The Phoenix dived low as it roared past them, less than eight feet over their heads. It had lost mass in the hours it was away, had shrunk to no more than the size of a condor, yet still it tore past with a blasting sound like a passing truck. A gush of chemical heat, smelling faintly like brimstone, washed over them. It was so close for a moment, Harper could’ve reached up and touched it. With its long hooked beak and flowing comb of red fire, it looked for all the world like a proud and ridiculous rooster, somehow given the power of flight.
Don Lewiston backed the sail and his long white craft slid the last hundred feet toward them on sheer momentum, the boom swinging loose and the canvas sagging and wrinkling. He threw a chain ladder over the stern, and when Nick began to climb, he reached a bony hand over to help him up. His blue eyes shone with something that was neither terror nor wonder, but both and more . . . an emotion Harper took for awe.
They fell in, sopping and shivering helplessly, one after another. None of them were shining anymore. They had each ceased to glow almost as soon as they caught sight of the sail, the Dragonscale giving out as if exhausted. The last ten minutes had been the hardest. The cold burned as if they were up to their necks in acid—and then it didn’t burn, and the numbness was even worse than the pain, killing the sensation in Harper’s feet and hands, creeping up her legs. By the time Don hauled her in—an unlikely catch indeed—she couldn’t even feel her own contractions.
Don left, came back with towels, with blankets, with baggy sweatshirts, with cups of coffee for Renée and Allie. He had lost weight, was gaunt and cold-looking, the only color in his face the deep red of his nose.
Harper had water in her ears and was distracted by contractions, coming rapidly now, so she didn’t get much of what anyone was saying. Renée asked questions, and Don answered them in a low, shaken voice, but Harper only caught pieces. Renée asked him how he happened to be there, close enough to fish them out of the drink, and he said he had been off the coast waiting for days. He knew they were walking into Machias because he had heard all about it on the ham. Harper imagined Don Lewiston holding a ripe roast ham to his face, like a meat telephone, and came very close to laughing, bit down on a hysterical quaver of mirth. “The ham?” Renée asked. “Yes’m,” he said. He had a ham radio that got CB. He could pick up signals all along the coast, and he knew all about the woman who was enormously pregnant, walking north with a black woman, a teenager with a shaved head, a little boy, and a desperately ill man who raved in a British accent. The pack of them were making their slow way to Machias, where they would be processed and sent to Martha Quinn’s island.
Only Don had been out to Martha Quinn’s island, sailed around it and walked on it, and had seen nothing but blasted dirt and blackened skeletons. He had heard ol’ Martha on the radio—several times—talking about the pizza parlor and the one-room schoolhouse and the town library, but the place she was describing had not existed for months. Had been leveled.
If Martha Quinn’s Island wasn’t a refuge, then it was a trap, but Don couldn’t see how to keep them from walking into it. He had vague notions of hovering close to the bay, and maybe—maybe—sailing in under cover of dark when Harper and company were close to Machias, trying to intercept them, warn them. But then, in the last couple days, people had stopped broadcasting about them and he hadn’t known where they were or what was happening. He had been anchored near the ruin of Martha Quinn’s island when he saw the Phoenix sink from the clouds like fackin’ Lucifer falling from heaven. Don said he wasn’t sure if he had been led here, or chased here.
Harper only distantly heard this last part. She felt her insides were being turned inside out.
“What’s happening?” Don Lewiston asked. “The fack is happenin’? Oh shit. Oh shit, don’t tell me.”
“Breathe, Harper!” Renée cried. “In and out. Baby coming. All done in a minute.”
Allie was between her legs. Somehow Harper’s sweatpants had come off and from the waist down she was wet and naked to the day.
“I see his head!” Allie shouted. “Oh, holy fuck! Keep pushing, bitch! You’re doing it! You’re making this shit happen, right now.”
Nick ran and hid his face in Don Lewiston’s stomach. Harper shut her eyes and pushed, felt she was shoving her intestines out onto the deck. She could smell a sharp, briny tang that might’ve been the sea or might’ve been placenta. When she opened her eyes for a moment, she saw the Phoenix again, now no larger than an ostrich, floating on the peaceful water beside the boat, wings drawn against its sides. He watched her with calm, knowing, humorous eyes of fire, a burning slick of oil on the sea.
She pushed. Something gave. She was torn open, her crotch a ragged seam of flame that made her sob with pain and deliverance.
The baby waved fat arms and squalled. Her head made Harper think of a misshapen coconut, slicked with blood: a dense thatch of brown hair, smoothed down to a lumpy skull. A fatty red cord dangled from her stomach, coiling on the deck and winding back into Harper herself.
It was a girl, of course. Allie put the child in her arms. Allie was shaking all over, and not from the cold.
The boat rocked at ease and the baby rocked in her arms. In a voice pitched just above a whisper, Harper sang a few lines of “Romeo and Juliet” to her daughter. The infant opened her eyes and looked at her with irises that were bright, shining rings of gold, the Dragonscale already deep inside her, wound right around the core. Harper was pleased. Now she didn’t have to give her up. All she had to do now was sing to her.
Sunlight glinted off the steely blue edges of the waves. When Harper looked for the Phoenix, there was nothing left except a few tongues of flame flapping off the water. Sparks and flakes of ash drifted in the still, cool air, pattering down into Harper’s hair, onto her arms. Some of the feathers of ash fell on her daughter, a smear of it across the little girl’s forehead. Harper bent forward and kissed her there.
“What will you name her, Harper?” Renée asked. Renée’s teeth were clicking together. She was shivering, but her eyes were shining with tears, with laughter.
Harper rubbed her thumb on her daughter’s forehead, spreading a little of the ash around. She hoped some of John was in it. She hoped he was all over her, all over both of them, keeping them still. She felt he was.
“Ash,” Harper said softly.
“Ashley?” Allie asked. “That’s a good name.”
“Yes,” Harper said. “It is. Ashley. Ashley Rookwood.”
Renée was telling Don about Machias, about their final boat ride and the men who shot John.
Don wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. “They’ll be after us. But maybe not for a while. We could have a twelve-hour head start on ’em. We might like to use that time to make ourselves scarce.”
“Where?” Allie asked.
Don had sunk down on one knee to be next to Harper. He slipped a hand out of his pocket with a small knife in it, unfolded the blade, shot her a questioning glance. She nodded. He made a loop with the umbilical cord and sawed through it in two strokes. A weak gout of blood and amniotic fluid pumped over his knuckles.
“An Tra,” he said.
“Gesundheit,” Renée told him.
One corner of his mouth turned up in a weary smile. “It’s on Inisheer. Heard about that on the BBC World Service. I’n pull in about thirty different nations on a good clear night. Inisheer is an island off Ireland, An Tra is the town. Eight thousand sick. Full support of the gov’nment.”
“Another island,” Allie said. “How do we know that’s not bullshit, too?”
“We don’t,” Don said. “And this boat ain’t equipped for a transatlantic sail. We’d be damn lucky to make it. Damn lucky. But it’s the best I got.”
Allie nodded, turned her head, squinted into the rising sun. “Well. I guess we don’t have anything else to do today.”