Son of Fortune Read Online Free PDF Page B

the other tokens already there—the memories they held were still too sharp. The tooth was almost too big to fit.
    “Is that an Indian thing?” Fish asked.
    “Yes,” Aiden said, not offering more explanation. If his luck was strong, Tupic might be through the mountains by now, on his way back to his tribe with the smallpox vaccine. Aiden pulled the strings closed, and the weight of his new life tugged gently against the back of his neck.

he sweetness of that first day at sea was gone by morning, with a storm that terrified Aiden, though it seemed only to slightly annoy the experienced crew. Sven the Ancient just cursed a little more as he fried the eggs and boiled the coffee, his bony legs braced casually against the galley cupboards. Aiden huddled in the bunk belowdecks. He was halfway between trying not to die and hoping with all his might that he would, and soon. The ship pitched and groaned. The sky churned and the sea heaved. He lay twitching and curled in a ball. Seasickness was a unique and disconcerting ailment, especially bad because it seemed ridiculous and weak. This was not the smashing bullet of war. This was not the sword’s deadly stab through the haphazard organs that turned out to matter so terribly much. It was not the gouge and tear of wild animals or the smash of an enemy’s club. It was not influenza that killed half a town in one sweep. It was not smallpox, lockjaw, ague, rabies, cholera, typhoid, pneumonia or any of the vicious maladies of awful everyday life. Seasickness was relentless and dull as bad wallpaper. It was just stupid. But horribly, inescapably, nauseatingly stupid. Aiden felt like someone had turned his body inside out, scooped up his guts with a spoon, boiled his bones into jelly, sprinkled it all with poison and hung him out on the fence for coyote bait. Fish dragged him up on deck a few times to gulp at the fresh air, but the sight of the heaving gray waves just made Aiden worse. At least he learned to throw up over the downwind side of the ship. Finally, by evening, the seas eased and he found he could sit up on deck without fear of vomit boiling up and pushing his eyeballs out of his head.
    “The barometer has steadied out,” Fish said. “So the roughest may be over with.”
    Aiden splayed his jelly bones out on the deck and stared pathetically at the gathering stars. He had never thought in a million years that he would miss the plains of Kansas, but right now their absolute immobility was very enticing.
    The next couple of days were milder, though the sky remained gray and drizzly and the sea sloppy. Aiden could not manage platefuls of fried potatoes and pickled fish, but neither was he begging for death. He mostly sat for hours on the piled timber, just watching the ocean. He did spend a few hours each day with the polar bears, playing with the cubs and coaxing the mother to eat. She was accepting fish now, as the gorge on seal meat had apparently wakened an appetite, but she still sniffed each morsel with suspicion and made her displeasure clear, swatting at the fish with a dismissive huff and peeling her lips back before taking it in her teeth.
    The last day of the trip, as they sailed into San Francisco Bay, was beautiful and calm. The sky was a clear, deep, cloudless blue.
    “Lucky you to see it so,” Captain Neils said. “I sail here twice a month since I am ten years old and have seen blue sky maybe a dozen times. Do you know, for a hundred years men sailed by this bay and never knew it was here? And always ships are looking for good harbor. But for a hundred years they passed it by. Paradise just there—but always in the fog.”
    Aiden had heard about San Francisco, but nothing could have prepared him for the first real sight of it. It looked like a storybook kingdom. Fine wooden houses marched up the hills in every direction, trimmed with what looked like wooden lace, and all with glass windows! Not just one or two windows, but three or four on each