Copyright © 2013
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Edited by Sherie Hodds
Cover design by Matt Reid
eBook design by Joseph Muise
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Dawydiak, Orysia, 1952-, author
Kira’s secret / Orysia Dawydiak.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-927502-17-4 (bound).--ISBN 978-1-927502-18-1 (ebook)
I. Title.
PS8607.A968K57 2013 jC813’.6 C2013-904722-0
C2013-904723-9
The publisher acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts Block Grant Program.
For Kira and her parents, Jodie and Terry
Chapter One—
A Discovery
Today Kira decided to do something forbidden. She was going to the beach by herself. She had only ever been there with her parents, and longed to explore the shallow tide pools where she’d seen golden starfish and limpets clinging to underwater rocks, and pink anemones gently waving their soft fingers. Once, when she reached in to touch these beautiful creatures, her mother had dragged her away. “No, Kira!” she’d scolded. “You must never put your hands in the seawater!”
When Kira cried, “But why? Why can’t I?” her mother said that sea animals were dangerous, they would sting and bite her and were not to be trusted. Later, in school, Kira learned that this was not exactly true. Many sea creatures were perfectly safe.
This early in the morning, the air was cool, so Kira pulled on her tall yellow boots and a light nylon jacket. She was glad her parents were at work and there was no one to see her as she slipped out the door and down a path to the beach. When she reached the water’s edge, she stopped and just watched the tide slide back and forth, leaving a lacy froth of bubbles in the sand between the rocks. She stood mesmerized by the waves; they had a soothing effect.
Kira did not know how long she’d been standing still, staring at the waves, when she heard a shout. She turned around and saw someone walking toward her, waving an arm. Kira squinted. Her eyesight was not the best, even with her thick glasses. In fact, she usually had to sit in the front row of her class so she could read the writing on the board.
“Hey, Kira! What are you doing?” It was Cody, the only boy in her class whose father wasn’t a fisherman or a boat-supply salesman. He was a chubby boy with a lisp, who was always pestering the teachers with science questions. His father was the local dentist, and Cody was the only kid in the village who wore braces. No one else could afford them. The other boys often made fun of Cody, but she didn’t mind him. Kira knew what it was like to be different—she was adopted.
“I’m just going to check out the tide pools,” Kira said.
“That’s where I’m going. I can go show you some cool stuff, if you like.”
“Oh, okay.”
Cody grinned, not noticing the waver in her voice.
They climbed over a few large boulders, stopping at small pools with snails and mussels and tiny skittering crabs. After half an hour had passed, Cody said, “I know where there’s a huge pool with all kinds of stuff in it. It’s kind of far, though.”
Kira’s eyes lit up. “Sure, let’s go!” She’d already forgotten about all the chores awaiting her at home.
They continued to scramble along the rough shore, just a short distance from the pounding waves. There was no sand now, just rock. After twenty minutes or so, they climbed down into a shallow valley covered by water. To Kira it was a vast blue mirror of the sky.
“This pool is always here. It never dries up like some of the smaller ones,” Cody explained. “During high tide the water washes over that side and fills it up. What do you think?” He waved his arm, as if introducing an old friend.
“Does it have a name?”
Cody laughed. “I don’t think so, but I call it Paradise Pond. I spend a lot of time here,” he admitted and looked away.
“Aha! That’s why you know so much about sea life,” Kira teased him. She’d always figured him for a bookworm. He was the smartest kid in her class.
Cody grinned. “Let me give you a tour,” he said, and gave a little bow. “Wait ’til you see the purple anemones, they’re awesome. And bright yellow starfish, and red crabs. You won’t believe your eyes!”
For the next hour Cody took Kira around the pool and pointed out the various species of starfish, clams, crabs, jellyfish, and anemones. He acted as proud of the inhabitants of Paradise Pond as Kira’s neighbour Brian was of his Labrador retriever. As they waded through the shallower water, Cody occasionally bent over and picked up a starfish or sea urchin to show Kira different features on their bodies. She thought they were all beautiful, even the spiny urchins and spidery crabs who scurried along the rocky bottom.
When Kira put her hands in the cold salty water, her fingers felt warm and almost as if they were melting.
“That’s weird,” he said.
“What’s weird?” Kira asked.
“Your hands.” He pointed at her hands wavering under water, like the tentacles on anemones.
Kira pulled them out and spread her fingers wide. They looked perfectly normal to her.
“Hmm,” he said, and scratched his head. He moved on to a different part of the pool.
Kira stared at her hands closely then dipped them into the water again. No doubt, her hands looked wider and her fingers shorter. Kind of soft and webby, she thought. How odd. Whenever she put her hands in the sink to wash dishes or into the chlorinated swimming pool, they looked like regular hands under water. Perhaps the sunlight and dark rock bottom were playing tricks on her eyes.
She caught up to Cody. “Hey, Cody, let’s do an experiment.”
