The Watch (The Red Series Book 1)

by Amanda Witt

  “I don’t think we’re moving anymore,” I said.

  Farrell Dean pulled something out of his pocket, studied it.

  “What’s that?”

  He held up a short metal cylinder. “It’s a compass. The little arrow points north.”

  “So does the north star,” I said dismissively, looking up at the cloudy sky.

  “Exactly,” Farrell Dean said. “Sir Tom said that at sunset, when the current dropped, we’d need to bear west.”

  “You mean row west?”

  “That’s right. The current brought us this far in the right direction, but now we need to pull west before the next current picks us up. Otherwise we could miss the island.”

  Well, that was motivating. Wordlessly I moved back to the middle seat, beside him, and picked up an oar.

  We rowed side by side, in silence, for what felt like hours. My palms stung and my shoulders began to ache, but there was no point in complaining. I didn’t want to miss this island and end up lost forever on the open sea.

  There was no moon and the clouds obscured the stars. There was only black night, black sea, the oar that grew heavier and heavier in my hands. When my arms started trembling with exhaustion and I thought I couldn’t possibly row another stroke, Farrell Dean spoke.

  “I think we’ve gone far enough,” he said. “Let’s take a break and eat something.”

  That sounded good to me. I crawled forward and felt around in the darkness for the bags of food, found some nuts and dried cherries, and passed some to Farrell Dean.

  He paused just long enough to eat, then picked up the oars again.

  “Drink some water,” he said.

  “We don’t have much.”

  “I know. But we have to drink it sometime.”

  Cautiously I unscrewed the cap on the neck of the leather canteen and squeezed a little water into my mouth, then carried the bag to Farrell Dean and made him drink a little. He was still rowing.

  “Move over,” I said. “Give me an oar.”

  “Don’t, Red,” he said. “I think we’re fine. I’m just making sure.”

  “What if we overshoot?”

  “I don’t think we can. The current will shove us back.”

  “Move over,” I said again, and this time he did. I picked up the other oar and started rowing, trying to ignore my protesting muscles. I didn’t want to go to this other island, but I’d much rather go there than end up dying on the open sea.

  “Are there people on this other island?” I asked.

  “Sir Tom says there used to be. No way to know for sure, now. They could be gone, could be dead. But we’re hoping they’re still there. We’ll try to find them and—”

  “But if there are people, why have they never come to us?

  Farrell Dean shrugged. “Maybe they have come. Maybe Jensen scared them away.”

  I nodded. “Or the wild men killed them.”

  “Or maybe they haven’t come because they don’t have boats. Or they don’t know the way.”

  “Or maybe they just like staying home.”

  “Yeah,” Farrell Dean agreed, his voice wry. “Would you want to go to Optica, given a choice?”

  “Yes, I would,” I said sharply. “Optica is home.”

  No matter what it was—an experiment, a death trap—still it was my home. Meritt was there, my friends, even my parents, whoever they were.

  For a few minutes Farrell Dean was silent. I felt bad for breaking our truce, but not bad enough to say something conciliatory.

  Then Farrell Dean spoke. “We have traps and fishhooks,” he said. “We’ll be fine. We won’t starve.” But his tone was less confident than his words, and I could read his thought: wouldn’t that be great, if he’d managed to keep me from starving in Optica, then carried me away to starve on the open sea.

  We rowed on in silence. I counted one hundred strokes, and my palms felt raw with blisters, but as long as Farrell Dean rowed, I intended to row.

  He lowered his oar and looked at me; even in the darkness, I think he read my mind. “We’re far enough west—we have to be, by now,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on the compass to make sure we keep heading in the right direction. Why don’t you try to sleep awhile.”

  I wasn’t sure what we could do if we went wrong—row wildly in circles in the dark?

  Then we felt it—the boat swayed, bobbed a bit more vigorously, then pointed its nose and began flowing speedily along. Wordlessly Farrell Dean handed me the compass: The little arrow on the compass glowed in the dark, and it pointed, comfortingly, north over the bow of the boat.

