EXCERPT – RESTRICTED WATERS
Did
you see something?” he asks.
“It’s
just that—” I stumble here, wondering how much to say. “We’ve all felt
something right? Something watching us? What about Guillermo’s legends? Those
perrorap things? Do you think they could be real?”
Sully
seems relieved. “Ah, the legends of an island people and their magical
dictators,” he says. “Remember, legends are sometimes meant to distract people
from seeing the truth.
“Look,”
he takes a pocket knife from his pocket and unties from it a thin rope knotted
into a small cube. It’s a monkey’s fist. “You see this little knot?” He holds
it up in his palm, then waves his other hand over it. The knot remains in his
palm. “No magic,” he says, “right?”
“Right,”
I nod. Seriously? He’s going to do one of those corny sleight of hand tricks
that I’m supposed to giggle over.
“Do
you believe I’m going to make the knot disappear?” he asks, curling his fingers
around the monkey’s fist and waving it around my head. “Well, if I can control
what you believe, then I can get away with whatever I want. Now, reach into
your pocket.” Somehow, his knife is there. I’m amazed, and for just a second,
I’m not thinking about what’s lurking in the water beneath us.
“Don’t
worry about Guillermo’s sea monsters.” Sully pats my knee and winks. “I have
powerful magic of my own to keep them away.”
Sully
groans his way up to a standing position. “Of course, the Commission is another
story. No joking around there. We’d just better keep our eyes open and our
noses out of places they don’t belong, right?”
I
nod, and hold his pocket knife up to him.
“Keep
it, sweetie. You just let me know if something scares you,” he says. “You can
talk to me anytime.”
I turn his knife over in my hand and
watch him walk away.
No, Sully, I can’t talk to anyone about
this.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kara
Lynn Conyer graduated from Syracuse University with degrees in journalism and
anthropology. After many years as a science writer and a science diver for the
Smithsonian Institution, she has learned a few things about what it's like to
be on an expedition in the middle of the ocean. When she's not gathering the
facts, she likes to imagine what secrets might lie beneath them. This is her
first novel.