The Sweet Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

cat.”
    “Daddy loves the seaside,” I say. “We all do.”
    “I have gills,” Daddy confirms. He frowns at Nico’s knife. “It looks stringy enough for cat.” Nico giggles, but Daddy’seyes wander away and grow troubled. “Likely I’ll never see the sea again,” he says to none of us. He’s been saying things like this more and more lately, since he passed his sixtieth summer. The number bothers him.
    “What does cat taste like?” I ask Nico.
    He chews chews chews gulps, dead pleased. “Sweet and salty at the same time.”
    “Disgusting child.” Herpyllis reaches over to wipe gravy from his cheek. “You know perfectly well it’s pheasant.” They have the same dark hair and green eyes, the same too-wide smile. I take after my own dead mother: lighter curls, deeper voice. I have our father’s eyes, though, that clear unlovely grey. Thinking is unlovely on a girl, Herpyllis has told me, though she likes to fix my hair and kiss my cheek when I’ll let her. She says kissing is good for the skin.
    “Never again,” Daddy says again, a little sharper this time.
    I reach across the table to squeeze his freckled, paper-skinned hand. “One day the sea will get tired of waiting and come to you. It’ll suck itself up into one big wave and come rolling across Athens until it reaches you. It’ll say, Where have you been? ”
    “Will it bring specimens?” Daddy says. “I haven’t looked at new marine specimens in so long. I used to take the king looking for specimens, when he was just a boy. Did I ever tell you how I taught him to swim? He was afraid until I taught him.”
    “The king was never afraid,” Nico says.
    Daddy leans forward. “He tried not to show it, but I knew. Have I never told you that story?”
    Herpyllis and I look at each other. Her lips quirk ever so slightly. I have to look away so I won’t smile.
    Daddy tells Nico for the fortieth or fiftieth time how he taught the king to open his eyes underwater, a skill my brother and I have had since babyhood. “It is impossible for sea water to hurt the eyes,” Daddy says. “Your eyes already contain salt water. You’ve tasted your tears, haven’t you?”
    Nico nods. Daddy often encouraged us to poke and taste and smell our various excretions, to learn about the workings of our bodies. “Why does the sea sting, then?”
    “Algae, perhaps,” Daddy says. “Tiny bits of it. Pythias?”
    “Daddy?”
    “You’ll stay home tomorrow, please, and help me with my books.”
    A job I like, the periodic tidying of his library, and the glimpse of books I’m not normally allowed to see. Plus he likes to talk about his work at such times, and show me his collections and drawings.
    “Well, I’m going hunting,” my brother says. He’s recently made himself a lot of equipment: bow and arrows, a fishing rod, and a stick lashed to a flint blade for a spear. He and his friends set out every morning insisting it’ll be rabbit for supper.
    “No,” Daddy says. “You’ll help, too. We’re all staying home tomorrow.”
    Nico looks at Herpyllis with do-something eyes. She opens her mouth to speak when we hear loud laughter from outside the front gate. Male, more than one. A moment’s quiet, the sound of a flute, then more laughter. We hear them move off down the street, singing. Calliope’s daughter, Calliope’s daughter  …
    “Drunks,” Daddy says. “No, sit down. You don’t need to go look.”
    My brother sits back down and starts hacking at the remains on his plate. He’s sulking. Suddenly he yelps. He’s cut himself, drawing a bead of blood above one knuckle, black in the lamplight.
    “Let me see.” I make a tourniquet with my napkin and hold it tight until the bleeding is staunched. Daddy’s taught me everything he knows about doctoring. I can splint a sprain, lance an abscess, bring down a fever, probably even deliver a baby. He’s shown me his tools and described the process. I kiss the tip of Nico’s finger and wipe pain-tears