Free The Shadow and the Star by Laura Kinsale

that they both came up with water streaming off their faces and their mouths full of salty bitterness.
    "Down go!" she cried. "Down go!"
    They took huge breaths, Kai blowing out her cheeks and pursing up her mouth comically. Samuel sank beneath the clear water with her firmly in his arms. The force of a wave rolled over them, carrying them a few feet back toward the shore, and the sand beneath his feet shifted. He squeezed Kai's chubby body to signal "up," and she kicked madly. He pushed off the sand, exploding out of the water, carrying Kai high in the air in his arms.
    She screeched with pleasure. Another wave went past, catching them in a rush of noise and white foam. Samuel shook water off his hair. As his ears cleared, he heard other shrieks beyond Kai's. He looked toward the beach and saw figures splashing out of the water.
    "
He mano
!" The cry came to him amid the surge of another wave. "
He mano! He mano nui loa
!"
    He saw it, a dark slice of fin breaking out of the surf, a murky shape, fast-moving, as long as one of the great boards that the Hawaiians rode on the surf. The shark cut between him and Kai and the beach. Samuel was distantly aware of the crowd gathering, of screaming, people running along the sand.
    Afterward, he remembered mostly the great calm that descended over him as the shark turned and moved swiftly toward them.
    He lifted Kai out of the water onto his shoulders. She gripped his hair painfully, still laughing, beating her feet against his chest. He clamped his hands on her ankles and held them still. She was squealing something, but he wasn't listening. Above the waves, above the thin wail of panic from the beach and the shouts of the men as they launched the canoe, he heard something more.
    He heard his song, the dark song of his brother the shark.
    He stood still and listened.
    The surf hid the fin for an instant, lifted his feet from the sand and brought him down gently. He watched the huge shape move past a yard away. The high-pitched sound of Kai calling for her mother rang in his ears, remote, like a distant train whistle, but his mind was full of the song.
    It held him silent, soundless; a fixed rock of coral, a lifeless piece of driftwood—a passive thing, unafraid. The shark glided past, turned and came again, nightmare huge. He listened to the song. He felt the shark's slow curiosity—the deep and mindless hunger in it, but he was peaceful and part of the surf, nothing that it wanted.
    Kai had stopped calling. She sat still, too, perched on his shoulders, her fingers pinched hard in his hair. Through the air he heard shouts and percussions—the men in the canoe beat the water with their paddles, coming fast and hard.
    The shark made a sliding turn, passing within touching distance. Samuel watched it slip by, saw the somber gray hide, the fin, the tail, and then suddenly it veered sharply back out to sea, away from the oncoming outrigger.
    The canoe seemed huge, rolling down upon them on the back of a swell. The paddles slapped the water violently. Samuel felt the first shot of fear—not from the shark, but from the threat of the wooden weapons and the savagery of the shouts. The outrigger seemed ready to crash against his side, but with startling skill the Hawaiian in the stern turned the canoe against the waves and it passed behind him. Someone plucked a screaming Kai off his shoulders.
    Brutally strong arms grabbed at him. He turned and jumped, blundering up against the hard polished wood, banging his thighs and knees. For a wild moment the outrigger on the opposite side lifted from the water and the whole canoe threatened to come over, but then he was hauled aboard, collapsing against a white-shirted chest, aware of English words yelled in his ear.
    The words thanked God, and thanked him; Lord Gryphon gripped Samuel back against himself as if he could not let go. Facing them in the canoe, Kai squirmed in the brown arms of a Hawaiian, squealing, "Dad
dy
,
daddy
!" and trying to