She swam as fast as she could, as long as she could. She swam toward The Bones. When she surfaced a fog had swept in, a blessed fog. Rudd could not find them. It was as thick and as dense as the whiteness of the squall. Please, God, she prayed. Let the fog last. Let it last!
She dragged Hugh up onto the ledge, which at this tide was almost entirely out of the water. His eyes were still closed. He appeared unconscious, but he was breathing. There was a bruise forming on his right cheek, but she had still never seen a lovelier face. She traced the spot where those deep wonderful creases appeared every time he laughed. How she loved his face when he laughed. He had begun to stir; she saw his eyes moving behind the pale blue veins in his lids. Suddenly she was looking into the soft gray light of his gaze.
“May?”
“Yes, you’ll be fine, Hugh. But he tried to kill you. He’ll try again.”
“But, May, you saved me.”
“Why were you such a fool to go out in this weather?”
“Love, I told you—it knows no season.”
She looked away from him and began to cry. Through the fog, the scales of her tail sparkled.
“May, why are you crying?”
“You know what I am now.”
He sat up slowly. He was looking at her tail. She could feel his eyes on it even though she would not turn her head to look at his face.
“And what are you?”
“You can see.” She stirred the flukes of her tail in the lapping water. “I am less than human.”
He gazed at the tail as it stirred the water. She looked at his eyes as they swept from the flukes to the hem of where her dress lay wet across what would have been her knees on dry land. He turned his head and smiled at her so sweetly she thought her heart might break.
“And if you are less than human, what does that make Rudd? We should all be so human as you, May.”
A sob convulsed her. Hugh took her in his arms.
“Look at me, May. Look at me.”
“I can’t. I can’t. I am ashamed.”
“No! No, never! What are you ashamed of? These lovely scales that make the fog so bright? The brightness of your mind? I love you for all these things, May. You are the stars. You are a galaxy unbound and come to earth. You are what makes the invisible world visible. I love you. You are the world to me!”
May pressed her head against Hugh’s chest. The thud of his human heart seemed to blend with the sound of the waves splashing against the rocks. She sighed. For the moment, nothing existed but the two of them. There was no Rudd. No Zeeba. They were two stars burning in a secluded patch of night sky.
About the Author
Kathryn Lasky is no stranger to the sea, having crossed the Atlantic in a thirty-foot sailboat twice. Kathryn is the author of over fifty books, including the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series, which has sold more than four million copies and is now a major motion picture, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Her books have received a Newbery Honor, a Boston Globe– Horn Book Award, and a Washington Post–Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award. She lives with her husband in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Kathryn Lasky
Cover photo illustration © 2011 by Jonathan Barkat
Cover design by Lillie Howard
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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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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lasky, Kathryn. May / Kathryn Lasky.
p. cm. — (Daughters of the sea)
Summary: In 1899 on an island off the coast of Maine, fifteen-year-old May learns why she has always felt different from the other girls in her small town, but must keep hidden that she is a mermaid or risk attracting the attention of a dangerous hunter, and losing a boy
for whom she cares
ISBN-13: 978-0-439-78311-8
ISBN-10: 0-439-78311-9
[1. Mermaids — Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Islands — Fiction.
4. Lighthouses—Fiction. 5. Maine—History—19th century—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ7.L3274May 2011
[Fic —dc22
2010026535
First edition, March 2011
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
E-ISBN 978-0-545-33245-3
Kathryn Lasky, May
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