Where was Isabelle? The question hounded him into restless dreams and then chased him back out again. Only on waking did he remember what he’d lost. He’d seen the Thunderclap fall from the sky with Isabelle, Marie, and Rebecca aboard. They were all so young. Even all grown-up, there was a part of Isabelle who would always be a newborn, a child in his heart.

He’d counted Isabelle amongst the dead once before only to have her turn up days later and half a sky away, but this time he’d seen the ship go down. That memory hurt more than every pain in his body. No matter how he tried to guide his mind to other things, like where in all the sky he was, he kept circling back to a vision of the great ship plummeting.

The corner of the cabin where he’d been laid out had been partitioned off from the rest of the ship by a heavy curtain. He briefly considered getting up to look around, but any motion more ambitious than blinking brought reprisals in the form of pain like someone splitting his skull with a chisel.

A gull screamed somewhere in the distance. If Jean-Claude never heard that noise again it would be too soon. His wounds burned and itched madly, though they had neither the heat nor stink of infection.

“Ahoy,” he croaked through parched lips. He felt the aeronautical term was a nice touch, not that it elicited a response.

He sucked on his tongue for a few minutes trying to work up some spit, and tried again. “Hello, the ship. Can anybody hear me?” His own desiccated voice rasped against his ears.

In due course, the curtain brushed aside and the ship’s surgeon came in. He was so covered in scars that Jean-Claude wondered if he practiced his stitchery on himself. He wore a bloodstained apron and held a short clay pipe clenched in his teeth.

“Well, there’s a surprise,” the surgeon said, pulling aside the sheet that covered Jean-Claude’s chest and prodding at the many wounds thereon. “Figured you for a dead man.”

Jean-Claude winced at his touch. “Keep that up and I will be.”

“Always knew you lemon eaters were damned babies. No heat. No rot.” He pulled the sheet back up and waggled his fingers by the left side of Jean-Claude’s face. “See this?”

“It’s a blur,” he said.

“Good enough,” said the surgeon, and went on to examining Jean-Claude’s lacerated and broken arm with all the care and delicacy of a man digging a trench.

“Nnngh.” Jean-Claude clenched his teeth, which made his eye socket feel like someone had shoved a galvanized icicle in there.

When the pain at last faded to the point where he could open his mouth without screaming, he said, “My ship. What happened to the Thunderclap?”

“Fell like a stone,” said the surgeon.