Veracity (24 page)

"Sure," he mumbled, using the same tone, almost managing to sound bored, "They're throwing them."

I leaned forward, "They're what?" But I could see that neither of them was going to give me any more information. Instead, they just slowly nodded their heads up and down, their expressions caught somewhere between amusement and sympathy. I shook my head and began following the sounds to their source.

I descended into the lower deck and passed through the gangway, ducking my head at all the appropriate places. As I got closer, I saw Solmund standing with his arms crossed, slouching over as usual, succeeding in making himself look even smaller than he was; he was busy watching the spectacle in the room from the safety of the open door. When he saw me, he froze, and as I approached, he shuffled back, making room for me to enter. I stepped into the doorway.

Everyone, besides the three of us who'd been on the upper deck, was crammed inside. They were backed up against the walls or sitting on the berths, making a space in the centre of the room for the person who was throwing the knives, which, at that moment, happened to be Toivo.

I soon had the entire room's uneasy attention and spoke as slowly as I could, hoping to emphasize just how furious I was, "What in the hell are you guys doing?"

Looking back, I actually think that Knut had encouraged everyone to be louder that afternoon, that he'd
intended
to be heard, because he was prepared for me in every possible way, as if he'd rehearsed exactly what he was going to say and do before I'd ever stepped foot into the room. Very, very coolly, he sauntered over to Toivo, who was looking as confused as ever, and lifted the knife from his open hand. Toivo quickly scuttled to the side and placed his back against the wall like the others, happy to be away from the focal point of the action. "Well, Joshua, as you can see..." Knut said, pausing in front of me without the least bit of intimidation, and manipulating the knife until the blade was held with the tips of his fingers. He suddenly spun around and flung the knife across the room. The handle of the blade was brightly coloured, moulded out of the unnatural material called plastic, which made for an interesting sight as it twirled end over end through the air. It stuck into the wood with a thud, very close to a red circle that had somehow been drawn there - though with what, I don't know (maybe some of the dried berries from the kitchen). To be dead honest, I was actually impressed by this demonstration, though obviously couldn't show it. Knut turned to face me again, resting his weight on one of his hips and crossing his arms in a relaxed, almost playful stance. "We're throwing knives."

I heard Mikkel and Onni crowd into the doorway behind me. They must have followed me when I left them; and understandably so.

I looked around the room, sizing things up as quickly as I could. The crew had sharpened two of the diving knives, probably using the whetstone from the kitchen, and had filed the dull ends until they were pointy enough to stick into the walls. And it was obvious that they'd spent a lot of time on this project, as they had to have first found the knives, then stolen the whetstone to sharpen them, figured out a way to make the red mark, and then, as was evident from Knut's performance, spent many an hour getting better at throwing them. From what I could tell, this might even have been some kind of organized competition.

I shook my head before speaking, "What's amazing to me is that you've all deliberately done this behind my back - which only shows me that you
understood
I would disapprove of it."

Knut didn't flinch. He was quite ready for that sentence to come out of my mouth. "You
would
? Why? I mean - what is there to disapprove of?" he asked, turning his back on me and walking to retrieve the knife from the pitted wall. After he had pulled it free, he held it again by its tip, ready to throw, and walked toward me until he was standing uncomfortably close, his body leaning forward, but with a warm grin on his face. "I honestly can't see much of a problem. It's just a bit of fun."

"Fun? No. Let's be clear about this Knut: it's violence. Period." My words were quick, the pronunciation abrupt. "And what every one of us has been taught -
all
our lives - is that violence only breeds more violence. Which is why I will not have it on the ship. Is that understood?"

Knut shook his head slowly, pityingly, "Man, Joshua - you've gotta lighten up. I mean - we're not on the island anymore, so why pretend we are?" He looked down at the fluorescent green handle, which was wobbling in the air between us, "We're just throwing knives against a wall, which, if you think about it, is as violent as cleaning a trail, or chopping some fruit from a tree, and much
less
violent than, say, fishing, which we did all the time on the island, and do all the time here." He paused for a moment, then chuckled to himself, "I mean - it's not like we're throwing them at Solmund or something." The room broke into nervous laughter, and Knut took the opportunity to eye a few members of his supportive audience before continuing. "Besides, we'll probably have to hunt when we get to land, or at least until we can figure out how and what to grow, which means that honing a little hand-eye coordination
now
will come in pretty handy later on, no?" He nodded condescendingly, as if to answer for me, and then threw a hand in the air, "But hey - if you're really dead set on keeping things the same on this boat as they were on the island, then fine - but keep in mind that friendly competition was never forbidden there, so it shouldn't be here, either. Right?" He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head a bit, "Come on - what do you say?", and then paused for a second before sticking out his lower lip and speaking in a shrunken, mocking voice, "Please...?" The room erupted into stifled giggles.

Maybe that was the moment that Dana had warned me about. Maybe this was one of those decisive points that come up in every one of our individual histories, which, provided we act in the right way, have the power to change our future for the better. Yet, even looking back at it now, I still don't know what that 'right way' would have looked like. How
could
I have taken control of the situation? Seize their shiny toys and hide them, right after hearing a plea that had sounded both reasonable and unanimous? Punch Knut in the face after asserting my decree of non-violence, and then shove him into a room and lock him there until he agreed that throwing knives was a bad idea? Or maybe I should have just snatched the blade from his hand, hurtled it against the wall, and won the competition. Every option that came to mind was either absurd or senseless. And the more I turned it over in my head, looking for the best way out, the more I came back to the easiest and most appealing option: to simply walk away. Let them have their little game and hope that this was as far as it would go. It wasn't the best move, or the smartest, but it was the only thing I could come up with at the time; or to be more honest with myself, it was probably the only thing I was brave enough to do.