“Sure.” Cody the science nerd loved experiments.
“Let’s put our hands in the water at the same time, and compare them,” Kira suggested.
“Okay.” Cody raised his eyebrows, but he was game.
They plunged their hands into the water simultaneously, and spread their fingers. “Ooh,” they said at the same time.
Kira’s fingers had shallow webs between them; Cody’s did not. His hands looked perfectly normal, just slightly distorted by the water. They both lifted their hands out and once again Kira’s were normally shaped hands, just like Cody’s.
“What the heck?” he said.
Kira suddenly felt breathless. “I need to go home. I’ve got chores to do. I’ll never finish before Mom gets home,” she said.
“Uh, sure. How come you have so much to do?” Cody asked.
Kira wasn’t sure she wanted to confide in Cody. She liked him, but she didn’t really know him that well.
“Both my parents work all day,” she explained, “and I’m the only one around to clean the house, stuff like that.” Kira was already scrambling up the side of the rocky slope, back the way they had come.
At the top of the hill, a gust of wind blew Cody’s next questions out of his mouth and beyond her hearing. Kira ignored him and hurried on. She didn’t want to talk any more about her parents, or what they had just seen under the wat
er. For once she wanted to be back inside her house, and she couldn’t get home fast enough.
When Kira opened the door to her house, she was dismayed to see her mother standing in the porch.
“Kira! Where have you been? I came home early and you were gone. I was mad with worry. What have you been up to?” she demanded, her hands on her hips, her lips quivering.
Kira shivered under her jacket. “I… I went for a walk. To get some fresh air.”
“Fresh air? All you need to do is open a window, or just step out the door. You were gone at least an hour. I’ve been calling everyone to find out if they’ve seen you. And now they’re all upset, and I need to call them back.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Kira said in a tiny voice.
Her mother narrowed her large, wild eyes like a laser boring into Kira’s brain. “You didn’t go to the beach, did you? Did you go to the water?” Her voice rose higher with each question until she was nearly shouting. “Did you touch the water?”
“N…no, I didn’t go to the water. I just took a little walk along the rocks,” Kira said. She didn’t actually touch the water in the open sea, just a tide pool, she thought. Would her mother believe her?
“You know you’re not to leave the house alone unless you tell us first where you are going,” her mother scolded. “I can’t even trust you to follow instructions. What are we to do with you?”
She put her hand to her forehead and Kira winced. She knew what was coming.
“I have a terrible headache and this isn’t helping,” her mother said. “The house is a mess, so get busy and sweep the floors while I take a nap. But do it quietly, and don’t leave the house!” She disappeared into her bedroom.
Kira felt terrible, and resentful. She never got to go anywhere by herself, and she hated being yelled at. Her mother always got a headache when she yelled at Kira.
Not her real mother, though, she thought. Maybe that’s why Kira was such an aggravation to her.
Kira picked up the broom and began to sweep. She thought about the stories she’d read at school, about evil stepmothers and witches. And Harry Potter’s mean relatives. She wished she could climb on the broom and zoom off into the sky, away from this small house and her fake parents. She wished she’d known her real parents. She had no photos of them, only the story about the shipwreck that had killed them, and how she had survived and was adopted by Cillian and Bess Cox who had no children of their own.
She should be more grateful, Kira thought. But why did they treat her that way, so strict, so many rules? She looked down at her hands, a pair of normal hands gripping the wooden broom handle. Yet not so normal in the saltwater. Were her parents keeping things from her, secrets, about herself, and where she came from?
Kira made a second big decision that day. She had a mystery to uncover, and she intended to solve it.
Chapter Two—
The Dream
Later that evening Kira’s father returned from fishing, weary from a long hard day at sea. She was prepared to get a harsh scolding from him as well. Instead, she had to sit through the same old lecture she’d been hearing since she could remember.
“The sea is a dangerous place, Kira. You know how people get swept off the rocks by unexpected waves. Every year, tourists visit our beautiful beaches, and every year one or two of them drown. Such a tragedy for them and their families.” He paused and knelt down next to Kira, and took her small hands in his large calloused ones. He looked earnestly into the large blue-green eyes blinking at him through thick lenses.
“Kira, I know you’re one of the best swimmers in your school. But that’s in the community pool. Even the strongest swimmers are no match for the currents off our coast.”
He put his big hand on Kira’s head and patted her gently. “Your mother and I would never forgive ourselves if any harm came to you. We were not blessed with our own children, and you were a gift to us. A gift we treasure. If we lost you…well, we simply can’t imagine our lives without you.” He lowered his head and gave a great sigh.
Kira felt ashamed. Her father had saved her from drowning, so no wonder he was afraid for her. She knew that fishing was a hard life, but there was enough to provide clothes for her, even if they weren’t the latest fashions, and a comfortable, warm house with her own little bedroom. There was always plenty to eat, though most of the desserts came from the diner where her mother worked.
