At first, there had been a lot of confusion as to whether or not the expedition should set off when it was originally intended to. They'd spent a lot of time trying to decide whether it was better to leave during the month that had the smallest risk of storms, or the month that had the most favourable currents and winds for our destination. Eventually, it was decided that we would set sail in the month that fell between the two, which everyone seemed content with; until, that is, a few unexpected problems came up with the ship, delaying us by a few weeks. And as our target date drifted by, the pressing question was raised: should we wait an entire year for that ideal window of time to appear again, or set sail as soon as we could? Or, to put it another way, could we risk giving the paper cutter an extra twelve months to study our weaknesses, to patiently watch and wait for our guard to drop? Their eyes probably skirted around the room with this thought, followed by a prompt clearing of throats and straightening up, the room grumbling with a sudden decision - the expedition would leave as soon as possible. Which is what gave those last weeks the urgency they had.
Suddenly, on top of getting everything organized for a lifelong voyage, the people who had assumed we would wait another year, now had very little time to say their goodbyes, make amends, or hand down pieces of advice that they'd always wanted to hand down. And though there had been ample opportunity during our training to do this, everyone chose to wait until the last second; myself included, I guess. As a result, what could have been tender or thought-provoking moments were pressed into a few rushed minutes of frenzied words.
Like Mitra, our sailing instructor, taking me out alone on one of the smaller boats and doling out technical advice as to what to do in a few rare circumstances, most of which, she was sure to add, she'd never actually experienced, but had at least read about. She paced around me while I was rigging the sails, explaining things, speaking faster than I'd ever heard her speak before, blinking like mad, touching me on the shoulders every time she passed, even if there was enough space for her to walk by without coming near me. Of course, knowing what I know now, I should have been hanging on her every word (and if I could go back in time, I would have certainly probed her brain with many a specific question), but, as it was, I spent the hours just waiting for the uncomfortable ordeal to be over with, calculating how long it would take to get into the harbour while nodding in her general direction whenever she paused.
Then there was Harek, calling me into a room after the midday meal, constantly grooming his beard, standing in front of me while I sat down, reiterating all of the different aspects of my responsibilities that we'd already been through ad nauseam. As he spoke, a twitching smile would light up his face for a few brief seconds, and then disappear, his expression always either too happy or too neutral, neither of them seeming to fit what was being said.
And poor Chalmon, who was probably the most ill at ease of them all, plying his hands together, bobbing his head up and down as he spoke, and talking in circles about nothing. Then, as we walked back out through the doorway together, both of us mystified as to what he'd actually wanted to say, he took the opportunity to pat me on the back with a stiff hand and quickly walk away.
Though, I have to admit that, with Dana, things were a bit different, if only because he didn't set out to give me some advice that I'd never asked for. Instead, he just wanted to hear a few honest words from me; and not expecting this in the least, it seemed it was my turn to feel a little discomfited. We went for a walk one afternoon, and midway through it broke off from the trail and headed toward a fallen tree, where he'd gestured for me to take a seat. I was so convinced that I knew what was going to happen, so sure that I was about to be witness to yet another painstaking ritual of closure, that I prompted him to begin once we sat down, as if to get it over with as soon as possible. "So - do you have a few wise words you'd like to pass on?"
He seemed a bit taken aback by this, if not a little regretful that, in fact, he didn't. "Uh... not really, no. I guess I just wanted to pull you aside before you left and find out if there was anything you were nervous about," he shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe see if you needed some last-minute reassurance of some kind. That's all."
"Oh," I said, feeling guilty about the intonation I'd used to start things off. It was a rare thing to have an Elder really, sincerely asking you what you were thinking. And the question of whether I was privately intimidated by something was enough to throw me off kilter a bit, because, well, there was something that I was worrying about before I fell asleep some nights. Actually, every night. "Um, yeah - I mean - once in a while, I guess... I wonder if the crew is going to act differently toward me once we're away from the island."
"Hmm," he murmured, pausing for all of one second to consider the likelihood of this happening, "Well... if you mean that you're wondering if they'll test your authority - believe me: they will. And don't be offended when they do; it's only natural. Just make sure that, when it happens, you stay confident and self-assured, and if anything, be more assertive than you think you should be. Loosening people's reins later on is always an option, whereas tightening them isn't. Though, I think that only makes sense, no?"
I squirmed a bit on the log, "Yeah, of course - I mean - I'm sure I'll do fine when the time comes. I just - you know..." I trailed off, growing more uncomfortable with the topic by the second. We were talking about a weakness of mine here, and one that I didn't like admitting to myself, let alone to others - and most of all to Dana. I bent over and removed one of my sandals, brushing off the sole of my foot and fanning my toes out to get the sand out from between them. Dana watched this little nervous display with a grin, and then focused his attention on the peculiarity of my toes.
