The Machias Seal Island Count

• Chapter 1 Disputed Waters
• Chapter 2 Landing on the Rock
• Chapter 3 The Shared Quarters
• Chapter 4 A Tally of Pincers and Beaks
• Chapter 5 Fog and Friction
• Chapter 6 Baseline Measurements
• Chapter 7 Razor-Billed Boundaries
• Chapter 8 Nocturnal Petrel Calls
• Chapter 9 Blind Trust
• Chapter 10 The Guano Protocol
• Chapter 11 Murres in the Mist
• Chapter 12 Territory Marked
• Chapter 13 Gale Warning
• Chapter 14 Trapped in the Lighthouse
• Chapter 15 Plumage and Proximity
• Chapter 16 A Shift in the Wind
• Chapter 17 Morning After the Surge
• Chapter 18 Banding Together
• Chapter 19 Shared Data
• Chapter 20 Courtship Displays
• Chapter 21 The Final Grid
• Chapter 22 Crossing the Borderline
• Chapter 23 Last Call at the Colony
• Chapter 24 Packing the Crates
• Chapter 25 Departure on the Swell
• Chapter 26 The Mainland Sum

The harbor at Cutler, Maine, smelled of diesel, decaying kelp, and salted bait tubs left out to bake in an indifferent morning sun. Tristan Hayes stood at the end of the wooden pier, a heavy canvas rucksack slung over one shoulder and an aluminum clipboard tucked firmly beneath his arm, staring at the grey horizon where the sea met a wall of damp, impenetrable haze. Somewhere twenty miles southeast, swallowed by the cold Atlantic chop, sat a fifteen-acre slab of treeless granite that two sovereign nations had been politely bickering over since the Treaty of Ghent.

Tristan adjusted his spectacles with an index finger, feeling the grit of sea salt already settling onto the lenses. He was thirty-two, possessed the wiry build of someone who spent his summers scrambling over talus slopes, and was currently employed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to do something entirely unreasonable. He was supposed to spend the next six weeks counting Atlantic puffins, razorbills, and common murres alongside a representative of the Canadian Wildlife Service.

It was an exercise in bureaucratic diplomacy disguised as conservation biology. Because neither Washington nor Ottawa could agree on who owned Machias Seal Island, they had settled on an uneasy truce: Canada manned the lighthouse, the Americans asserted fishing rights in the surrounding grey zone, and every few years, both federal agencies dispatched an ornithologist apiece to produce a single, reconciled seabird census.

Tristan didn’t care about the flags. He cared about the birds, and he cared about his baseline data. What he did not care for, however, was the prospect of spending forty-two days confined to a wave-battered outcrop with Simon Dubois.

"You’re brooding, Hayes," a voice shouted from the deck of the Wandering Gull, a thirty-eight-foot lobster boat idling beside the dock pilings. Captain Joe Miller leaned out of the wheelhouse, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the oily water between the hull and the green-filmed wood. "Step aboard before the tide turns, or you’ll be rowing that canvas duffel out there yourself."

"I am not brooding, Joe," Tristan said, stepping down onto the gunwale with practiced balance. "I am verifying the equipment manifest."

"You’re glaring at the fog like it personally insulted your mother," Joe countered, wiping his hands on an ancient, crusty rag. "He’s inside the cabin, by the way. Got here forty minutes ago. Brought four pelican cases and a bag of those fancy French biscuits."

Tristan stiffened, the strap of his pack digging into his collarbone. "He’s already here?"

"Large as life, twice as French-Canadian," Joe chuckled, shoving the throttle forward a fraction to keep the boat snug against the fenders. "Go on in. Break the ice. Try not to stab each other with your calipers until I get paid for the charter."

Tristan took a steadying breath, ducked his head beneath the low lintel, and pushed open the salt-swollen wooden door to the main cabin.

