The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black Read Free Book Online Page A

younger sister, Anna, sailing. For two weeks, they slept on scratchy cushions in a tiny room in the prow of the boat. Alex mostly sat on deck, his skin tightening with sunburn even though it was slathered with coconut-smelling lotion and his hair stiffening with salt as he read. Sometimes the glow of the sun on the paper was almost blinding.
    Anna swung around one of the fasts. She'd been running around the deck all day in a red bathing suit and a floppy hat, dancing up to him and trying to get him to play games with her. Meanwhile, Dad fished off the back and Mom steered lazily. There was barely any wind and the swells were small. Alex was bored but comfortable.
    "Want a plum?” Mom called, reaching into a cooler.
    "Nah,” Dad said. “Alex just wants to sit there with his nose in a book. All this beautiful nature around and he doesn't want to experience any of it."
    Alex ducked under the mast and took the fruit, frowning at his dad. He bit into it as he resettled into the cockpit. The plum was mealy and less sweet than he thought it would be. The juice ran over his hand.
    The book on Alex's lap was about sharks. He imagined them, darting beneath the boat, sleek and hungry. Mako sharks were the fastest—but pelagic, meaning they liked deep water. They seldom surfaced. According to what he had read, the great white shark could swim anywhere. In any kind of water. He kept his eyes on the water, looking for thin, angular fins.
    Sharks would eat anything. He considered dropping his plum over the side. He bet that so long as it was moving, a shark would eat it. It was the movement that enticed them.
    If one did come, then Alex would tell them what to do. Alex would be a hero. Even his dad would think so.
    ” M o m,” Anna said. “When can we swim?"
    "When we anchor,” Mom said.
    "When will we anchor?” Anna asked, the whine in her voice more pronounced.
    "Depends on the wind,” Dad said. “But it won't be more than a hour."
    "You said that an hour ago,” said Alex, but he didn't mind. He liked reading about sharks with all that deep water underneath him.
    In a little more than two hours, they anchored off a lagoon in Jamaica. They'd flown into Montego Bay a week ago and had been working their way down the coast. Most nights they inflated the dinghy and rowed in for ginger beer and dinner at one of the little fish places along the shore. Tonight, though, there was no town, just a lagoon and Mom, boiling potatoes in the galley.
    The beach was nice. No coral to cut up their feet. Anna paddled near some rocks, picking up snails and trying to catch the little lizards that seemed to be everywhere. She chased one into the water and then scooped it up, triumphant.
    Alex walked on the beach, looking for shells. Dad scooped sand out of a hole, ready to start a fire and grill the grouper he'd bought the day before. Mom's potatoes finished boiling and she brought them over, wrapped in tin foil, to stick in the fire.
    That was when Alex spotted them. The white flowers.
    They grew among the scrub, near a banana tree crawling with ants. Tiny buds of white on long stalks. Like the pen-and-ink illustration in the compendium about werewolves. He wasn't sure, but what if they were the same kind ?
    In the story, two children had been out picking flowers when they stumbled upon the white ones. After gathering a few stems, they turned into wolves and raced home to eat their parents.
    What if Anna picked one? Alex imagined her sprouting fur and how upset his parents would be, how convinced that she would never hurt them. When she went for Dad's neck, Mom would still be sure that Anna was only attacking because she was scared.
    But what if Mom or Dad were the ones that picked a flower?
    He'd have to run for the flowers, smell them fast and hope that he turned into a wolf too. But it was too easy to imagine if fast wasn't fast enough. He thought of sharks.
    "Hungry?” Dad called to him.
    His stomach rumbled in answer and he felt sick.
    What if