The Seadragon's Daughter Read Free

one crime he actually didn’t commit.” She pulls free of me, stands and waits, hands on hips, for me to get up too.
    The lamplight makes my young wife’s milk-chocolate skin look like soft brown velvet. I make a show of staring at her, her brilliant emerald-green eyes and full lips, the roundness of her breasts, the dark triangle of tightly curled pubic hair nestled between her long brown legs. Pushing the covers aside, I motion for her to return to bed.
    “Oh no,” she laughs. “Save it for the weekend. This is a school day. You don’t want your son to be late, do you?”
    “I think you and I care far more about his being on time than he does,” I say.
     
    Walking to Henri’s room, I watch where I place my feet. No matter how often Chloe and I go into a cleaning frenzy, toys, games, dolls and action figures seem to end up scattered almost everywhere. Both of us have stepped on, kicked, broken or tripped over more of the children’s things than we care to remember—even on the steps of the spiral, wooden staircase that runs up the center of the house to all three levels.
    Only the bottom floor of the house manages to escape the children’s litter. It’s Chloe’s doing really. “I don’t want any children playing down there. It’s too dark and gloomy for my taste,” she said shortly after she came to live with us. “I know Henri’s been down there God knows how many times with you. But you’ve been lucky he hasn’t asked yet about your father’s holding cells. He’s too young. He doesn’t need to hear what they were used for.”
    Just before I open Henri’s door, Elizabeth’s laugh signals that Chloe’s with her, teasing her awake. I smile at the sounds. When I grew up, barely any noise broke the quiet of the house. Now during waking hours the children’s laughs, screams, shouts, giggles and occasional wails fill the air. And Henri’s pet dog, Max, adopted from the pack of guard dogs I keep on the island, often adds to the ruckus with his loud barks and growls.
    While neither the children’s mess nor their noise usually bother me, it does make me smile when I think how my father would have growled if he’d been subjected to any of it. But I grew up in a far different household than the one Chloe and I have decided to build for our children.
    I often marvel at how ordinary my small family’s life now seems, how much our routines mirror the daily activities of those who live on the mainland. Still, I have no doubt how horrified any mainlander would be if they learned of our true nature.

2
     
    “Peter, it happened again,” Chloe says, standing in the kitchen area, busy sawing with a serrated knife on a large slab of frozen beef when Henri and I finally come up to the great room for breakfast. Elizabeth, playing with a Raggedy Ann doll on the floor near her, smiles at me and gives her half-brother an even wider grin.
    Rubbing his eyes with the back of his hands, Henri stands next to me, looking as if he were almost still asleep.
    I shake my head. “That makes how many boats?”
    “Fifteen boats found floating without anyone on board—all in the last twelve weeks. The Herald says that makes it twenty-six people either missing or dead—that they know of.” Chloe pauses cutting, points with her knife at the open wireless laptop sitting on the large oak table where we take our regular meals. “I left it on the article if you want to read it. They had it on the news too.”
    “No thanks,” I say, glancing at the computer, Chloe’s latest and currently favorite toy. “I still don’t like reading for very long on those things.”
    Chloe flashes me a superior smile. I may be older, larger and stronger and I may be the master of all things mechanical in our household, but we both know she’s the one to turn to when a computer screen freezes or a new program needs to be installed.
    “At least this time it was just one fisherman that disappeared,” she says. “Channel Seven’s saying