Child of a Hidden Sea Read Free Page B

evidence to the contrary, she had been imagining a hospital for Gale, phone service and Internet access—was short-lived. The people coming out to meet them looked as emphatically poverty-stricken as the sailors. Their village—a collection of shacks made of scavenged ship beams and driftwood, mortared with seaweed-colored muck—ringed the rise of land sheltered by the bay. There wasn’t a single electric light or cell tower; what illumination there was came from crude torches. Gaps and breaks in their teeth suggested they had little access to modern medicine.
    The skipper had Gale transferred to a lifeboat, and gestured to indicate that Sophie should follow. The others were unloading, packing seaweed, fish, and barrels of brined moths into other boats. They were careful but hurried, moving with an air of urgency.
    Sophie didn’t need to speak the language to know they were spooked by the storm—it was blowing up out there—and concerned about the other fishers. The kids were ordered ashore. A couple protested, and were overruled.
    Hostility brimmed in the glances everyone was giving her.
    The skipper grasped Sophie’s hand briefly before she clambered aboard the rowboat. “Feyza Stele kinstay,” she said. Gibberish, but her tone was reassuring.
    â€œThank you,” Sophie replied. She put her hand on her heart and the message seemed to get through. Straightening, the captain replied with a formal-looking bow. Then she was on the choppy waters of the bay, in a rowboat with her injured aunt and four burly sailors.
    â€œDo you want me to…?” Tapping the nearest sailor, Sophie mimed a willingness to row. He pointedly set his foot on the spare oar.
    Face it, sofe, nobody wants anything from you.
    â€œBe that way. My arm’s hurt anyway.” Behind them, the preteen kids were rowing themselves ashore. People were waiting, on the beach, to meet them.
    They pulled up onto the sand, the sailors leaping out to tow the rowboat up beyond the reach of the waves. The biggest of the men lifted Gale like a baby.
    â€œWatch her injury—” But one of the others had clamped onto Sophie’s elbow, manhandling her in the opposite direction.
    â€œOw! I want to stay with her! Where are you taking me?”
    No answer. He hurried her along, up to a boardwalk, then a crude staircase cut into the rock. His grip on her elbow was like a granite cuff; struggling just ground her bones against each other.
    What now?
    Not drowning had been such a relief she hadn’t even thought about who her rescuers might be, what they might want. She fumbled for Gale’s pouch— if I flash that badge, or offer him the coins …
    She stumbled as her escort jolted to a stop in front of the biggest of the shacks.
    â€œBastien,” he boomed.
    Sounds from within. A willowy man with limp flaxen hair and gapped, soft-looking teeth opened the door, spilling candlelight out into the rising breeze.
    The man looked from the sailor to Sophie, then past them to the sky, the signs of the rising storm. He uttered a single phrase, in a soft voice, and the sailor let Sophie go.
    She didn’t wait for an invitation, plunging past them both on shaky legs, collapsing onto a bench on the far wall. The men conversed in the doorway; then the sailor left, and she was alone with the blond.
    Him I can fend off. Even by the starved standards of these islanders, he was twig-thin, unhealthy looking, pale where they were weathered.
    He looked at Sophie, assessing her. After a moment he opened a trunk, pulling out a slate and a piece of chalk.
    â€œBastien,” he said, pointing at himself.
    She felt a trickle of relief. “Sophie.”
    â€œBastien,” he said again, and now he wrote it: “Bastien Tannen Ro.”
    He offered her the chalk.
    Sophie wrote her first name.
    â€œSophie…?” He tapped the two names after his first.
    â€œMy whole name?”
    He tapped again.