One thing was certain: Mikkel had quite the balancing act to perform. After all, one of the only things the crew had learned since we left the island was that a mutiny was easier to accomplish than they'd ever imagined; and Mikkel wasn't standing on very solid ground himself, after having known about The Goal since he'd Come of Age, and only divulging it for the very first time the day before. The crew might have been a little suspicious of him, or at least would be for a few days. Emotions would be running high in the debate, and there was the danger of alliances forming, of canyons being carved between those who were in favour of my death, and those who weren't.
After the conversation was finished, I could hear people going back to their chores and duties, moving throughout the ship. No one was saying a word. I pressed my ear against the walls as people passed, trying to catch a phrase or two that might explain a bit about what had been said, but there was nothing to hear.
Then, at one point during the morning, a few people gathered into the room next to mine, their mumbled voices and sneering laughter humming through the veneer as soon as they closed the door. This continued for a little while, until there was a sharp thud against the wall, a few quick steps, and then the grainy sounds of a knife being worked out of the paneling. A muffled voice came from the other side, accompanied with cold giggles beneath it. "Hey - is that bothering you?" Knut pounded a quick fist against the wall, "Hey! Can you hear me in there? ...Because - uh... if it's upsetting at all, just let us know, okay? I mean - we want you to be comfortable in there. We want you to be having a nice time." The last part of this sentence didn't have much volume to it, as his back was turned while he was walking to the other side of the room to throw the knife again. It clunked against the wall. There were more giggles. "So if you need anything, don't be afraid to ask. Because we'll get right on it. Promise."
The throwing of knives against my wall continued until its novelty must have begun to wane, and eventually, they settled down on the bunks to talk. Knut must have sat with his back to my wall, because someone continued to stab at the wood with constant prods. But they were mechanical and lacked in violence or intent, and I think were just done in an attempt to annoy me. Soon enough though, even the jabs slowed, and then finally stopped.
For the first time, I could press my ear against the wall without being deafened by the knocks on the wood, but when I did; I found that I couldn't really pick any words out of the steady murmuring. Then, at one point, the tones became more subdued, more secretive, and Knut suddenly moved away from the wall and to the centre of the room, where their voices gave way to concentrated whispering; which was almost impossible to distinguish as whispering, let alone understand.
I took a few quiet steps away from the wall and looked around for something that would help me hear. I remembered the plastic cup that Onni had placed in my water bucket and tried pressing it up against the wall to listen. I found, to my surprise that I could almost make out words; but it wasn't enough. I stepped back again and inspected the wall. I noticed a black knot in the wood, which was close to the floor and had a tiny section missing near its centre, and I lay down on my stomach to try it there. I covered the knot with the cup, and, after listening for a long time and not understanding a thing, someone raised his voice above a whisper, getting caught up in what seemed to be a counterargument of some kind. "...ya... tha... bah ... No. No. Not if the life raft is gone too." There was the sound of someone being slapped - maybe on the leg, maybe across the face - it was hard to say. Then there was a stiff silence, after which the whispers died down into nothing more than breath that must have formed words. Every now and then I could make out the broken shape of the letter S, but that was all. Though, I continued to listen anyway; until, after an incredibly long pause where there were no sounds whatsoever, I heard everyone stand and leave the room, dispersing to other parts of the ship. It sounded like there were three of them walking away, but I couldn't be certain.
When I was sure they were gone, I let myself fall onto my back and stared up at the ceiling, letting the cup roll out of my hand and onto the floor, where it arced in small circles at my side, being dragged in different directions by the flux of the ship. True, for all my eavesdropping, I hadn't heard much, but it was enough to know what they were talking about. Knut, along with one or two others, was busy planning my murder. And what was more, I understood both the plan, and the fact that it would probably work. A few of them would come into my quarters in the middle of the night, take me by knifepoint in complete silence to the upper deck, and then throw me overboard, maybe stabbing me first so that I couldn't wake anyone by yelling once I was in the water, and afterwards, toss the life raft in with my body. Then they would break open my door first thing in the morning, where the sounds of the splintering doorframe would be masked by their screams of alarm as they 'discovered' that I had cunningly escaped during the night.
It's interesting that after realizing this, while lying on the floor and staring up at the ceiling, the cup still drawing plastic circles beside me, I didn't really feel afraid - it was more a kind of pragmatic detachment. I was just taken over with the need to come up with a plan of my own. That was all.
The first thing I thought to do was slam a fist against my door and demand to speak to Mikkel. But I knew that he would only shake his head and speak to me in a soothing voice from the gangway, using the word 'paranoid' as many times as he could in one sentence; if, indeed, he would see me at all. I'm sure, as he was probably one of the few people who wanted to spare my life, that he had tensions of his own to deal with, and that he would be incredibly wary of appearing to back me any more than he already had.
