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Harmony wasn’t certain what hurt the most, her strained muscles, sunburn or where she’d hit her head during the crash. Pain kept her awake all night – that and Molly pacing the room, as if she was keeping watch over her and Boy.
Her cabin was still a mess, so it took Harmony a few minutes of digging around finally to find something to wear. It would have been nice to work only in her underwear again but she slipped on a thin cotton shift, afraid to work all day out in the sun again without something to screen the sun from her already burnt skin.
Harmony checked on Boy and teared up at seeing her best friend in such a sad state. She was way over her head and needed his advice. More than that, though, she needed the way he inspired her to keep going when all she wanted to do was give up.
She kissed the top of his head. “Please, come back to me.” It was heartbreaking not to hear a reply. She didn’t have the knowhow to repair him, but could at least fix the airship and have it ready to go. With that in mind, Harmony straightened and left the room. She would find Molly and insist she figure out what was wrong with him. Sometime during the night she had disappeared. At the time, Harmony had been glad of the respite from the constant thumping, but now she was curious about where she was.
All it took to locate Molly was to walk out of the cabin and onto the deck. “How did you manage to do that?”
Harmony couldn’t believe her eyes. After all the struggling she had gone through the day before to pull the balloon a few feet off the ground, Molly had finished the job of getting it completely back on board without any help. If Harmony had known how strong the tiny robot was, she would have asked for her help earlier.
Harmony briefly hugged Molly and then looked at the mess on deck. “Now all we have to do is clean this up, fix Boy and figure out how the three of us are going to get the friction engine running and the balloon inflated.” She continued to smile despite recognizing it would impossible without help. She nudged Molly on the shoulder. “Easy, right?”
Molly just stared at her.
Harmony huffed. “I know. It’s not going to be easy, but I simply refuse to die on this island.” Since the glide wires were still wrapped around the captain’s chair, she plopped into Boy’s. She spoke more to herself than Molly. “I’m not giving up. I have to get back home. I don’t want my parents always having to wonder what happened to me.”
She didn’t say out loud her biggest regret. Griffin had wanted to come with her but she had insisted he go with Walker and Journey. They’d had to deliver a load of wheat up north and she had wanted Griffin to meet more people and see how they lived. He had made it clear he wanted to be with her but she had thought he needed some time to see and experience more of life. He had spent the entirety of his own life in a walled-off city called Freedom. What she wouldn’t give now to have his calming presence with her, but more than anything, she didn’t want to die and have him never know how much she loved him.
To stop that line of thinking, she stood and reasoned, “I need to figure out what needs to be fixed first, but I can’t do that with so much clutter. I want you to go and see if you can figure out what’s wrong with Boy,” she said to Molly. “We’ll never get out here without his help.”
Molly chattered away with none of it making any sense, so Harmony held up a hand to forestall the robot. “Boy knows more about this airship than I ever will and he understands how to navigate the open sea. He has all of that knowledge downloaded in that cracked head of his.”
She placed a hand on Molly’s shoulder. “You fix him and then maybe he can figure out what’s wrong with you.” She knelt to eye level with the tiny robot. “You’ve been through worse than this. I believe in you. We can’t afford not to believe in our own abilities, not at this point. We’ll both dig down deep and accomplish things we never thought possible, do you hear? Because, if we don’t, we might as well go out there and dig our own graves.”
It must have been a pretty good pep talk because Molly headed toward the cabin. Harmony let out a long sigh. Now all she had to do was believe it herself, for it only took one glance around at all the damage to make her think about going to find a shovel to dig those three damned graves.
“Okay. Enough of feeling sorry for yourself. Get your sorry ass in gear and go fix some shit.” Upon standing, every muscle screamed in protest but she simply refused to acknowledge it. She thought of a children’s song her grandmother used to sing to her to keep her spirits up. So, instead of cursing, she hummed Three Blind Mice. Somehow the tune seemed fitting.
The sun was directly overhead by the time Harmony decided she couldn’t go another moment longer without eating something. She looked around and smiled. The deck was now almost clear of debris. There were a few things still rolled into a pile on the portside. She still had to repair the engine and inflate the balloon, but at least now she knew there weren’t any other problems to deal with.
She hummed as she walked toward the cabin to go check on Molly and Boy. Harmony ceased humming when she entered the cabin. Boy no longer lay on the bed but in pieces all over the floor. She was going to ask Molly what the hell was going on but could only stand in the doorway, her mouth bobbing up and down without any sound coming out.
Afraid she would only upset Molly if she did finally manage to speak, Harmony backed out and headed to the galley. Maybe eating something would help her see the logic of completely tearing Boy apart. She began humming again but this time louder, and tried to remember the words, hoping it would take her mind off the awful sight of seeing Boy dismantled.
After digging around in the mess on the floor, she found an apple and a wrapped block of cheese. But no matter how much she searched, she couldn’t find a single knife and so broke off a huge hunk of cheese. She cleared a chair and sat. Harmony chewed and blanked out everything else. Unfortunately, she soon ran out of food, leaving nothing to think about but the state of the galley. Having seen her best friend scattered around the cabin had been too much to handle, so she laid her head on top of her arms on the tabled top and cried.
Harmony might have stayed that way for the rest of the day had common sense not prevailed. She couldn’t just sit around feeling sorry for herself, and after all, she had been the one to tell Molly to fix Boy – she was just going to have to trust her.