Hidden

Informationen zum Autor Donna Jo Napoli is the acclaimed and award-winning author of many novels, both fantasies and contemporary stories. She won the Golden Kite Award for Stones in Water in 1997. Her novel Zel was named an American Bookseller Pick of the Lists, a Publishers Weekly Best Book, a Bulletin Blue Ribbon, and a School Library Journal Best Book, and a number of her novels have been selected as ALA Best Books. She is a professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband. Visit her at DonnaJoNapoli.com. Klappentext When a marauding slave ship captures her sister, Melkorka, eight-year-old Brigid is lost at sea but survives, disguised as a boy, and sets out to rescue Melkorka, and as the years pass she becomes a woman, reputed to be fierce enough to conquer a man, but desirous only of reuniting with her family.Hidden SPRING CHAPTER ONE The shock of the cold makes me go instantly rigid. I lift my arms and break the water’s surface and claw at my cheeks till I manage to pull the gag down, and I’m gasping. White glitters the water, the air. Splashes come from somewhere. My arms flail. Shivers seize me. I clamp my jaw shut to hold down the chattering. Monsters loom in the starlight. Snow accumulating on trees. I swim for it. It isn’t far. It can’t be far. Crack! My hand protrudes through the ice it just broke. A thin layer lines the riverbank. A stabbing sensation shoots across my hand, and somehow I know my palm is sliced open. I make fists and beat my way through the chunky stuff, grabbing at stiff stalks, so many of them, all poky and horrible, my feet are digging into bottom now, and there’s frozen mud at last. I pull myself up onto land. “Mel?” I croak. A groan comes from so close I can feel her breath. I reach out and grab. An explosion of strange words from a crazy language. It’s one of the boys from the boat! I can’t tell which one in the dark. I don’t know what he’s saying. I look back at the river. The boat is far away now. I scream, “Mel!” The dark bulk that is the boy gets up and runs toward the trees. But I won’t follow; he can’t know any more about where we are than I know. He was stolen too. All of us on that boat, we were stolen from our homes. Home. Downpatrick, Eire. My Eire land. Where my mother and father and brother live. Where Melkorka and I should be. Across all that water. I’m so far from home now. It’s been days. Days and days. I crawl along the bank, touching everything I can reach. “Melkorka? Mel, Mel, Mel.” My fingers can hardly feel anymore. I shake so hard, I think I may fall to pieces. Where is she? Where is my big sister? She always boasted that she and our brother Nuada could communicate with eyes alone, but she and I were learning to do that too. We were learning how on the boat. We did it even when our gags were off for eating; we kept silent. That was Mel’s idea—to pretend we were mutes. I don’t know why she did it, but I did whatever she did. I didn’t need Mel’s words to know I should copy her; I obeyed her eyes. And I’m sure an eye message passed between us the instant before I jumped. “Mel!” I’m screaming. She’s a better swimmer than me. She has to be here! “Mel!” I press on a stick and it slaps me in the face. I fall onto my back and hug myself. I think back. There were only the boy’s splashes. No one else. Two women, nine children, all captives on that boat, and only that one boy and I jumped. Mel didn’t jump. Dear Lord, Mel, my Mel. Mother told us to stay together. “Immalle,” she said. Together, together. Mother put us on the nag, dressed like peasant boys. In disguise like that, no one would bother us. We were to stay at Brenda and Michael’s ringfort u...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Donna Jo Napoli
• Editore: Simon & Schuster USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Raccomandazione d'eta': 12 a 17 anni
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 31.12.2015
• EAN: 9781442483026
• ISBN: 978-1-4424-8302-6
• Pagine: 384
• Categoria: Libri per bambini e per ragazzi > Letture, fiabe, saghe, rime, canzoni > Fiabe e saghe