Opening Atlantis Read Online Free Page A

place.
    He wondered whether Kersauzon and the Bretons would race to the shore. Sensibly, they didn’t. Anyone who gave himself extra work when so much wasn’t extra had to be a fool. François Kersauzon might be a lot of things, but Radcliffe would have sworn on Christ’s holy relics that he was no fool.
    The boat fought through the breakers and grated to a stop on a beach half sand, half mud. “You go out first, Father,” Richard said. “You brought us here. I never would have—I thought the Breton was cozening us.” The rest of the Englishmen in the boat nodded.
    â€œI thank you,” Edward said. His back creaked as he straightened. When he stepped ashore, his boot squelched in mud. He knew he ought to come out with something grand, something people—or at least he—would remember for a long time. But he was no traveling player or glib peddler, to find fancy words whenever he needed them. “Well, we’re here,” wasn’t what anyone would call splendid, but it was true.
    Kersauzon hopped out of the other boat and trotted toward him. The Breton took the new land for granted. It wasn’t new to him, not as a whole, even if this stretch might be.
    â€œWhat do you think?” he asked, as proud as if he rather than God had shaped the ground on which they stood.
    â€œIt’s…different,” Edward answered. The murmur of waves going in and out, the wind’s sigh, the smell of sea in the air—all those things were familiar enough. So were the grasses and shrubs just beyond the beach. Past that, familiarity broke down. Radcliffe pointed to a strange plant. “What do you call that?”
    â€œI don’t know its right name. I don’t know if it has one,” Kersauzon said. “But I’ve been calling those barrel plants.”
    Radcliffe nodded. Right name or not, it fit well enough. The trunk—he supposed it was a trunk—looked like a stout, bark-covered barrel. From the top sprouted a sheaf of big, frond-filled leaves like the one Will had netted from the Atlantic.
    More barrel plants, some bigger, some smaller, dotted the landscape. Their leaves were of varying sizes and shapes and of different shades of green, but they all seemed built on the same plan—a plan Edward had never seen before. Farther inland, the woods were of conifers, but not of the sort of conifers he knew. “Have you a name for the trees, too?” he asked.
    â€œI do—I call ’em redwoods,” François Kersauzon replied. “Cut down a small one and you’ll see why—the lumber is the color of untarnished copper. And Mother Mary turn her back on me if I lie, Englishman, but some of them are bigger than any trees I ever set eyes on back home.”
    â€œAre there men here?” Richard Radcliffe asked. “Moors or Irishmen or other savages?”
    â€œI’ve not seen any,” Kersauzon said. “I don’t swear I’m the only fisherman ever to find this shore. Basques or Galicians who don’t get their salt at Le Croisic—or maybe even those who do, for the Basques are close-mouthed bastards—may come here, too. But I’ve yet to run across a native. It’s a new land.”
    Edward spied a flash of motion—motion on two legs—behind a tall barrel plant. “Then what’s that?” he demanded, wondering if the Breton was tricking his son and him.
    Kersauzon only laughed. “Bide a moment, friend, and you’ll see—and hear.”
    â€œHonnnk!” The note was deeper than a man could have made it. Edward gaped at the curious creature that came out from behind the barrel plant. It walked on two legs like a man, but it was some sort of enormous bird. Its neck and head were black, except for a white patch under its formidable beak. The shaggy feathers on its back were dun brown, those on its belly paler. The legs were bare and scaly, like a