Read Online Shadows in the Cave by Meredith and Win Blevins - Free Book Online

down. The water was clear, and probably onlytwo or three times as deep as Aku was tall. He thought for a moment about stretching out on the bottom and not being able to breathe. He felt panicky. The more he looked, the more panicky he felt. And he could see that, all along, he was floating further and further into the ocean that went on forever.
    In a flurry he set himself for one more charge toward the land. He kicked his legs and flailed his arms and kicked his legs and flailed his arms. Then he took a careful look down and saw that he was still sailing out to sea, as a cloud sails the skies at the mercy of the winds.
    He stopped. He looked back toward the familiar land, where a person could walk, talk, find something to eat, and never come to a single place completely without air. The land was getting farther and farther away, and the palisade looked lower, much lower, and vague. He realized that he could float so far out onto the everywhere-is-water that he wouldn’t be able to see the land. As the sky was everything above, the water would be everything below.
    He looked down and saw the no-air-at-the-bottom place drifting along beneath him. He let himself imagine, just for a moment, how much of the no-air place there must be. Some people thought the ocean went all the way around the Earth, to the far side of the rolling country that was on the other side of the mountains where the Galayi people made their home. Some people said that, if you could walk on water, it would be a hundred days’ walk all the way around to that rolling country. Other people said a thousand days. And probably the everywhere-water was as big up and down as it was across. The no-air part of Earth might be as big as Turtle Island herself was. Or bigger. At the very beginning, when all the plants and animals, including human beings, were ready to come down and live on Earth, the entire planetwas water. Then Water Beetle started diving down and bringing up dirt, making places to walk and build houses and live. No one knew how much of the everywhere-water Water Beetle had covered with dirt.
    Aku decided he couldn’t swim anymore. He was far too tired in his muscles and he felt woozy in his head, too. He would sail like a cloud. Why not? He didn’t have any choice, and it felt good. He would wag his legs gently and sail and sail and sail until the water was as big as the sky and then … He guessed he would slide down and lie on the bottom.
    “We’ve got to do something!” Shonan said.
    “There’s nothing to do,” said Oghi, looking out to sea. He couldn’t see Aku. “He’s in the riptide. He can’t swim straight against it, but he kept trying, and going the wrong way.”
    Both men were mixing in words of the Galayi and Amaso languages, hoping the other would figure it out.
    “Where will he end up?”
    Oghi shrugged. “Nobody who swam against one ever came back. We learned to swim across them.”
    “I’m going to do something.”
    Oghi looked at Shonan with questions in his young-old eyes.
    “He’s my son,” Shonan said.
    Tagu let out three soft barks.
    Shonan could see that Oghi was pondering something, but he had no idea what.
    “We could ride the tide out, just like he did.”
    Oghi stared into space.
    “We could take something …” Shonan looked around and saw various pieces of flotsam, but they were all spindly.He wasn’t sure they’d hold him and Aku. Then he spotted a big piece of driftwood no more than twenty steps into the water. It was taller than a human being and thicker than a man’s thigh.
    “How far out does the riptide go?”
    Oghi shrugged.
    “I’m taking that log and going after my boy.”
    The sea turtle man let a beat go by, gave a truly odd smile, and said, “Me, too.” He broke into a grin. “Tie Tagu to a tree, will you?” No question they couldn’t make the dog stay, not when his master was out there.
    Shonan waded into the water, climbed onto the log, and straddled it. He looked back and in