Child of a Hidden Sea Read Online Free Page A

state.
    Power down. Years of hiking, sailing, caving, and climbing had taught her to catch up on her rest when there was nothing else useful she could do. She closed her eyes, made a halfhearted attempt to meditate, and drifted into dreamless sleep.
    Clinking woke her. She opened her eyes to see Bastien had finished measuring and mixing the contents of his tea bowl. He flipped an hourglass-shaped timer and stared at the chalkboard with Sophie’s name on it. Humming, he sketched letters from the unfamiliar alphabet below the letters of her name. Translating it? His lips moved as he worked. “Zooophie. Nuh. SSSSohhhfeee.”
    When he was satisfied, he dug in the trunk, this time coming up with a conch shell about the size of a softball and a tool—was it made of ivory?—that reminded her of a dentist’s pick. He lit two lanterns, brightening the room around the table. Then, taking a deep, meditative breath, he began to carve.
    Great. Now it’s hobby hour?
    â€œBastien—”
    â€œShhh!”
    She took out Gale’s purse again, touching the zipper and watching it open itself. She dumped its contents, examining the seams, looking for wires or magnets, feeling the weight of it, listening to the purr of its teeth locking together. She’d have to cut the thing up to figure out how it worked.
    She examined the gold coins. They were a set, of sorts—each had a ship on one side and an unfamiliar flag on the other. Words, too, in the Latin alphabet: Sylvanna, Tiladene, Redcap, Ualtar, Wrayland …
    Land , she thought. Names of states? Towns?
    Places she hadn’t heard of. Coins she’d never seen before. They had the weight and softness of real gold, but who minted with gold these days? How remote would these places have to be—Viemere, Tiladene—for her to have never heard of any of them?
    There was so much here she didn’t recognize—wildlife, cash, these place names, if that’s what they were. She knew what Sanskrit looked like, and Arabic; she could recognize Cyrillic text and Chinese characters even if she couldn’t read them. But Bastien’s alphabet—the one stamped onto the satchel, the alphabet he was using, even now, to score beautifully calligraphed words onto the conch shell—she’d never seen those characters.
    She saw he’d inscribed the translated version of her name onto the shell.
    That can’t be good. Maybe it was a bridal gift. She eyed the flimsy wooden fork he’d stuck into the jar of moths. That nice sharp pick might make a better weapon if she had to defend her virtue.
    It was a silly thought. Frail as he was, one good swing of the camera case would snap him in half.
    These people are poor, but the stuff in his trunk, the hobby tools, they’re finely worked—expensive. She looked at the purse. The weird alphabet goes hand-in-hand with premium stuff.
    Which was maybe a decent observation, if it proved out, but what did it get her?
    The outer surface of the conch shell was brown, a complex mix of sand and driftwood hues. Bastien had scored through to a deeper layer, revealing creamy calcium beneath.
    Sophie closed the satchel, watching it zip itself yet again. What could do that? Nanotech? Robots? That was the stuff of science fiction. She opened it, stuck her fork half in and half out of it, and tried to close again. Its lips curled, closing on the stem, delicately pushing it out onto the table. Then it clamped shut.
    Bastien scraped at the shell, scritch, scritch. It seemed to be getting louder.
    Everything was getting louder. The creak and the groan of the wood walls of the shack as it shuddered in the wind were multiplied. She realized she could hear the shack next door rattling, too—and the one beyond that. Sand grains gristled, rubbing each other as they passed through the neck of Bastien’s egg timer. His breath gurgled.
    Outside, stones clattered, thrown up the beach by the surf