Simon Dubois was sitting on the bench locker beneath the starboard windows, completely occupying the space simply by existing in it. He was broad-shouldered, wearing a faded red wool sweater with frayed cuffs and oilskin trousers that had seen considerably more field seasons than Tristan’s neat Gore-Tex gear. His dark hair was curling wildly with the ocean humidity, and a rough shadow of beard clung to his jaw. In his hands, he held a stainless-steel mug from which steam rose in slow, fragrant ribbons, carrying the dark scent of chicory.

Simon looked up, his pale blue eyes narrowing slightly before his mouth curved into a slow, irritatingly confident grin.

"Hayes," Simon said, his voice carrying the faint, melodic cadence of Montreal beneath flat English consonants. "You haven’t changed a bit. Still wearing the department-issue pocket protector, I see."

"It’s a waterproof Rite-in-the-Rain notebook pouch, Dubois, and you know it," Tristan replied coolly, dropping his duffel onto the deck with a heavy thud. He removed his glasses, wiped them deliberately on the hem of his flannel shirt, and put them back on. "I see you brought enough luggage for an arctic expedition."

Simon glanced at the stacked, airtight cases strapped against the bulkhead. "Some of us believe in protecting our optical gear from salt spray. But please, tell me you didn’t bring that decrepit wooden surveyor’s transit again. The one that was calibrated during the Carter administration."

"That transit has an error margin of less than three minutes of arc," Tristan said, sliding onto the bench across from him. "Which is more than I can say for your handheld GPS unit, which regularly misplaces the northern hemisphere by thirty yards."

"That was one time, on Grand Manan, and the satellite constellation was experiencing solar flare interference," Simon shot back, though there was an easy warmth in his tone that made it impossible to treat the jab as a true hostility. He offered the thermos toward Tristan. "Coffee? Real stuff. None of that brown water your agency calls roast."

Tristan hesitated, his stomach hollow from the early morning drive from Bangor, before reaching into his coat for his own tin cup. "I accept out of logistical necessity, not gratitude."

"Naturally," Simon murmured, pouring a steady stream of black liquid. "God forbid the United States yield sovereignty over morning caffeine."

The engine rumbled beneath their boots, shifting from an idle purr to a deep, rhythmic thrum as Joe threw off the lines and swung the bow away from the wharf. The Wandering Gull lurched, sliding into the greasy green swell of the inner harbor. Outside the sheltering arms of the headland, the Atlantic waited—cold, slate-colored, and vast.

Tristan sipped the coffee. It was dangerously strong, scalding hot, and undeniably superior to anything he had brewed in his motel room at four in the morning. He stared out the salt-streaked glass as the pine-topped bluffs of the Maine coast began to blur and dissolve into the marine layer.

"Did you review the survey grid protocols I emailed last week?" Tristan asked, eager to shift the conversation to neutral, quantifiable ground.

Simon sighed, leaning his head back against the painted plywood of the cabin wall. "I did. And as usual, Tristan, your approach reads like a tax audit. Dividing the northern boulder beach into five-meter quadrants is madness. Do you have any idea how fast the razorbills shift between the crevice nests when the tide drops? We’ll be double-counting every adult bird on the eastern ledge before lunch."

"The Canadian method of visual transects from thirty paces has a fifteen percent margin of error," Tristan countered, tapping the aluminum clipboard on his knee. "Fifteen percent, Simon. In a population of only four thousand breeding pairs, that’s six hundred birds. We cannot file a joint report to the International Joint Commission with a variance that large. The fishery managers will use the low number to justify opening herring trawling closer to the shoals."

Simon’s easy demeanor tightened slightly, the playful glint in his eye receding behind professional wariness. He set his mug down on the ledge of the porthole. "I am just as committed to protecting the forage base as you are, Hayes. You don’t need to lecture me on the baitfish depletion. But I am a biologist, not an actuary. If we spend twelve hours a day bent over measuring tapes in the middle of a breeding frenzy, we will crush more eggs under our boots than we tally on your little sheets."

"We won't crush anything if we stick to the flagged paths."

"The flagged paths don't reach the eastern sub-colony," Simon said bluntly. "The winter storms washed the rocks clean. The whole gully shifted three feet to the west. The Canadian Coast Guard keeper told me when he rotated out last month. Your old maps are useless."

