once for the cliffs I had dreamed of. White as sliced flesh, before the blood springs to the wound.
There I dreamed of the sea. When I woke, I knew that the waves that had broken on the edges of my sleep were not my own dreams. I sat up quickly, almost expecting to find Zoe there, sleeping beside me as if she’d never gone. But there was only Piper’s back as he sat looking out from the cave’s entrance, watching the sun set over the water.
“That headland, there.” He jerked his head to the north, to a finger of land that pointed accusingly at the ocean. “That’s Cape Bleak. It doesn’t look like it, but on the northern face there’s a path down to a small cove. When courier ships from the island were due to come this way, our scouts on the mainland would light a signal fire on the point, to let them know it was safe to send in the landing craft.”
It was full dark by the time we reached the tip of the headland. The wood that we’d scavenged was damp, and Piper had to tip the last of the lamp oil on the mound to coax it into flames.
We waited all night, but there was no answering gleam of flame from the sea—only an occasional flash of white where the waves broke below the cliffs. The cries of gulls scraped at the night.
At dawn, the fire had subsided into ashes.
Piper exhaled as he rubbed his face with his hand
“So we try again tomorrow night,” he said. But I noted the slump of his shoulders, the set of his mouth.
We should have learned it after the island, and after the tanks of dead children in New Hobart. After Zach had thrown the ships’ figureheads at our feet. And after the Ark, which held nothing for us but another blast. Nothing was more dangerous than hope.
Ω
We sat for a long time. We should have been sleeping, but neither of us wanted to go back to the cave, and to be cramped in there with nothing to speak of but the ship that might never come. So we waited on the cliff, watching the light from behind us spread over the sea.
In my vision, the ship had cut cleanly through the water. The ship that we saw, rounding the point, moved sluggishly. It lurched when the wind picked up, wallowing to the left. The mast was crooked, and the sail puckered where it had been stitched. The figurehead wasn’t the only thing missing; all along the prow the wood was gouged. Sections had been patched with tar and boards, but the wounds still showed.
People were busy on the deck, and another was clambering in the rigging. But one figure was motionless at the bow, hands on the rail.
A whistle came to us. The wind on the headland was gusty, and it stretched the notes and then snatched them away. But I’d heard enough to know. Piper stood, and we both ran to the cliffside path, while the chorus of Leonard’s song was carried past us on the wind.
chapter 39
By the time we’d scrambled down to the rocky cove, a dinghy had been lowered and was halfway to shore. Piper waded thigh-deep into the water to meet it. I watched while he embraced Zoe, his arm so tight around her waist that for a moment he lifted her, and the other sailors had to move quickly to steady the small boat. Then he lowered her into the water beside him. She smiled as she walked toward the beach, where I waited. I wished I could have stopped time there: Zoe smiling, Piper grinning behind her in the water. I didn’t want to speak—our news was too grim to give to her, on this bright morning, when she’d just found us.
“I thought you’d gone east,” I said. “Got away from all of this.” From me, I meant.
She shook her head. “I was going to.” She was unabashed. “For the first day I did head eastward.” She paused, squinting into the glare of the sun on the water. “But then I kept thinking about Xander.”
Piper was listening, too, but Zoe wasn’t looking at either of us. She was staring beyond The Rosalind at the low waves.
“I kept thinking of how he was always telling us The Rosalind was coming in, and how we’d dismissed him.” She spoke very quietly. “I thought I should try, at least. That one of us should