by Jake Halpern
Kana used his foot to apply pressure to the bottom of the stick. There was another snap, then Kana handed the stick to Line. Marin helped him stand, and the curved handle fit perfectly under his armpit. Line would have been hard-pressed to carve a better crutch.
“Don’t suppose you saw any lekar while you were out there?” Line asked as he struggled to his feet.
“Don’t press your luck,” said Kana with the thinnest of smiles.
“Too late for that.” Line shrugged. “Thanks, though—this’ll help.”
They continued on, at a faster and more controlled pace. Line’s crutch helped immensely, and they made such good time that Kana began to hope that the furriers wouldn’t have started the general boarding yet. They took a wrong turn only once, and retraced their steps quickly. But in time, they came across familiar markings and areas they had been before, and at last exited the woods not far from the hermit’s house.
Marin turned to Kana.
“Go!” she said. “We’re through the woods, safe and sound. Run down to the boats. Tell them we’re here. Hurry!”
Kana nodded and took off at a sprint. Marin and Line followed behind as quickly as they could. They’ll be there, Marin told herself. She bit her lip until she felt the sting. There is no way they could have left so quickly. They’ll be there. They’ve got to be there. Marin forced Line to move fast, at times nearly dragging him along. They passed through the main street of Bliss and paid little attention to the darkened houses. They’ll be there, she told herself with every step. They’ve got to be there.
When they emerged from town, they saw the ocean for the first time. And in the distance, the last wisp of sun had disappeared. Nightfall. Marin’s heart was in her throat. The air seemed colder already, but what she noticed most of all was the dark. She looked at her hands, and already the details—knuckles, fingernails, old scars—were hard to see. They had been told of how quickly the darkness would fall when the sun finally disappeared. It took years and years for the sun to make its way across the sky, but only minutes for Night to arrive.
Far ahead, at the cliffs, flags still fluttered at the loading area. Marin saw boxes and suitcases—hundreds of them. The okrana said that some of the luggage might be left behind, but this looked like all of it. Clearly, they were still boarding.
“Where is everyone?” Line asked. He was jerking his head left and right almost spastically.
Marin looked again. Everything was there . . . except for the people. What’s more, the luggage seemed to be in terrible disarray. Possessions were strewn about as if a tornado had plowed through the area. Some of the flags were still standing, but others leaned to one side, and a few were snapped in half.
“I’ll check,” said Marin, breaking into a run. She couldn’t stay at Line’s pace any longer. Kana was in the distance, by the cliffs. He was surrounded by a wasteland of debris—shirts, pants, coats, books, shoes, cracked jars, combs, brushes, shovels, blankets, pots, and plates. She yelled for him as she drew nearer. Kana’s attention, however, was on the ocean.
“Where are they?” she gasped as she reached his side.
Kana pointed at the horizon. The sun was gone but they could see the distant image of the ships in the glow of the rising moon. The furrier vessels were miles away, sailing in tight formation, heading due west.
“No,” Marin whispered. “They wouldn’t . . .”
She jumped up and down and waved her arms. Surely they were close enough for someone to see them.
“MOMMA! DAD! We’re here! Come back!”
Kana started yelling, too, and for several minutes they screamed themselves hoarse. Line picked up a discarded flagpole, its cloth banner torn in two, and waved it over his head. The ships continued on their course.
“It’s not possible,” Marin whispered. And yet she knew it was. Of course it was. How many times had they told us? They had no choice. The furriers set the rules. And then there was the unstoppable force of the tides. They had left precisely on schedule. Any thoughts to the contrary were simply the wishful delusions of a child.
Gradually, Marin became aware of her surroundings again. A mud-smeared doll lay facedown in the thistle. A cracked clay pot sat next to it, with its contents—a thick bean stew—soaking into the ground. Next to it lay a scrap of cloth—torn from a shirt, or pants, or a jacket. It was smeared in blood. These scenes were repeated all over the loading area. The town’s well-practiced departure had been brutally swept aside. Whatever the reason, the loading process had broken down so completely that treasured possessions had been cast away like table scraps.
