Through the Whirlpool Read Free

Mauri and broken his arm. Jade now knew that Rena was bad news. Beside her in the speedboat sat the Head, a thick-shouldered boy of limited intelligence but unswerving loyalty to her, and Screwdriver, the rat-faced youth who was steering.
    P ulling herself onto her board, she began to paddle furiously, expecting to hear the craft behind her again. But when she threw a glance back, the launch had turned and resumed its course for the river mouth. Strange that there had been no pursuit. Thinking over events later, she could not imagine what might have been more important to that crew than settling their score with her when they had her there, trapped in the water. It could only have been some shady job they could not afford to delay.
    A shadow blocked the sun as she lay on her towel. Squinting against the light, she peered up. And her heart stopped. Unused to seeing the blubbery body out of uniform, dressed only in beach shorts and a tee, one arm wrapped around her board, Jade could still not mistake the sadistic glint in those eyes. The older girl may have let her prey slip away the week before, but this time Jade knew she would not be so lucky. No escape… and Kyle right beside her.
    “ What do you want, Rena?”
    Bluff it out, Jade was thinking. Yet Rena ’s muscled arms looked like they could do some serious damage.
    The older girl scowled: “You, Weasel. I want you!”

Emba rking
 
    W hen Kreh-ursh arrived at the beach, seven of the blue-robed shahiroh—the sea callers, those most powerful chanters among the sea nomads—were standing in a group. A short distance beyond, his village’s proudest possession, the great canoe, was pulled up at the tidemark. The length of fifteen men lying end to end, and so wide a sailor could sleep across one of its benches, it dominated the sand, dwarfing the beached fishing canoes alongside. Capricious magic flowed from the intricate designs in its high, carved prow and stern, tingling with life, demanding respect.
    A crew of forty or so Shahee, or sea nomads, clothed in their customary green, stood beside it. At a distance from them, six pale-robed candidates, all weighed down by packs and blankets like himself—four girls and two boys—huddled into cloaks against the dawn chill. As he approached, only Geh-meer broke her tense concentration to flash him one of her brief smiles. The others just looked nervous, unwilling to talk.
    “ Ready?”
    “ I don’t think so. Is it too late to pull out?”
    She smiled again. “You know you wouldn’t. We’ll be fine.”
    Her words, sparse as they were, comforted. Once on the island, they would be alone, bound to silence—mental and verbal—reliant only on their own skill. If and when they returned, the celebration would be memorable, but that was a world away, on the far side of this test.
    It had been a harsh year: climbing jungle slopes; swimming tiring stretches against the current; cutting, shaping, and carving heavy logs; being tossed together in a flimsy canoe on treacherous Shah—the wide sea. Together the eight of them had fought to master the sea nomad’s five skills. Mind speech, the most important of these, was how his people spoke to each other, the Shahee sea nomads with easy precision, but the shahiroh sea callers as true adepts. Next, candidates had to know how to read the sky and waves for the information they could reveal. Wavecrafting, the third skill, meant shaping ocean currents, literally bending water. Akin to that was windcalling, harnessing the rhythms of the air to do one’s bidding; finally, though not least, came woodworking and carving, learning to feel for the life within growing things, especially the trees, and mold it to one’s purpose.
    These five skills, along with adherence to the life code, or unwavering respect for all living things, was the backbone of Shahee heritage. Shah, the eastern sea, was their home. Though voluntary, sea-nomad-becoming should be undertaken only when one was ready, and