Drowned Read Online Free PDF

it open. It’s been roasting in the sun for a while, so the contents are dry and rotten. He dips his index finger inside and, with an “aha!” pulls out a nice-sized, perfectly round pearl. He’s been gathering them forever, and has the best collection on the island. He must have thirty or so by now. He reaches into his pack, pulls out a small box and drops it inside with the others. I always wonder what he expects to do with them. Maybe make a string of them to give as a gift to the princess. It’s not as if any commoners would wear them; they’re just not sensible.
    But they sure are pretty. There is a picture of a girl in a long gown in Fifty Famous Fairy Stories, with hair braided upon her head and beautiful white pearls adorning the hollow of her throat. I sigh, imagining a string of them around my own neck. I don’t know why I constantly think of such impractical things when I am around Tiam.
    We walk along to the west side. There’s not a single soul anywhere to be seen, and so when a seagull squawks above us, it’s eerie and foreboding.
    Tiam is thinking something else as he watches two birds soar over us. “I wish we could live up there, in the clouds. And fly, like them.”
    Tiam wishes a lot. I guess I do, too. But his wishes are so creative. He doesn’t think like everybody else. He’s not only strong, he’s smart. Yes, he would be a good king. “We used to,” I mumble.
    He laughs. “Yeah, right.”
    “We did, ” I insist. “We built machines that could fly like birds and carry people inside them. But that was a long time ago. Like thousands and thousands of tides ago.”
    “Really?” He sighs. “That was the Golden Age of Man, right, that you told me about?”
    I nod. I’d explained to him that every civilization, every race, has its Golden Age. Ours was so many tides ago, all we have are rumors and stories about its grandeur. Back then, every human was clean and beautifully dressed. Children had fat, rosy cheeks and so much land of their own that they could run across it until they were out of breath and still have more to conquer. Every dinner table was piled high with so much food of all colors and tastes, more food than anyone could possibly eat. People went to social gatherings and did things called dancing, music, art, because they enjoyed it, because it made them feel good and because they didn’t have to fight for what they needed. They had everything they needed at their fingers. They never had to wrestle for food or dodge scribblers or clean out a craphouse.
    I’d told him that every civilization also has its decline. Some go quickly, others erode away slowly. Our decline started quite suddenly, with the floods that covered the earth. Nobody knows why it happened, because it wiped out nearly everything. It made recovery impossible. Now what little is left is just fading away, bit by bit, like the last embers after a fire has been stamped out. Humanity is fighting, and has been fighting for a long time. But we’ve been losing for too long. We used to think that we could get back some of that lost rosy-cheeked grandness, but nobody believes that anymore. We’re almost at the end. I don’t think anyone can deny that.
    He smiles at me, only for a moment. “You’re amazing,” he says into the wind.
    “Sure,” I mutter, blushing more deeply.
    “It’s true. The things you know. It’s just sad that, well...” He looks away, but I can complete the sentence for him. It’s just sad that you are so deformed. He smiles irresistibly, which makes it impossible to hate him. “Forget it.”
    I quickly change the subject. “So what does you being king have to do with me?”
    “With you?”
    “I mean, why did the king pick today to talk to me?”
    “Oh. I...don’t know,” he says, a peculiar expression on his face. Either he’s picturing himself sitting on the throne wrapped in pretty robes or he knows exactly why the king was talking to me.
    The west side is the side of the