Tristan frowned, glancing down at the topographic sheet clipped to his board. It was a high-resolution aerial render from the previous summer, cross-hatched with meticulous red and blue ink lines where he had mapped the nesting sites of Fratercula arctica. "The granite doesn't move that fast."

"The granite doesn't, but the deadfall and the kelp drifts do," Simon replied. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees, bringing him closer to Tristan’s side of the narrow cabin. The smell of wool, salt, and damp cedar drifted off him. "Look, we do this every two years. We argue for three days on the mainland, we go out to the rock, we fight over who gets the north blind, and then we figure it out. Why not skip the fighting this time?"

"Because precision matters," Tristan said, though the argument felt thinner than he intended.

"Precision matters," Simon agreed softly, his gaze steady on Tristan’s face. "Accuracy matters more."

The boat cleared the mouth of the harbor, striking the open swell of the bay. The bow rose sharply, slamming down into a trough with a jarring crash that sent a fan of white spray rattling against the windscreen like buckshot. Tristan reflexively gripped the edge of the wooden bench to keep his balance. Simon didn't flinch; his body naturally absorbed the roll, swaying with the rhythm of the keel with the instinct of someone raised on the St. Lawrence estuary.

For several minutes, the only sound was the laboring diesel engine and the rhythmic groan of the timber hull. The coastline had vanished entirely now, swallowed by the fog. They were in the Grey Zone now—the contested wedge of ocean claimed by both the American republic and the British crown since the days of wooden frigates and long-range cannon. It was an anomaly of history, preserved by lobster traps and conservation treaties, where Canadian and American boats fished side by side without customs clearance, their flags snapping in the same raw, salt-heavy wind.

Tristan looked down at his boots. He had been dreading this voyage for six months, ever since the regional director had called him into the regional office in Hadley and informed him that Ottawa had once again nominated Dubois as their lead.

Two years ago, their time on the island had been a complicated mess of professional posturing and unresolved tension. They had spent weeks trapped in proximity, their elbows brushing inside four-by-four observation blinds, arguing over band numbers while the wind howled through the lighthouse stays. There had been a night—just one—after a gale had knocked out the solar array, when they had shared a bottle of unlabelled rye whiskey by the cast-iron stove in the keeper’s quarters. They had talked until two in the morning about fledging success rates and the terrifying decline of sand lance populations, their knees touching beneath the table, the space between them humming like a live wire.

And then, when Tristan had reached out, his hand hesitating over Simon’s sleeve, Simon had pulled back with an enigmatic, rueful shake of his head, retreating behind his dry Canadian humor and the unbreachable barrier of the border. They hadn't spoken of it since. When the boat had come to take them off the rock at the end of August, Simon had shaken his hand with formal politeness on the wharf at Saint Andrews, turned his collar up against the rain, and walked away.

Now, sitting three feet across from him on the damp bench of the Wandering Gull, Tristan could still feel that sudden, cold distance as sharply as the ocean air leaking through the cabin seals.

"You brought the banding pliers?" Simon asked, breaking the quiet.

"Of course," Tristan said. "Sizes two through four, stainless steel. The aluminum ones corrode too quickly in the guano pools."

"Good. The Maritime regional office sent me two thousand bands. All stamped with the Ottawa address, of course."

Tristan let out a short, dry laugh. "Don't flatter yourself. Half of those birds will end up wintering off Cape Cod, where our observers will log them into the Patuxent database. Your bands are just jewellery for American birds."

"American birds?" Simon scoffed, a genuine smirk breaking through his beard. "They were nesting on that rock before your ancestors figured out how to ruin tea in Boston harbor."

"And yours were still paddling birchbark canoes through the mosquito swamps of the Saguenay."

"Ah, now he shows some life," Simon said, settling back against the wall, clearly pleased with himself. "I was worried you were going to be solemn for the entire forty miles."

