Strong Like the Sea, стр. 52

Saisei raises her head, her pale yellow throat puffing in and out as her mouth moves as though she’s chewing on something. But instead of a smooth curve to the hard, flat shell like other green sea turtles have, a dent creases Saisei’s back in the middle, forming a slight double bump instead of one continuous line. The old scar circles her middle like a shark tried to bite her in half but spit her back out.

A few golden plovers sweep down from the trees overhead and land on the shoreline somewhere behind Saisei. Their mellow qui-lee-lee songs sprinkle bursts of melody over the sound of waves, but Saisei doesn’t seem to mind.

She rests on her hard belly and elbows with fins pulled back near her shell as she tilts her head up to soak in the sun. With thick scales covering her whole body, she is regal and ancient, as if my imagination pulled her straight from a Triassic world where dinosaurs ruled before birds ever took to the sky. In the depths of her half-lidded eyes, a silver-gray ring shines through the dark and focuses on me as we lie together on the sand.

She bends her neck and uses her elbow to wipe sand from her scaly face, but I stay still, hardly daring to blink. Part because I don’t want to scare her, and part because she scares me—not terrified like with the eel, but more like a shiver prickling along my skin. At four feet long and maybe three hundred pounds, she’s so big—it shakes me a little that something this huge could crawl out of the ocean to sit next to me. And if something this big can come out of the sea to find me, what else can live in the deep where no one can see?

The eel found me. The turtle found me. The blue bubble hid right on the shore. What else might come looking?

I wait, tense, ready to bolt for the lanai should she get tired of chewing on air and decide to munch on me instead . . . but she doesn’t.

We stay that way for a while, Sarge snoring at my back, Saisei lounging a half-dozen feet in front of me. Under her watchful eye, I’m rooted, caught in this place and time as if captured by a ghost net.

Minutes slip by and my ears fill with the sound of surf, birds, and rustling leaves. But Saisei doesn’t move any closer. Bit by bit, my muscles relax until I’m limp again.

Maybe she’s not coming closer because she thinks I’m a lumpy pile of rubbish or a weird piece of driftwood.

Maybe, but I don’t think so. I’m sure she sees me.

More than that, it feels as though she sees right through me. As if she already knows everything that I could tell her.

Fascination fills the space where fear used to be, and I know I could watch her forever.

Sharing the beach with her like this, if someone told me that Saisei knew all the secrets of the universe, I would believe them. I can’t help but wonder, what secrets would she share if she could speak?

“Have you crossed the ocean?” I whisper. “Gone to the bottom of the sea?”

She blinks, her throat still puffing in a quick, steady rhythm.

“Did you ever travel as far away as my mom? Have you seen a typhoon?”

Her chin touches the sand, though she doesn’t look away. Uncle says she’s shy, but she doesn’t seem to mind my words, softer than the plover’s tones. Maybe she thinks my voice is only a murmur of surf and sea. Or maybe Saisei saw me cleaning and decided I wasn’t so bad.

“When you saw the typhoon—were you scared? Or did your shell protect you?” Did Mom feel protected in the belly of the submarine with its shell of metal instead of bone?

Sarge groans as he stands and walks away while the plovers fly off in a flutter of gray wings, but with the turtle so close, I don’t turn my head. With my legs tucked against my belly and my spine curved, I pretend we’re the same—even if Saisei probably outweighs me by two hundred pounds.

“Did your mom leave clues so you’d know what to do?” I imagine a little bitty turtle searching the whole ocean for her mom with no video chats or phone calls—just tiny flippers alone in the middle of one enormous ocean. In that moment, I feel like she knows me, and I know her. An old soul and a girl. Both of us alone, but surrounded by life.

Saisei closes her eyes and the connection fades, but even as it drifts away, I reach for one more moment, clinging to the magic between us long enough to murmur a final question. “Were you ever scared you’d never find your way home again?”

Sarge huffs, his collar tags tinkling against each other as he dances near.

“Saisei’s found her way home over and over, even when I tried my best to send her away.” Uncle’s voice is calm, but I still sit up and scoot away from the turtle. What had the protector lady said the rule was? Be far enough away to cover the seal with your thumb? If it’s the same rule for turtles, I’m way too close. Normally, I’d never get this close to a turtle. But she came to me. And I was asleep besides. But still, I cringe. I know better.

I glance up at Uncle, but instead of being angry, he seems at peace, with none of the rage and pain from before. He watches Saisei scratch her nose with her elbow again. “She’s like family to me now. Some are born to all the family they need, others