In all honesty, I wish I could hold onto him long enough that the ship leaves without him. They missed the first one, already, and there are only two departing. I suck in a long breath of his sandalwood and tobacco and bravely withdraw, holding my shoulders back. I nod, he smiles.

I extend my hand to Mrs. Marks for a formal handshake—as it would be most improper to advance on a woman, would it not? She pulls me in and tousles my messy hair and kisses my head. The heat rises on my cheeks and as I hobble back on my crutch, my eyes glued to the dock. I shuffle my feet and adjust the wood under my arm.

"I wish you could stay," I admit quickly.

"I have a husband, and many more adventures to lead," Mrs. Marks answers.

"I have an estate expecting me back, and much work to do in Amity," Dr. Oswald answers. "My own children be wondering after me, and I long to see them."

"I know," I say. My eyes lift to look past them, to the dingy tilting at the side of the brigantine moored in the bay. A second large brig, already laden with a pirate crew unhappy with the change in their management, sits on the creaking mechanical platform, rising noisily and gradually and amazingly up the two-hundred feet of white water. I nod towards the dingy. "They'll be rowing back for you before long. I will miss you, but all the same, I..." I take a deep breath, as if it can conceal the squeak and the break of my voice, and rub my throat as if to blame it. "I wish you all the best, and safe travels, and... and I will see you both again."

"Are you sure you don't want to come, Walter?" the doctor asks. He taps his pipe out into the water and places it neatly in a wooden case. It slides perfectly into a pocket.

I nod, smiling very slightly, almost mischievously at the new world around me. I haven't seen any of it, and yet I feel as if I could not live with myself for leaving it. The peaceful way the water rushes all around us, and yet from the land is only a notch or two away from silence; the simple beauty of the village and the forest and the way their tall spires compliment one another, and contrast to the intermittent sag of weeping willows. Wisps fly over the land unchecked, finding things that make them happy—like the sea or the playing of small foxes in the street—to glow brighter by. There are delectable fruits on the smallest isle which I have yet to try, and a cabin I have yet to build. Opportunity and discovery and adventure is everywhere in this place, blossoming, and I would be a fool to leave it behind for Amity; a place that I could never call home again. My cottage and its hidden mysteries led me here when it crumbled. It seems poetic to settle at the source of what uprooted my life in the first place.

"You have grown so much, Walter."

I look up.

"I will admit, I saw Captain Avery as a rotten influence at first, but I will admit just as easily that I was wrong," Dr. Oswald says, resting both hands on his walking stick. "I was wrong to think he was a bad man, and I was wrong to think you were so impressionable as to try and become him, thread for thread."

I frown.

"You lost your mother," he continues. "And yet, her politeness, her propriety, her compassion and good sense and good heart live in you. And all those traits have strengthened over the last month as you have started piecing together who you want to be and have become someone destined to be great. Meeting your father, as little of a father as he was, was the best thing that could have happened for you. I can see you trying to become him, but leaving out the bad parts so that you have this fantastic combination of both your parents' best traits cooking, and in another year when I see you again, I am absolutely certain, I will be meeting with a new man; and one of the absolute finest. So, you must guarantee me that chance, Walter, do you hear? I want to meet the finest man in the world. Promise me that."

I squint at my dull shoe and my bandaged foot, nodding. I look up with a close-lipped smile, holding back my breath and my flattered tears. "Thank you, sir. I promise. I will write, too. I'll write letters whenever a ship goes to carry them. Promise."

The creases around his eyes deepen and he claps his hand onto my shoulder to give me a squeeze. "Good lad." He reaches into his coat and starts to wiggle something out through his collar. "I have something for you. Simon will want to get his hands on it, too, so you gentlemen will have to share. Seeing as he isn't here, it is yours for now. I worry he jumped on the first ship, too distracted to say goodbye, or perhaps slept in after the amount he drank with Elian last night and is missing his chance to go. You didn't see where he went after the party, did you?" He unrolls the sealskin map to Riven Isles, hand-painted by the black-clad, half-blind sailing officer that is now rowing the dingy back in to us on the dock.

I shake my head. "I saw him fall down the hill. I didn't see where they went after Elian scooped him up, though. Into the woods, somewhere."

"Hm. Well, so long as they are together..." His brows knit. He holds out the map. "Officer Langley passed this to me under the captain's orders and said that it was Avery's belief in me to make the right decision on what to do with it. I have grown, too, this month, I think. Initially, setting out, I wished to claim these isles, discover them publicly, earn my own glory like all the generations in my family before me—war heroes, renowned explorers and scientists, accomplished navy men, and so on. But I think I should be happier leaving this place a secret. It is inhabited, and the locals have suffered enough of humans, wouldn't you agree? I will leave the map to you and Simon and tell no one of what we have found, here."

"As far as the rest of the world will know of our travels, the Giant's Ring was too dangerous and we never crossed through it," Mrs. Marks says. "The ship was attacked and lost to pirates on the journey back and the crew was either lost to sea or picked up by passing ships." She winks at me. "This way, if you ever come back, you can say you were adrift, rather than on a mysterious island or returning from the dead."

I rub my thumbs over the waxy texture of the page, grinning first at its handiwork, then at my companions. "Adrift. That's an exciting story."

"Almost as exciting as the real one."

The dock quivers with the clunk of the dingy against it. We all look to see Increas grabbing hold of a cleat. He winds a bowline knot around it with the painter, then scans us all. The only sign of the night before is in the puffiness under his prowling grey—human—gaze.

