The Sand Dog
Grandfather had been gone for two years but I never thought it would be an ordinary day he’d come back, like a Monday or a Tuesday… I always knew he’d return across the water, triumphing over a few monsters on the way, I just didn’t know when…When Azi’s grandfather leaves their small Mediterranean island, Azi waits every day for him to return. The arrival of a nesting turtle and a tall sandy dog convinces Azi that it must mean that Grandfather is on his way. As Azi digs deeper into the past, he begins to unravel hidden secrets and starts to find out just how alike he and his grandfather really are. And without him, Azi knows he will never feel complete…
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018
Published in this ebook edition in 2018
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Text copyright © Sarah Lean 2018
Cover design copyright © HarperCollins Children’s Books 2018
Cover design by Katie Everson
Cover illustrations copyright © Jessica Courtney-Tickle
Sarah Lean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008165819
Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008165826
Version: 2018-05-04
For my nephew Seb (lead guitar – Chapman’s Farm, vintage, Pops) Granville
Contents
I NEVER THOUGHT GRANDFATHER would come back on an ordinary day like a Monday or a Tuesday. He’d come on the kind of day when the rising sun is pouring its colours on the sea because there’s not enough room for all its glory in the sky. Grandfather was like that kind of special day to me too. He was a fisherman, and from watching the drift of deep-water seaweed he could land a net of fish full to bursting. He knew the journey of a past storm by what swept up on the beach, and could tell a thousand stories of extraordinary creatures from the deep. He said that the ocean had a long story to tell about all of us, full of signs of things that have happened and signs of things that are to come. I always knew he’d come back across the sea, triumphing over a few monsters on the way, but I was still waiting after two years for that special day to arrive.
I live on a small island in the Mediterranean. My home used to be with Grandfather in a little fisherman’s cottage but now I’m in a flat with Uncle above his restaurant at the back of the beach. My open bedroom window is like an ear to the sounds of the water, and it was one Friday night that I heard the rhythm of the tide change.
In my underpants, I went downstairs and walked across the beach to look out over the waves. The sea was black as simmering tar, and the moon reflected like broken glass on the restless waves. At the far end of the beach on the shallow rocks that divided the beach from the cove further along, a turtle was struggling hard to climb out of the water. Her shell was patterned like the crazy paving of our narrow streets, and I wondered what it felt like to carry her home on her back.
The turtle was clumsy on the rocks without the support of the water, and tumbled on her back to the sandy cove. I ran over. Turtles aren’t good on land anyway, but her front flipper was caught in some fishing line round her neck like a sling, making it hard for her to move at all. I recognised the chip in her shell from when she’d been to our island two years ago. I wondered if she remembered me, because she didn’t seem afraid when I rolled her over. She was heavy, and as big as a shield, but I was strong and cut her free from the line. She lumbered off, digging grooves in the sand with her flippers, leaving a rippled pattern beside my footprints. Slowly she made her way to the back of the cove where she dug a cool hole, laid her eggs and buried them deep in the dark, just as she had before. I stayed with her until she was ready to go back to the sea, as the sun rose pink and gold behind a thin bank of cloud at dawn.
Grandfather had taught me that the sea could tell me a story. I needed three signs to let me know that he was coming home. The turtle had been the same one I’d seen the day before he left. Could that be the first sign?
I swam and dived with the turtle in the growing day, in the place where she was at ease, where I felt at home too, until I heard Uncle shouting from the rocks, ‘Azi! Get out of the sea! It’s almost eight o’clock!’
I surfed in with a wave and followed Uncle up to the restaurant where he was already laying tables ready for the early tourists.
‘Hurry up, or you’ll be late,’ he said. ‘And don’t forget your jobs after school!’ he yelled, as I leaped up the stairs to the flat, two at a time, to get dressed.
