The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) (30 page)

“My old people,” I went on, and
my voice trembled. I looked up at the sky, trying to stop the tears prickling
at the backs of my eyes. “Louie, Estelle,
Mariella
 . . . and the food supplies, the winter coming on
 . . . So many people will die, and it could have just been me.”

 
“Hold on, Red.” Farrell Dean was shaking
his head. “Don’t get ahead of the facts. Everything you’re saying—sure,
that might have been going through
Meritt’s
head. But
I don’t think it would have worked. The Watchers wouldn’t have given
Meritt
any real power, not even in exchange for you. He’d
be a token, a puppet.”

I didn’t believe that. I knew
Meritt
, knew how single-minded he was, how smart, how good
he was at getting things done, how easily he could manage people—even
Cline, suspicious and cynical about absolutely everyone except Farrell Dean,
liked
Meritt
. He could have made it work. He would
have made it work.

But Farrell Dean had messed it
up.

“It should have been my decision
to make,” I said. “My choice. Not yours.”

“Stop it, Red,” Farrell Dean
said sharply, shifting until we were knee to knee, looking me straight in the
eye. “Think about what you’re saying. A suicide mission is still suicide.”

Was it? And if so, so what? It
was just a word. Suicide, sacrifice, whatever you wanted to call it, the
question remained: If I’d had the choice, would I have turned myself in,
knowing I’d die, but giving all the others a chance to live?

 
“Maybe
Meritt
still can salvage the situation,” Farrell Dean said. “He’s good at that, at
thinking on his feet. Maybe it will all come right after all.”

“Maybe he was already planning
to salvage it,” I said. “Maybe he could have brought me to the Watchers and
persuaded them that arresting me was good enough, that they didn’t need to kill
me. Or maybe he was coming out to get Angel to help him—to help
us—and wasn’t intending to turn me in at all.”

I could come up with all sorts
of possibilities, but how could I know which was the correct one? The waves
slapped the little boat, waves that were cold and dark and gray. What had
happened to the lovely sea, the water that felt like freedom, like hope?

“Red?” Farrell Dean waited until
I looked up. “If you can’t think of yourself, think of
Meritt
.
For his sake, it’s better we got you away. He might trade you for a chance to
save the city—I hope not, but he might. Or he might let you trade
yourself. And if that happened,
Meritt
would never
forgive himself. It would eat him alive.”

But when he met my eyes, we both
knew he was describing how he himself would feel. He wasn’t sure at all that
Meritt
would feel the same way.

“We’re going to have
to agree to disagree,” I said, turning away from him. “I know
Meritt
. I trust him to do what’s best.”

Whatever that was. I
no longer felt like I knew.

“How
far is this other island?” I said. The sun had set and we were in the long gray
twilight.

Farrell Dean, who had been
sitting facing away from me—giving me what privacy he could—swung
his legs over the bench seat, turned towards me.

“I don’t know how far it is in
miles,” he said. “Sir Tom thinks it’ll take us less than two days. Maybe only
one. It depends on the speed of the current.”

I tried to hide my astonishment,
and
knew I failed. Two days in this little
boat? Two days on the open sea in this tiny little boat, with only—I
looked again—one gallon bag of water? We had plenty of dried food, but
water . . . that apparently was part of what fell out when I
tipped the boat.

I didn’t want to think about it.
We couldn’t get back now, anyway.

* * *
*

As it grew dark the movement of
the waves slowed. I dangled my fingers in the water; it moved, but I didn’t
think we were moving any longer. We were rocking, but not going forward. I
dropped a small piece of dried apple in the water; it floated gently beside us
for a long time before it drifted away. After a series of such small
experiments, I was sure—at least as sure as I could be, out there in the
dark, with no stable landmarks.

“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, possibly 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?