Ocean: The Awakening by Brian Herbert, Jan Herbert Read Free Book Online

towel, all bearing the stylized “E” logo of the Ellsworth Ranch. She also had her California surfboard with her, hoping to catch some good waves. It was late morning.
    For a while, she hesitated going into the water due to the number of people out there, so she jammed her ten-foot board upright in the sand and sat under the umbrella, reading a book about ancient Hawaiian royalty, and the koa-wood canoes they used to ride between the islands. Because of that history, koa was considered to be a sacred wood by the Hawaiians. It was rare, and expensive.
    The beach was white sand (from bits of dead, bleached coral that had washed ashore), with black, lava-rock promontories towering on two sides of the picturesque, protected area. The week before, she’d seen a cow where it didn’t belong high atop one of the promontories, and she’d watched with interest as ranch hands rescued the animal and then repaired the broken fencing that had allowed it to get through. Sometimes cows and horses stumbled off the bluffs onto the rocks and were killed by the fall, drowned if they went over at high tide. It was an ongoing problem that caused her grandfather to pay special attention to fence maintenance, but on a property as large as his there were bound to be lapses.
    After reading a chapter, Alicia studied the gently rolling waves, noting that the water was not active enough for surfing, not the way it had churned several days ago when she’d ridden her board for hours. Now, leaving her board upright in the sand, she put on fins, a snorkel, and a mask, and waded out in the midst of the crowd of swimmers and waders. Then, keeping her head above water, she used the fins to paddle out to the buoys that designated where netting protected the area from sharks, a section where she had noticed a lesser number of swimmers. There was a risk of being caught in an undertow out here that could carry her over the top of the netting, but she was a good swimmer and wasn’t afraid of sharks. Besides, she knew the lifeguards had fast boats, and they were very competent. Finally she pulled on her mask and put her head underwater.
    Despite the large number of people in the water, bright fish were abundant beneath the surface, including rainbow-hued coris as well as yellow and black kihi-kihi . Though she was not an ichthyologist, she’d heard that kihi-kihi were actually a reef species, so she wondered why they were here. She wasn’t complaining, though; they were especially beautiful, darting this way and that, in small schools.
    Then she saw something large and hazy ahead, coming from the deep sea beyond the underwater netting, a swath that began to break apart as it continued to approach. It was a school of jellyfish, she realized, and it kept coming, even slipping through the netting.
    Alarmed, Alicia turned and swam on the surface toward shore, but she wasn’t fast enough. Quickly, the large, bell-shaped creatures were swarming all around her, stinging her skin. She found herself in the midst of thrashing swimmers, panicked and screaming, and heard an alarm siren that had been activated by the lifeguards.
    Somebody ran into her and hit her hard on the back of the head—causing a sharp pain that made her stop swimming and try to tread water instead. She felt woozy, swallowed water, and struggled to swim again. How deep was it here? She had lost track, wasn’t even sure where the beach was anymore.
    Abruptly, she felt a strong arm around her waist, and someone pulling her through the water. A native man with dark skin and tattoos, she realized. The jellyfish finally stopped swarming her as her rescuer got her to the shallows, where she could walk again. Her skin was on fire from the stinging attacks, and she felt short of breath.
    The air was full of screams and crying, and the alarm siren continued to wail. She’d never heard that awful sound before, in the ten months she’d lived in Hawaii.
    As she reached the sandy beach and struggled to