Kingdom Keepers VI (9781423179214) by Pearson Ridley

Author:Pearson, Ridley
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction - Young Adult
Publisher: Disney Pr

By her watch, they were still forty-five minutes from the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the second lock. The morning’s Navigator had implied that the second ceremony might be considered the most important of the four.

While Mattie considered the best deck from which to view the festivities, she took her eyes off the crowded deck outside Vibe. When she looked again, there he was: wide shoulders, pink skin raw from the sun, a stubble of hair atop an enormous head, ears like a cartoon character’s puffy cheeks, piggish eyes. Greg Luowski, as they’d described him.

It was a risk worth taking, but a risk nonetheless. Some people could feel it. The experience went back as far as the New Testament. If he had that kind of sensitivity, she would be in big trouble. Big, as in six-feet-one, one hundred and eighty or ninety pounds. Seriously big. The kind of big capable of picking her up like an oversized pillow and launching her over-board.

No sound whatsoever now; everything in slow motion, driving her right shoulder between kids as she worked her way toward him. Heads, hair, and shoulders bouncing in unison—something beyond the rail had excited the gathering all at once. Mattie never took her eyes off the man-boy’s freckled neck. His height made him an easy target.

Closer now. Only a yard to go. The crowd jostled, crushing her. She fought against the invasive voices, resisting them, holding them back as best she could. But it was like trying to fight off a fire hose with a napkin. The voices rose from the depths of the silence.

“Stop shoving!”

“That hurts!”

“My foot!”

She willed them out of her head, out of her thoughts. She had to focus. To concentrate. She was interested only in him. It would take more than brushing up against him. Full contact. What she thought of as a lock. Only a lock would do. Ten to fifteen seconds at a minimum. More, if she could manage.

The moment was upon her. She squeezed past one more girl. The man-boy towered in front of her. Much scarier up close.

Mattie rose to her toes, trying to appear as though she were stretching to see over the rail. Her hands hovered briefly alongside the boy’s upper arms, and then she took hold, as if losing balance.

It was a good, strong lock.

The boy’s head turned. He feels it! she thought.

“Sorry!” she said, not letting go. She closed her eyes to prevent him from seeing them roll into the back of her head. Images flashed through her brain like a high-speed slide show. The boy’s voice filled her ears, foreign at first, then owning her. The same every time.

Mattie’s having a seizure! Mattie’s speaking in tongues! For so much of her childhood even her own mother had seen her gift as an illness. Doctors always giving it names. Labels. Her parents mumbling behind her back. Packing up. Sneaking out. Running away.

The rush of impressions from the boy pushed the memories away.

The closest thing Mattie could compare a successful lock to was a computer download.

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