in frenzy. Although Sal had let her use his pocketknife, the blade had been worn dull by their time on the island.
It was the sharp edge of a recently halved white stone that proved crucial in the making of her own spear.
Around the hour the girl she used to be would have been welcoming Nora into her bedroom with a tray of strong tea and fresh pastries, and gossiping about the various intrigues of last night’s party, Vida put down this stone and tested the tip of the stick she had carved into a spear against her index finger.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and frowned at the drop of blood beading on her skin. Then an expression of pure joy suffused her face. She scrambled to her feet and went to find Sal.
When they had first crashed onto these shores, she had been told she couldn’t help, and then she had been assigned to search for kindling all day. Now it was Flora Flynn and Mrs. Charles Brinkley who collected firewood, and Vida put her mind to matters of life and death. Thus it had been since the night after the storm.
That night Vida and Sal had sat by the fire until dawn, keeping the flames high enough that a raft in the dark would see them and know where to paddle toward. They had discussed many things—how much “lumber” had been lost, and what sort of shelters they could build with what was left. They agreed that this time their shelters should be by the rocks over the cove—the land was higher there and it would make a better lookout and was more likely to survive another storm. They discussed, too, the best ways to collect coconuts, and who should have the benefit of their milk first. And they wondered what there was of the island, beyond that first band of forest, beyond the waterfall, over the ridge. Whether the wild yams could be cultivated for a greater yield. What else they didn’t know about their home, for good or bad, which might now be their home for a long time yet.
But mostly they had talked about Fitzhugh.
Neither dwelled on the likelihood of his survival. Vida was afraid that if she acknowledged how impossible it would have been to live through weather like that on the open ocean, she might actually do him some harm—that whatever remote chance of his having lived through it might be dashed by careless speech. But they weren’t hopeful, either. Vida kept waiting for Sal to say something like “The great Fitzhugh Farrar would never succumb to a watery grave.”
But he didn’t.
Instead he spoke of how Fitzhugh had been when they first met—that frightened, eager, sickly child. Sal’s father had been a bosun with the Farrar Line, and had been killed in an accident involving the engine of one of Farrar’s Atlantic steamers. Sal’s mother had died on the day of his birth, and so it was that at nine years old he was all alone in the world, and old Winthrop Farrar decided that he owed it to the boy’s father to give him a livelihood. At first this just meant keeping the nervous, easily fatigued Fitz company, but when Sal told tales of all the far corners of the world he’d traveled with his father, and all he had learned of navigating by the stars, or steering around a storm, Fitz became less melancholy, and it was decided that Sal would be in charge of teaching the young heir to be brave. Once Sal had taught him all he knew—as they were just becoming men, then—he was given a budget to hire every sort of trapper, sailor, cartographer, wrangler, so that they could learn how to live by their wits and survive outside the safe, walled cities of man. How to live close to the land. Fitzhugh became a different person with Sal’s companionship. He had invented a whole new self to inhabit.
As the night passed, as they fed the fire twigs, Vida and Sal kept Fitz alive by talking about him. In the morning, there had been no sign of the raft that had sailed into stormy seas. But, having learned of all the transformations that Fitzhugh was capable of, Vida knew that she, too, could change.
And she had changed. It shocked her how much and how quickly. Even Dame Edna had remarked on it—said she wouldn’t have minded having Vida along with her when she followed armies to report on battles.
Vida still