daughters of the sea #4: the crossing by kathryn lasky excerpt

8/9/2019 Daughters of the Sea #4: The Crossing by Kathryn Lasky EXCERPT

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Copyright © 2015 by Kathryn Lasky

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint

of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920 . SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and

associated logos are trademarks and/or registered

trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

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responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted,

downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced

into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any

means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter

invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For

information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention:

Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

e-ISBN 978-0 -545-63404-5

First edition, May 2015

Cover design by Ellen Duda


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“I loved you, so I drew these tides into my hand and

wrote my will across the sky.”

— T. E. Lawrence


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4

A P R O M I S E B R O K E N

IT WAS A RELIEF to Hannah that Stannish had been

called to New York on portrait business. That had

been a week ago, the day after the wedding. There

had been no time really to discuss Lucy’s terrible

fate. The few words they had exchanged had been

perfunctory.

“My darling, I know how difficult this must be for

you. I am so sorry.” He had picked up her hand and

pressed it to his lips. But there were words leftunspoken that she could read in his eyes. Stannish

clearly found it reassuring that there was one less

girl who so closely resembled his betrothed. He had

nearly been apoplectic that day last summer when

he had inadvertently bumped into May. “Well, at least


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she lives offshore in a lighthouse,” he’d sniffed. Lucy

bore a much stronger likeness to May than to

Hannah, and now that he had insisted on her dyeing

her hair there was even less of a resemblance. He

had made her promise not to swim. “You’ll be cured

by spring. I give you my word.”

Cured — what a strange word that was! What was

she being cured of — her true nature? Stannish

called it an addiction. But how could it be? This was

her essence, her inherent character. She was part

mer. God had made her this way. Stannish had told

her she would get used to being away from the water.

That the sloughing off of her crystalline scales from

her tail would stop. He had even given her an oint-

ment that eased the irritation.

She broke her promise to Stannish two nights

after he left for New York. It was the first time shehad swum in almost six weeks. From the moment

she entered the water, she began to feel herself again,

and even the dark hair dye seemed to wash away

more with each swim. Something deep inside her

was knitting back together again. Something was


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healing. . . . If he loved her as deeply as he said he

did, was it not this that he loved? That essence that

made her Hannah? She was haunted by Ettie’s words

on the steps of the church. They popped around in

her head now like annoying flies — oily , superficial ,

varnish. That last one being the worst. Had she in

fact fallen in love with someone who was all surface

and no essence? But he was a great artist. The most

celebrated painter in Boston, New York, London,

Paris. His talent sprang from something deep inside

of him. Something that she was in awe of. A person

could not be an artist of the magnitude of Stannish

Whitman Wheeler and have no essence. His art

was a mystery to her, but it made him who he was.

And she honored that, loved him for it, revered

it, and would change nothing about him. Why could

he not feel the same way about her? She touched herhead. Her hair felt more supple, softer as the dye had

faded with her nightly swims.

There was an isolated spot in Boston Harbor, the

Fort Point Channel, with no shipping traffic. A dere-

lict tug bobbed off a pier, which if no one tended


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would most likely sink to the muddy bottom within

another two years. It was a perfect place to stash her

clothes and then slip into the water — she and the

water rats. But the rats paid her no heed.

It was a shock that night when she first slid into

the water. It took her legs forever to fuse into the

long, powerful tail. She had to pull with her arms as

she never had before. Her two legs seemed to flail

until finally she stopped trying to use them for fear

she would splash too much and attract attention

from shore. So she dived, but found she could no lon-

ger hold her breath as easily under the water. She

had barely made it out of the channel before she had

to come up for air. There was, of course, the slime

and refuse of a busy city harbor. Then she turned

right, dived deep, and swam straight out into the

harbor as her legs finally fused. She was careful toavoid the sweep of the Boston Harbor Light. That

first night she did not have the strength to swim

very far. But by the second night she felt much stron-

ger and took a course south by southeast to the

Stellwagen Banks. She had avoided a pod of dolphins.