"The professor is coming, but I do not see his bags," the officer slowly states. "Or his books."

I turn around.

"Simon!" the doctor and Mrs. Marks exclaim. "And hello, Mr. Arrow."

Simon raises his hand halfway in a tired wave, one arm slung around his friend's shoulder, buried under the purple scarf and slipped partway into his maroon waistcoat, worn—too small—by the other man.

I frown.

"We almost missed you," Simon expresses as they near. He shakes his head, blinking his red eyes. "I am so sorry. So sorry. Lydia, Cornelius, it has been the greatest pleasure to know both of you, and I say with absolute certainty that I will be seeing you both again."

They frown, too. We all frown at each other, except for Simon and Elian, who seem content.

"You aren't coming?" Dr. Oswald asks with the slightest quaver in his old voice.

Mrs. Marks smiles. She steps forward to hug the two young men together, bringing red to the tips of both their ears. "I think that's a wonderful decision. I hope you find happiness."

"Thanks," mumbles Elian, who seems to have lost his shirt. His upper half is covered only in Simon's tight and half-buttoned waistcoat.

Simon shakes her hand firmly. "Thank you." Without the waistcoat, he looks almost naked. When his hand slips from hers, he holds his tweed coat tightly around himself and the ruffles of his blouse. "I have a good feeling. I hope the same for you, and for you, Cornelius. Safe travels."

Officer Langley raps an oar against a pole on the dock, glaring. The doctor's and Mrs. Marks's things weigh in the center of the small rowboat. "The winds are changing as we dawdle and Leslie's ship is getting further away. Wrap up."

"Of course," the doctor returns. He steps forward to embrace Simon and Elian, holding the professor's hand as he stands back. He grips it firmly and nods. "Take care. I will miss seeing you in my library, but I think it is wonderful that you are stepping out of your comfort zone at last. Perhaps you can divorce your work, hm? Perhaps marriage to a person isn't so farfetched?"

Both the young men flush scarlet. Simon draws his hand from around his friend's shoulder and smacks it to the back of his neck, where his messy, damp hair drips water. Elian adjusts his scarf and ducks in his chin, hiding his cheeks behind the purple mask. He rubs off the dried mud stuck to his cheek, staring widely at the dock.

Dr. Oswald squeezes Simon's shoulder, beaming. "Write to me." He steps back and puts his hand on Mrs. Marks's arm. They both wave to us all. "Goodbye, gentlemen."

"Farewell," Mrs. Marks smiles. She helps the doctor into the dingy, while Increas holds on to the dock and keeps the boat as stable as he can manage.

"Goodbye!" I say, waving more and more wildly as they push off. "Goodbye, Doctor! Goodbye, Mrs. Marks!"

In such good spirit, they continue to wave back until my arm can no longer keep it up and I have to stop. Only then do they, too, stop. They turn around, and I watch their backs grow small behind the sour face of Increas Langley as he rows their boat for the mooring. I sit down on the edge of the dock, my feet dangling inches from the clear waters below. Crabs scurry across the sandy bottom. A wide, flat creature glides over them on smooth flaps like wings, trailing a long barbed tail in its gentle wake.

I hold my crutch with the map on my lap and shield my eyes from the sun, squinting out at the moored ship. Men help to load our companion's belongings aboard. The two savants stand together by the gunwales and look back to us, to the island, taking it in.

The dock creaks and I look up.

Simon looks down, his spectacles threatening to fall from the tip of his nose. His narrow eyes peer past me, to the map. Elian hovers behind him, combing his fingers through his damp curls. I catch a glimpse of what had previously been his ear and cringe. It is a hole surrounded in uneven clumps of burnt flesh, a mass of red and black with a texture like grainy wet sand. I look at Simon's crusted, squinting blue eyes instead.

"What the devil happened to the pair of you sods?" I ask. "Where's your shirt gone, Elian? And Simon! You look as if you went for a swim, dressed."

"That's a good question, Walt," says Elian, rubbing his bare, muscled shoulder. My muscles don't show so much yet, but I reckon when my body catches up to my head, I'll have ones as good as he does. I am strong. I've chopped down many trees and swung my share of swords; don't doubt that I am strong.

"I did swim," Simon answers vaguely, rubbing his whiskers.

"But, not—" Elian begins loudly. Simon smacks his shoulder with the back of his hand, face screwed up, and the man turns around, shaking with laughter.

"There," Simon points out over the lagoon, "look, they're lifting the anchor."

I turn back to the water. We are silent as the anchor raises, and equally so as oars push out the sides of the vessel and it begins its steady path towards the mechanical lift. We wave more to the doctor and Mrs. Marks and their fluttering handkerchiefs and marvel at the strange contraption as the brigantine locks into place. As it slowly rises, we see the long, thick straps slung in front of and in the back of the keel which hold the ship in its ascent.

Simon murmurs a few words of awe, mentioning something about the center of gravity.

Then, his hands clap together.

My eyebrows pinch and I turn to see him reaching into the lining of his damp tweed coat. He pulls out the scroll that I immediately recognize as painting number two and he pushes up his glasses.

"Now, Walter, hand me that map, thank you," he says. He shakes his painting out, beads of water flying from the sealskin, then unfurls it. He grins at it, at me, at the map, at Elian. "It is time for our next adventure."