Saltwater Heart

by Kendall Kulper

Genres: YA Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

The summer James lost his heart to Alice, Alice lost her heart to the sea. The confident and charming daughter of the town's most accomplished whaling captain, Alice changes James's life the moment she teaches him how to sail. But when her father needs to fill a spot on his ship, it's James who is offered the position, and the day he returns from his expedition, he discovers Alice has disappeared. In this companion novella to Salt & Storm and Drift & Dagger, James must search the world for his heart's desire, a journey that takes him from the strange and mysterious world of the infamous Roe witch to the deepest and most dangerous reaches of the ocean itself.

Release date: September 8, 2015

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 49

Sample

Three years before I lost my hand, I lost my heart to Alice.

We were both fifteen. We’d grown up in Fairhaven, along the rocky tidal pools of the Massachusetts coast, on opposite sides of town. Opposite in all ways: She was the daughter of the most accomplished captain in our town’s history. My mother was a washerwoman.

The day we met, the wind was at crosses with itself. Bits of dust swirled up from the streets and stung our eyes. Down at the docks, a sail that had been put aside for repairs suddenly burst into the air and flew away, flapping and folding on itself. The shipwrights called off their work for the day, and my master sent me home. I didn’t often have holidays. I pictured going back to our cottage—where my mother would surely put me to stirring her stinking, sweating pots of underdrawers—and picked up my fishing pole instead.

Fairhaven had a little beach just north of town. In a few weeks, children would descend on it, thick as flies, but summer had only just begun. The wind had teeth, and the beach would be empty.

I saw her boat first. Too high out of the water and stuck sideways in mud. Fanlike black handprints dotted the hull. The sail snapped like a whip in the wind. She was in the water next to the boat, her pale skirts floating around her like clouds of silt. She had on a bonnet, a big, ugly thing that made her face look like it was down a well. The sleeves of her dress, from the points of her elbows to the tips of her fingers, were painted black with the sludge of the cove.

I watched her for a moment, and when she finally saw me, she let out a noise—part surprise, part relief.

“You!” she said, happy, as if she’d been expecting me. “Come give me a push!”

I stood with my pole over my shoulder, thinking about all the things I’d heard my mother mutter about rich folk.

“Yoo-hoo!” She lifted her arm over her head and waved. The wind caught her bonnet, and she clutched at it. “I need a push!”

I just watched her.

“Gust out of nowhere! Give me a hand.”

“What happened?” I called back.

“Wind, I said!”

“It’s too windy to sail.” I was enjoying being unhelpful.

“Oh, wind I haven’t got a problem with.” She laughed and kicked the hull. “Just mud. Are you going to help me, or shall I start swimming home?”

She knew and I knew I wasn’t going to abandon her. If word got back to Fairhaven I’d left Captain Gray’s daughter in the muck, it would mean bad things for my mother. I dropped my pole on the ground, shucked off my jacket, kicked free my boots, and waded out to her.

“Step back,” I said, and she shook her head. With that bonnet on, I thought, she might knock herself out.

“You’ll never get it out on your own. Here, I’ll take the port side. Ready?” She wiped her hands down the front of her dress and braced herself against the hull. “All right now, push!”

I threw my weight forward. Beside me, I could hear her breathing hard. The boat shuddered but didn’t move. In another minute, I thought, she would send me to walk back, dripping, to town to fetch the towboat. The idea made me grit my teeth, and I shoved so hard the whole thing came loose with a little pop, quick enough that I went right along with it, facefirst into the water.

I came up coughing, spitting out mud, listening to her laughter.

“Fancy a swim?” she asked. All I could see in the shadows of the bonnet was her grin, white and smooth. . .