Unlike anyone else on the island, the two smallest toes of my right foot were joined together, a sheath of skin and flesh wrapping around them until about midway, where they finally stuck out individually at the end. It was something that everyone had always known about me, but Dana seemed to be looking at them as if he were seeing them for the first time. I joined him, both of us stopping to stare down the length of my leg, and it felt comically appropriate to wiggle them a bit, as if to add some life to the display.
"Actually, your toes bring to mind something that I've never really thought to mention. Do you remember my telling you about some of the potent weapons that were dropped in a few places, near the end of the first phase?" He waited until I'd nodded before continuing, "Well, as you know, mutations, like your toes, happen all the time, but the effect of these weapons is that they drastically increase their likelihood. Now, if you continue to cycle through the route that we've marked out for you on the maps, you won't come anywhere close to the places where those weapons were dropped, but that doesn't necessarily mean you won't see animals that have migrated from them, or maybe even just through them. Which means that if you ever come across creatures that don't seem to make any evolutionary sense, you know why - it's the result of those weapons. (Though, come to think of it, it might also just be the effect that transporting plants and animals between ecosystems for hundreds of years has had on the earth.) Regardless, there's the possibility of seeing some very strange flora or fauna out there, which, as I'm sure you can imagine, will only help evolution in the long run."
I must say that I was a little lost at the disconnectedness of this tangent. It certainly had very little to do with the crew acting differently toward me once we left the island, and I wasn't sure if he'd brought it up to save me from the awkwardness of the subject, or out of genuine interest. "So, Dana - I'm sorry - what are you trying to say with this?"
"Nothing really." As was his habit, he turned to look at me with his eyes closed, opening them once they were pointed at my face, "I guess I'm just pointing out that you'll have some interesting things to look out for," he concluded, grinning at the ambiguity of his words.
"Right," I said, and then looked down at my toes. "Right."
After that, the goodbyes again returned to being clumsy and gracele
ss for the people who had dragged me into a corner to say them. But at least (for the most part anyway) they seemed to pass by fairly quickly, until there was finally no one left to say goodbye to. And of course, looking back at all of these fumbling exchanges, it's obvious that Kara's is the one that stands out the most; and not only because it was the most stressful, but because, considering how disastrous things could have unfolded that day, it was probably one of the luckiest moments of my life.
Most of that potential for disaster had to do with the pieces of paper that I'd cut out of the art book to give her, which had only proven to be a burden that became heavier with time. Needless to say, having stolen them was already enough to land me in serious trouble, but when Peik had held out his wad of pages, and then cracked and sprinted into the sea, they had suddenly become the sole evidence that was needed to confirm the identity of the paper cutter. And even if it wasn't me, that's exactly what I would have become. Because let's face it: if I were caught with a couple of inconsequential paintings, it would have been doubtful that someone else had gone through the considerable trouble it would have taken to smuggle them to me. Their rationale would have been straightforward: the kind of person who would cut something trivial out of the library could only be the kind of person who was so used to cutting other things out (i.e. disclosed material) that they'd started pilfering things simply out of interest. They would strip me of my position, ban me from the expedition, and probably punish me for Peik's death; none of which I wanted to take a chance with. So, it was clear that I had to get rid of them. However, knowing this was one thing, whereas finding a way to actually do it was quite another. After Peik's death, Mikkel and I had to be accounted for at all times, with Elders even being assigned to sleep near our rooms (and they were incredibly light sleepers, too, sitting up in their beds when we stepped outside to urinate, alert to where we were standing, waiting for us to go back to sleep), and other Elders to escort us from one site of the island to another throughout the day - not exactly an atmosphere conducive to the disposing of illicit papers. The idea did cross my mind to just leave them where they were (which was jammed between two boards under my bed), but I knew that if anyone ever discovered them after we were gone, they would note that they were paintings, which would only have led people to suspect Dana of everything, and I felt like I owed him a little more than to leave him with a brutal onus like that. But as much as I mulled this over, the only way I could think of getting rid of them was to shove them down my pants and walk around with them, waiting for a safe opportunity to bury them somewhere, which, during the last few days of preparation, is what I started doing. And this looked like it was going to work out fine, because as the errands that had to be done before disembarking were growing in number and urgency, everyone was finally too busy to be waddling beside Mikkel and I at every hour, and as I was doing just as much as everyone else, I often found myself running around on errands as well, and knew that a time was bound to come along when I would find myself alone and unwatched. Which is exactly what happened that day.