The next thing I thought about was Onni; wondering if I could use his vague offer to help in some way, but couldn't think of anything. Onni didn't have an aggressive bone in his body, which, I imagined - in this case anyway - made him of little use to me.
Then I thought about what I could do on my own. I knew that my murder, if they had wanted it to be covert, would have to be done at night; and, as I doubted they would risk being so obvious as to kill me only hours after they'd had a group discussion where the overall decision was against it, I assumed that they would try the following night, or the night after that. If we were still making progress as I'd calculated, then we should have been in sight of land within a day or two, where perhaps Mikkel planned on finding an island to leave me behind on (where I would be alive, but also in a place where I couldn't do any harm). Which meant that, when they finally tried to kill me, we would probably be in sight of the spiny peninsula. And so long as I was ready for them, and could catch them by surprise when the door edged open - and then scream, punch, yell, scratch, break bones, and maybe even rip a knife from one of their hands and cut some skin - I could cause such a scene that everyone would wake and come running, only to realize that some of their fellow shipmates had taken it upon themselves to remake a decision that had already been made. And, provided I was still breathing after all was said and done, they would almost certainly find themselves looking over their shoulders at the land in the distance, and have no choice but to feel some kind of twisted obligation to let me go.
That was my plan. And I was convinced it was a good one, even in the case that I didn't survive; because, I rationalized, this way, I would have won to some degree. I would have at least tried to save myself. And it just happened that, in the process, I would also hold them more accountable for their actions. I would take the power out of their hands, and no longer would it be as easy as turning their heads away from my bobbing shape in the water to appease themselves. No, they would be forced to deal with the blood that they had spilled, to clean it up, to see the ugliness of what they'd caused; and I was sure that the bright red of it would be burned into their minds for the rest of their lives.
I grinned at the ceiling, then stood up, and began pacing around the room, clenching my jaw, my fingers wrapped tight. For some reason, it all seemed rather clever to me at the time, this idea of leav
ing them with a lasting imprint, with a voice that would echo through the years. I was certain that, provided I screamed loud enough, the sound of their wrongs would surface again, maybe come back to them in the form of some blurry whisper, a scratching message through chattering branches on a cloudy afternoon, a distant hum sticking to the walls of their conscience that would become louder once they were alone.
That's what I would leave them with.
* * *
28
A few hours later, I heard people go into the galley to cook the midday meal, and within minutes the same familiar smells that had seeped into my room before were again slipping through the cracks. My stomach stung anew, and I listened obsessively to the sounds they were making, everyone gathering beside the stove to serve themselves, the thick clay plates being set onto the table, the utensils clanking together before they ate. While everyone sat forking food into their mouths, I noticed that the usual conversation between the crew was restrained, quiet, which, to me, only served to illustrate how divergent their opinions had become. After they had finished, and plates were being scraped and cleaned, I listened for the footsteps that might remember me, hoping, wishing that if something was actually sent to my room, that it wouldn't be stolen again and eaten greedily outside my door.
And those footsteps came; two people were walking down the gangway toward my room. I backed away from the door, swallowing. While I was waiting for them, I recalled an odd tradition that I'd once read about in an unassigned section of a book that Mitra gave me (a sea epic that I was supposed to be studying for its technical details). In this tradition, the very people who were about to put a man to death would give him one final and extravagant meal, supply him with a bounty of nutrients that his body would never use. At the time, I'd wondered if the custom had sprung out of a need to try and console the dying man. But now I'm pretty sure that it was just to console the part of the executioners that would die with him, the part of their conscience that needed some mollifying nourishment; a little act of charity to help convince themselves that they were acting out of necessity and nothing else. Though, whether this same perverse concept was at play that afternoon or not, I didn't really care. I just wanted food.
The key clattered to get into the hole, and the door opened quickly. It was Onni, and he had a plate of cooked fish in one of his hands, of which, I'm sorry to say, I couldn't help but focus on with what must have been a completely crazed expression. He had a small pail of water in his other hand as well, and walked into the room watching it, careful not to splash any on the floor. Meanwhile, Toivo stayed in the gangway, looking around uneasily. He was obviously there for 'security' purposes.
My eyes followed the plate of fish moving through the room until Onni bent over to put it on the floor beside my water bucket, which struck me as an odd thing to do. (I wondered if I was expected to eat on all fours now; and if he had been specifically instructed to give it to me in this way.) But there was something in the reverence in which he did it that stopped me from saying anything. And, as I wasn't about to crouch down and shovel the food into my mouth as they might have expected me to, I could only stand there, pretending to be patient, waiting to see what would happen next.
Onni picked up the small pail of water and took a few steps over to the large bucket that he'd brought in the day before, apparently intending to fill it to the brim, even though I hadn't really used much of it. This was already strange enough, but then he moved around the bucket until he was at an entirely unnatural angle to it, so that the pouring water was facing the gangway as it came out. He seemed to be pointlessly shaking the water as well, as if it were solid and needed help to spill out of the pail. And it wasn't until I saw the piece of cooked fish slither out of his sleeve and land on the floor, the sound of which was timed perfectly with a quick clearing of his throat, that I realized what the spectacle was all about. The fish had crumbled into a couple of pieces, but still lay behind the bucket he was filling, hidden from Toivo's view.
