Alexandra Duncan - Salvage

“It’s a bad sign,” says a red-faced woman with hair the yellow-white of the waste plain. “Means a storm’s stirring up.”

The man beside her laughs. “Everyone knows the Gyre doesn’t get storms. It’s what makes it the Gyre.”

“What do you know about it, eelkin?”

“More than you, you great frozen shark-breathed bat.”

The crowd breaks out in shouts.

“. . . could have died of anything . . .”

“Who do you think you are, telling me how the sea is?”

“. . . pure chance . . .”

“. . . could have killed it, at that . . .”

Miko slams the butt of her spear against the dock—three short raps. Everyone falls silent.

“My sons and I scavenged it, so I’ll say what it means.” Her voice arcs over the crowd. She grins. “And I say it means a feast.”

A shout of agreement goes up from the crowd, and men and women with their fishing knives and hooked spears close in to help butcher the beast, their quarrels forgotten.

That night, a thousand small cookfires spring up at the lip of the brink. Some of the smallones fetch their kites, and we watch them flutter against the sunset. Miyole and I sit with Kai’s family around their raised fire trough while chunks of squid steam and crackle over the flames. When I bite into my share and its hot juices run down my chin, it’s enough to make me forget the hard lines of pain in my legs and back. Miyole tells a story she read, about a fish-tailed girl who falls in love with a prince and trades her voice for a pair of legs. Only when she gets them, it ends up the prince doesn’t love her and every step she takes is like walking on knives. The sadness of it hangs on to me even when Miyole is done. Then Kai’s brothers and sisters coax a little stringed instrument into their father’s hands.

“Sing with us, Ava,” Miyole begs when Kai’s father starts to hum a song they all know.

I shake my head. I couldn’t sing, even if I knew the words. I sit listening to the strum of music and popping fire and the gentle lap of water, and I wonder if there really might be such a place as doesn’t have storms.

M iyole kneels beside Kai and his older brothers and sisters on his family skiff as his mother paddles them into the Gyre plain. The sun hasn’t broken above the water yet, but the sky is lavender and warming. The waste plain radiates a soft, eerie glow, as if it’s lit from within, rather than above. Some of the other scavengers have already rowed so far out into it, they’re nothing more than dark shapes on the horizon.

“Be back before the sun’s high,” I shout to Miyole. “Your mother said.”

“I will,” she yells back. “Don’t forget to practice your reading.”

“Right so!”

I wave again and turn away. Miyole’s tablet keeps stories inside it. Now I’ve got my alphabet, she wants me to try out the sounds of words by reading stories what try to trick with their words that sound near the same. There are so many words to remember, new kinds of animals and things to do with the sky and the movement of the Earth. Some what I thought were empty words—drift and dawn and noon—make more sense now than ever they did closed up in the Parastrata.

But oh, the numbers. Much simpler. Clean, elegant marks, one for each of my fingers. Miyole helps me draw them on my knuckles in ink, and I match the symbols to my counting as I cook and wash, scatter grain for the chickens on the rooftop, and draw my mind away from my little lingering pains. Perpétue still offers me her pills, but they give me drowning dreams. The worst is the one where Modrie Reller feeds me stones and leads me to the dark water gap between the pontoons, then pushes my head below the waves. All the while, Lifil and Miyole splash together on the sunlit surface.

I wander back over the Gyre’s bridges. This is my favorite time of day, the hush straight before sunrise. Most of the scavengers have already gathered on the shore and everyone else is still indoors, cooking breakfast, or waking children, or hanging out clothes to dry. I can drift among the houses and ships alone, my own ghost.

“Luck,” I whisper. “Are you there?”

And I know it’s only fancy, but I listen anyway.

“I miss you,” I tell the air, and I wait for some sign, a gull blown off course or a sudden shift in the wind.

Perpétue’s house comes into view, and my emptiness slips away. There is no room for ghosts here. I pad across the deck and mount the stairs. I have chickens to feed and laundry to hang, and then reading to practice. Twice now, Perpétue has offered to take me up the Icelanders’ tower to search the network for my modrie, but I’ve put her off. The more I learn about reading, the more I see what a fool I’d seem if she found out how little I know. Sometimes I take out Miyole’s tablet and sit looking into its bright, blank screen, trying to work up the will to bring it to life, practice tapping my own words into it. But the most I can ever do is stare at its pulsing blue network light and the word fading in and out beside it, the one I know best now. Searching . . . Searching . . .

“Ava?” Perpétue’s voice rings up from the sloop’s docking well. “Is that you?”

I pause on the stairs, hurry to the side of the well, and poke my head over its lip.

Perpétue stands ankle deep in salt-clouded water, working a hand pump. The ship rises on its struts behind her.

She shades her eyes and looks up at me. “We’ve got a leak. Give me a hand?”

“Right so.” I lower myself down the ladder and splash in beside her. The cold water seeps into my skirt hem, making it leaden.

“Keep pumping.” Perpétue turns the handle over to me and kneels in the water to feel along the seam where the docking well’s floor meets the wall. She doesn’t seem to mind the cold water soaking her up to her knees, but all I can think on is how fast the docking well would fill if the leak got worse, how my heavy clothes might drag me to the bottom as the water rose around my head. I wouldn’t even need a bellyful of stones. I pump faster.

“Ah, wi. Here it is.” Perpétue sloshes to her feet and fetches an L-shaped piece of metal and a cold fuser, like the kind I’d seen Jerej use. She kneels again. The cold fuser fills the water with blue light and a muffled hum, and the surface boils in sudden, choppy ripples. But then there’s a choking sound, and the light cuts out sudden.

“Damn.” Perpétue pulls the fuser out of the water and smacks its side with the heel of her hand. “Always shorting.”

If this machine’s anything like the piston seal or the coaxer Soli showed me how to fix, I might could do it. Couldn’t I? Do I dare ask her? Before I let myself think on it too hard, I push the words out. “Could I look at it, so missus?”

“You?” Perpétue’s face is all surprise.

“Right so.” I try not to mind how the water’s creeping up along my leg and hold out my hand. “I could try.”

Perpétue shrugs and hands it over. “You can’t make it any worse.”

I turn the fuser over in my hands, careful to avoid its burning cold mouth. It looks well raveled, all except a hairline crack in the groove above its trigger. I carry the cold fuser over to the wall where Perpétue keeps her fixers mounted and choose one I know will make the machine’s casing open easy as a hand unfolding. Perpétue drops a worktable down from the wall and snaps on a light for me. The water laps at my calves, but I clamp my teeth together and ignore it. Perpétue doesn’t seem to mind, but then again, she’s wearing boots up to her knees. I lay the cold fuser open and lean in close to inspect it. Tiny beads of moisture dot the workings and the metal around the power cell.