I was helping with the organization of the expedition's food, gathering things to compensate for what we were falling short on, when I realized that I was the only person on one of the trails. I stopped and, after spinning around, saw a few bushes that I would be able to hide behind while burying the pieces of paper. Wonderful. I craned my neck in every direction, listening for people coming from either side before stepping off the path - but, unfortunately, after a few seconds, I could hear that there was. Frustrated, I slapped my leg and started walking in the direction of the sounds, trying to keep myself from looking either annoyed or suspicious. But as luck would have it, of all the people that could have come into view on that particular afternoon, it happened to be Kara. And she was alone.
It had been so long since we'd met to talk that neither of us really knew what to do at first. We'd stopped in our tracks, frozen, and then, seeming to snap out of abstraction at the same time, started mouthing silent words, both of us pointing at different groups of shrubs where we could scamper to and take cover. Finally, smiling, she shook her head and just started walking into the underbrush toward one of them, and soon sunk out of sight behind it. I followed, trying to remember what we'd talked about last, and, getting a little annoyed at myself that I couldn't, stooped down next to her.
From the outset, things were strange between us that day. There was a nervousness in her movements, and one that was very different from what I'd seen in other people who were saying goodbye. It was guarded in the same way, but beneath it there was this jittery energy, something intense, anxious. For myself, as was usually the case when I was with her, I was struck dumb at first, and though I concentrated on looking her in the face, I couldn't stop my eyes from dropping to the smooth hollows of her neck, or to her chest, or then to her waist, where I stopped; because she was sitting at an odd enough angle that a sliver of skin could be seen between the bottom of her shirt and the waistline of her pants. Soft skin in creamy shadows, which did nothing but make my imagination slide away, helplessly away, onto a warm and smooth landscape where I know I shouldn't have been.
I shot my eyes back up at her face, my scalp warming with embarrassment. In the short silence that followed, I also became incredibly self-conscious as to how much I was swallowing, sure that I looked as if I were sucking saliva into my mouth just to drink it down. It was time to try and save myself. "I - um..." I began, but my whisper quickly fell away. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to say, or for that matter, seeing as I couldn't remember what we'd discussed the time before, even what the general topic was that I was supposed to be saying something about. But when I scanned my mind for something else of substance to blurt out, I remembered the paintings. "Oh!" I said aloud, "I - uh... I have something for you!" And then, in a rather ill-advised impulse, I slammed my back onto the ground and shoved my hand down the front of my pants to fish around for the pieces of paper.
She was, to say the least, a little shocked. Until that point, she had seemed unusually passive, sitting fairly still, an amused little smile on her face, but as soon as I started digging around inside my pants, she'd sat up a bit, her eyebrows working between expressions of disgusted curiosity and aversion, her hands placed on the ground on either side of her, as if she wasn't quite sure of whether she should move away from me or not. Understandably, she relaxed when she saw the pieces of paper, smiling with a bit of relief, and then adjusted her legs to kneel down, positioning herself to better inspect the pages.
"I've been meaning to show these to you for quite a while," I whispered as I unfolded them, "but... well, didn't really have a chance." I flattened them as best I could and rotated them until they were oriented for her to see. "I guess... I wanted to find out if there was something in them - you know? Like some kind of code, or message or something. And I thought that, if there was anything to see, you'd be the one to see it."
I had always been right in thinking Kara would be affected by the paintings. As soon I put them in front of her, her mouth had fallen open a bit, and she leaned in closer to look at them, her eyes busy, her hand sometimes reaching out to run a few fingers along the glossy surface, as if she'd wanted to feel its texture, her focus seeming to pause at every individual colour, licking her lips like she could taste them. She studied the two paintings for longer than I'd ever expected her to, and as the minutes passed, we could hear the muffled sounds of two people pass by us along the trail.
When she was finally finished, she straightened up, still kneeling, and slid her hands from the ground, over her knees, and onto the top of her thighs. I watched her fingers move over the cloth of her pants until they settled there, and then I shuffled a bit closer. "So," I said, speaking as quietly as I could, just above a whisper, "what - uh... what are they about?"
"Well," she began, searching the leaves around us. Then she reached forward and, quite unexpectedly, placed her hand on my arm. Her thumb swept back and forth along my skin. I swallowed. "To
tell you the truth," she ventured to say aloud, "I think they're about how we're worse than we think we are;" and then her face lit up with a curious smirk, "and better."
Even if I'd had hours to think her words through, they wouldn't have meant anything to me then, if only because I wasn't ready to hear them. Though, that isn't why I didn't think about them that day; I didn't think about them because I was concentrating on the warmth of her hand, on the smooth sweeping motion of her thumb, on the pulse that was beating ever louder in my throat, on the fact that both of us had stopped breathing. However, there was an even greater reason why her words evaded me; which was that, before I had a chance to ask her to expand, or even before I could begin to let my imagination run wild with what was going to happen next, another voice entered our conversation.
"Kara?" the voice called out, an accusatory tone ringing between the letters.
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