Ghost Ship Read Online Free Page A

water,
Northseeker
slowed to a halt.
    “We have to get the map back, then,” Rollo said, shrugging out of his fur cloak.

    “What are you doing?”
    “Going to get the map.”
    “But it’s too deep. You’ll drown.”
    Rollo grinned. “No. I can breathe underwater, remember?”
    “But, Rollo—”
    “Breath of a fish within me,” he shouted, and dived over the side of the longship.

    “Rollo, no!” She peered over the side into the water. He had disappeared from sight. How long should she wait before she panicked? One minute? Two? What if the enchantment didn’t work? It was deep here, and dark and cold. Two minutes passed. Asa gnawed on her thumbnail and watched.
    “Come on, Rollo, come on,” she muttered.
    A moment later, he surfaced,clutching the map and laughing.
    She reached down to help him back on board. “Did you do it? Did you breathe underwater?” she asked.

    “Asa, it felt amazing!” he shouted.
    She reached for a cloth to dry him off. “Wasn’t it cold?”
    “Not at all. I felt like a fish. And I could see
Northseeker
the whole time.” He pulled his fur cloak back on. “I don’t feel ill or tired, despite what Egil said.”
    Asa was thinking. How she longed to try out her special magic, too.
    “Asa?”
    She smiled at him, then closed her eyes and threw open her arms. “Wings of a raven upon me!”
    What a sensation! Her shoulders hunching together, her bones and muscles contracting, her fingers elongating and growing light. Her chest tightened, but it wasn’t painful. A feeling of weightlessness gripped herand she flung out her arms to find they were actually black wings.
    She took to the sky.
    A giddy rush as the air surrounded her and she shot out of the cloud of mist around
Northseeker
and into the pale blue sky. She tried to laugh, but only a raven’s caw came out and, watching the clouds spin above her, she dipped and dived on the wind.
    And then there was something else. Something black and hissing. A sky patrol.
    Her blood turned to ice.
    She dropped down and back to
Northseeker
, but the balloon was moving fast and gaining on her from behind. Her tiny bird’s heart began to beat in a panic as she plummeted through the sky.
    Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
.
    The mists parted around her and she was back on
Northseeker
. She let her breath go and her wings dissolved. Her own body, feeling heavy and stiff, gathered around her once more.
    “Sky patrol,” she gasped.
    Rollo was staring at her. “That was amazing!”
    “Sky patrol, Rollo!” She wondered why he wasn’t panicking.
    Rollo turned his face upward. The balloon was directly overhead now. “Why are you worried, Asa?” he said. “They can’t see us.”
    Of course
. Why hadn’t she thought of it? She was so used to hiding when she saw one of the dark balloons, but
Northseeker
was invisible. She began to laugh, with relief and with the thrill of having changed into a bird.
    Rollo laughed, too, and then poked his tongue out at the balloon. “You can’t see us,” he teased in a singsong voice. She joined in, and they laughed until the sky patrol had gone ahead, over the cliffs and into the distance.
    “I don’t feel ill at all,” she said. “Maybe Egil was making it up.”
    “Probably trying to scare us,” said Rollo. “Trying to stop us having any fun at all so we’re just as miserable as him.”
    She agreed and they kept sailing.
    But by nightfall, after sailing the twisted course between the islands, she was feeling distinctly queasy.
    “I don’t think I can sit up any longer,” she said.
    Rollo was picking at his plate of cheese and pickled fish. “I feel sick.”
    “And exhausted,” she added. “Like my arms and legs weigh a ton.”
    “It hurts to breathe. Like my ribs are bruised,” he groaned.
    “This is what Egil meant, isn’t it? We’re sick because we used our magic powers.”
    “I think I’m going to—” Rollo was suddenly on his feet, leaning over the side of the ship and throwing