I prop myself up on my elbows, watching as she rummages through the drawers. I’ve got no earthly idea what time it is, apart from “not night.” There’s no window in Swift’s bunk, and it strikes me now that the janitorial closet might have been roomier.
When she strips off her shirt, I don’t spare her the way she spared me. Her body is laced with scars, but that’s not the only thing marking her skin. Inked across the bottom of her rib cage is a bird, its pointed wings curving down toward her hips, its head covered by the bottom edge of her bra. A swift.
Of course.
“So did your mom give you that name, or did people just see your tattoo and start calling you that?” I ask.
“Mom.” She says the word like it’s eggshells that she’s dancing over. “Now quit staring, jackass,” she snaps, and throws her shirt in my face. “Get off the floor. You’ve got shit to do.”
Five minutes later, we’re jogging through the halls on the ship’s lowest level. Down here, the engines groan and grumble as if we’re passing through a giant metal heart, and the smell of saltwater winds through the air. The upper part of the Minnow is stitched together from mismatched pieces, the halls bleeding from metal to wood and plastic in a train wreck of bolts and glue. But down here, the comforts of the yacht parts melt away into the cold, industrial womb of a warship.
We round a corner and step through a hatch into what I should have known the ship possessed from the start. The Minnow already has a built-in trainer deck. There are two huge cutaways with roll-up doors on either side of the hull that open out to the ocean, and a runoff trough that takes in whatever seawater washes over and sweeps it into a channel that feeds out the back of the ship. A massive cutaway dominates the rear wall, with a similar set of roll-up doors which have been pulled up to give us a wide, sweeping view of the morning sea. The floor is damp under my bare feet, and I take care not to slip as I pick my way after Swift. Santa Elena waits at the edge of the trough, four of her crew beside her and the pup’s tank at her side.
On the back wall, a knot of cabin boys and girls takes me in with wide eyes. None of them look older than thirteen, and Santa Elena’s boy is among them. I can’t tell which is the bigger spectacle for these kids: the monster pup, or the shoregirl dragged aboard to hatch it.
A pit of dread builds in my stomach. The pup’s in its purse, which keeps it in stasis. It’s safe and warm, fed by the rich fluids that cradle it. The second it’s exposed to the outside world, it needs constant care and attention. We usually have a rotating staff when the pups hatch back home—a night shift, an early day shift, and a late day shift. Twenty-four hour supervision.
With my life tied to this baby monster, I can’t afford to do any less than that.
“I’ve collected the tools you need,” Santa Elena says as we draw near. She’s dressed in sweatpants and a track jacket, her hair bound back in a ponytail, a far cry from the elegant woman who lounged in the throne room last night.
For a second, I hold the captain’s gaze, and I’m sure she sees the questions in my eyes: How do you know what we need? How did you get this equipment? How did you get this pup?
But she only smirks. “Your knife is there. Turn it on any of my crew and I’ll have lead in your skull faster than you can blink.”
She gestures to a bank of instruments spread out on a workbench. Whatever her source, she’s clearly done her research. There are tubes and bellows for clearing the baby’s airways, towels for wiping it down, an adhesive thermometer to monitor its temperature. And then there’s the blade,
gut-hooked and wicked looking, designed to carve the leathery skin that forms the sac.
I take it in my hand, testing its weight. I’ve only ever been the one holding the knife once, a year ago. I remember what Mom said to me as she hovered over my shoulder, ready to swoop in the instant my wrist twisted the wrong way. “Make the cut along the lower edge of the purse,” she told me. “Let the fluid drain before the pup does.”
But we had Tom with us, holding up the other end of the purse while Mom guided me through the work, and technicians on the sides, ready to swoop in with the care the pup needed. I need more hands than I have here, but no one’s stepping up to help. Swift’s fallen back to the captain’s side, and none of her crew look interested in anything but watching me struggle.
“Put up the dams,” Santa Elena barks. Two of her crew, a man and a woman, move to the edges of the drainage channel and haul up partitions that catch the water, creating a miniature tank that fills to knee-depth in a minute.
My hands are shaking.
“Dump the purse,” the captain orders the men to her left. They wrap their arms around the tank that holds the Reckoner pup and tilt it over slowly but surely until the amniotic fluid drains into the pool, the sac sliding out after it. The waters flush a muted orange, and the pup convulses in its purse.
I grab the rest of my tools and step over the barrier, shuddering as the chill of the seawater sinks into me. The amniotic fluid forms a thin, slimy skin on the water’s surface, one that the pup will have to fight once it’s free-breathing. I set the tubes, bellows, and towels down on the other side of the partition and move toward the purse, my fingers curling tighter on the knife.
The purse is about four feet long and three feet wide. By my estimates, the pup’s probably around two hundred pounds, almost twice my weight. As soon as this thing gets free, it’s going to have a mind of its own, and it’s up to me to get out of the way before it gets any ideas.
Santa Elena seems aware of this. I can see it in her smirk as she declares, “Have at it.”
I kneel, the water seeping into my shorts, and grab the sac by its bottom. The pup’s awake—its paws press at the leathery womb that surrounds it. Still trembling, I press the blade into the purse until its point punctures the skin. A bubble of amniotic fluid oozes out, and I press harder until the knife’s hook makes it inside the sac. I yank back.
The blade’s sharp, but the membrane is tough. It doesn’t make a clean slice like it ought to. The edges are ragged. I grit my teeth and pull harder until I’ve sliced all the way across the sac’s bottom. The syrupy fluid gushes out, drenching the front of my shirt as I lean over the sac and reposition it, this time so that I’m kneeling at the top.
This is the part I’ve been dreading. This is why it takes so many hands, why my own two won’t be enough, why I stand a good chance of losing one of them.
I hook the knife in the middle of the first incision and start to pull back, carving a T-shaped gash in the membrane. I try my best to lean back, to get out of the way. The pup twitches, and one of its—his, I can see that now—rear legs stretches out into the open air, kicking for the first time without any resistance.
I glance down to find that his reptilian eyes have slid open. His gaze is fixed on me, and for a moment he reminds me far too strongly of Durga. The lines that shape his body are unfamiliar—clearly he isn’t one of my mother’s constructions—but he’s a terrapoid through and through, and it’s enough to rattle me. She’s gone. She’s really gone.
Breathe, I remind myself. What comes next?
“Make it fast,” my mother told me. “The quicker the cut, the slower he’ll react.”
I pull too hard. The blade dips against the pup’s skin, flaying the purse membrane wide open as he rushes toward me, and all of a sudden the baby Reckoner is free.
And he’s pissed.
He lunges up, his beak snapping, and before I can react, he’s got a chunk of my hair locked in his bite. The deck behind me comes alive, Santa Elena shouting as her crew draw their guns and point them at me and the pup. He twists viciously, his stubby limbs flailing, and the sharp edge of his beak shears off some of my hair.
The rest rips right out of my scalp.
But I’m free. I stagger backward as the baby continues to thrash, rolling off his back and into the water. He lets out a nasally squeal as if the world he’s been born into has already offended him.