As usual, she would start from the top and gradually make her way down. When finished, she had to scoop all the dried droppings into buckets and send them off across to the Brooklyn floating warehouses. There, the pigeon droppings were stored and later used to soften seal skins for shoes and clothing. The stench of the pigeon towers had stopped bothering Madison years ago. For as long as she could remember, she had been helping her mom and dad with their pigeon farm. Like the other farms scattered around the Lower Side rooftops, theirs was used to raise pigeons for squab, the only decent bird meat available on the Archipelago. The meat that came from seagulls was hard to chew and didn’t taste that good. The farm also produced pigeon eggs, a delicacy that went straight to the Upper Side… but Madison always managed to hide some of the eggs for her family or to trade them on the Black Market.
Madison’s own tower was different from the rest on the farm. Her pigeons were not bred for food. Her pigeons were special! They were homing pigeons, trained by Madison to be couriers. After the Flood, people had gone back to using birds to deliver their messages, and it was the quickest way of communicating around the Archipelago. Most of her carrier pigeons went on to service the Government, but she had kept two pairs for her own personal use, and she often did favors for people on the Lower Side. When someone needed to send an urgent word to Dr. Omar at the Infirmary, Madison was the person they would seek out. She liked that part of the job, but wished she could avoid the bird slaughtering and the plucking of feathers… Unfortunately, she had no choice… Madison was almost sixteen now, and ready to take on a bigger role in the family’s trade. It was her duty.
But deep in her heart Madison knew she didn’t belong here. Not on a pigeon farm and so high up in the sky… Madison took in the vastness of the ocean all around her. Her eyes followed the tiny dots of vessels sailing between the Brooklyn Bridge towers. Of course, only the tower tops were visible, several feet above the waterline, giving them the appearance of two perfectly symmetrical islands. How long was it since she had last swum in those waters? When was the last time she had gone diving with Tony and Flynn, helping them scavenge and dream of winning the Trials? It had been more than a year… Furious at herself for thinking of the past, Madison rolled up her sleeves and began scrubbing.
Madison had just finished cleaning the first pole and was swinging her leg over the next one when she heard a voice say, “Hello there!” Startled, Madison spun around, almost losing her balance. A boy sat perched on a pole a few feet away, grinning at her. It took Madison a few seconds before she realized who he was… “Flynn Perry, you idiot!” she cried, the scarf over her mouth, muffling her angry voice. “Don’t creep up on me like that! I almost fell!”
“Boy, it stinks up here!” Flynn scrunched up his nose in disgust. “I should’ve worn a gas mask.”
“Why did you bother coming, then?” Madison’s eyes flashed between the folds of her scarf. She started scrubbing again, trying to ignore her unexpected visitor… trying to recover from the shock of seeing Flynn there… only an arm’s reach away.
Flynn rummaged in his satchel and took out a soda can. “Here, I brought you something,” he said.
Madison’s hand shot out and snatched the can. “I’ll drink it later… when I take my gear off,” she mumbled and put the can in one of her egg baskets. “Thanks…”
“You’re welcome,” Flynn replied.
“So… what brings you up here? What do you want?” Madison asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
“Nothing… Well… Tony’s sick!”
“I know.”
“He says you might be, you know… interested in…”
“Scavv’ying?/Scavenging?”
“Yeah… Be my Crew Mate at the Trials.”
“I’ll have to think about it… Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” Madison replied and went back to scrubbing.
“Great! Then it’s a deal,” Flynn grinned and started to climb down the tower.
“I didn’t say yes, did I?” Madison shouted after him. “I said, I’ll think about it!”
“See you tomorrow at ten,” Flynn yelled when he had reached the bottom. “You know where to find me, right?”
Of course, Madison knew… and her heart skipped a beat. Good thing her face was so well covered, she thought, or Flynn would have seen her cheeks blush a bright shade of red.
Was Madison going to join him on the Seeker? Up on the tower, Flynn had acted as if he was taking it for granted that she would… But the truth was that he wasn’t at all sure. He could only hope that she would… hope she would be able to step into Tony’s shoes without losing precious time. True, she hadn’t trained with him and Tony for a while, but Flynn knew she was fit and strong. Climbing up and down those stinky pigeon towers was no small feat… And she loved being in the water. That’s why he and Tony had noticed her in the first place. A little girl swimming like a fish… Most girls on the Archipelago couldn’t even float… they weren’t encouraged to go in the water, and Madison had surprised everybody with what she could do… She had outraced all the boys with her powerful freestyle, and she could hold her breath just as long as Tony could… Yes, Madison was a great swimmer and an excellent backup scavvy diver, thought Flynn, as he began to make his way home.
Flynn had now walked out of the shadows of the Pigeon Towers, but there was no way he was going to take the cable car… Not after what had happened earlier. He began to jog along the bridge-way, which connected Madison’s building to the one across Water Street Canal. Might as well go through some training exercises, he thought as he picked up speed… It was the perfect distance for his Breath Hold Practice, a drill he had been doing almost daily for the past few years. First, he would run slowly for an hour, while performing a sequence of breathing exercises… Those always started with running two steps, holding his breath, followed by ten steps of running and breathing normally… Then he would increase to four, six, eight steps… and keep increasing, until finally, he was holding his breath for twenty and breathing normally for ten.
The Breath Hold Practice was a great way to accustom a diver’s body to high levels of carbon dioxide and low levels of oxygen… Just one of the many things Flynn had learned from Ann Baxter on how to be a great scavenger… Suddenly, the woman’s name brought a rush of memories into Flynn’s head… The famous Ann Baxter… the only woman diver to ever make it among the top Free Scavengers! The woman who had been Duncan Roth’s team mate and his equal… That had been before the Rottweiler had shot up the ranks to become Marcus Van Zandt’s right-hand man. Rumor had it that Baxter and Roth had been more than just members of the same crew. They had been lovers, but something had made them part ways…
It was Ann Baxter who had become Flynn’s mentor from the moment he had stepped on her raft and demanded to be her apprentice. What had made Ann accept Flynn on the spot remained a mystery to him… It could have been the sheer boldness of the act itself… No one had ever dared to approach a Free Scavenger with such a request. There was always a long line of hopefuls, waiting to be noticed, but never daring to ask… Whatever the reason, Ann had taken Flynn under her wing, teaching him all there was to know about free diving. And more than that… She had filled a big void in his life. For a brief moment in time, Ann had become the mother he never had… But Ann had disappeared on the day Flynn had turned fifteen! She had gone on one of her regular dives and not come back… And like most free divers, her body was never found. Ann Baxter had died doing her job… and that was it… another casualty of life on the Archipelago. As much as Flynn didn’t want to admit it, he missed her terribly… especially now… He wished his old teacher was still around to see him compete in the Trials… and to see him win!