“I told her what happened.”
“Everything?”
There was an edge in Damian’s voice.
“Except about how you were hit with the shard,” Lucas said.
“Oh. Your mother’s cool, you know? I wish…”
When it was clear that his friend wasn’t going to finish his thought, Lucas said, “Is it okay? You coming here so soon.”
“Oh, Dad’s over at Halvergate on what he calls business. Don’t worry about him. Did you keep it safe?”
“I said I would.”
“Why I’m here, L, I think I might have a line on someone who wants to buy our little treasure.”
“Your father said we should keep away from people like that.”
“He would.”
“Julia thinks so too.”
“If you don’t want anything to do with it, just say so. Tell me where it is, and I’ll take care of everything.”
“Right.”
“So is it here, or do we have to go somewhere?”
“I’ll show you,” Lucas said, and led his friend through the buddleias and along the low ridge to the northern end of the tiny island where an apple tree stood, hunched and gnarled and mostly dead, crippled by years of salt spray and saltwater seep. Lucas knelt and pulled up a hinge of turf and took out a small bundle of oilcloth. As he unwrapped it, Damian dropped to his knees beside him and reached out and touched an edge of the shard.
“Is it dead?”
“It wasn’t ever alive,” Lucas said.
“You know what I mean. What did you do to it?”
“Nothing. It just turned itself off.”
When Lucas had pulled the shard from Damian’s arm, its translucence had been veined with a network of shimmering threads. Now it was a dull reddish black, like an old scab.
“Maybe it uses sunlight, like phones,” Damian said.
“I thought of that, but I also thought it would be best to keep it hidden.”
“It still has to be worth something,” Damian said, and began to fold the oilcloth around the shard.
Lucas was gripped by a sudden apprehension, as if he was falling while kneeling there in the dark. He said, “We don’t have to do this right now.”
“Yes we do. I do.”
“Your father—he isn’t in Halvergate, is he?”
Damian looked straight at Lucas. “I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re worried about. He tried to knock me down when I went to leave, but I knocked him down instead. Pounded on him good. Put him down and put him out. Tied him up too, to give me some time to get away.”
“He’ll come after you.”
“Remember when we were kids? We used to lie up here, in summer. We’d look up at the stars and talk about what it would be like to go to one of the worlds the Jackaroo gave us. Well, I plan to find out. The UN lets you buy tickets off lottery winners who don’t want to go. It’s legal and everything. All you need is money. I reckon this will give us a good start.”
“You know I can’t come with you.”
“If you want your share, you’ll have to come to Norwich. Because there’s no way I’m coming back here,” Damian said, and stood with a smooth, swift motion.
Lucas stood too. They were standing toe to toe under the apple tree, the island and the Flood around it quiet and dark. As if they were the last people on Earth.
“Don’t try to stop me,” Damian said. “My father tried, and I fucked him up good and proper.”
“Let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Damian said. “It is what it is.”
He tried to step past Lucas, and Lucas grabbed at his arm and Damian swung him around and lifted him off his feet and ran him against the trunk of the tree. Lucas tried to wrench free but Damian bore down with unexpected strength, pressing him against rough bark, leaning into him. Pinpricks of light in the dark wells of his eyes. His voice soft and hoarse in Lucas’s ear, his breath hot against Lucas’s cheek.
“You always used to be able to beat me, L. At running, swimming, you name it. Not any more. I’ve changed. Want to know why?”
“We don’t have to fight about this.”
“No, we don’t,” Damian said, and let Lucas go and stepped back.
Lucas pushed away from the tree, a little unsteady on his feet. “What’s got into you?”
Damian laughed. “That’s good, that is. Can’t you guess?”
“You need the money because you’re running away. All right, you can have my share, if that’s what you want. But it won’t get you very far.”
“Not by itself. But like I said, I’ve changed. Look,” Damian said, and yanked up the sleeve of his shirt, showing the place on his upper arm where the shard had punched into him.
There was only a trace of a scar, pink and smooth. Damian pulled the skin taut, and Lucas saw the outline of a kind of ridged or fibrous sheath underneath.
“It grew,” Damian said.
“Jesus.”
“I’m stronger. And faster, too. I feel, I don’t know. Better than I ever have. Like I could run all the way around the world without stopping, if I had to.”
“What if it doesn’t stop growing? You should see a doctor, D. Seriously.”
“I’m going to. The kind that can make money for me, from what happened. You still think that little bit of dragon isn’t worth anything? It changed me. It could change anyone. I really don’t want to fight,” Damian said, “but I will if you get in my way. Because there’s no way I’m stopping here. If I do, my dad will come after me. And if he does, I’ll have to kill him.
The two friends stared at each other in the failing light. Lucas was the first to look away.
“You can come with me,” Damian said. “To Norwich. Then wherever we want to go. To infinity and beyond. Think about it. You still got my phone?”
“Do you want it back? It’s in the caravan.”
“Keep it. I’ll call you. Tell you where to meet up. Come or don’t come, it’s up to you.”
And then he ran, crashing through the buddleia bushes that grew along the slope of the ridge. Lucas went after him, but by the time he reached the edge of the water, Damian had started the motor of the boat he’d stolen from his father’s shrimp farm, and was dwindling away into the thickening twilight.
The next day, Lucas was out on the Flood, checking baited cages he’d set for eels, when an inflatable pulled away from the shrimp farm and drew a curving line of white across the water, hooking toward him. Jason Playne sat in the inflatable’s stern, cutting the motor and drifting neatly alongside Lucas’s boat and catching hold of the thwart. His left wrist was bandaged and he wore a baseball cap pulled low over sunglasses that darkly reflected Lucas and Lucas’s boat and the waterscape all around. He asked without greeting or preamble where Damian was, and Lucas said that he didn’t know.
“You saw him last night. Don’t lie. What did he tell you?”
“That he was going away. That he wanted me to go with him.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Well, no. I’m still here.”
“Don’t try to be clever, boy.” Jason Playne stared at Lucas for a long moment, then sighed and took off his baseball cap and ran the palm of his hand over his shaven head. “I talked to your mother. I know he isn’t with you. But he could be somewhere close by. In the woods, maybe. Camping out like you two used to do when you were smaller.”
“All I know is that he’s gone, Mr. Payne. Far away from here.”
Jason Playne’s smile didn’t quite work. “You’re his friend, Lucas. I know you want to do the right thing by him.
