Free Alive (The Veiled World Book 1) by Vanessa Garden Page A

of them. He went seeking the soul of my brother and never returned.”
    “But how do you know that he’s dead? What if…” Amber’s eyes widened slightly. “What if he’s alive, along with the others? What if this lady has them all?”
    “This is too crazy,” muttered Jacob. “I want to get off this plane and find the others. We need to find Bruce and get him to fly us home.”
    Amber nodded, but then she reached out and touched Jacob’s arm just as he was about to dive in.
    He brought his arms back down to his sides.
    “I’m staying,” she said, her face calm and her blue eyes serious.
    “What?”
    “I’m staying here, in this place,” she repeated, flicking a quick glance at me. “I want to bring my brother back. I want to go to the Land of Resting Souls.”
    Jacob stared at her for a long time before he looked at the water. “That’s easy for you to say; you don’t have a bunch of kids depending on you at home. I’ve got a family waiting for me.”
    Amber stiffened and she took a step away from Jacob. His words had hurt her. A sudden urge to shove Jacob into the water consumed me.
    “But what if you brought your dad back?” she said, her voice becoming animated with excitement again. “Think of what that would do for your family.”
    Jacob’s hands bunched into fists. “I’m not listening to this.” He brought his arms up beside his head and dived into the water.
    “Are you insane? There are dangers in these waters.”
    Jacob didn’t answer me and kept swimming after his dark head bobbed up through the surface of the sea, shoving one arm after another into the water, in a way I’d never be able to.
    Amber, getting ready to dive in herself, hesitated and turned to face me. Her eyes looked me up and down and then her lips made an “oh” shape.
    “You can’t swim.”
    Blood burned beneath my cheeks as shame flooded every inch of me. But I nodded. No use lying now. I was going to drown anyway. May as well be honest until the day I die.
    “With the Change there’s not much room for learning to swim. By the time you get used to water, it’s gone and replaced with something else. And Prince Ollie is a slavedriver so I don’t have much of a chance to learn even when there is water.”
    “That’s okay. I know how to do the safety swim. I’ve got my bronze medallion.”
    “Look, I don’t know what the safety swim or the bronze medallion is, but I’m too heavy. Yes, you’re tall and strong but…I’ll sink you.” Panic raised my pulse. There was so much water.
    “Wait!” Amber bent and poked around under the nearest seat and came out with a small bundle of something that was bright yellow. “Put this on! It’s an inflatable vest. It’ll keep you afloat.”
    She unravelled it and slipped it over my head. It was a tight fit, but I could still breathe, and I quite enjoyed the way her hands felt when they brushed against my shoulders and neck. Aside from my mother and the cook who had pinched my cheeks my entire life, Amber was the first female of my own age who had ever touched me.
    She frowned then took hold of a small string dangling on my side. “Pull this.”
    I did, and jumped when the thing started to fill with air.
    “It’ll choke me! Get it off!” I shouted in a panic, my fingers clawing at the growing thing.
    She smiled and put her hands on my shoulders. “It won’t. You’re a big boy but it will save you. Trust me. Now were going to have to go in.” She thought for a moment and said, “Wait,” before disappearing into the cabin and fossicking around in a metal tub and returning with two knives.
    By now the thing had stopped inflating and I relaxed a little.
    “Those are blunt,” I said before reaching into my back pocket for my blade. I flicked it and proudly allowed the blade to wink in the golden twilight sun. “My great-grandfather arrived here on a war ship. This was his knife. One that saved his life many times over.” I wished my father had taken it with