Shadows in the Cave Read Online Free PDF Page A

cliffs rising to the south, the great water blasted with the light of the rising sun—she cared nothing for this familiar world. She felt like she couldn’t breathe, like the air had been sucked off the planet.
    Yes, she knew Aku was on the way. She knew he felt the same passion, bigger than anything she had ever thought people could feel, a force rough and crazy, like the white-frothed waves that racked the sea. She knew that when he came to Amaso, she would give him all they both wanted, they would fulfill the promise. But she felt empty now . She wanted something now .
    She got an idea. She saw her father, Oghi, walking away from the hut they shared—only the two of them lived there. He was headed for the tide pools and soon would come back with his hands full of shells. He was the village seer, and he used shells as tools of divination to get glimpses of the future. She didn’t understand how it worked. Now she ran after him.
    Though she called him “father,” he was no more than a dozen winters older than she, and he was the brother of her first father. Two winters ago her mother died giving birth, and last winter her father died of the coughing sickness. Oghi had never married and lived alone in a small hut about a hundred paces from the village. Though he declined to move into the village—the closeness made him uncomfortable—she moved in with him. Neither of them had any other family left.
    “Father,” she called, “what are the tides today?”
    Oghi meant “sea turtle” in the Amaso language, and her father knew more about the ocean than anyone else in the tribe. In a vision he’d seen himself as an ocean-going turtle. Then he learned to shape-shift into the common turtle with the smooth red-brown back and the fine-tasting green fat. Though he was a monster as a turtle, the weight of two men, as a man Oghi was slight and looked boyish, except for his ancient eyes. His hair, oddly, had been red-brown from birth. He kept track of the weather and everything about the sea for the village.
    “The tides will be big,” he said. Sometimes the incoming tide pushed halfway to the village and deepened the separate fingers of the river until no one could walk across them, or the outgoing tide exposed long stretches of sand and rock, and sucked the river almost dry.
    “Really big. Flood tide way upriver tonight. Go get some water. We’ll cook these mussels.”
    “What about the ebb tide?”
    “Biggest one in a moon tomorrow at midday. Bring back plenty of water. You’ll want to stay away from the river in the morning.”
    Will I, now?
    At dawn she was ready. She shoved the log off the sand into the river, stood in the water naked, and held it back against the current. The outgoing tide shooshed around her thighs. If she didn’t launch on the log, the force would take both dead tree and passenger, ready or not.
    She looked at the sun, gathering itself on the eastern horizon far, far out to sea. She felt the river running out to … no one knew where, not even her father. It was against all wisdom, yes, it was. Of all Amaso people she, daughter of Oghi the sea turtle, knew that best. It was what she wanted—to be swept away by an immense force, to be taken .
    She pushed the log and flopped onto it. The current seized both of them and for a moment snatched her breath away. Once, several years ago, she’d felt loss of control like this. She’d dared some other girls to climb an oak tree that stood on the edge of the high river bank, roots peeping out below. Taunting them, Iona crept further and further out on a thick limb. She was agile as a squirrel and as sure-footed. Her best friend scooted out onto the branch and—
    It snapped off. The friend fell the height of two men to the flat ground and hollered like she’d been wounded mortally. Iona fell onto the sloping bank and tumbled head over heels all the way to the river sand. Her friends shrieked in fear. Iona stood up and roared like a bear, beating her