Not going to work now. Too late for that.

I curled on the ground, clutching my foot, my body racked with shakes.

The lizard edged a little closer and lowered itself down beside me, its eyes narrowed. Its irises were like beaten copper, burning bright. But I was feverish, and it was my own eyes that burned. I closed them and my head spun, as if on a merry-go-round.

I spent the rest of that day and the night racked with shivers, sweats, and chills, a pounding tide of pain in my head and foot. I was tormented by nightmares that dragged me back to places I thought I had forgotten—half real, half horrors—conjured up by my poisoned imagination.

My life seemed to play before my eyes. The older sailors said this meant a soul was about to meet its maker, and there was nothing to do about it … except make my peace.

“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound …” Da sang, and I played the fiddle. The instrument buzzed and tickled against my small fingers. Then Da’s clothes fell empty, collapsed in a dusty pile around me, and the last note all wrong …

“Ungodly child! We took you in for the sake of Christian charity. Jigs and popular music? Only songs of worship will be played under my roof. Little good music did for your father.”

I shrank down on my sleeping mat at Aunt’s hearth, holding my fiddle tight. What was Da dying of his winter cough to do with being a fiddler? We’d had cozy lodgings and he’d worked in warm taverns …

Aunt grew and grew until she filled the room, her voice a furious roar. She wrestled my fiddle from my hands and hurled it into the fire. My body was dense as lead, and all I could do was watch the fiddle and my music, Da’s music, eaten by flames …

“You have a good ear, young fellow,” said the naval recruitment officer. He flipped a coin into my cap.

“Thank you, sir.”

I played and played, my arms stiff and deep grooves worn into my fingertips. I couldn’t face another night in a shop doorway. I just needed enough coin for a hot pie and a night’s board in a decent flophouse. Passing sailors and their sweethearts tossed in more coins.

The officer was back. “How old are you, boy?”

“Eleven, sir,” I tried, rolling back my shoulders. I was not yet nine years old but was always tall for my age.

“Hmm.” He stroked his ginger whiskers. “A ship is about to sail, in need of a fiddler. You seem a sturdy sort, if young. Can you work hard, obey orders?”

I nodded. “That I can, mister. Captain, sir.”

A ship! Fancy me … on a ship!

He was gone, and I cringed as hard raindrops bit at my skin. It was not rain but a stream of coins falling from the sky, filling my cap and rolling across the quayside. I scrabbled to collect them and held one up to see the sun glinting off it. The shiniest new copper farthing …