The wheelhouse door slid back an inch, and Captain Joe poked his weathered face in, cold air swirling around his greasy knit cap. "Wind’s backing around to the south-southeast. Barometer’s dropping a point or two. Nothing serious, but the surge on the landing slip is gonna be nasty by the time we raise the light."

Tristan stood up, ducking slightly to clear the ceiling beams, and looked through the forward windows. The fog had thinned to a pale, luminous haze, illuminated from above by a white sun that gave the water a dull, metallic sheen. Out on the water, small rafts of birds were beginning to appear, bobbing like corks in the heavy chop.

First came the eiders—thick-necked and heavy-bodied, paddling furiously away from the bow wake before taking to the air with frantic, low-altitude wingbeats. Then, slicing cleanly through the mist on narrow, razor-sharp wings, the first alcid appeared. A single Atlantic puffin, carrying three tiny silver fish crosswise in its bright, triangular bill, veered hard to the west, its orange feet trailing behind it like tiny rudders.

"Breeding plumage is late this year," Tristan remarked, watching the bird vanish into the white. "The bill plates are smaller than average."

Simon joined him at the window, his shoulder pressing lightly against Tristan's. The contact was brief, but intentional enough that Tristan felt a sudden, familiar hitch in his breathing.

"The spring was cold," Simon said, his voice quiet now, stripped of its mocking edge. "The capelin ran late. The southern colonies had poor egg production. If Machias is down, too, the whole Gulf of Maine metapopulation is going to take a hit."

"Which is why we need an exact tally," Tristan said softly.

"I know," Simon admitted. He turned his head, looking down at Tristan. Up close, Tristan could see the fine lines etched around Simon’s eyes from years of squinting across cold water, the faint white scar across the bridge of his nose where an angry herring gull had clipped him during an banding run on the Gaspé. "I don't actually want to fudge the numbers, Tristan. I just... I don't want us spending the entire summer fighting over decimal points."

Tristan met his eyes. The cabin seemed suddenly very small, the rumble of the engine dropping into the background, leaving only the sound of water rushing along the cedar planks of the hull.

"We fight because it's safer," Tristan said before he could stop himself.

Simon didn't answer immediately. His gaze dropped to Tristan’s mouth for a brief, heavy second, then flicked back to his eyes. The humor was entirely gone, replaced by a dark, simmering intensity that made Tristan’s pulse accelerate against his ribs.

"Maybe it used to be," Simon said, the low rumble of his voice barely audible over the hum of the engine.

Before Tristan could parse that, Joe shouted from the helm. "There she is! Dead ahead through the slot!"

The fog parted like a pair of damp curtains drawn back by an unseen hand. Emerging from the grey wastes of the Atlantic, Machias Seal Island appeared.

It looked less like an island and more like an armored whale breaking the surface to die. Bare, yellow-green granite rose precipitously from the boiling white surf, utterly devoid of trees, bushes, or any vegetation taller than a blade of salt-grass. The lower ledges were black with wet bladderwrack, slick and treacherous, pounded ceaselessly by the Atlantic swell. Above the rock line, the land flattened into an undulating plateau covered in emerald turf, honeycombed with thousands of subterranean nesting burrows.

At the center of the rock stood the lighthouse: an octagonal concrete tower painted brilliant white, crowned with a red lantern room that flashed its solitary beam every thirty seconds into the noon gloom. Grouped around it were two small, white-painted wooden keepers' dwellings with red tin roofs, a couple of weathered outbuildings, and the raised wooden boardwalks that kept human feet from collapsing the fragile, underground puffin burrows.

And everywhere, filling every square yard of air, water, and stone, were the birds.

Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. The sky above the island was a swirling, chaotic cyclone of black and white wings. Puffins with their oversized, painted bills whirred through the air like clockwork toys; sleek, menacing razorbills banked sharply against the wind; and on the distant ledges, packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the sheer cliffs, the common murres stood upright like solemn little sentinels in formal wear.

