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.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any
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.
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