“It must have been a disaster,” said Kana. “No one would notice if three kids weren’t where they were supposed to be—not at first, anyhow.”
Marin looked down at the pier. The tide was as fast—and as strong—as predicted. Already the sea had retreated about two hundred feet, exposing the rock and pebble-strewn seabed. Her legs buckled and she fell to the thistle, staring at the distant image of the ships with ferocious concentration, as if she could will them back. They will realize what happened and change course.
The ships grew smaller and smaller until they were the tiniest of specks on the horizon. And then Marin couldn’t see them at all because her eyes were awash with tears. The truth of the situation was rising up within her like a bubble. She tried to press it back down, to pretend it wasn’t there, but slowly it crept back up. There was no ignoring it, so she tried to accept it gradually. The boats are gone. That was a fact she could see with her own eyes. My parents are on the boats. Okay. Me, my brother, and Line are still here. She could feel the panic rising again as she built to the final truth. Night has fallen. And it will last for a very long time. And then Marin was sobbing. Kana tried to comfort her, but she shrugged him off and hugged her knees.
“It’s getting cold,” said Kana. “We can’t stay here.”
CHAPTER 20
Line bolted away from the cliff’s edge and back toward town. He sprinted, then hobbled, then sprinted again. Kana and Marin called after him, but he kept moving as if he didn’t hear.
“Where is he going?” asked Kana. Even from far away, Line looked crazed.
Suddenly, Marin knew.
“Back to his house,” she replied. “He’s looking for Francis.”
As Line ran, he imagined his brother huddled in his bedroom and—in the intensity of the moment—Line wasn’t certain whether he hoped to find Francis there or not. He started yelling Francis’s name when he was several hundred feet away, and continued until he burst through the front door. He stood there and listened. The house was silent, everything arranged where it should be; RAT, SNOUT, and TEETH hung from the walls, staring at him through the darkness.
“FRANCIS! I’m here! FRANCIS!”
Line paused, not even daring to breathe. Silence. He ran upstairs to Francis’s room and opened the door. The room was empty. He moved on to his room, since in recent months Francis preferred to sleep there. It was empty as well. The only indication that someone had been there was a small, child-size depression on the bedcovers. Line’s hands shook. He walked to the bed, kneeled, and pressed his face against it. He could smell his brother’s scent, sweet like tree sap. This is where he was sleeping when I left him. Wild, paranoid visions ran through his head—of Francis running back home at the last minute before boarding, screaming for him.
Line collapsed onto his bed and began to sob. It was a terrible sound, like a death rattle. Horrible, scalding guilt tore at Line. Francis is completely alone—parentless, and now without even a brother. And it’s my own stupid, bloody, damned fault. Line lay there, motionless, eyes closed, overwhelmed.
Several minutes later, he became aware of another presence in the room. He opened his eyes and saw Marin.
“Leave me alone,” said Line.
“I promise you, Francis will be fine,” said Marin. She placed a hand on his b
ack. At one point, Marin tugged on his shoulder, trying to rouse him off the bed, but he refused to be budged.
“Leave me be,” he repeated.
Marin leaned in close.
“The neighbors were looking after him and so were my parents,” she said. “I promise you—Francis is on one of those boats.”
Line said nothing at first, just pressed his face harder into the bedcovers. “I left him,” he whispered. “I left him alone in this house and I never came back.”
Marin’s hand was firm on his shoulder. “Line, listen to me: you’re going to see him again—soon.”
He looked at her questioningly, but with a sudden emergence of hope. “How?”
“Kana went down to the base of the cliffs. He saw some small boats there. One of them looks light enough to push out to the water. If we hurry, maybe we can catch the furriers. But we need your help.”