The noise reached the boat before the smell did: a roaring, deafening cacophony of groans, croaks, sharp caws, and the low, guttural growl of thousands of nesting sea-parrots that sounded like a subterranean engine idling beneath the turf. And then came the scent—an eye-watering, primordial reek of ammonia, fish oil, rotting seaweed, and centuries of accumulated guano that clung to the damp air like smoke.

"Look at them," Simon breathed, pressing one hand against the salt-streaked glass. The sardonic researcher had vanished entirely, replaced by the pure, unadorned awe of a field naturalist confronted with the wild mass of life. "Look at that eastern shelf. It's completely full. Hayes, they’re three deep on the outer rim."

Tristan looked, his professional detachment crumbling under the sheer spectacle of the colony. The numbers were staggering. Whatever decline had hit the southern reaches of the Gulf, Machias Seal Island remained the fortress of the northern sea.

"We have our work cut out for us," Tristan said, feeling a rare, crooked smile pull at the corners of his mouth.

"Forty-two days," Simon said, turning to look at him, his shoulder still pressed firmly against Tristan's. "Just you, me, thirty thousand birds, and a lighthouse keeper who doesn't speak to either of our governments."

"The keeper is Coast Guard," Tristan noted automatically. "He speaks to Ottawa."

"Angus MacDonald speaks only to God and his radio," Simon countered, stepping back and pulling his wool cap down over his ears. "Come on, Hayes. Let’s get the gear to the deck. If Joe drops my pelican cases in the wash, I’m claiming your transit as Canadian crown property."

The Wandering Gull slowed, its engine dropping to a low, throbbing idle as it rounded the western point toward the narrow, surge-swept gulch that served as the island’s only boat slip. The water there was a maelstrom of green foam and dark rock, rising and falling four feet with every swell.

Tristan picked up his rucksack and clipboard, stepping out onto the deck into the cold, screaming wind of the colony. The spray hit him instantly, cold and briny on his face, but he hardly felt it. He was watching the birds dive into the surf, watching the red roof of the keeper’s house draw near, and keenly aware of Simon Dubois standing less than an arm's length away, ready to step off the edge of the known world and onto fifteen acres of contested stone.

The surge channel was less a harbor than a narrow, toothy fracture in the western ledge where Atlantic swells threw themselves against slick green bladderwrack.

Captain Joe nudged the Wandering Gull into the frothing gut of the gulch, keeping the bow pinned against the wash with sharp, precise bursts of diesel power. The wooden hull groaned against the rubber tires hung from the slipway timbers. On the concrete landing platform six feet above the surging white water stood Angus MacDonald, wrapped in a faded yellow oilskin slicker that reached his shins, holding a hemp line thick as an anchor cable. He didn't wave. He simply stood planted against the Atlantic gale, looking less like a host and more like an extension of the granite bedrock.

"Jump when the boat hits the crest, not when she drops into the hole!" Joe barked over the shrieking alcids overhead, throwing the transmission into neutral for a fraction of a second. "You miss the ledge, and I ain't fishing your carcass out until the turn of the tide!"

Tristan slung his canvas daypack tight across his back, tucking his aluminum clipboard into the front of his storm coat. The boat rose on an oily heave of grey water, five feet, six feet, level with the slime-blackened wooden ramp.

"Go, Hayes!" Simon’s hand slammed flat against the center of Tristan’s back, a firm, steadying shove that propelled him forward across the gap.

Tristan planted his lug-soled boots hard on the wet wood, his knees bending to absorb the impact. His left foot skidded on a smear of kelp, but his fingers caught the iron cable bolted into the rock wall before he could slide backward into the churning white foam below. He pulled himself up onto the flat concrete pad, gasping as the freezing wind took the breath straight out of his lungs.

Behind him, Simon leaped with infuriating grace, clearing the gap with room to spare and landing on the balls of his feet like a mountain goat. He immediately turned back toward the boat to catch the heavy pelican cases Joe was swinging over the gunwale.

"Here’s your toys!" Joe yelled over the thrum of the engine, heaving the first waterproof crate across the gap.

