supporting the muscles and tissue they were supposed to, and there was an itchy heat in her marrow. She recognized that sensation as being similar to the one she’d experienced once when she was learning to ride a scooter and accidentally flipped the thing. Some part of her knew at the time that she had broken her arm, but by the time she got it X-rayed it was as good as new. The itch meant she was healing.
Somehow, she had fallen out of the sky and survived. She really was a monster. A freak. Maybe even a witch. She started to cry.
“Don’t be scared,” Lucas managed to say in one try. “Pain will pass.”
“Should be dead,” she whined quietly through her liquefied jaw. “What’s wrong with me?”
“No. Not wrong. You’re one of us,” he said with a slightly stronger voice. He was healing just as fast as Helen was.
“And what’s that?”
“We call ourselves Scions,” he said.
“Offspring?” Helen mumbled, remembering the definition from one of Hergie’s despised Word of the Day assignments. “Offspring of what?”
Lucas answered her. Helen heard him, but she didn’t. The word demigod was so far from what she was expecting to hear she had to think about it for a second. She had prepared herself for it to be something horrific, possibly even evil, which made her the way she was.
“Huh?” she blurted out stupidly, so confused she had stopped crying. Her view jiggled, and Helen realized that Lucas was laughing.
“Ouch. Don’t make me. Laugh,” he said even though his chest kept bouncing up and down.
It felt funny to have her head bobbing around like that so she started laughing, regretted it, but couldn’t seem to stop. It was almost as if the pain was so awful she had to laugh it off.
“This really hurts,” he said as he started to get hold of himself.
“If you stop, I’ll stop,” she said, her fit winding down as well.
In between recurring snickers, they went back to quietly managing their pain and waiting for their bodies to knit themselves back together. Despite the pain, the time ticked by soothingly. Out of one ear, Helen could hear the steady thump of Lucas’s heart, and out of the other she could hear seagulls. Dawn was on its way, and she felt completely safe for the first time in weeks.
“Why don’t I hate you anymore?” she asked when she felt like her head bones were solid enough to enunciate properly.
“I was just wondering the same thing. I think the Furies are gone.” Lucas sighed deeply, like a huge weight had just been lifted off his chest, even though Helen knew her head was probably as heavy as a bowling ball. “I was scared for a moment when we were in the air. It was very hard not to engage you.”
“We? Oh, you can fly!” Helen said, realizing.
She remembered how Lucas had a habit of appearing and disappearing so suddenly, and how she had heard the thuds and scuffs of his takeoffs and landings. She had never seen him fly because she had never thought to look up.
“How did you get under me?” she asked, shifting her position ever so slightly.
“I caught you. I saw you faint and slowed your fall as best as I could, but we were already close to impact when I got an arm around you.” He shifted as well, and then flinched in pain. “I can’t believe we’re alive.”
“Neither can I. I thought you were coming to kill me tonight, but instead you caught me,” she marveled, still stunned. “You saved my life.”
It was as if the fall had knocked all the rage right out of her. She didn’t hate Lucas at all. She felt the pressure of his arms lying across her back increase slightly, quickly, and then relax again.
“The sun’s coming up,” Lucas said after a while. “Hopefully, my family will be able to see us now.”
“All I can see is your chest out of my right eye and mounds of sand out of my left. Where are we?”
“At the bottom of our impact crater on the last bit of beach before Great Point Light at the absolute tip of the narrowest strip of sand on the northernmost end of Nantucket Island.”
“So . . . easy to find,” Helen quipped.
“Practically in my backyard,” Lucas joked, and then flinched painfully when he laughed. He went quiet for a moment before speaking again. “Who are you?” he finally asked.
“I’m Helen Hamilton,” she replied hesitantly, not sure what he was