Read Online Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica - Free Book Online

over the years to come away with the idea that everyone was fundamentally neurotic.
    Her brother was a bona fide kid genius. He’d finished high school when he was twelve and had been working on his second undergraduate degree, two years later, when he came out to their parents. Dad had decided a teen whiz kid who was also gay was someone with too much to cope with, and packed him off to a doctor to talk it all through.
    If she could only have one week on Stormwrack, Sophie wished Bram could have been around to share it. The magic would offend his sense of an ordered universe—at heart, her brother was an engineer. But he might have some idea why Stormwrack’s moon was the same, so indisputably, Earthily familiar, when its land masses were jumbled beyond recognition.
    I’ll get back. Gale’s already promised she’ll get to know me. We’ll talk her into letting us have a proper look around, him and me. So little land mass, and it sounds like it’s mostly one country to an island … She dozed off contemplating the map, falling into thick, dreamless and restful sleep.
    A tap at the cabin’s hatch woke her. “Zunbrit Passage, Kir.”
    She made her way up to the main deck and found that Estrel had dropped anchor. To the stern, the water was pewter and foam, the waves breaking over a series of jagged rocks that extended eastward in a winding, dangerous-looking line. Most of the rocks were scoured bare by the water. One was just big enough to host a few dozen petrels.
    Her pulse raced as she looked at the birds. They resembled Leach’s storm petrel, a species she’d filmed in New Zealand. There was another bird, almost identical to the Leach’s, that had recently become extinct.
    Which species was this? Any number of organisms that had died out at home might survive here, wherever here was. The thought was so exciting it very nearly hurt.
    One of the birds dropped off the sea mount and started dabbling in a stretch of shallow water at its base, almost dancing on the water’s surface as it fished.
    â€œSophie?”
    She shook herself back on task. “Just thinking.”
    The crags and islets were the tip of a great mountain range. They were mostly too small to sustain larger animals; they wouldn’t be good for much besides wrecking ships. Sophie thought: I can see why they used it as a ransom drop. Lots of cracks and crannies.
    â€œCaptain, do you have a dive locker? Equipment?”
    â€œAfter a fashion.” Dracy led Sophie amidships and down. The room was all but empty. “I left the best of our salvage equipment on Stele with Boris, my diver,” she explained, apologizing.
    â€œYou must have something—a snorkel?”
    â€œDon’t usually need ’em,” Captain Dracy said. “Boris is a merman.”
    â€œHe breathes water? Are you serious?”
    Dracy nodded.
    â€œWouldn’t that have been something to catch on video?”
    â€œI don’t know video, Kir.”
    Hell with whether Gale wants me, I will get back here, Sophie thought.
    She quashed the urge to ask five thousand questions about mermen and magic, instead looking over what was left in the locker. Tanks and a regulator would have been too much to ask, but there was a decent mask—it appeared to be made of a dried sea jelly—and a pair of flippers that might have been carved from the cartilage of some massive creature. Plus plenty of rope, floats, and flags.
    The fins were short—not quite right for a free dive, but they’d do. She scooped them up and headed topside.
    â€œMy heroine,” Lais said, as she emerged. “Savior of my honor.”
    â€œYour horse’s honor, anyway,” she said, leaning against the rail so she could put the flippers on.
    â€œThe studs of Tiladene will neigh your praises for five generations.”
    She laughed. “I haven’t succeeded yet.”
    â€œRemember,” Dracy murmured.