Simon caught it by the heavy molded handle, pivoting smoothly to swing the sixty-pound container onto the dry platform, then turned back for the next. Tristan stepped in beside him, his shoulder brushing Simon's heavy wool sweater as they worked in breathless synchronization. Case after case—optical instruments, high-density batteries, steel banding kits, and rations—cleared the gap between the heaving boat and the stone slip. With every pass, their arms grazed, their breath mingling in white plumes against the freezing, salt-laden air.

"Last one!" Joe bellowed, hoisting a wooden crate marked with red Canadian stencil paint. Simon reached out, took the weight, and hauled it up onto the concrete, his face flushed from the exertion.

Angus MacDonald stepped forward, his weathered hands catching the stern painter Joe cast up, and snubbed it once around the rusted iron bollard. He looked at the mountain of waterproof luggage, then squinted through rheumy eyes at Tristan and Simon.

"Ottawa sent more plastic boxes than usual," Angus said, his voice like gravel grinding under a heavy boot. It was the first time he had spoken, and his Nova Scotian drawl cut through the screaming wind with effortless clarity. "And Washington sent the thin one with the glasses again."

"Good to see you too, Angus," Tristan said, wiping a fresh layer of brine off his spectacles with the corner of his dry sleeve. "The solar bank holding its charge?"

"Batteries took a bath during the nor'easter in April," Angus grunted, turning his back on them to survey the boiling surf. "Wind generator is squealing like a stuck pig, but the light's spinning. That's all Ottawa pays me to care about. Get your gear above the high-water mark before the swell picks up. Tide’s coming in fast, and she don't care about your bird counts."

With that welcoming address, the keeper turned on his heel and began the slow, deliberate climb up the wet wooden stairway that led toward the lighthouse compound, his yellow slicker flapping like a tattered flag against the wind.

"Charming as ever," Simon muttered, wiping sweat and sea spray from his forehead with the back of a calloused hand. He grabbed two of the heaviest equipment cases. "Grab the transit box, Tristan. If that wooden relic gets soaked in sea foam, your error margin is going to jump from three minutes to three degrees."

"The mahogany is sealed with three coats of marine varnish," Tristan retorted, though he immediately lifted the long wooden case by its canvas strap, cradling it defensively against his chest. He picked up his personal duffel with his free hand. "And unlike your satellite transponders, it doesn't need six hours on a diesel generator to tell me where north is."

They hauled the gear up the sixty-odd wooden steps bolted directly into the shear face of the granite cliff. Every step brought them higher into the swirling vortex of the colony. The air was thick with the rhythmic, mechanical flap of thousands of pairs of wings. Alcids were everywhere—hurtling in from the feeding grounds with tiny silver sand lances dangling from their bills, crashing clumsily onto the turf, or circling endlessly on the stiff thermal updrafts created by the sheer stone face.

The smell intensified with every foot of elevation. It was not merely the odor of guano; it was a living, breathing bio-mass of decaying fish heads, fermented kelp, and the sulfurous muck of thousands of underground burrows that had been occupied since the retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet.

At the top of the stairs, the landscape flattened into the central plateau. Here, the raw granite gave way to a dense, spongy carpet of salt-marsh grass and chickweed, riddled with deep, excavated holes where the puffins nested. To protect the fragile underground tunnels from being crushed by heavy boots, a raised wooden boardwalk—barely eighteen inches wide—stretched across the green expanse, connecting the landing slip to the keeper’s dwelling and the stark white lighthouse.

"Look out," Simon said suddenly, reaching out and grabbing Tristan’s elbow to yank him backward.

A fraction of a second later, a puffin came barreling out of the mist like a thrown bowling ball, landing with a frantic flurry of short wings and skidding feet barely two inches from the tip of Tristan’s left boot. The bird tumbled onto its breast, shook its black head vigorously, and blinked up at them with absurdly solemn, triangular eyes. Its bill was banded with brilliant stripes of vermilion and gold, and tucked neatly crosswise inside it were five glistening, silver sprats.

