Her eyes slid to him. “Birds are smarter than that man. If he was a bird, he’d fly backward.”

I grinned. “Probably barking, too.”

We clasped our hands together and drew three deep breaths. Then we let go and dove.

I kicked down, plunging fathom by fathom, the hush of the sea seeping into my mind and my muscles. By the time I touched the slippery wood ribs of the Valparaíso, the boats were just blurry shadows on the surface. With the pestering drag of the tide, I knew I wouldn’t have much time for searching, but there was no use moaning about it. I ran my hand along the hull, kicking to the seabed; then I rummaged through the sand for whatever felt solid, and pushed off.

I knew as I kicked up I had nothing good. Bits of coral and shells, only. Most of the Valparaíso’s treasures were long gone, but a big storm like this might uncover overlooked finds, like shoe buckles or spoons or even coins. Tesoros del tiempo, Mama had called them. Treasures brought by time.

“Well?” Sewel said as I broke the surface. He’d moved over to Mr. Baines’s boat, and they were sharing a fresh bottle.

“Nothing, sir.” I held up my empty hands to show him, then dove before he could holler at me.

A few more searches turned up a rusted hammer, a few nails. Everything slick with the grit and spit of the sea. Nothing worth an egg.

I moved on and began to search the ship itself, swimming through its hatches and twisting through the hold as I peered into silty crates and reached inside murky hogsheads. Soon my mind opened and spun into daydreams, turning the nail that grabbed at my shirttails into a cutpurse, the eel peering from inside a barrel into a demon. Every inch of this ship had told me a story at one time or another, from the ballast bricks, which had surely once made castles, to the rope tied to the prow, which drifted like a string in search of its missing kite.

Mama used to say that some daydreamers built castles in the sky, but I built my castillos en el mar. I knew of no better place to open my mind than fathoms below.

After an hour or so, Mercy and I met behind her papa’s boat. My eyes burned from the salt and my legs and arms felt heavy as bricks.

“I found plenty of sand.” I waited for her to say she’d found plenty of salt water. Mercy and I never found nothing.

“We have to get out, Frannie. Look.”

I blinked my pickled eyes and followed her gaze to the black clouds. “You think it’s a hurricane?”

“Not the storm. Look.” She pointed just beyond the Valparaíso, where the sea’s surface rippled.

My breath caught as a great fin sliced up.

Shark. Biggest one I’d ever seen. Long as the wherry and near as wide.

We’d swum near sharks plenty of times, but never one this excited, pushing so high at times I could see its gills.