  “Sleep,” Farrell Dean said again.

  “Only if you promise to wake me later,” I said. “It won’t help us if you collapse from exhaustion.”

  There wasn’t much room to rest in the boat, but by sitting on the damp floor of the stern and extending my legs under the middle seat, I could lie down flat. I spread the blanket over me, and in the bow Farrell Dean reached down and pulled it over my feet; and before I knew it, I was asleep.

  * * * *

  Sir Tom was sitting in his cabin, near the blazing fire. It was warm and bright, and my friends were all there, sleeping on the floor.

  “It all comes down to loyalty,” Sir Tom said, puffing on his pipe. “Some might call it faithfulness. A fullness of faith.”

  * * * *

  I awoke to a thick gray fog that had soaked straight through my blanket, my clothes. I wanted to close my eyes and go back to Sir Tom’s warm fire, his snug cabin, my friends, but it was too late. I knew it was only a dream.

  Shivering, I sat up.

  “It’s pretty cold,” Farrell Dean said, watching me. He was hunched into himself on the little bow bench, wrapped in the other blanket. In the gray morning light he looked pinched with exhaustion.

  “You never woke me,” I said, and my teeth chattered when I spoke.

  “Here.” He tossed me the bag of food and ignored my comment. “Eat something. That’ll help warm you up.”

  I fumbled with the bag and managed to pull out some beef jerky and dried apples. Maybe they helped a little bit, but I was still shivering when I finished. I took a small drink of water—my throat cried out for more, but I was terrified of running out.

  “Are we going in the right direction?” I asked. Farrell Dean nodded. The fog was so thick that, though he was less than ten feet away from me, he looked blurred.

  “Your look half frozen,” he said, moving to the wider middle seat. “I think we’d better combine our body warmth.”

  I was halfway to him before I thought.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  I was embarrassed, but I couldn’t think of an evasion. “Cline says I toy with your affections,” I said. “He says I’m torturing you, or something.”

  To my surprise Farrell Dean laughed.

  “Cline’s a mother hen,” he said. “I’m not as delicate as all that. Besides, I don’t think Cline would thank you for letting me freeze to death.”

  I didn’t need more persuading.

  We sat together for two hours, maybe three. We sat mostly in silence, huddled under the two blankets, watching the waves, the shifting clouds, the endless bare horizon. The boat rocked gently and moved steadily along. The compass pointed north.

  Maybe it was the warmth from Farrell Dean’s body, thawing my frigid limbs. Maybe it was the western wind that began to blow, lifting the fog, caressing my face. Maybe it was the sun peeking out through the clouds, sending thin gold fingers of sunshine through to streak the gray water a glowing green, a hopeful color. Maybe I was sick of fear and grief, anger and despair; maybe I had to let them go in order to survive. Maybe it was all these things, or none of them, but after a time I began to feel strength returning, and courage.

  I was the same girl who had imagined other islands, other worlds, places where I wasn’t confined in a circle but could go freely as far as I wanted to go. And now here I was, on the sea, going to a new world—a world of mystery, po
ssibly of danger, but also a world that was outside Optica’s walls, out of range of her cameras, beyond the Watchers’ influence and command. What wouldn’t I have given, just a few weeks ago, for this chance, this adventure? And now I knew what my city had become. Now I had good reason to leave, to find help.

  Maybe I’d even find answers. Maybe from outside I could look back in, and from that perspective understand.

  Beside me Farrell Dean shifted, leaned forward to pick up the water canteen. The blanket slid from his shoulders. I saw the dark streaks of dried blood that stained the back of his shirt, welding it to his back, and I remembered my dream. Loyalty and faithfulness, Sir Tom had said. Fullness of faith.

  Meritt had saved Farrell Dean from the city meeting, but—how could I have forgotten?—before that, Farrell Dean had refused to betray Meritt. He hadn’t told the wardens that Meritt was up in the watchtower, and he hadn’t told them that he had accepted stolen food not for himself, but for me. He had taken every strike of the whip on his own back, rather than turn the wardens’ attention to us. He had been loyal. He had been faithful.

