Hannah

by Kathryn Lasky

  “Look here. She’s dropping like a shot. Hit twentyeight and now the mercury’s going to twenty-seven. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the atmospheric pressure this low.”

  Perl yawned. “Makes you sleepy when she gets that low. The eye must be near.”

  So, thought Hannah. Not only are storms and hurricanes female but mercury and pressure are. She was not quite sure what he meant by atmospheric pressure. Hannah noticed that suddenly everyone appeared to be rather lethargic. Perl was not the only one yawning.

  “Well, I think we should turn in,” Mr. Hawley said. “Perl, Marston’s and your cots are near our door. If there is anything untoward, don’t hesitate one minute to come in.”

  “A-yuh,” replied Pearl.

  “Certainly, sir,” said Marston.

  Hannah was not one bit sleepy. If anything, she had never felt more alive as the atmospheric pressure continued to plummet and the mercury slid down to almost twenty-seven inches in the barometer. On one side of her in the hallway Daze slept, on the other, Susie. Hannah slipped from the bed, made her way downstairs to the kitchen, and stepped outside.

  She stood for a moment on the pantry porch, clinging to the post. It was an amazing night. The grand oak had been uprooted and fallen on the porch, crashing through its roof. She saw random boards, most likely from the outbuildings, tool sheds, stables, and greenhouses, flying through the air. Hannah immediately knew that if she tried to run across this wind, there was no way she would make it to the water. She would be picked up by a gust and smashed against a tree or a building. But if she crawled on her belly, she would offer less of a target. She sat down on the steps and scooted on her bottom down to the path, then turned onto her stomach and began slithering across the lawn. Now the only thing she feared was something falling upon her. She was nearly halfway across the grass when she heard a clacking and squawking above her. She covered her head and looked up.

  “Good God in heaven,” she muttered. It was a chicken coop complete with chickens flying through the air. It crash-landed a few yards from her. Momentarily stunned, the chickens stopped their squawking, then erupted again in a mad clucking. One of them managed to walk from the coop but in another second it was picked up by the wind and was soon tumbling head over tail through the air. Feathers blew down into the grass just in front of Hannah as she continued her crawl toward the sea. In the path, a large birch had been torn up but she managed to get around it. She saw the bodies of some tiny baby birds flung from their nest.

  She was almost to the cove when suddenly the sea came to her. A surge of waves like immense watery hands plucked her from the lawn, from the grass, from the crashed chicken coops and uprooted trees, and bore her into the water.

  She felt the wonderful familiar tingle in her legs as they fused together, the power and strength of that glistening tail. With one flick she propelled herself into the deeper water. She kept swimming down beneath the churnings and the surface rage of the bay. She felt the drag of the undercurrents, but they only made the swimming more interesting. It was as if she were trying to thread her way through a water maze. She wanted to get out to beyond Egg Rock where the really big waves would be crashing. In calm weather it took her only two rises to break through the surface for air. But in this hurricane she might have to take three. It was on her second rise that she noticed that everything around her had grown incredibly still. She swam now so that she was almost in a vertical position and lifted herself higher out of the water, which she could do easily by treading water with the flukes of her tail. She seemed to be in a windless pocket of the sea. The water was smooth. When she looked around she saw a swirling vapor, but when she tipped her head straight, it was clear—only stars. This must be the eye of the hurricane, she thought. I am finally at peace. Then she laughed. At peace in the eye of a storm! It seemed as if she had traveled vast distances to discover something at the very center of her being that she had always known.

  And yet, she thought as she swirled herself about in the still water to face the coast that was only a dim scratchy line behind a veil of flying froth and spume, and yet all that I have known of love is there. She could almost hear Ettie’s voice and feel the painter’s eyes on her. She realized with instant clarity that she did not really know what awaited her.

  But suddenly she sensed a presence. It was nearby. It wasn’t a seal. She knew how seals swam, she knew their scent. Her heart began to beat wildly. There was someone near…someone…She looked about, frantic with excitement. There was no fear, only the joy of sensing another. The clouds and rains were scraped away and a stream of moonlight fell upon the calm lake in the middle of the stormy sea. There was a glistening flash as the moon’s silver light illuminated a tail, a tail just like her own.

  I am not alone! There is a world out there.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2009 by Kathryn Lasky

  Jacket photo illustration © 2009 by Jonathan Barkat

  Jacket design by Lillie Mear

  All rights reserved. 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.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lasky, Kathryn.

  Daughters of the sea : Hannah / by Kathryn Lasky.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In 1899 when a fifteen-year-old orphan named Hannah obtains employment as a servant in the home of one of Boston’s wealthiest families, she meets a noted portrait painter who seems to know things about her that even she is not aware of, and when she accompanies the family to their summer home in Maine, she feels an undeniable pull to the sea.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-439-78310-1 (alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 0-439-78310-0 (alk. paper)

  [1. Mermaids—Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Social classes—Fiction. 4. Household employees—Fiction. 5. Orphans—Fiction. 6. Boston (Mass.)—History—1865—Fiction. 7. Maine—History— 19th century—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Hannah.

  PZ7.L3274Da 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009008433

  First edition, September 2009

  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, down-loaded, 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: 978-0-545-23003-2