I edged past Knut, who didn't really move out of my way, and stood between him and the target, and then slowly panned through the room, pausing to look each one of them in the eye, just like an Elder would have done in the same situation.

There was Toivo, still looking as confused as ever. I imagined that he was one of the people who was most easily swayed by Knut, and could picture him sneaking around and gathering material when no one was looking, hiding in his quarters to grind one of the knives across the whetstone, stopping every time someone walked down the gangway to look over his shoulder at the closed door, hoping that if it opened, it wasn't me who poked my head in.

Then there was Aimil, his expression exactly the same as it always was, looking as if you'd just asked him a question that he didn't know the answer to, but was waiting for someone to tell him. He visually stood out from the others in the room, with his red hair and pale skin, and the rest of the crew with their tanned arms that were just a bit lighter than the wood of the walls.

Niels, with his eyes skirting restlessly around the room, folding and refolding his arms, shifted his weight from one leg to the other. Part of me wondered if he were any good at throwing knives, because, somehow, I imagined he would be.

Knut, incapable of wiping that smirk off his face, beaming with confidence, knowing that he'd outwitted me, that he'd won this little skirmish of power, that rehearsing words that might come up in a confrontation beforehand had paid off for him, again. There was something about the way his hair was neatly drawn to the side that suddenly struck me as maddening, and I wanted to reach out and ruffle it, or maybe find him asleep one day and cut it into jagged lines.

Onni, who was lightly tapping the side of his leg, looking at me with his lips pressed into a kind of encouraging grin, seeming like the only one in the room that might have a bit of sympathy for the awkward position I was in.

Solmund, still watching from the gangway, looked afraid, probably already wishing that he hadn't come on the expedition at all, wondering why he hadn't just stayed on the island, bridging the gaps of the Elders' imaginary voids for the rest of his days.

Mikkel, casual as always, standing beside him, watching the situation unravel through the doorway, careful to have positioned himself on neutral ground in every way possible. He still had that slight look of pity in his expression, as if he wanted to shake his head at me, but under the circumstances, couldn't.

And that was my crew, standing in the room, waiting for my reaction after having purposefully done something inappropriate, waiting to see how much I was going to mirror the Elders in my response, how much I would dare act like one of the people that I had personally rolled my eyes at many a time, often while standing next to some of the people who were now looking at me. Yes, this was a test, just as Dana had predicted. But somehow, I don't really think their incentive was what he'd imagined it to be; I didn't get the feeling they were testing me to find out where their limits were, it was more just a matter of seeing if I would fail. And I did.

"Alright," I sighed, "you guys can have your stupid little game. But I want you to know how disappointed I am that you did this secretly, that you all
intentionally
did this behind my back. There are better ways to go about these things - and I expected more from you." The room was quiet, except for the sounds of Onni's hand tapping at his thigh, which he'd bowed his head to look down at when I began speaking. But he was the only one who had looked away; everyone else seemed to be watching me square in the eye, looking as if they were struggling to keep a grin from splitting their faces in half. And after I'd walked out of the room and down the gangway, I'm sure every one of them had done exactly that, because as I was climbing the stairs to the upper deck, I could hear a muffled explosion of giggles in my wake - which was probably even a response to someone jumping into the middle of the room and mocking me with some fine juvenile display that I can only guess at.

I went back to the helm and corrected our course. And while I stood there, I continued to hear the now familiar thudding sounds, each one followed by an ever-increasing hilarity, which had to have been exaggerated, overemphasized for my benefit alone. They were rubbing it in my face. And to me, at the time, each one of those dampened clunks against the wood seemed to be communicating something more than just 'we won,' it also seemed to be whispering, 'and more easily than we ever thought we would.'

No, I can't say I was very happy with the way things had gone, but I also knew that the bitter taste of this small, petty defeat would pass, and that what I had to concentrate on was making sure that when something like this happened again, I was prepared for it, that I had a kind of plan of action in the back of my mind, ready, like Knut. I convinced myself that I wouldn't make the same mistake twice, that I would learn from my errors and stand my ground from that point on. And as long as I did that, I was sure the crew and I would find a way to fumble forward, and not regress any further than we had. Yes, I finally said to myself, nodding at the greying skies again and thinking of everyone bustling around in the wind, things were only going to get better.

And the slow reeling clouds pressed down on the water, tightening the gap, quietly shutting the horizon's eye, and seeming to wink at my self-encouragements in the strangest way. The sky was bowing its head, filling its lungs, holding its breath.

19

The layers of grey clouds, some of them marbled with dark folds, kept slating in above us; and as the sky filled, and the ceiling crouched ever lower, like a slow sinking blanket coming down over our heads, the winds began to build. But none of us were too worried. We all thought we'd seen similar skies to this on the island, where the streaking sheets would usually dissipate without ever spitting a drop of rain. We weren't even bothered to watch how fast or in what way the system was developing - we knew it was coming, and that seemed to be enough. Though, Mikkel did notice something a little strange, and mentioned it to me, calm as always. He'd noted that specific layers of the clouds were moving over us in one direction, while the bulk of the others were moving in the opposite, but that the interesting part was, of all these varying cloud directions, none of them corresponded with the main direction of the wind we were sailing with. Odd. Finally, a tiny virus of worry seeded itself in the pit of my stomach, and I made a point to watch the clouds more closely than I had been. I had to hold onto the rail when I did this, as the waves had been building throughout the days prior to that as well. Yet, for all my scrutinizing, I still couldn't find any real reason for concern, and wouldn't, until after the midday meal, when we caught sight of the swells.

"Hey Solmund - what are you drawing there?" Knut's tone, as it always was with Solmund, was acerbic, mocking.

"Nothing," came the defensive reply, like clockwork. He pressed the slate that he'd been drawing on against his chest.