Tides by Betsy Cornwell Read Free Book Online

stretched his lean arms into the sky. When he looked down at Mara, a strange expression came over his face. “Do you want to come? I’m sure Gemm would feed you, and you could meet Lo. I think you and she could be friends.”
    Mara wasn’t sure how to take that, Noah’s going from wanting her to be his friend to wanting her to be his sister’s. But she got that odd feeling in her stomach again when Noah asked her to come back with him. She must be hungry.
    The younglings could eat late tonight, she decided, though they wouldn’t be happy about it. She’d worry about that later. A voice in her head whispered that she’d been good enough for one day, one lifetime, that she deserved a little fun. No one would ever be the wiser.
    She ignored the other voice, the Elder’s voice telling her to be careful, telling her the old stories about outsiders. But the Elder told different stories, too—like the one about the other Noah, with his ship full of animals. He’d saved them and then set them free.
    She glanced at her Noah again. Maybe he was like that.
    “All right,” she said, and found that she was smiling. “I can’t stay too late, though.”
    She walked to his rowboat with him, not at all sure what she really wanted. Her will, her knowledge of herself, always seemed to evaporate when she was on land. Things were so much clearer in the water.
    So she sat in his boat and let him push off. This was new, this being in the water and above it at the same time. The currents moved the boat, moved her, but she had no communication with them. She felt isolated and cramped, like a message in a bottle.
    She distracted herself by watching Noah. It was strange to see him push against each wave with the long wooden flippers he called oars. They progressed through the harbor at a pathetically slow pace.
    “Can I try?” she finally asked.
    Noah gave her another sideways look, eyebrows raised. She’d known him only a few hours, but she already hated that look.
    “You’ve never rowed before?” he asked. “You did say you live on these islands, didn’t you?”
    Mara fought a strong urge to stick out her tongue at him. “Just let me try it,” she said, and he handed her the oars. She wrapped her fingers around the wooden shafts and pulled.
    Water swirled in circles around the paddles, and she cut easily through each wave. She felt better now, in control of her movement through the water. The boat was a kind of second skin, in its way.
    Noah’s eyebrows were still raised, but his expression had changed. “I guess you have done this before,” he said. “I’ll just shut up from now on.”
    “Fine with me,” said Mara, grinning at him, feeling the rush of water underneath them as she rowed.
    “I guess the whole ‘friends’ concept is out the window, then.”
    “Is that you talking?”
    Noah made a horrified face and clapped his hands over his mouth. He looked so different when he joked, his eyes crinkled at the edges and sparkling. His eyes, she saw, were green.
    It took only moments to cross Gosport Harbor and the tiny stretch of ocean between Star Island and White. Mara looked over her shoulder and pulled the rowboat up to the shore. Noah jumped out—did he have
any
care for his shoes?—and, wading through the shallows and foam, he pulled the boat onto the gravel with Mara still aboard.
    The sound of the hull scraping against the bottom made her cringe. “I’ve got it,” she called, and jumped out, pushing the boat from behind until it rested several paces in from the tide line.
    She looked up from her efforts to see Noah recovering from a backwards fall. He had still been pulling the boat when her pushing it had overtaken him.
    “You’re strong,” he said.
    “And you’re still talking. You’ll want to look to that. Now, what’s for dinner?”
    Mara laughed, and Noah did too. She caught her hand reaching out to take his as they walked inland and pulled it back, mentally smacking herself. What was she