Line considered this. Then he nodded, wiped his eyes, and stood up. He walked over to the corner of the room and grabbed an old wool sweater that was hanging on a peg. He had neglected to pack it, and suddenly it seemed like a godsend. He was already wearing one sweater, but it was ripped and rather thin. He put on the second one, too, relishing the added warmth. Marin took his hand and they walked down the stairs.
Down by the pier, at the base of the cliffs, they found Kana standing next to a boat. It lay on its side in a mat of shoreline weeds and mud. It was a small, two-sailed sloop that the villagers used to teach children how to sail. Line had used it often as a younger boy. The nearby fishing boats would be much better, but they were too heavy to drag across the exposed seabed to the ocean.
“It’s just a sloop,” said Kana, “but I figured it’s worth a try.”
They began pushing. At first, the boat wouldn’t budge, despite their straining. They slipped in the wet ground and fell, over and over. Then they tried to flip it, but it was too heavy to keep upright.
Finally, Line called a stop.
“Gather some logs,” he said.
“Rollers?” asked Kana.
“Yes,” said Line. “We can roll the boat on top of them—just like the time we got your uncle’s boat stuck.”
“Good,” said Kana.
They spent an hour gathering logs, then pushing the boat onto the rollers. Although it moved, it was still slow going. Another hour passed, and they had only moved the boat about twenty feet. The seashore looked even farther away now. At their current pace, there was no way they could catch up with the receding tide. Line knew this, but he kept pushing, as did Marin and Kana. The boat inched forward. Line put too much weight on his ankle. He stumbled awkwardly, narrowly escaping being pinned by the boat.
“Line!” yelled Kana.
“I’m okay,” replied Line, though he knew he was exhausted. He hadn’t eaten in a long time. Marin’s arms trembled with fatigue as she put every ounce of strength into pushing the boat another inch. Kana was the only one who still seemed to have any stamina. He felt surprisingly strong, but he knew better than to waste energy trying to move the boat alone.
“Stop,” said Kana. “We need to rest.”
Marin and Line stopped. They understood what Kana meant. This wasn’t going to work. They would have to find another way. Kana turned away from the boat and began walking up the cliffs.
“Where are you going?” called Marin.
“Back to town.”
Kana walked up the sloping, grassy hill, acutely aware of how dark everything had become. It was just like people said: nothing came swifter than Night. Of course, Kana could see well, but Marin and Line could not. The rising moon would help; that was something. He glanced back at them. They were following close behind, clutching each other and stumbling frequently. No one spoke. The physical and emotional toll of their ordeal had finally caught up with them. The sense of panic that had consumed them for so many hours gave way to a feverish sense of unreality, as if none of this were really happening to them—as if by merely collapsing to the ground and closing their eyes, they might wake up safe on the boats.
“We need to rest somewhere,” said Marin. Her voice was slow and wearied.
Kana plodded ahead and kept his eyes focused on the town, which appeared as a mishmash of overlapping shadows. He couldn’t see perfectly, but he could distinguish between the various shades of blackness to make out the contours of the roofs, the fences, and the gateways of Bliss.
“We should go to the mayor’s house first,” said Kana. “There might be a note on the message board.”
Kana took both of their hands, and together they walked into the growing darkness. No one spoke after that, nor were they tempted to. They walked past the giant hourglass that served as Bliss’s official clock. The hourglass, which was mounted on a great stone pedestal, was flipped when the luminescent sand ran out—about every twelve hours. Because the position of the sun changed so little from day to day, this hourglass was the town’s way to mark time, and they used it to set all of their windup clocks and watches. Currently, almost all of the sand had fallen into the lower chamber.
They continued walking through town. According to custom, all the doors to the houses had been left open, and whenever the wind blew, a chorus of old, creaking hinges groaned as the doors swayed back and forth. Then, quite suddenly, there was a violent gust of wind and several dozen doors slammed shut all at once. Marin jumped.
