Girl at the Bottom of the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

again. They were so deep it was like being nowhere. Outer space , Sophie thought hazily, weightless in the dark water. She felt like an astronaut of sorts. When the mermaid undid the tangles of hair that cocooned her, Sophie floated down onto the sandy ocean floor, thinking, This is another planet entirely.
    When she looked up toward the sky, Sophie expected to see nothing, a void, in this place where the sun had never shone. But what she saw in the darkness was a great wall, a darkness upon the darkness that rose high above them. Sophie’s eyes adjusted to the dim glow of her sea-glass talisman, the light fighting against the extinguishing weight and blackness of the depths.
    It looked like a mountain range that rose up as far as she could see and extended all the way to the edges of her vision. But it made Sophie think of the wall inside her, that dark fortress Angel taught her to pull up around her heart so that no one—not good-hearted Angel or evil-hearted Kishka—could get inside, so Sophie decided to regard the epic strength and darkness rising before her as a safe space, not a sinister one. A place for them to rest.
    â€œTalk about the middle of nowhere !” Sophie said aloud and started to giggle, a bit overwhelmed. Even if she was part znakharka , Polish witch, she was still part teenage girl, and she was a human girl at the bottom of the sea, looking up at the biggest mountain the earth had ever kicked up. As her eyes continued to adjust, Sophie could spot thin streaks of brightness at its black peak, orange flares that shone and vanished. Were her eyes playing tricks?
    â€œCan you see?” Syrena asked, swirling down to the floor beside her. The mermaid stretched, raising her arms high above her head and unfurling her giant tail onto the sand. She pointed toward the mountaintop with her long, pale finger, blue in the glow of their talismans. Syrena’s sea glass sat upon her bare chest, a starfish trapped in its center like a bug in amber. Sophie’s, sitting on her grubby t-shirt, held a seashell. The blue light shone up to their faces, and their eyes met: Sophie’s wide with wonder, the mermaid’s ageless, ancient, with their own luminescence.
    â€œIt is the earth birthing itself,” Syrena said. “Special place. The mountain—how you say it?—barfing out hot liquid earth, water-fire.”
    â€œIt’s called lava,” Sophie said.
    Syrena rolled her eyes, a faint strobe in the darkness. “Yes, lava. Don’t be show-off. The lava barf is cooled and hard and becomes the earth. This is where everything happens. Powerful place. Good place to fix you.”
    They lay there, watching the orange tongues lapping at the peak as if they were fireworks in the sky. A fire in the sea. Here and there,great explosions of what looked like black smoke shot from cracks in the endless crags.

    â€œJust water,” Syrena said. “Much minerals in it, make it dark. Very rich water, very healthy for us.”
    Beneath them the ocean floor trembled, a daisy chain of earthquakes as the mountain did its eternal work creating more of the planet. Syrena leaned into Sophie and offered a lock of her hair. “Hungry yet?” the mermaid smiled. For thousands of miles, her hair had acted like a net, a trawler capturing algae and plankton, small shrimp and fishes. Syrena grabbed a thick lock of it. It was messy and weird, yet the dark tangle Syrena had dangled in front of Sophie’s nose smelled oddly delicious. Sophie’s belly rumbled. How long had it been since she had eaten? How long had she traveled on the mermaid’s back?Sophie opened her mouth to the tangle, and it was like eating a great stew. Tastes she’d never known, green tastes and blue tastes, deep and oceanic. Everything salty and briny and delicious. Syrena bowed her head to the girl and Sophie nibbled right up to the roots.
    â€œOkay!” the mermaid snapped, slapping away