Mechanical Hearts (Skeleton Key) by Nicole Blanchard, Skeleton Key Page A

just shook my head in response. He didn’t have anything to say after that and we both polished off our pears.
    “I was thinking,” I said, once I licked my fingers clean, “that we could use the sextant Fletcher gave you to track the whale again. If those guys who attacked us still have it, then we can find them, overtake them, and still get the whale.”
    “We’re lucky I still have it,” he said, pulling it out of his backpack.
    I took another pear from the pile next to the fire. “The only thing wrong with that plan is getting to them. Even if we figure out where they took the whale, we have no way to get there.”
    “That’s not the only thing wrong with it,” Ezra said.



Ambrosia
    E zra held the sextant up and peered through the eye sight. He squinted, cursed, and tried it all over again. Whatever he saw inside did not make him happy.
    The fierce scowl on his face made him look all the more like the pirate he claimed not to be. “Is it broken?” I asked hesitantly.
    “It sure as hell isn’t working,” he said, then threw it into the dirt beside his feet. “I can’t get a decent read off of it. Before the attack, we were obviously headed in the right direction, but now, it just reads like we’ve already reached our destination.”
    “We’ll figure it out,” I said. “If we can survive a sinking ship, we can survive this.”
    He didn’t say anything and I didn’t want to agitate him any more than he already was, so I retrieved a bit of plastic they used for diverting water and laid down on the ground next to the fire. I made a bed of my clothes so I didn’t have to sleep in the dirt and used the plastic to conserve what little body heat I had.
    “The best thing we can do is get some rest and reevaluate in the morning. There’s nothing we can do right now. You should be able to sleep now, and I’ll make sure to wake you up every couple hours.”
    He shook his head. “I’ll stay up and keep watch.”
    “Are you sure that’s necessary?”
    “I don’t want to take any chances.”
    By then, my eyelids were drooping, and I could barely speak for all the yawning. “Fine,” I said. “Just wake me in a couple of hours and we’ll trade off. If your head starts hurting, don’t try to be a hero.”
    “Trust me,” he said as I drifted into sleep, “I’m not the hero in this scenario.”

    The next morning it was the cold that woke me. I was shivering so much my teeth clattered together with an audible racket. A chill clung to the morning air and the fire had long since burned itself out.
    I pawed at my eyes and sat up. Ezra was leaning against the pear tree. “Why didn’t you wake me for my watch?”
    He shrugged. “I had a bit of a nap yesterday and you needed to sleep.”
    My joints ached from sleeping on the rough floor and I rubbed my hands over my arms after a good stretch. Neither did much to wash away the chill, so I put on my still-damp clothes, reasoning that they would dry throughout the day.
    “So you watched me sleep?” I said. “That’s not creepy at all.”
    His lips twisted into a half-smile. “Considering that you think of me as a pirate, you’re lucky I didn’t do more than just watch you sleep.”
    Heat washed away any lingering sleepiness like one warm wave on a hot summer day, leaving a coat awareness draped over me in its wake. I didn’t say anything back, but I felt his eyes on me as I gathered a couple apple and pears for breakfast.
    Something changed throughout the night. Something I didn’t quite understand. I resolved to ignore it. Complications—and anything other than a platonic understanding between Ezra and myself would have been a complication—weren’t on my agenda. Even if there was a tender feeling writhing in my stomach when I looked at him. Instead of seeing him as a means to an end, now when I caught his gaze, I remembered his head on my lap and his smooth voice telling me stories of his past.
    I took my time cutting up the apples and