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Verne could barely speak, daunted by his father’s lack of sympathy. “But what . . . what is he going to do?”

“He’ll be thrown into the streets, I expect.”

Verne looked across his dinner plate and for the first time assessed Pierre Verne as a person, not simply as his ever-present father. The man took care of local matters in his tedious law practice, though he had never set foot in court nor spoken with eloquence at a dramatic trial. Pierre handled little more than property deeds and standard contracts. Only at a time like this, after a horrible tragedy, did he show any excitement in picking up the pieces.

“Perhaps André can go into an orphanage,” Sophie said.

“Too old,” Pierre answered with a dismissive wave of his left hand, which still clutched the now-soiled napkin. “No orphanage would take a young man of working age. Maybe we should hope those idiots in Paris get us into another war, and then Nemo can join the fighting and take a soldier’s pay.”

Sophie spoke in an artificially sweet voice. “And which idiots are those, dear? The monarchists, the Republicans, or the Bonapartists? I can’t remember from week to week.”

“I shall let you know after I read tonight’s paper,” her husband said. Then he looked over at his son, as if expecting his words to carry some kind of comfort. “You’re lucky you aren’t in that young man’s situation, Jules. You have prospects, a secure place in town, and a job with me in the law office.”

Sick to his stomach, Verne pushed himself away from the table. “I need to be excused, Father.” He hurried up the narrow stairs to the room he shared with his younger brother.

He opened the shutters to let in the moist air. Outside his window, the tall masts of sailing ships in port rose like towering trees. How could his father be so dismissive of other people’s lives? Verne felt trapped at home. He looked out toward the empty dock that had held the unfinished Cynthia; now nothing remained except a few protruding boards from her sunken hull, burn marks, and soot.

Despite his father’s confidence, Verne’s life appeared to be a dead-end path. He would never leave France, never have adventures and explore the world as his fictional heroes did. And now, André Nemo -- who had always shared his enthusiasm, creativity, and energy with Verne -- had lost everything. Where would he go? How would his friend survive?

Verne could sneak him food and clothes for a time, and Nemo would certainly find his own solution before long. Verne just hoped he himself could be part of it. Together, they had dreamed and imagined so much . . . yet now prison doors were slamming shut around them.

It was the dark edge of twilight, and Paul hadn’t come upstairs to bed yet. Verne threw himself on the blankets and lay wide awake, smelling the river fog, listening to the ship bells and groaning timbers and creaking ropes. The water and the ships called to him like a distant siren song.

From the fourth-story window, his view of the masts was unobscured. Any one of those vessels could guarantee him passage away from this sedentary place. In his imagination, many times he had climbed into their riggings, raised himself to their crows’ nests, gripped the yardarms to hear the tug and flap of wind-stretched sails. Did he have the nerve to make those dreams real?

Ships came and went at all times, departing for far-off lands and returning with exotic treasures. But Verne had to stay in Nantes, confined in his little room in his family’s narrow house in a tiny provincial town.

Didn’t he?

Miserable, Verne managed to fall asleep before his brother came up to join him.

v

Nemo needed her help, more than ever in his life. Caroline Aronnax vowed to do everything in her power to assist the young man who had so inflamed her imagination and unleashed her own dreams. She had to keep his precious imagination alive.

Before she’d met André Nemo and Jules Verne, Caroline had never considered spending time with two young men of such different