Read Online Between the Sea and Sky by Jaclyn Dolamore - Free Book Online Page A

persona.
    “Good day.”
    The door shut. Swift flipped the coin the human had paid with and caught it, three times in a row, then dropped it in the coin box. “So you found the place,” he said.
    “I did. Was that Alan’s father?”
    “Yes. Did you tell him you know Alan?”
    “No.”
    “Smart. He doesn’t like anybody.” Swift sat behind the desk and kicked his feet up on the counter, flexing his toes. Fandarsee didn’t have the feathered wings of a bird, but their feet were shaped similarly for grasping something while in flight, with long toes and a small thumb on the back of their heel. “How do you know Alan anyway?”
    “It was a long time ago,” Esmerine said. “We were kids. He used to come to the islands and gather seaweed and we talked.” She spoke quickly, leaving emotion behind. Alan had seemed so unimpressed by her appearance after their years apart, so she didn’t want to make much of it either. “Why was his father here? He sounded upset.”
    “He’s always upset,” Swift said. “Whenever he visits we’d all rather be somewhere else. He loaned the shop some money a while ago and it hasn’t all been paid back. I think he loaned the money so he could keep some kind of tie on Alan. He’s that kind of person. But I wouldn’t care if Alan did go. I guess he used to be your friend, but I can tell you that he’s a pompous—”
    The door opened again, and this time it was Alan. Swift yanked his feet from the counter. Alan hung up his hat again and looked at Esmerine.
    “I went to the house,” he said. “I spoke to a young man there, who said a Lord Carlo had been visiting him when a mermaid came and ‘charmed’ them, and gave Lord Carlo her belt. He was not entirely forthcoming with this information, mind you, but I managed to get it out of him.”
    “Charmed them? No, they must have stolen it from her!”
    “I’m sure you’re right; I’m only telling you what he said.”
    “Thank you,” Esmerine said, tugging at her clothes, forcing herself to keep seated so her feet wouldn’t hurt, although she wished more than anything to be able to swim circles around the room. “But—she was no longer there?”
    “He said they departed a few weeks ago for the Diels—mountain country, which is apparently where Lord Carlo is from—to be married.”
    “Who is this Lord Carlo?” This was sounding worse all the time. “Dosia only mentioned boys.”
    “Maybe Lord Carlo is a boy,” Swift said. “I heard about a baby king one time.”
    Or maybe Lord Carlo had heard about Dosia somehow, or seen her from a window, and decided to claim her, Esmerine thought.
    Esmerine had come so far already. The more she learned of Dosia’s fate, the more she felt as if a piece of her own self had broken off and fallen into the ocean. But how could she follow Dosia to the Diels?
    “Are you … all right?” Alan asked.
    She nodded wordlessly. Panic made her flush. The room was unbearably stuffy.
    “Does Dosia still remember how to read?” he asked.
    “Only a little …” Alan had taught them both some letters, but she felt certain Dosia had forgotten.
    “Maybe you could get a letter to her.”
    “Maybe,” she whispered, her voice cracking. She swallowed, thinking of the boys who had been killed in the ship’s graveyard when she was young, and the shock and grief their mothers had experienced. Sometimes terrible things happened and there was nothing one could do, but she had never thought it could happen to her family. And Dosia wasn’t even dead. Esmerine didn’t want Dosia to be dead, but if she was miserable and Esmerine would never see her again, it was almost worse.
    Was it awful to think so?
    Why did Dosia have to go after humans in the first place? Esmerine had warned her. She still went. Why did she have to be so stupid, so stubborn?
    “The Diels …,” Alan said. “I could be there and back again in four days … Might take me another day or two to find her, but I have no doubt that