Apollo’s crossing from North Brother Island

Apollo’s crossing from North Brother Island is both a dangerous escape and a turning point in his effort to reach his family. Cal sends him away from the island in a small creek boat, insisting that he first visit his son’s grave and then find Emma Valentine. Across the dark, cold East River, Apollo leaves the island without looking back, carrying Cal’s warning that the creature can swim and the knowledge that he must discover for himself who lies in the grave.

Cal’s decision to send Apollo away

At the dock, Apollo, Cal, and Cal’s twin imperial guards remain behind as the wind rises and trees snap near the water. Apollo thinks he sees a man-sized silhouette of impossible scale in the moonlit landscape, then tries to dismiss it as a hill distorted by fear. Against that uncertainty, Cal offers her understanding of what people call magic: women who seem to do the impossible when they must save someone they love. She tells Apollo that she once watched Emma Valentine paddle across the river in her creek boat, searching for her son, and that Emma seemed to glow on the water. Her account makes Emma’s search an example of the transformation she has just described.

Cal pulls Apollo toward the trawler, but the guards do not help him aboard. She tells him he is not taking the eastward trip with her people. Instead, she points to a small craft tethered about fifty yards away, on the rocky shoreline, and directs him along a ledge toward the rocks. Her choice separates Apollo from the group’s route and gives him another destination: he is to continue his own search rather than leave the area with Cal.

The creek boat and the pursuit

Apollo loses his footing on the sloping rocks and falls to the water’s edge, with Cal scrambling after him. Kinder Garten calls from nearby, recognizing Apollo and taunting him about being left behind. Cal does not answer. She pushes Apollo toward the olive-green creek boat, whose color makes it difficult to distinguish against the dark water, and uses a black aluminum paddle to help him board. When Apollo reaches for the paddle, she swats his hand away, balances it between the rocky ledge and boat, and gestures for him to sit on it and scoot himself into the craft. Kinder Garten’s taunt about abandonment follows them, while the sound of Apollo’s stumbling has led him to search in the opposite direction.

At the water’s edge, Cal says she is tired and wants to see her little boy again. She hands Apollo the paddle, sits down, and pushes the boat away from the rocks with her feet. Before they part, she gives him a specific task: he must go to his son’s grave and see it for himself, so that he has no doubts; otherwise, he will be no use to Emma. She says he must then find his wife. When Apollo asks how he can track Emma down, Cal reaches into her sweater pocket, where bullet shells gleam in the moonlight, and tells him she will show them her claws. She soon disappears over the ridge. Kinder Garten shouts for someone to get her gun, but the crossing’s immediate consequence is that Apollo is alone on the water.

Across the East River

The distance between Apollo and the island grows quickly, and the splash of the East River against the creek boat grows louder. He understands that he must paddle a long way, at night and in the cold, to reach the far shore of The Bronx. He does not look back. Instead, he tries to paddle quietly, remembering Cal’s warning: the big one can swim. The warning turns the river crossing into more than an escape from the island; the open water is also a route along which Apollo may be pursued.

After another twenty minutes, with The Bronx seemingly no closer, Apollo despairs. He begins to repeat the words of his private mantra, but cannot finish the sentence. Eventually the shore comes into view at Barretto Point Park. The landing marks the end of the crossing, but not the end of the immediate danger or of the work Cal has set him. Apollo now feels ready to learn who is buried at Nassau Knolls Cemetery in Port Washington, New York, making the grave the next necessary step in his search for Emma.

Landfall and the next journey

Apollo abandons the creek boat at the edge of Barretto Point Park and walks to the nearest subway station, East 149th Street on the 6 line. His jeans and boots are wet; he is exhausted and disoriented by what he has learned about the supernatural. Even a homeless man in the station looks at him with mistrust and worry. At the turnstile, Apollo reaches for his wallet to use his MetroCard, only to remember that he lost it in the waters of North Brother Island when he nearly drowned. The habitual motion meets the material cost of his escape: he has crossed the river without the wallet he expected to have.

Apollo hops the turnstile and rides the downtown 6, thinking about how much force a Honda Odyssey would need to smash through the wrought-iron gates of Nassau Knolls Cemetery. His route from the island has therefore carried him directly toward the grave Cal told him to inspect. The crossing also acquires the shape of a possible rebirth in Apollo’s own immediate reflection: because he survived, he wonders whether it was more like a baptism, and what he might have been reborn as. The question remains open as he leaves the river behind and turns toward the grave, where the answer is no longer something he can avoid seeing for himself.