Read Online On the Isle of Sound and Wonder by Alyson Grauer - Free Book Online

bright and startlingly blue-green, like lightning over the ocean. Her golden-brown hair was long and handsomely done in braids and curls, and her traveling gown was a bright russet red with gold and ivory silk sleeves. She seemed a little windblown and damp from the sea, but all in all, quite well and merry. She might have been three or four, though it was hard to tell with mortals.
    She saw him looking at her and gave a little gasp, stopping in her tracks as though it were part of a game. Aurael felt something strange break open inside of his sleepy, icy soul. He heard her take a few steps closer, and, after a pause, he let both of his eyes open wider by a fraction. The girl stopped again, pressing her mouth into a line to prevent her giggles from escaping.
    Aurael shut his eyes again, heard her venture even closer, and then, silence. The breeze was gentle in the branches of his tree, but he heard no sign of her. After several moments, he opened his eyes fully, puzzled, and found that she had vanished. He frowned, the bark of the tree shifting to accommodate his furrowing brow.
    “Are you a nymph?”
    The girl was sitting on the ground at the foot of the tree, leaning against the trunk like a kitten pressing against the legs of an unsuspecting stranger.
    “What?” Aurael replied before he could stop himself. “No. No, I’m not a nymph.” The word tasted like evergreen sap to him, acrid and disgusting. A nymph indeed! He pulled a grimace in the tree bark. The little girl was tracing the patterns on the bark, deeply interested in every line.
    “Are you a fairy?”
    Aurael tried not to gag audibly. “No, I’m not a fairy, either.”
    “But you can talk. Trees don’t talk.” The girl looked up at him with a very serious expression. “So you must be something other than a tree.”
    “Are you certain this isn’t in your head?” Aurael inquired, trying to see past the leaves and toward the beach, where the voice of the man had sounded. “Where did you come from, anyway?”
    “A ship,” replied the girl, drawing circles in the sand.
    “And before that?” Aurael could hear the man walking about on the sand, and the sound of the waves, but he remained out of Aurael’s eyesight. “Where before the ship?”
    “Home,” answered the child. “That’s a silly question. Of course we came from home.”
    Aurael’s frustration ground against the bark of the tree as he gritted his teeth, but there was something so endearing about the girl’s expression as she looked up at him that he could not bring himself to snarl a reply. He sat silently for a moment, considering the new development.
    “What’s your name?” she asked him after a few moments. “My name’s Mira.”
    The spirit hesitated, but the earnest expression on her face was too much. “Aurael,” he murmured back, softening against the tree bark. It was against his better judgment to give up his name so easily, but she was enchanting, and he had been alone for so long.
    “I like that,” the child said agreeably. Aurael tried not to smile.
    “Who came with you?” he asked her.
    “My father,” the child said brightly. “He’s on the beach trying to retrieve our trunks.”
    As if on cue, the father called out. “Mira! Come here. I’ve found your doll.”
    Mira gasped delightedly and scrambled off down the sandy hill toward the beach. Aurael strained his branches to get a look, but could not see where she’d gone. He sighed, the branches of his tree shuddering and swaying about him, and waited for her to come back, but she did not. The airy spirit dozed in the warm sun, and slept again.
    The little girl, Mira, did come back eventually to sit by his tree several times over the next few days. Often she did not speak more than a few sentences at a time, but sat quietly and drew in the sand, or played with her doll, or built stick monuments with twigs and leaves in the soil. Aurael was enchanted by her singleness of purpose, serene countenance, and