Orlen rolled off the cracked plate and hit the wet planks with his elbow.
For three breaths nobody made a sound except the lake slapping the piles underneath them. Then the boy drew air in with a raw, hiccuping scrape and began to cry. It was an ordinary sound, loud and furious with pain, and it told Ysabet before her hands reached him that his neck and back were whole.
His father landed beside them hard enough to shake the lower stage. He caught Orlen by the shirt, pulled him against his chest, and then looked down at the blood on the boy’s knee as if he could not figure out how knees worked.
“Hold him still,” Ysabet said. “Let me feel his collarbone.”
She used her left hand. Orlen twisted away from her, kicking once against the boards, and cried harder when her fingers pressed his left shoulder. Bruised muscle, scraped skin from the rail, a split lip where his chin had met his own shirt. Nothing moved under the skin that should have stayed fixed.
Beside her knee, Pip made a wet, clicking sound.
Ysabet turned.
The new shell on the creature’s left side no longer curved like a dish. A jagged white split ran from the soft upper rim all the way down to the thicker base near its middle legs. Along the crack, the half-hardened plate had torn back from the gray fold underneath. Clear fluid, thicker than water and faintly chalky, leaked down Pip’s flank…
