Kira's Secret Read Online Free Page A

ye laugh. The lass asks a good question. Many people don’t believe in ’em. They need proof, science like, for everything. But some things are hard to prove. Selkies is one of ’em.”
    â€œSooo,” Cody began, drawing out the word, “you think they exist?”
    Kira wanted to disappear right then. She hated the tone in Cody’s voice, and was sure he would tease her and maybe even tell the other kids at school how childish and naïve she was. He was the ultimate science guy. Why did he have to show up when he did?
    â€œCody, me son, I knows they exist. I seen ’em with me own eyes, I did. ’Twas one night on a beach at Cooper’s Cove, down the shore. Me mate, Eddy Quinn, and me were takin’ a walk after a late supper and saw a bonfire on the beach. So, we thought we’d have a look and came closer. We noticed ’twas a bunch of ladies dancing round a fire. We crept up, quiet like so’s not to frighten them, noticed they weren’t wearin’ much. Figured their clothes were the piles of stuff behind ’em on the sand.” Bill cleared his throat and looked away. Kira blushed, remembering the drawing in her book of folk tales.
    â€œAnyways, old Eddy, he steps on a twig, it snaps, and the ladies break their circle and jump into those piles of clothes. But what do ya know, the clothes are sealskins, and each lady turns into a flesh-and-blood seal and slithers down the sand and into the water!” Bill slapped his thighs, making Cody and Kira jump a little.
    â€œWell, I takes a close gander at the water’s edge, but they’re gone, disappeared into the sea. And when I turns around, Eddy’s not to be seen, neither. Spooked he was, ran off. But I know what I seen that night. Selkies!”
    â€œSo where’s Eddy now?” Cody asked.
    Bill pulled on his scraggly white beard and squinted tightly. “Ah, poor fella. Drowned at sea long ago, along with the whole crew. Sorry, ya can’t ask him about the selkies. We was both surprised, or we’d a grabbed a skin each and had us a wife. Mind, this was before I married my Maggie.”
    â€œHey, Bill! You telling tall tales again?” A scrawny young man in overalls had come up behind them. “Don’t believe a word he says, kids!” he laughed. “C’mon Bill, it’s chowder for lunch, you don’t want to be missin’ that.” Still chuckling, the man turned and walked back down the wharf.
    Bill shook his head, then bent to pick up his bow and fiddle. He beckoned at Kira and Cody to lean in closer. He whispered in his hoarse voice, “I’ll wager there’s more than one selkie wife in this village, and others up and down the shore. Not only that, I happen to know there’s merrows, too.”
    Kira sat up straight again. “You mean mermaids and mermen?” She’d also read about them in her book of Irish folk tales.
    â€œShush,” he said, holding a finger over his whiskery mouth. “Not too loud now. None of ’em wants to be found out. They’re private and they’re proud.”
    Cody threw his hands up in the air. “Oh, c’mon. If they’re for real, give us some names.”
    Bill stood up and shook his head again. “I can’t do that. It’d bring bad luck. I already lost one foot.”
    â€œWhy? Because you told on a mermaid?” Cody smiled and looked at Kira with raised eyebrows. He was not buying Bill’s story.
    â€œBecause I said somethin’ I shouldn’t have. We do a lot of foolish things when we’re young. We think we know everything. We don’t. And you don’t neither, laddie, none of us do.” He began to shuffle down the wharf toward the village centre. “I must be off now—don’t want to be late for Mrs. Mason’s famous fish chowder.”
    Kira and Cody watched him walk, rocking from side to side until he was off the