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Normally, she would have swum with them for a few

miles. They loved to play with her, especially when

they had new pups. She often helped with pups,

herding them along so as to keep them close to their

mothers if a shark was in the vicinity, or often just

tumbling with them through the currents. But she

was not feeling particularly sociable tonight.

At least she had a chance to meet again with

Ettie. Ettie was going to try to contact May and May’s

beau, Hugh. Hugh was very smart, a Harvard man,

and he had said as soon as the trial began that if

Lucy was found guilty, they could appeal it. How-

ever, neither Hannah nor Ettie really understood that

much about the law.

May had written to both Hannah and Ettie from

Egg Rock, the lighthouse just off the coast of Bar

Harbor where May lived with her stepfather, GarPlum, and his invalid wife, Hepzibah. May was anx-

ious as she had not heard from Hugh in several

weeks. Hannah knew how that might feel. But she

was certain that Hugh would not have forsaken May.

She herself would often have qualms when Stannish


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went away, such as now on his trip to New York con-

cerning a new commission. She knew that it was a

glittering world that he entered, filled with glamor-

ous women and extravagant parties. It was nothing

like Boston. He would come back with reports of the

grande dames of the city and the latest fashion. But

he would always return and fold her in his arms and

say that not one could come close to her beauty.

Those moments of his return were wonderful. She

tucked them away like precious jewels, stringing

them together like pearls on a necklace that proved

their love.

By the time she had swum back it was close to

dawn and a slight drizzle had begun to fall. The Old

Custom House Tower rose like a flinty schoolmaster

over the old port city. The hands on the clock of

its east-facing side pointed at five. She decided thatshe had to go see May. May’s beau, Hugh, suppos-

edly was getting a new fancy lawyer, or she thought

he was. And Ettie — she had met with her twice

since the wedding. She wasn’t sure how Ettie was

able to slip out from the house on Louisburg Square


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and escape the vigilant eye of her governess, Miss

Ardmore, but she did.

Ettie had been sending not just letters but tele-

grams to May in Bar Harbor and had managed to on

her own slip across the Charles River into the distant

precincts of Harvard to find Hugh, whom she was

pestering to do something. Ettie had told her that

poor Hugh was trying to do everything while at the

same time finish his thesis in astronomy.

When Hannah had accidentally called it astrol-

ogy, Ettie had nearly exploded. “Astronomy! Hannah!

Astrology is a quack science. No, that’s really a con-

tradiction in terms, I think. Astrology is all based on

superstition. It’s at best a faux discipline but most

undisciplined.” She had paused briefly. “It’s for undis-

ciplined quacks.” It was very hard arguing with

someone like Ettie, who was younger by nearly sevenyears and yet smarter than any towering adult.

The second time Hannah had seen Ettie she was

talking about going to her favorite uncles, Godfrey

and Barkley Appleton, or God and Bark as she called

them. They were two middle-aged bachelor gentlemen


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who had distinguished themselves as being the only

members of the family who seemed to take Ettie

seriously and encourage her education beyond what

they called “the domain of the governess.” They

had made noises about Ettie going to Radcliffe, the

women’s college across the river next door to

Harvard. Ettie was an unstoppable force of nature,

and there was no telling how far she would go to help

save Lucy.

When Hannah had worked in the Hawley house

as a servant, she and Ettie had become unexpected

friends. It was odd how it all turned out. For at that

time Hannah had not crossed over and had no

inkling of her true nature, nor did she suspect that

out there two sisters were waiting to be found. It was

ironic that Ettie herself, who had two fully human

sisters, felt as if she had been born into the wrongfamily. So she and Hannah had gravitated toward

each other like two lost stars in the infinity of space

seeking to make their own small galaxy.

daughters of the sea #4: the crossing by kathryn lasky excerpt

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