashing one of Gale’s attackers across the face with it hadn’t done any real harm.
    She’d never been in anything resembling a fight before.
    That wasn’t a fight, it was attempted homicide.
    It was the fight that had caught her attention. She’d seen Gale go into Beatrice’s house and hadn’t noticed the two older women’s resemblance; hadn’t thought much of her at all. Even when she’d spotted the two men loitering across the road, watching the house and muttering, it was Beatrice and her husband she’d worried about.
    She was debating whether to call the police, was imagining explaining to a 911 operator: Hi, I’ve been parked outside my birth mother’s house for a couple days. Now someone else seems to be stalking her too … and I hate competition.
    When Gale had come out, heading down the street, the two guys had perked up and begun following her. It had been an Aha! moment: Hey, that woman looks like Beatrice! And hey, those guys are after her!
    Knife-wielding, grim-faced men … She shuddered.
    â€œDon’t obsess,” she muttered. “Stick with the here and now.”
    The DSLR camera inside the case was undamaged, as was the housing that let her shoot underwater. Easing it into the housing, Sophie tipped the lens into the tidal pool, taking a few shots of the unfamiliar anemone. The snapped-off bit of coral went into the case itself, next to Gale’s magical courier pouch. She shot an image of the moon and then the mud village.
    Look at the beach, Sofe! Not one candy wrapper, no plastic bottles or grocery bags, not even a scrap of a condom.
    How remote would this island have to be for there to be no litter, no SAT-phones? Her battery warning came on and Sophie powered off the camera immediately. The spare was in her car, recharging. She’d shot over two hundred frames of her birth mother, and suddenly she regretted them all.
    She’d have to restrict herself to species she didn’t recognize; if she was careful, she might coax thirty more shots out of the battery. She took one frame of a bat sea star, because it had a fine spiderweb pattern in black on its back, something she hadn’t seen before in Asterina miniata .
    â€œIf I wanted one of those moths, would I be able to get one?”
    â€œYou’re hungry?”
    â€œHungry? Oh, the pickles. No, I want a live one.”
    â€œThey’re sour when they’re fresh.”
    She wasted a few seconds of battery power to show him the photos she’d taken so far. The little kids crowded around, asking questions.
    â€œThey ask if your lightbox is magical.” Ralo indicated the