I sighed. “Flowers are good for birds but not for me, Farthing.”

Farthing rested both claws on the rim of the fumarole and gave me a long look.

I shrugged and peered inside. Around the base of the plants was water. The fumarole was a black stone bucket filled with rainwater! I splashed it into my mouth, and it was warm and fresh, not salty, and I laughed out loud as I scooped up gulp after gulp until my stomach sloshed.

My reflection stared back at me. My thick black hair was a fright and my dark eyes wild. I’d grown strong in my years at sea, but my ragged clothes and smudged skin made me look like a street waif. Me and the reflection grimaced at each other.

“Well, you really are a useful little thing, aren’t you?” I said to Farthing.

The lizard tilted its head to one side and its ruff of spines rose at the back of its neck like a little coronet. Looking, for all the world, like the animal was proud of itself.

My dull headache began to clear with the water. Even the puncture on my foot felt better as I followed Farthing to the prickly pear field. When it plucked me another fruit, I decided Farthing must be a she. The clue was in her ladylike fruit-picking technique. The lizard sniffed at the fruit and chose one of the ripest, pink and yellow rather than tough green. Smart. Then with a foreclaw all delicate—like the little finger of a fancy lady drinking her tea—the fruit was skewered and twisted from its tough stem. She rolled her prize on the ground to break off the hairs. After, she slit it lengthways with that dainty foreclaw before nudging it with her muzzle toward me. What would Mr. Darwin make of her? I thought of the hundreds of specimens we’d preserved in barrels, and shivered.

After gobbling down another three pears, delivered by the little lizard, I felt positively cheerful.

“I am in your debt,” I said with a little bow.

The lizard slowly moved closer. I reached out my hand to her and she watched it approach with narrowed eyes, but she did not move as I touched her on the shoulder, just with two fingers. Her scales felt like overlapping fingernails, nothing like the rough wrinkled skin of the sooty iguanas scattered on the shoreline.

A large dragonfly swept over us and Farthing leapt into the air, clawing at nothing as it darted away; then she fell over onto her back. She seemed to catch sight of her tail and mistake it for the dragonfly because she chased it, snapping and whining, then collapsed to the ground with a snort. I laughed out loud. She looked like … a green scaly puppy. She suddenly stopped, shook her head, and raised her ruff of scales. She snorted again as if daring me to make fun of her and I pressed my lips together. What a peculiar little creature.