Their pace quickened as they approached Deep Well House.
“Can you see anything on the door?” Line asked Kana.
“Yes,” replied Kana. You could hear the excitement in his voice. “There’s a note.”
“Thank God,” said Marin.
Kana pulled them along faster. They soon reached the flagstone path leading to Deep Well House. They could see the white paper hanging from the front door, but it was only when they were a foot away that they could read what had been written. It was a single word scrawled in a childlike script:
HIDE
CHAPTER 21
“Hide?” said Marin. She was incredulous. “Hide where?”
Line stepped closer and removed the note from the door. He turned it over in his hands. Apart from the one scrawled word, it was blank. “Hide from what?”
Marin snatched the note from Line and crumpled it, then let it fall to the ground. “Where can we possibly hide?” she said, looking at Line and Kana. “This is a joke—it has to be.”
Kana picked up the note and smoothed it out. After examining it for several seconds, he shook his head. “It’s not a joke,” he said. “We’re stuck here, and that’s a fact. Maybe there’s a place to hide in town, but I don’t know where that is.”
On the boats, Marin thought bitterly. That would be an excellent place to hide. She grimaced. What we really need now—what we have to have—is rest. “We’re tired,” she said slowly, feeling the fatigue on her tongue. “Let’s stay here—in the mayor’s house—at least for a bit.”
Line shook his head firmly. “No—the tide is going to keep rolling out.” His forehead bristled with sweat, and to Kana, he looked disturbingly pale. “And it’s only going to get darker—and colder. We need to make a plan—right now.”
“I know,” Marin replied. “But there’s no quick fix. We already tried pushing the boat, and I can’t think of anything else we can do. We can come up with a plan while we rest.”
Line nodded.
Kana opened the door, and they ventured into Deep Well House. The cavernous main hall was pitch-black but for a murky shaft of moonlight that filtered from the glass-enclosed cupola overhead. As the various shades of black began to take on subtle hues, Kana discerned a narrow set of stairs at the far end of the room. These led to the mayor’s quarters.
“This way,” said Kana.
Kana led the way up the stairs until he came to a closed door. He jiggled the doorknob. It was unlocked—of course. He pushed it op
en and entered an opulent room with wood paneling, velvet curtains, leather couches, and fur rugs—all illuminated in the dim glow of the rising moon, which cascaded in through several bay windows. Did the mayor live this lavishly—or was this just how the house was supposed to be arranged after the envelopes arrived? In the center of the room sat the biggest bathtub that Kana had ever seen. It resembled an indoor pool, only it was shallow, no more than four feet deep. Steam rose from the water.
Marin shook her head. “He left it this way?”
“I always thought he was strange,” said Kana, as if this explained everything. He moved to the shadows of the room and began looking through cupboards.
Marin turned to Line. “I can’t believe the mayor has a heated pool.”
“I can,” said Line, leaning over to get a better look. “It was probably a rule he had to follow for this house.” In a quivering old-man voice, he said, “You shall leave the pool heated.”
Marin chortled and dipped a hand experimentally into the water. It was warm—bordering on hot. She placed her hand against her cold cheeks and neck. Seconds later, Marin realized that Line was disrobing—first his shirt, and then his pants. Embarrassed, she turned away.
“I’m going in,” said Line. “I’m freezing; this island has become an icebox. And after being stuck in the bottom of that pit . . .” His voice trailed off as he began to climb in. Marin couldn’t help but stare as Line slowly entered the pool.
“This water isn’t boiled,” he said. “You can smell the minerals. It must come from a hot spring that someone managed to divert.” He sat down and groaned with satisfaction.
“You should wash your arm,” said Marin. “That cut doesn’t look so good.”
Line nodded slightly, but his eyes were closed and he looked half asleep as he lay in the pool with his head resting against the edge.
“I found some matches and candles,” Kana called out. From across the room, a lone flame sparked to life. “I don’t need them, but you two might.”