Kira went to bed early that evening. She read two chapters of her library book then closed her eyes. But sleep would not come to her easily. She had so many questions she wanted to ask her parents, questions that would probably upset them.
Earlier that summer she had asked if she could go fishing with her father, like the boys did every year when school was out.
“No, Kira,” her father had said. “It’s a hard job out on the boats. You’re not strong enough, you’d be in the way, and that would be a safety problem for everyone. Anyhow, you’d probably get seasick, and the smell of the fish would knock you senseless after a while.”
No matter how often she protested, or how much she tried to reason with him, her father would not give in. Kira knew she was as strong as the boys, and she could run faster than most of them. It wasn’t fair. Her mother was no help, either. She left for work at the diner each day, leaving a list of chores for Kira: sweep the floors, wash the dishes, iron the clothes, do the mending.
The only things she was not allowed to mend were the fishing nets. Kira was glad—she hated the feel of the rough nets in her hands. She didn’t mind handling raw fish, and eating the fish and lobster her mother cooked, but she avoided the nets. She found them nasty and repulsive.
So while most of her classmates had summer jobs or were at camp, she had to stay at home all day. She felt even more isolated because her house was at the edge of town, out of sight of nearly all the others. The small blue clapboard house overlooked the wharf where the fishing boats tied up.
That night as she slowly drifted off to sleep, Kira consoled herself with visions of the beautiful creatures she had seen in the tide pools that day. She always dreamed in vivid colours. This time she found herself standing at the edge of a tide pool, staring deep into the clear, salty water. A loud bark made her look behind to see a giant dog running toward her. He was huge, the size of her entire school building, and the drooling tongue that hung out of his mouth was longer than she was! Kira didn’t hesitate. She jumped into the water and started swimming away from the dog.
She heard a splash behind her, followed by a tidal wave. The monster dog was closing in on her! Kira reacted automatically—she dove down, straight down into the pond. It was a long way to the bottom. When she finally landed on the soft silt, Kira tilted her head back in amazement. The seaweeds she had seen from above were the size of poplar trees under water. A nearby lavender-coloured anemone was larger than her father’s thirty-foot boat. Like Alice in Wonderland, she had shrunken to the size of a pocket doll. So the dog, who by then had returned to shore, must have been a regular-sized canine.
Kira gazed around at her new surroundings. What other wonders would she find now? If she was so tiny, there could be other dangers underwater. She tried to remember what Cody had told her about the animals that lived in tide pools. Starfish, sea urchins, clams, mussels, limpets—they all moved too slowly to be a serious threat. And jellyfish might be slow, but they had deadly stingers, especially if they were larger than she was. But there were also crabs, and she’d seen how quickly they could scuttle sideways. And fish, there were lots of colourful fish in the tide pools, but most of them were small. Then again, baby barracudas had all those sharp teeth, they were super fast, and ate everything they could swallow.
From the corner of her eye, Kira saw a dark shadow flitting past. She crouched behind the anemone bush and looked up. There was nothing in the water above her, but when she focused beyond the surface, she saw that the shadow belonge
d to a seagull flying high up in the sky. That was when Kira realized that although she wasn’t wearing glasses, she could see everything clearly, close up and far away. Fantastic, she thought.
Her excitement was short-lived. From off to the left, something large and silvery was approaching at great speed and heading straight for her. Kira panicked. Should she try to hide in the anemone? Their tentacles could be fatal if she touched the poisonous parts. Should she try to swim for shore and hope the dog had gone?
In a flash she decided to swim. To her amazement, she found herself shooting through the water, around and through the seaweed, past jellyfish, anemones, and small fish. The large silvery monster, whatever it was, had been left far behind. Kira swam up and up toward the light and broke through to the surface. She saw no dogs or other land creatures as she started to scramble up onto the rocks.
But she could not get out of the water. She kicked and struggled, clawing with her hands, but to no avail. It felt like she was being dragged back into the pool. She looked behind and was astonished to see that her legs were gone and in their place was a golden fish tail.
Kira awoke in her bed, gasping. She sat up and checked under the covers for her legs. They were still attached to her body. It was only a dream, or a nightmare. But such a brilliant, magical nightmare. She lay back down and pulled the covers up to her chin. She relived the thrill of flying through the water with no effort at all. And no worries about breathing, either. How cool is that, she thought, revelling in her dream and slipping back into sleep.
Chapter Three—
Hitting the Books
When Kira woke the next morning, all she could think about was her dream. She remembered the delicious sensation of gliding through the water like an elegant manta ray, the scenery painted in vibrant hues like she’d never seen in previous dreams. Kira dearly wished she could return to that world, but reality loomed. Her heart sank as she climbed into her clothes and dragged herself into the kitchen. She stared at the notepad on the fridge door, and read the list of chores for the day.
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