  Reaching out I touched his back gently, just barely making contact with the welts across his shoulders. They weren’t a dream, any more than the bruises on my arm from where the scarred warden had grabbed me were dreams, or the claw marks Ezzie had taken in order to help Sir Tom. All this was real. We were real. We were brave. We were willing to suffer if that’s what it took to help each other, to help Optica. That was worth something, surely, in the overall scheme of things. And if I could help my friends, if I had even the smallest chance of helping them by going to this island, by looking for whatever or whomever Sir Tom wanted us to find, then what could I do but go, and go gladly?

  Chapter 34

  The second day on the sea went faster than the first. Farrell Dean stretched out in the bottom of the boat and slept restlessly while I watched the compass assure us that we were drifting north. Then he climbed back onto the bench seat and I dozed in the intermittent sun while he watched the compass.

  Eventually the fog burned completely off and it grew so warm that we rigged a tent from the blankets and sat in the bottom of the boat, in the wedge of shade. In my wildest dreams I’d never pictured anything like this—sitting knee-to-knee with Farrell Dean on the hard damp bottom of a boat, both of us sweaty and unkempt, not to mention bloody, with nothing but open sea around us, nothing but the inexorable sun above us, peering at us through the weave of the blanket, and beneath it all the rocking, always rocking, never ceasing rhythm of the sea.

  “Farrell Dean,” I said, holding on to the bench seat to keep from being rocked against the side, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “What is it?” he said, but he reached up and adjusted the blankets, and I knew it was so he wouldn’t have to meet my eye. He was expecting me to say something else that would cause pain. That made me feel smaller inside, and lonely. If even Farrell Dean wasn’t comfortable around me, who was I, anymore? And I couldn’t blame my hair this time; it was all my own doing.

  Pushing that thought away, I said, “On the beach, right before we left, Angel said Optica was an experiment.”

  “An experiment,” Farrell Dean repeated, his face blank. “An experiment?”

  It felt like years since we’d had a full conversation. Farrell Dean hadn’t heard about what Meritt and I had learned in the watchtower, and he hadn’t heard what Sir Tom had said to me when we were alone on the beach, about watchmakers and the care and feeding of ants. There was a lot to tell.

  But we had plenty of time, rocking along in the middle of the ocean, so I told him everything, as exactly as I could remember it. Farrell Dean listened silently for the most part, his face intent, only interrupting now and then to clarify a point.

  “And Angel didn’t say what sort of experiment,” he said when I’d finished.

  “No. The wardens showed up and I ran.”

  “An experiment. And the Watchers said you were the best chance for future subjects.” He grimaced. “You know they do keep a close eye on the bloodlines, Red.”

  “Yes, but I’d be a liability as far as that—you’ll never get a bigger, stronger person using me.”

  “Maybe they’re not going for brawn. You’re smart.”

  “But not especially.”

  He studied me. “It has to have something to do with your hair. You’re more likely to have children with red hair than anyone else is.”

  “Yes, a rage for red-haired Optica children. That’s probably it.”

  He shrugged, acknowledging the point.

  “Sir Tom said my hair had nothing to do with me being watched. And the Watchers—they seemed to keep me around as a subject in spite of my hair, not because of it.” I went ahead and told him the bit I’d left out before. “They said I was a joke. An un-funny practical joke.”

  Farrell Dean bumped my knee with his. “Consider the source, Red,” he said. “An insult from a Watcher is as good as a compliment from a normal person. You’re beautiful, and so is your hair.”

  Now I was embarrassed, as if I’d been fishing for compliments.

  Farrell Dean didn’t notice; he was too focused on sorting through the news about Optica.

  “The Watchers mentioned Louie and Estelle, too, and other people,” I said. “So it’s not just me. It might even be all of us.”

  “But somehow you especially. You and your possible future children.” Farrell Dean didn’t like that, I could tell. Neither did I.