Tristan let out a slow breath, looking from the bird down to Simon’s hand, which was still firmly clamped around the sleeve of his heavy foul-weather jacket. He could feel the heat of Simon’s grip through three layers of waterproof fabric.

"Careful, Hayes," Simon said softly, his voice dropping below the roar of the colony. His pale blue eyes were crinkled at the corners, holding a mixture of amusement and that same unnerving intensity that had silenced Tristan in the boat cabin. "You step off the boards, and you’ll cave in a nursery. Then I’d have to write you up for an international environmental violation."

"I am perfectly aware of the nesting density protocols," Tristan said, his voice tighter than he wanted it to be. He pulled his arm back gently, breaking the contact. Simon let go, but the smirk lingered on his lips. "And the sprat load on that adult is an encouraging indicator. Three-inch juveniles. That means the cold pool in the lower bay hasn't entirely collapsed."

"Always looking for the silver lining in the fish guts," Simon said, turning to continue down the boardwalk. The narrowness of the path forced them to walk single-file, Simon leading the way with the heavy pelican cases swinging easily at his sides, his broad shoulders swaying with the deliberate, heavy cadence of a man who worked with his body every day.

Tristan followed close behind, trying to keep his eyes on the wooden planks beneath his feet rather than the worn wool of Simon’s sweater. It was infuriating how little Simon had changed, and even more infuriating how readily Tristan’s body remembered the geometry of him. Two years of professional emails, polite exchanges of Excel spreadsheets, and safe, distant administrative phone calls were unraveling within twenty minutes of setting foot on this desolate slab of stone.

They reached the gravel yard surrounding the light tower. The lighthouse itself was a towering monument to utilitarian geometry: eighty feet of reinforced octagonal concrete, brilliant white against the slate sky, crowned by the iron-railed lantern room and a slowly rotating glass lens that cast a pale, superfluous flash across the midday gloom. Beside it stood the two-story wooden keeper's house, its clapboards painted stark white with brilliant red trim around the heavy hurricane-shuttered windows.

Beyond the yard, the island dropped away toward the northern ledges, where hundreds of razorbills stood upright in tight, aggressive clusters, their deep-cleft, black bills tipped upward as they growled and snapped at one another for territorial purchase on the narrow rock shelves.

Angus MacDonald was already on the porch of the house, his back braced against the red front door, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette that hissed softly whenever a drop of sea mist touched the ember.

"You boys take the east side," Angus said as they dropped the first load of cases onto the crushed-stone path with a collective sigh of relief. He flicked the ash into the wind. "Cranberry Island ferry brought two fresh tanks of propane last Tuesday, so the range works. The cistern’s half-full of rainwater, but if you waste it on daily baths, you’ll be drinking out of the kelp pools by mid-July."

"Understood, Angus," Simon said, wiping his brow. "We’ll haul the rest of the crates up from the slip."

"Take your time," Angus muttered, opening the screen door with a high-pitched metallic creak. "The birds aren't going anywhere. Neither are you."

The heavy wooden door shut behind him with a solid, echoing thud, leaving them alone in the roaring wind.

Simon turned to Tristan, crossing his arms over his chest. "Well, Hayes. We have six pelican cases, three crates of canned beans, forty liters of distilled water, and two dozen battery arrays waiting at the bottom of those stairs. Shall we race?"

"Science is not an athletic competition, Dubois," Tristan replied stiffly, though he was already unbuttoning the throat of his storm jacket to let the cold wind cool his flushed neck.

"Everything is a competition between our agencies, Tristan," Simon said with a quick, flashing grin that made his dark beard twitch. "Ottawa versus Washington. Kilometers versus miles. Metric sanity versus your bizarre attachment to the imperial inch."

"The US Customary system has a long and venerable history," Tristan said, setting his boots back onto the boardwalk toward the landing slip.

"It’s an abomination," Simon called after him, falling into step right on his heels. "Just like your methodology for counting razorbills."

