Dark Shimmer Read Online Free Page A

little laugh. “Are you talking about my homeland?”
    “Yes. Did you ever see him? Did you see the queen? The princesses?”
    “I did.”
    “Really?”
    He tosses me one end of the fishing net. “Pick. The ones like this”—he holds up some leafy seaweed nearly like lettuce—“they go in the pile here. The rest are junk.” He throws a lacy seaweed back in the water.
    “I know which ones you sell to the glassblowers.” I get to work. The pile between us grows fast. “Tell me about your homeland.”
    “You don’t want to move there, if that’s what you’re thinking. There are wars all the time.”
    “Is that why you left?”
    Giordano lifts one side of his mouth as though I’ve said something funny. “I left to be with my own kind.”
    “I thought you said you were a stranger when you came here.”
    He shoots me a glance and looks down at his task. “What is it you want to know, Dolce? Why are you asking about that kingdom?”
    “Does everyone love the king?”
    “Hardly. He’s got a whole army to protect him.”
    “Just him?”
    “Well, no. The entire kingdom. But it’s always the kings who manage to start the wars, so they’re the ones people try to kill.”
    “So no one likes him?”
    “They revere him, I guess. He’s rich. Powerful.”
    “And what about the princesses? Do people love them?”
    “Those haughty spoiled brats? They walk like this.” Giordano moves from the hips up, as though strutting, stiff-backed. Even though he’s sitting, I can tell the gait he’s mimicking. “They don’t talk to commoners except to bark orders.”
    I blink. “You’re lying. Princesses in stories are lovely.”
    “Stories aren’t life, Dolce.”
    I find a tiny live shrimp in the net and pop it into my mouth. It crunches sweet and salty. “But even if they walk like that, no one would kill them, right? No one would dare.”
    “No.” Giordano stares at me. “Why are you talking about death today?”
    “Everyone should be.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “People kill ones they don’t like.”
    “That’s murder you’re talking about, child. Good people don’t do that.”
    “That’s not true. I saw that baby go off in the boat in the middle of the night…off into the lagoon.”
    “Mella’s baby? Is that what you’re talking about? No one murdered Mella’s baby. He’ll be adopted.”
    “I don’t believe that.”
    Giordano shrugs. “Suit yourself.”
    “I face the truth. No one here likes me.”
    “The mothers like you.”
    I shake my head.
    “They do, Dolce. I heard them talking. They’ve taken to you lately. Some of them are sorry you’ve been so left out. They talk about how odd you’ve become, but they know you’re not bad. They look at you differently now.”
    “Only because I’m making the mirrors. They think it’ll be my fingers and toes that go pink instead of their sons’ fingers and toes. I might be saving their boys, so the mothers can see potential for me. Who knows? Someday I might be someone who could die in place of their boys.”
    Giordano wipes sweat off his upper lip. “You have a dramatic streak.”
    “But you’re not saying I’m wrong.”
    “You go talking like that, and you’ll find yourself isolated for good.”
    “That’s all right with me. I’m supposed to be isolated. I’m a princess.”
    Giordano laughs.
    I stand. I could kick his buckets of crabs off the
fondamenta.
    Giordano catches my foot in midair. “Go away, Dolce. Go be a princess. Pink toes suit a princess.”
    I walk away haughty. This is my princess walk. I don’t need anyone. I am a princess. And no one will dare try to kill me.

T he sun is low on the horizon. It’ll set in minutes. It’s funny how the sun seems to rise so slowly but set so quickly. “Mamma, we need to hurry.”
    “Another minute.” Mamma greedily throws two more crabs into the bucket I’m holding. She finally stops and grins at me. “Enough.”
    We slosh back to shore, then walk home, our shifts