The Oyster Thief by Sonia Faruqi

Author:Sonia Faruqi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

16

Silk

Pavonis, can we please swim closer to the seabed?” Coralline asked, turning her head to look at him.

“No,” came the reply.

Izar looked at Coralline to his left and, past her, at Pavonis, to her left.

“But the surface is dangerous,” Coralline wheedled.

“No kidding. Thanks to humans.” Pavonis’s dark orb of an eye, the size of a golf ball, swiveled pointedly to Izar before returning to Coralline. “But we have to remain up here, because constables might be looking for you below. Right now, constables pose a greater danger to us than ships, so we won’t be descending to the seabed until we stop for the night, somewhere far, far away from Hog’s Bristle and on the way to Blue Bottle.”

Listening to Pavonis’s thumps along the walls of Bristled Bed and Breakfast, Coralline and Izar had followed the convoluted corridor to a broken-hinged back door. But the constables had spotted Coralline just as she and Izar were slipping out the door, and they’d given chase. Thanks to Pavonis’s swerving and maneuvering, they’d managed to lose the constables, but it had not been easy.

Izar looked at Coralline from the corner of his eye. Her rolled-up braid looked like an ant mound atop her ear, like a little pincushion, and the effect was not unpleasant, but Izar hated to look at it, for he knew the bruise it concealed. Her wrists were still pale blue from how tightly the carrot had clasped them. They must be sore, Izar thought, but Coralline seemed aware of any pain only subconsciously, when she massaged them at intervals.

He was aware of his shoulder pain much more consciously—he felt as though forks were stabbing the socket. On land, he would not have been aware of his shoulder pain the way he was in the water. When he swam in the water, it was primarily his head and shoulders that combated the force of water resistance for his body, just as, when he’d walked on land, it was primarily his legs that had combated the force of gravity for his body. But water resistance was not easy to combat—water was eight hundred times denser than air. As such, to swim with an injured shoulder was worse than walking with an injured leg.

“Are you a human or a turtle?” Pavonis growled.

Izar saw that he’d fallen slightly behind Coralline and Pavonis, and he swung his tail hard to arrive at their eye level, his hand covering his shoulder to soften the impact of water against it. Coralline looked at him but didn’t say anything.

A small white fish fluttered past Izar. A black dot on the fish’s tail, and black lines along its face, made him think of a magician with a pencil-thin moustache. He thought of yesterday, when he and Coralline had passed all manner of animals during their swims. In an encyclopedic voice, Coralline had told him their names: bluehead wrasse, fairy basslet, green razorfish, gray angelfish, roundel skate, turbot, tarpon. He’d nodded at her occasionally, curtly, until she’d discerned his disinterest, and her voice had trailed off.

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