They spent the next two hours hauling the gear up the sheer face of the rock. It was brutal, back-breaking labor that quickly burned away the remaining chill of the boat ride. The wooden stairs grew slicker as the tide reached its peak, sending plumes of cold ocean spray crashing over the lower timbers. Tristan’s shoulders burned under the weight of the battery packs, and his palms grew raw inside his soaked work gloves, but he refused to slow his pace or ask for a break. Every time he reached the top of the stairs with a load, Simon was right there beside him, breathing hard, his woolen sweater damp with sweat and salt water, matching him crate for crate.

On the final trip, as they hauled up the heavy wooden box containing their dry provisions, Tristan’s boot caught on a raised nail in the boardwalk. He pitched forward with a startled gasp, the crate tipping violently toward the edge of the boards where a deep puffin burrow gaped like an open pitfall.

Simon moved with startling speed. He dropped his end of the crate, lunged forward, and caught Tristan around the ribs with both arms, hauling him backward with a grunt of pure effort. The wooden crate slammed flat onto the center of the boardwalk with a dull boom, narrowly missing the delicate entrance of the burrow.

For several long seconds, neither of them moved.

Tristan was pulled tight against Simon’s chest, his back pressed hard against the damp wool of the red sweater. He could feel the heavy, rapid thud of Simon’s heartbeat against his shoulder blades, and the rough warmth of Simon’s stubbled jaw grazed the side of his temple. Simon’s hands were clamped tight around Tristan’s ribcage, his fingers digging into the canvas of his coat, holding him completely secure against the gale that howled across the open plateau.

"Got you," Simon breathed directly into his ear, his voice rough and shallow from the climb.

Tristan’s throat felt parched. The smell of wool, sweat, and sea salt was overwhelming, crowding out the guano and the ocean chill. For an instant, the memory of that night two years ago—the warmth of the cast-iron stove, the cheap rye whiskey, the unbearable, static-charged silence between them—surged through Tristan’s veins like high-voltage current. His hand came up automatically, fingers brushing against Simon’s forearm where it was locked around his chest.

"I have you," Simon repeated, softer this time, his grip loosening just a fraction, but not releasing him entirely.

Tristan swallowed hard, staring at the small, oblivious puffin that had just poked its head out of the burrow six inches from their boots. The bird blinked its solemn, rimmed eyes at them, utterly indifferent to the two men entangled on the wooden planks above its home.

"The provisions," Tristan whispered, his voice cracking slightly before he cleared his throat. "The crate didn't break."

"Damn the provisions," Simon muttered under his breath, though his hands finally slid away from Tristan’s sides, leaving a cold vacuum in the space where his body had been.

Simon stepped back, his chest heaving, running a hand through his dark, wind-whipped hair. His blue eyes were dark, searching Tristan’s face with an unreadable, intense scrutiny that made Tristan’s breath catch in his throat.

"You alright?" Simon asked, the usual mocking edge completely absent from his voice.

"Fine," Tristan said, turning quickly to adjust his glasses, though they were already straight. He bent down and grasped the iron handle of the wooden crate, desperate for something solid and inanimate to anchor his hands. "Just lost my footing on the wet pine. Thank you."

Simon watched him for a beat longer, then grabbed the other end of the crate. "Don't mention it. I can't finish the census alone. The director would make me write the final report in triplicate if you went off the ledge."

"I would never give Ottawa the satisfaction," Tristan said, lifting his side with a grunt.

Together, they carried the final load across the remaining stretch of boardwalk, past the towering white shaft of the lighthouse, and up the steps to the front porch of the keeper's house.

The wind had shifted slightly to the south, bringing with it a bank of cold, wet fog that began to swallow the outer ledges, turning the thousands of wheeling alcids into ghostly silhouettes against the grey Atlantic. The first phase of the mission was complete. They had landed on the disputed rock, their gear was dry, and the birds were waiting. But as Simon pushed open the front door of the house, looking back over his shoulder to meet Tristan’s eyes in the gathering mist, Tristan knew that surviving the next six weeks on this desolate outcrop was going to require far more than counting birds.