Peter Dickinson - A Bone From a Dry Sea
Here you can read online Peter Dickinson - A Bone From a Dry Sea full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. publisher: RHCP, genre: History. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
![No cover](/templates/la/images/nocover.jpg)
- Book:A Bone From a Dry Sea
- Author:
- Publisher:RHCP
- Genre:
- ISBN:9781448172610
- Rating:3 / 5
- Favourites:Add to favourites
- Your mark:
- 60
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
A Bone From a Dry Sea: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "A Bone From a Dry Sea" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
A Bone From a Dry Sea — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "A Bone From a Dry Sea" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Font size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Epigraph
Then
Now: Sunday Morning
Then
Now: Sunday Evening
Then
Now: Monday Morning
Then
Now: Monday Morning
Then
Now: Monday Afternoon
Then
Now: Tuesday Morning
Then
Now: Tuesday Afternoon
Then
Now: Wednesday Morning
Then
Now: Wednesday Morning
Then
Now: Wednesday Afternoon
Then
Now: Thursday Morning
Then
Now: Thursday Afternoon
Note
About the Author
Also by Peter Dickinson
Copyright
About the Book
One small body curled among the mass of sleepers. Different. Yes, Im different . . .
Four million years ago, then, a young girl Li lives with her tribe along the shores of a mothering sea. But Li is different. A thinker, a questioner, her sense of wonder and intuition could help shape the future of her race.
In Africa, now, on the site of that very same plain Vinny visits her father who is working as part of a team searching for fossil remains of our ancestors. Fascinated by the tiny fragments of bone that are painstakingly dug out of the ground, Vinnys curiosity helps lead the team towards a major discovery . . .
PETER
DICKINSON
A BONE FROM
A DRY SEA
Myth in all tongues credits the dolphins with
Making the bays they visit happy, waking
Song in flint cottages that lacked it long.
Man haunts what shores he can.
THEN
THE CHILD CLUNG to the rock, letting the broken waves of the bay wash over her, cooling the fierce sunlight. She was not afraid. The sea was her home.
Light dazzled off the water, but she kept her head above the surface and gazed steadily towards the mouth of the bay. She was on shark-watch. Out on the open shore grown males would keep watch, but a submerged rock-shelf barred the entrance to this bay, so it was safe to let the children learn the duty.
She was hungry. For days now the wind had blown hard from the south-east, driving the ocean rollers before it. The tribe used the bay because there were caves in the low cliffs, deep in two of which fresh water trickled down the rock. But food inside the bay was scarce, so normally they would have hunted the rocky inlets beyond for shellfish and shrimps and crabs and the little octopi that hid under boulders.
But with a wind like this the dark green rollers pounded in, hurling their foam to the cliff-tops and then dragging anything loose back seaward in their weight of water. Anyone who tried to feed out on the open shore would be swept away to where the sharks cruised, or break an arm or leg, or crush a foot. So by now all the tribe were hungry.
A hand touched the childs flank beneath the water. She glanced down, grinned a greeting as her mother rose beside her, and returned to her watch. Her mother had brought her two mussels, barely the size of a fingernail. Her mouth watered as she heard the crack of shells being pounded open, and she was putting her hand down to take them when she froze, pointed, yelled the warning Big wave, and immediately added the snapped-off hoot that meant Shark!
When each roller reached the submerged shelf at the bays mouth it rose to a wall, ridged with foam, and seemed to hang for an instant before it crashed into the bay. In that moment before wave-break the sun lit it from beyond. Now a giant wave, two waves in one perhaps, had come. It seemed to rise as high as the cliffs behind the bay and then poise at the entrance for longer than an ordinary wave. In its green-lit depths hung a darker, curving shadow as big as four grown males. Then it crashed down and its foam creamed over the bay.
The noise was enough to startle even people used to the surprises of the sea, so many of the tribe surfaced to look. The child was standing on the rock now, pointing and yelling. Her mother was racing for the shore. As the wave-thunder died and before the next wave crashed in they heard that the yell was Shark!, but mostly stayed where they were it was only a child, mistaken, probably, or mischievous. Then the mother reached the shore and joined in the cry, and the whole tribe streamed for safety.
The shark had vanished. It must have been swimming along the shoreline, hunting perhaps for someone desperate enough to go foraging out in the open, when the monster wave had picked it up, a moving mass of water too powerful for it to be able to fight its way against, and so it had been tossed into the bay.
The child yelled again and pointed with her web-fingered hand. She had glimpsed the long shadow gliding beneath the ruffled surface a few paces from her rock. A moment later the dorsal fin broke the surface as the rising sea-bed forced the shark upwards.
The people yelled. The shark veered along the shoreline through a spatter of hurled rocks, and away down into deeper water. It vanished for a while but circled round by the rock again, and again the child yelled and pointed, and again the fin emerged. This time the people were ready, and larger rocks hailed round it. And again. And again.
At first they were trying to drive it away so that they could return to the water, but soon they realized it was trapped. Except in the moment when a wave came pounding in, the entrance to the bay was too shallow for it to pass. So now the tribe were the hunters and the shark the prey, if they could find a way to kill it. They spread along the shore, harrying it on.
The child watched from the rock. Now that her eyes understood what they were seeing she could trace the sharks movements all round the bay, except through the turmoil at the entrance. She turned steadily, one arm raised to point, helping the others follow the track of their enemy. They surged along the shore, leaping from rock to rock, hurling anything they could lift. Cushioned by water few of these missiles can have hurt the shark much, but it grew half-mad with fright and began to break from its circuit and make dashes across the bay, sometimes actually rubbing against the rock where the child stood. She kept to her task, unalarmed.
A shark must swim to keep water moving through its gills, or it will die, so this one couldnt lie in the deep centre of the bay, out of the tribes reach. Round and round it had to go, enduring their attack. Now they grew bolder, some dashing into the water as it went by with rocks in their hands to pound at the passing flank. These blows too did little damage, but the sense of dominance increased, infecting them all. Excited young males ran into the water ahead of it, ready for their attack. The cliffs echoed with the tribes yells.
On the far side of the bay, a male plunged in and followed the sharks path towards the rock. It looked like more bravado, but when he reached the rock he climbed out and stood beside the child. He was her uncle, a senior male, already beginning to challenge the aging leader, and he was taking this chance to increase his prestige by directing the shark-hunt. He watched the shark make two more circuits while the child pointed its path, but next time, as soon as it was safely past the rock he grunted Go away and pushed her into the water. She swam quickly ashore, glad to be out of the sun and free of the ache of pointing all the time.
She didnt join the others along the shoreline, but climbed to a patch of shade beneath an overhang, where she could sit and watch the hunt, while the tribe dashed in and out of the water, screaming and smiting, and beating the surface into gouts of spray. She alone seemed not to be swept up into the frenzy. She wanted to see.
Next pageFont size:
Interval:
Bookmark:
Similar books «A Bone From a Dry Sea»
Look at similar books to A Bone From a Dry Sea. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Discussion, reviews of the book A Bone From a Dry Sea and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.