The song pours out of Ember's throat: inexplicable, irresistible, irrepressible. It spills, sloshing, syllable-foamed, to pool in lungs and hearts. It doesn't matter that she's singing it (almost) alone. A taut chain's as good as a staircase, and the tide must turn, it must turn now, she knows it in her bones and her heart and her nose, even as Corvii chase after her.

[i]...my Bonny’s down beneath the mast
counting grains of rice
sorting good from sour salt
and executing lice...[/i]

She needs to be on this ship. It's [i]freedom.[/i] If she makes it up, if she just avoids being knocked down (not that she's making pursuit easy, she moves like she was born in the treetops, alternating between running and swinging herself beneath by her arms), then heaven will break open, the heart of this old wreck will stir, and something, Mosaic, [i]something[/i] will happen that is a miracle. All she has to do is be there. To be ready. To welcome her lover aboard, to somehow escape from beneath the sight of this terrible eye, to be [i]free[/i] of everything except love and wonder.