"Hey - uh... thanks for the water, Onni," I said, sounding suspicious. I looked up at Toivo with a stupid wooden grin on my face to see if he'd noticed, but he wasn't looking, and nor did he seem to care. He was busy watching his feet, lifting his toes off the floor, lowering them. He didn't even raise his eyes from them as he spoke.
"Come on, Onni. Let's go."
Onni had finished topping off my water, and so walked out of the room, closed the door, and locked it. But neither of them walked away, and when I heard that they were exchanging a few hushed words, I crept as fast as I could to the door to listen.
"...Yeah but it stays in the door from now on."
"What? Says who?"
There was no reply, only a quick silence followed by the sounds of Onni being pushed to the ground, his hands squeaking along the wall, trying to catch hold of something, and a dull bump signifying that he hadn't. Finally, after the sound of Onni getting to his feet again and another tense pause, their footsteps departed in opposite directions. Neither of them had removed the key.
But at that moment, I had other things to think about. The second that I'd heard their footsteps recede enough to know that nothing else was going to happen, I scurried to the food on the ground, crouched beside it, and shoved both the fish on the floor and the other on the plate, into my mouth, bones scratching along my throat as I swallowed. Once I'd finished, I scooped the plate from the ground and began to lick it, wiping it up and down across my face until it was spotless, and then moved onto the ends of my fingers. Only when there was nothing left anywhere did I begin to slow down. I drank some water and sat on the floor with my back against the bed, a hand on my stomach, which I could feel contentedly working away.
Finally, I could think.
So, it seemed obvious enough that the key was left in the door to help my assassins, taking out the factor of getting it from Onni in the middle of the night, but what I didn't understand was whether this could signify what day they planned on doing it. I was sure that Mikkel would see the little ring of silver sticking out of the keyhole when he walked by it in the gangway, but it seemed they were confident he wouldn't do anything about it, that he would avoid the touchy subject as much as he could. Though, it also occurred to me that he had made the suggestion to leave it there. Maybe it wasn't only a few members of the crew that wanted me dead, but the majority of them, and Mikkel's insistence on keeping me alive was only proving to undermine his authority more by the hour; and, for the sake of maintaining order, maybe he felt that he had no choice but to let them kill me and stage my escape. Maybe it was the only way to keep everyone happy. Yet, even if this were the case, once again, I doubted my murderers would be so obvious as to take advantage of the key being left in the door after only a few hours. It would be in their interest to wait at least a day or two, when people would begin to see it as commonplace; even if everyone knew what it was for, including Mikkel.
That afternoon stretched out into long hours of worrying; worrying about what would happen, how many people I would have to fight off, what time of night it would take place; wondering if I would have a day to prepare before the door inched open, or two; questioning if my plan would really work, if they would really feel a warped obligation to let me go if I survived the attack. I spent my hours being eaten away by guesswork.
And then, just as the light from the window started to grow weak, I heard what seemed like the entire crew, except for whoever was at the helm, gather in the galley. They ate the rest of what had been cooked at the midday meal, and began to play a game of some kind. The laughter that accompanied this game sounded strained at first, but soon gave way to something a bit more genuine, and became louder, and then louder; until eventually, the room was heaving with it. I imagine that it was a competition of some kind. At one point there was a thick pounding sound, as if someone had fallen onto the floor - which the room bellowed in a raucous response to - so it had to be something quite physical. Whatever it was, I'm sure a few of them were trying fairly
hard to enjoy themselves, hoping to distract their minds from what they were constantly and secretly thinking about.
I was looking out of my window, listening to them, watching the grey of the sky darken, the swells on the sea's surface reflecting less and less, the blue of it becoming more metallic, black, when I started to become aware of something subtle and indistinct that could be heard under the din of their laughter. I looked at the door, listening intently, trying to filter out the loudest noises. And then I heard it, a creak in the floorboards, someone walking as gently as they could through the gangway.
Everything seemed to fall into place in one flaring second. I had been wrong about their plan. It wasn't in the middle of the night, when they would have to risk waking people. No. Instead, it was when everyone was still awake. Knut had simply given a few people the charge of creating the noisiest distraction they could in the galley, while, surprisingly, they had expected only one of them to march me up to the deck by knifepoint, stab me, and push me over.
I smiled. They had seriously miscalculated.
I walked to the door on the edges of my feet, listening to him get closer, trembling with aggressive energy. He stopped directly on the other side of the door, which only meant that I was right. This was it.
I watched the one shining dot on the door latch, the reflection of the tiny bit of light leaking in from the window, waiting for it to move, listening for the lock to unbolt. My mind was empty. Red.
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