Read Online The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) by Aaron Starmer - Free Book Online

“Do you want to know what it was?”
    Keri turned back. “I. Don’t. Give. A. Crap.”
    “It was love letters to Alistair,” Fiona said. “We’re dating now, in case you were wondering.”
    The bluntness caused Keri to hold her hands up in surrender. “If you say so.”
    “I … we … uh…” I stuttered myself into silence. The logical reaction was to call Fiona a liar or to laugh it all off as a joke, but I was ditching logic in favor of emotion. I kind of liked what she’d said.
    “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone,” Keri told us, and she was true to her word, double-timing it to our house like she was racing curfew.
    “Who’s nosier, your sister or that Mandy girl she hangs out with?” Fiona asked, but I wasn’t going to let her off the hook that easily.
    “Really? Dating?”
    “Oh, come on.” Fiona rolled her eyes. “I’ve been to your room. Your mom found us behind that rock. It’s what everyone is thinking. The more you deny it, the more they’ll believe it.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because I’m older than you. Wiser.”
    “Oh right, a wise old thirteen,” I said, forgetting the promise I’d made to myself to humor Fiona for the sake of uncovering the truth.
    “Actually, I’m fourteen now,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Let’s go to the park. To the swing sets. No one will bother us there. You need to hear more. Things get complicated.”

    THE LEGEND OF FIONA LOOMIS, PART II
    Fiona Loomis returned to Aquavania many times throughout her childhood. Only at night, though, and only when everyone in her family was sleeping. The radiators would call to her, and she’d creep down to the liquid portal in her basement and enter a world she was growing to love.
    Toby was always waiting, and so too were all the creatures and landscapes Fiona had dreamed up. Life went on without her, on its own time line. Fiona could be away from Aquavania for a week, only to return and find that ten years had passed. Or she could be away for a month and find that only ten minutes had passed. There was no way of predicting the time gap, but whenever she was gone, the palm trees and vines and ferns would climb and twist and grow. The animals would form couples and have babies and become families. When things got old, they wilted. Things passed away.
    To say it was always harmonious would be a lie. Sometimes Fiona would introduce a new creature and anarchy would ensue. Take, for example, the levitating bandicoots. The problem with levitating bandicoots was that they could eat almost anything in Fiona’s world, but they preferred to eat the highest flowers of the orangeberry spruce. Those flowers were the staple of the paisley giraffes’ diet. Without them, the giraffes starved.
    So once when Fiona returned after some time away, she found bandicoots so chubby that they could hardly levitate and paisley giraffe carcasses strewn everywhere. It horrified her, but it also taught her that her powers weren’t perfect. Sure, she could create more rules—she could make the bandicoots hate orangeberry spruce flowers or make the giraffes less finicky—but she also had to let this world figure itself out. It was as real a place as any.
    “Am I God here?” Fiona once asked Toby.
    “In a manner of speaking,” Toby told her.
    “Everything else grows old here, but I don’t, do I?”
    “Your body doesn’t,” Toby explained. “But your mind does. Your body only grows old in the Solid World.”
    “The Solid World?”
    “The place you come from. Home.”
    By home , Toby meant Thessaly—Fiona’s house, her family. But to Fiona, Aquavania was starting to feel like home as well. Every time she visited, she made the island bigger. She gave it levels. Her mind conjured up enormous trees with intertwined limbs that served as walkways through the canopies. Smaller branches wove together like tangles of fingers and formed tunnels.
    Below the canopies, Fiona created an aviary so thick with birds that it looked like