Strong Like the Sea, стр. 53

“Is that what you and Auntie did with Mom?” I ask.

“’Ae, foolish of me to forget how much power a little girl can wield.” At first I think he means power as in “powerful cleanup,” like what we did for the beach, but in his quiet mood, I’m not sure. Prickly words are easy to use with barbs that sting and jab. It’s harder to scoot the spines aside and leave the soft heart unprotected—but I think he’s trying.

He takes a few halting breaths like he wants to say more but doesn’t know how. Probably he needs more practice.

“Are you okay?” I glance from Uncle to Saisei and back, half-expecting our turtle friend to hurry away when I talk loud, but she raises her head to peer up at Uncle instead. You’d think a turtle’s beak would make it hard for them to smile, but I swear she does, and he beams down at her as if she were a beloved child instead of a turtle.

“I’m well enough.” He takes a long sip of noni tea. “So you and Saisei, good friends now, hah?”

“Maybe—but I’m not sure. When she moves her throat like that, does it mean she’s tired?”

“Oh, no. Her ribs are part of the shell, so her lungs can’t expand to breathe unless she moves some part of her body outside the shell. It could be a flipper, but she likes to use her neck for that.”

I try to imagine living with my ribs all cemented together in place, but my lungs hate the idea so much I take a big breath just because I can. “I thought maybe she was showing off—like swelling up to seem bigger like a puffer fish.” Not that she needs to look bigger. She’s already huge.

“No. One time, I met a turtle who moved his tail to breathe.”

“Like a dog?” I glance at Sarge with his tail whipping back and forth and try to imagine Saisei wagging her tail like that. So weird.

“No, it was more regular, with a constant steady beat. He wagged out and in so his hindquarters around the base of his tail could expand out and make room inside his shell. It was just his way of breathing.”

Turtles breathing with their butts. Who knew? For the first time in forever, I want to know about a creature of the sea. Not knowing the difference between breathing and acting tough or being tired is a rookie mistake. It’s like Uncle said, knowing about sea creatures is kind of like knowing a secret code, and the more I know, the less I’m afraid. My knowing stuff won’t let Saisei actually talk to me like a person can, but if I understood her special codes, maybe she could talk back in different ways. I clear my throat. “What else can you tell me?”

“About green sea turtles?”

“Yeah, like why do we call them green? They’re brown. There’s nothing green on them at all. Yellow maybe, and kinda white in parts, but the rest is brown and black.”

He sniffs and takes a drink. “The green is there, but you can’t see it. There’s a green layer of fat under the shell between the bones and the organs.”

“Eew, that’s gross. What else don’t I know?”

“Plenty,” he chuckles. “They have favorite colors—red, orange, and yellow, I believe. And their hearing isn’t very good unless it’s low frequencies that humans can’t really hear. But their sense of smell is keen. They use it to find food, mates, and predators.”

“Is that how they know where to go? Can they smell their way home?” Fat lot of good that would do Mom. She can count a whole load of things faster than Sarge can swish his tail once, but she’s not gonna sniff her way home.

“We don’t think smell has anything to do with how they navigate the ocean. They use it to avoid danger and find food for short-term detours, but that’s all.”

“So, how do they find their way back home then?” Maybe whatever it is could help Mom find her way home too.

Uncle sweeps a cupped hand around an imaginary circle. “They follow magnetic signatures from the earth. So, no matter how far they roam, the earth guides them home. Sort of like a compass they can’t lose, but it tells them more than just which way’s north.”

My lips twist. Pretty sure none of that turtle stuff can help Mom. She’s smarter than almost anybody, but she’d still need a compass and a good boat or sub to get home.

Auntie steps up beside Uncle, reaches for my hand, and pulls me up. “Cheehoo, such good job, Alex. Pau cleaning already? You’re this big—” She snaps her fingers. “How did you do so much?”

I brush sand from my side and pick up my bowler hat. “My friends helped, and so did Sarge . . . kind of.”

“Ah, yes. Always helpful, that one.” Uncle nods gravely, but Auntie laughs.

“Helpful as a wool blanket in summer, and just as in the way.”

Uncle walks over and peers under the bushes as if looking for any rubbish we might have left. “You did well. No digging here?”

“No, why?” The micro-plastics didn’t reach up that far. We scooped farther down, midway between water and grass.

“What, you want all my secret treasures at once? Saisei’s not enough for one day?”

The twinkle in his eye says he’s kidding, but I answer anyway. “Saisei is awesome.”

“She is a treasure—and some treasures are best protected and left alone.”

Before I can ask what he means, laughter from a cleanup crew echoes down the beach, and Saisei turns to push herself toward the water with halting flops. Her flippers leave straight, paired marks in the sand as she drags her shell along, push by push, her tail carving a last line behind her.

“What happened to her shell?” I’m not sure if the scar is exactly in the middle or not, even though I stared at her for