Total pages in book: 191
Estimated words: 188966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 945(@200wpm)___ 756(@250wpm)___ 630(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 188966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 945(@200wpm)___ 756(@250wpm)___ 630(@300wpm)
My thoughts tripped back to that fateful day, and I sucked in a breath as so many others unspooled.
I sank like a stone into a sea of them.
I let them crash over me with waves of tenderness, brokenness, and home.
And when the last one washed away, I focused on the two young reporters.
This story wouldn’t be the one they came for.
It would be so, so much more.
“I thought he was dead when I first saw him. I jumped overboard and swam as fast as I could, all while my father yelled, my mother screamed, and the pod of dolphins we’d been studying swarmed around me...”
Chapter One
*
Aslan
*
(Moon in Latin: Luna)
I’D NEVER BEEN SO SCARED OF THE sky before.
Never thought clouds could reach down and smother me. Never believed rain could fall fast enough to drown me. Never thought thunder could reach inside my chest and stop my terrified heart with its fury.
BOOM!
My mother screamed. My sister screamed. My cousin screamed.
But my father just kept holding on to all of us. Draped over us the best he could as the boat tossed side to side, desperately trying to cast us out of it.
Lightning forked.
Terror sliced.
Another BOOM!
“It’s okay. We’re okay,” my father chanted, his voice long since salt-whipped and hoarse. “There is land beneath our feet. There is always land, even when there is an ocean between us.”
My sister pressed tighter against me, huddled into a tiny, storm-dripping ball. “Aslan, make it stop. Please, make it stop!”
I tried to be brave like my father.
“It’s okay, Melike.” I wrapped my arms around her tiny figure, doing my best not to crush her as another wave tipped us high, so high, then shot us soaring down its face, landing back on the churning angry surface as froth splashed high into the sky, clashing with rain, fighting wet with wet.
We landed sideways.
We rocked with horror.
And for a moment, I feared this was it.
The moment we capsized.
But...like all the other moments, the ocean cradled us at the last second, keeping us upright even while drenching us in fresh brine.
Everyone gasped for breath.
Everyone clung to the sides, the benches, the broken rigging, desperately holding on, all knowing our strength was fading with every wave.
“It’s okay, canım,” my mother crooned, using the term of endearment I’d heard a thousand times before. My life. My soul. To my mother, we were all her life, even while that life was so terribly threatened.
She swallowed back tears and did her best to be brave for us. “Listen to baba, Melike. He says the land beneath the waves will save us. We will touch it again soon. You’ll see.”
“I hate the sea!” my cousin, Afet, yelled over the howling storm.
“Emre, what are we going to do?” My mother shouted at my father just as another wave crested against the savage fork of lightning and smashed heavily over us.
Spluttering.
Coughing.
Our fingers clung to anything and everything.
Each time the hull was battered by another wave, it grunted as if the waves were knives, slowly disembowelling it.
Another thunderclap punctured our eardrums.
The boat groaned a little louder. A dying groan.
We’d started this journey with twelve others.
The small boat had been overcrowded, unbalanced, and with a motor that coughed and spluttered more than it propelled.
I’d had my doubts when my father helped us into it.
But he’d said this was how these things were done.
Covertly, quietly, smuggled across the sea by moonlight.
But the storm had decided that twelve were too many.
The rain had come.
The waves had arrived.
And now...there were only five.
“The storm will pass,” my father bellowed, gripping on to all of us as if he could fight the storm and swim us to shore. “Just hold on. The boat will last. We will look back upon this as our greatest adventure!” He forced a grin, his teeth startling white in the storm-churned night. “We will live the life of safety and happiness that I promised. You will see.”
My sister didn’t buy it. My cousin cried harder. And my mother just looked at all of us as if imprinting our faces on her heart.
Another roil.
This one tossed us into a heap and made us cry out with fresh bruises. Blood coated my forehead from smashing face first against one of the benches. Blood smeared my cousin’s upper arm, mixing with seawater until it swirled with morbid patterns.
True fear settled into my heart.
Fear borne from suddenly understanding that my parents weren’t magic. They could promise to keep us safe, but they couldn’t actually make that promise come true.
They were as helpless as me, and that knowledge—that awful, awful knowledge—made me clutch at my baby sister. “It’s okay, Mel. Close your eyes. It will all be over soon.”
My mother let out a tattered cry; her dark eyes locked over my shoulder.
She shook her head, her hair plastered to her shoulders, her mouth working in a frantic prayer.