Read Online Sea Dweller (Birthstone Series) by Melanie Atkinson - Free Book Online Page B

friend?  Was it because I
didn’t arrive on the island with a magical gem?
    I stared at the moon’s
reflection, grimly picturing Sai again. He’d always been my friend and now, in
one day, I wondered if that friendship had been ripped from me. I shook my
head. If Sai had made his choice, did it really matter anymore? There was
nothing I could do about it, but still, I had a choice to make. I would
either need to find a way off the island and back to my parents’ land, or I
would need to become an accepted Vairdan. I would need to understand the island
traditions.
    I sighed in frustration and
scanned the ocean when suddenly, a glimmer on the sand caught my eye. I stared
at it for several moments, straining my eyes against the darkness in an attempt
to make out the object, not registering what I was seeing.
    It was small. And it looked
as though it just skimmed the surface of the shore, as if floating above it. I
took a step in the direction of the object but halted, annoyed with myself.
    “Stupid island stories have
me seeing things,” I muttered, rolling my eyes. Still, I couldn’t deny I was
curious. I eyed the tiny glimmer again before making up my mind to check it
out.
    When I was only a few feet
from the object, I saw it wasn’t lit by the moonlight like I had originally
thought. Instead, it was its own source of light. It glowed from within.
    I knelt in front of it and
stared for a moment, disbelieving my eyes. It was a stone — a small jewel,
really — and it hovered in the air several inches above the sand.
    I swept my hand beneath it,
gasping when it began to drift downward as though drawn to my skin. It returned
to its original place once I removed my hand. I cupped my palm beneath it,
waiting to see if it would fall into it. It descended slowly but I took my palm
away again right before it touched me. Once more, it rose in the air. Slowly, I
moved my hands all around the stone, just centimeters from actually touching
it. When that didn’t produce any results, I leaned down, my face so close to
the stone I was able to see tiny pale veins coursing through its body. The
color, unlike anything I’d ever seen, was an iridescent pink and it burned in
the center, lit with an internal fire.
    I placed my fingers above it.
Again, it remained stationary. Bit by bit, I moved my fingers closer to the
stone’s brilliant surface until finally, my thumb and forefinger grasped it.
    A half second later I
regretted my decision. What felt like a jolt of lightening coursed through my
fingers, up my arm, and into the rest of my body. I gasped in shock as heat
overwhelmed all other senses. My entire being felt as though I’d exploded into
a blaze. Glorious, white flames danced before my eyes.
    My blood seemed to move
through my body in rapid waves, pounding in my ears, head, and joints.
Inexplicably, I felt as though a part of me split away from everything else. It
was to that separate piece that I heard the stone speak. It was in a language
only my blood understood and ached to respond to. I remained still, counting
gasps until the sensation began to ebb from my trembling frame. Even as it did,
I was afraid to move.
    When my breathing steadied, I
turned the stone over in my fingers. Its veins throbbed with brilliance and
inside its center, the core of light pulsed to the beat of my own heart. 
Awestruck, I touched my fingers to my face to make sure nothing had changed. No
gills. And no fins like a fish. So what had just happened?
    Minutes passed as I
scrutinized my treasure. Every so often, I placed it above my palm and watched
as it sunk toward my skin, as though seeking a place to nestle.
    I don’t know how long I’d
been staring at it when I finally looked up and blinked at the starlit sky. Was
the stone placed in my path as a joke? I shook my head in disbelief. Tales of
magical rocks played through my mind like a procession of performing monkeys
but I tried to push them away. My discovery couldn’t be correlated