I rubbed my face hard. It wasn’t over yet. I was thirteen years old and had been at sea for four years. I might not be a man, but I had some wits about me.

That’s more like it.

I clenched my teeth.

The hole was too high for me to climb back up, and anyhow, I was certainly safer down here for now. I sat by the fire, warming my hands through force of habit, but after nearly being burned to a crisp it wasn’t surprising it didn’t give me any comfort.

The tiny blaze soon burned down and there was nothing more to add to it. I felt the fiddle case strap across my chest. Scratch, made of wood, all dried out.

Don’t you dare …

I shook my head. “Then I really would be alone,” I said. My words echoed.

I stared up at the burned black edges of the hole, and for a second a small green face blinked down at me. But it disappeared with a blink, because it had never been there at all.

Don’t even think about it. Nothing could survive a flame like that.

“I wasn’t,” I snapped, trying not to think at all, “but you don’t know for sure, do you. You … didn’t see …”

My throat swelled. I waited in the heavy silence, then took the fiddle off my back. I opened the case, took out the instrument, and played the two songs Farthing had seemed to listen to, her head on one side, her ruff of scales rising.

The floor trembled below me and the earth released a deep groan. Dust settled on me from the roof of the tunnel. I smelled sulfur and wondered if this was going to be my grave, but I played on.

I didn’t notice my tears start, just that my face was wet when I finished. I smudged my hand over my eyes and cheeks and drew a ragged breath. Even Scratch had nothing to say.

Some time later I stood, brushed myself off, and put Scratch back in his case. I wound Mr. Darwin’s eyeglass on its elastic around my wrist and gave one last glimpse up at the blue sky through the hole above before I turned toward the darkness of the tunnel.

I had no clue which way I should go. Both directions were yawning black mouths. Farthing would have known. I stared into the darkness. The lizard was only with me for a day and a half; I needed to stop feeling so wretched about her being gone.

Quite right. After all, you’ve collected hundreds of animals just like that one. Many are now preserved in barrels …

“None like Farthing,” I snapped.

There was no way to climb out and the tunnel leading to the sea might fill with water if it went any deeper or if there was another storm. The other way, toward the volcano, might fill with lava.