Fort Morgan by Claudia Hall Christian Read Free Book Online

into
the boat.
    Somehow, the small boat expanded to fit all
of them. Sandy sat down on the wooden bench, and Jill took the seat
next to her near the back of the boat. Her father took up the stern
of the boat. Heather and the woman she was with stood near the
front of the boat. Perses pushed the boat away from the dock.
    They floated along the
calm burnt-orange water. There was no discernable wind or current.
Yet somehow, the craft moved across the amber sea. After a few
moments, the dock they’d stood on sank into the gelatinous water
with a quiet plop . Otherwise, the only sounds were the Sea of Amber lapping
against the boat and the gentle sound of their breath going in and
out.
    “ How are we moving?” Sandy
whispered to Jill.
    Jill shrugged and looked at her father. His
gaze was fixed on the horizon. She followed his gaze and saw only
the spot where the Sea of Amber met the cloudless orange sky. Jill
shivered.
    “ Are you cold?” Sandy
asked.
    “ Creeped out,” Jill said
under her breath.
    She glanced at the woman Heather was
standing next to. While she watched, the woman’s appearance
changed. At one point, Jill was sure the woman looked like the
Virgin Mary from her Catholic school days with a white head
covering and blue robe. A few minutes later, the woman took on the
features of the pagan goddess, Brighid. Jill blinked, and then the
woman had long, kinky grey hair that stood out from her head and
white, sightless eyes. Her skin then shifted to the deepest black
with clear dark eyes and dreadlocks that looked like snakes. Every
once in a while, Jill saw the woman’s visage settled into the site
of a beautiful woman of regal bearing with golden brown skin.
    “ Is
she . . .” Sandy leaned closer,
“ . . .changing?”
    Jill nodded. Sandy cleared her throat.
    “ Heather?” Sandy
asked.
    Heather turned to look at Sandy for the
first time. For a moment, Heather’s eyes scanned Sandy’s body. It
was clear that she didn’t recognize her friend.
    “ Heather?” Sandy repeated.
Heather’s face broke into a warm smile.
    “ Sandy.” Heather nodded.
She glanced at Jill. “And Jill.”
    Heather looked like she would run to hug
them. She glanced at the ever-changing woman and decided against
that.
    “ I’m glad you’re here,”
Heather said.
    “ Where is here?” Jill
asked.
    “ This is the Sea of
Amber,” Heather said.
    “ Obviously,” Sandy
said.
    “ Yeah, I guess that is
obvious.” Heather nodded.
    “ Trust nothing you see,”
the woman standing next to Heather said, now wearing the visage of
an African warrior princess. “Everything is a fabrication of the
serpent. Even this boat.”
    “ They want us here?” Sandy
asked.
    The woman changed into a Chinese woman
similar to Ng Mui, one of the five elders of the Shaolin
Dynasty.
    “ It appears that way,” the
woman said. “They are trying to capture someone, some
thing.”
    As the woman nodded, she transformed into an
alabaster woman with shocking blue eyes and jet-black hair.
    “ Your friend,” the woman
said.
    “ Tanesha?” Heather said in
a whisper.
    “ Perses’ granddaughter,
the one protected by the Sword of Truth,” the woman
said.
    “ Katy?” Jill
asked.
    “ Wait,” Sandy said. “What
are we talking about?”
    “ Serpents!” the woman said
as she transformed into a disheveled woman with bushy--eyebrows and
an inch of grey roots in her bad black-hair dye job. Her clothing
looked like that of a transient.
    “ We’ve killed serpents
before,” Sandy said. “Why would they want Katy or
Tanesha?”
    “ Or Keenan, Jake, and
Delphie?” Jill asked.
    “ Blane,” Heather
said.
    “ Blane too?” Sandy
asked.
    Heather gave a sad nod.
    “ What do you know?” the
woman asked Perses, as she transformed into a pirate complete with
a captain’s hat and parrot.
    “ I know that you are
driving me crazy, Hera,” Perses said. “Stop changing.”
    “ Sorry.” The woman looked
embarrassed. “I do that when I’m