  “What sort of experiment could that possibly be?” I said.

  He shook his head. “I can think of all sorts of experiments, but none that quite fits the bill.”

  “Whatever it is, it isn’t going well,” I said. “Not if the Watchers are talking about their life’s work being all for nothing. Not if the watchmaker abandoned his watch. And Angel says Sir Tom backed a failure and that’s why he’s suddenly feeling guilty. We’re not just an experiment—we’re a failed experiment.”

  I didn’t much like being a failure at anything, but maybe being a failed experiment was better than being a successful one.

  Farrell Dean nodded. “That’s why they aren’t interested in keeping us alive anymore. Like Sir Tom said, the supply drops stopped. And the Watchers don’t know how to keep us alive because they’re just here to document the experiment. They don’t know anything about running a city.”

  He broke off. “But that doesn’t make sense either,” he said, after a second’s pause. “They’ve been abandoned, too. The Watchers and the Guardians. Would whoever is in charge really throw away their own people, along with the experiment? I guess if they’re ruthless enough to experiment on people in the first place, then—”

  “No, wait—” I said. “I just remembered. When we were all supposed to be asleep, Sir Tom was talking with your mother about the time of the ashes. He sent men to see what was happening, he said. The ones who got sick. Animal sick, I mean. Or contaminated or whatever it is—the things at the tree, you know—”

  He nodded and I went on. “They went to where the black ash came from, and they came back saying everything was destroyed on the mainland.” The word still felt odd on my tongue.

  “So if that’s where the supplies came from,” Farrell Dean said, finishing my thought, “then they didn’t stop sending supplies because the experiment failed. They stopped sending supplies because they were dead.”

  I nodded. “Or probably dead.”

  “Which means we might be a successful experiment,” Farrell Dean said slowly, and I nodded.

  For a moment we thought in silence.

  “Who was it?” I said finally. “Who did this to us? Who was the watchmaker?”

  “I don’t know,” Farrell Dean said. “But it might be a good thing if he’s forgotten us or dead.”

  * * * *

  Our water supply dwindled. My tongue felt thick. In the middle of the afternoon I noticed that Farrell Dean was shorting himself and told him I wouldn’t d
rink unless he did. It was frightening, but we reminded ourselves that, at the moment, we were fine—thirsty, and cramped from being in the boat, and sore from rowing and from our various cuts and bruises, but better than we’d have been if the Watchers had had their way.

  * * * *

  Night fell. How long we sat silently in the dark, adrift on the waves, I don’t know. There was no moon, and for a time there were no stars, only the sound of the water and the feel of the wind turning colder and colder on my face.

  Then the clouds cleared and the stars began to shine. Out there on the sea, with no buildings or trees to block them, no electric blue lights to dim them, they were magnificent, astonishing. Farrell Dean and I leaned back against the sides of the boat, staring up at them, tracing patterns here and there.

  Eventually, feeling dizzy, I sat up again. Farrell Dean had fallen silent and I felt no need to talk, either. I sat there in the starlight, watching the sea move past, feeling as if I were living in a dream.

  I had been staring at the shape for some time before my brain registered what my eyes were seeing in the dim starlit night.

  “Land!” I said, and Farrell Dean swung around.

  A huge form loomed above the sea. It drew closer and closer and we watched, as if it might vanish if we blinked, as if it might be an illusion. But it wasn’t. It was real. The half-insane old man hadn’t, after all, sent us out to die on the sea.

  Eventually the bottom of our boat scraped something solid. We were still a good ways from the pale stretch of beach, so Farrell Dean leaned way over the side, stretched his arm down.

  “It’s sand,” he said. “I’ll get out and pull us in. You stay put.”

  But after watching Farrell Dean work for a few minutes, after seeing him wince with the pain in his back, I climbed out too, the cold water wetting my pants up to my hips, and together we tugged the boat in, up the long gentle sandy slope. Then we kept pulling, tugging the boat beyond the tide line and into the shelter of the trees.