It was evening before Kalus said anything to Sylviana of the morning's adventures. First there had been work to do, then he felt reluctant to worry her. Finally, as they sat side by side on a flat stone before the diminishing fire, she asked him.
'Where did Avatar take you?' For an answer he reached into his pouch and took out the cactus buds, and laid them on the stone between. 'Did you ever see these, or hear of them? They come from a desert plant that is like but unlike others I have seen. He was very intent on my eating them—-he risked much—-but I wanted to talk to you first.'
She took one in her fingers, and held it up against the light. 'If I didn't know better….. They look like peyote buttons.'
'What are they?'
'A hallucinogenic cactus, used by the Native Americans in dances and religious ceremonies. It's a kind of drug, if that's the right word for something found in Nature. It's supposed to open the mind, and let you see things beyond the physical reality.'
'Is it a kind of magic, then?' He was fascinated and intrigued that the tiger had experienced this elevated state, and wanted him to feel it, too.
'I guess you could call it that. But one very dangerous to the young, or to anyone who doesn't know what they're doing.'
'Have you ever eaten them?'
'No. I've smoked marijuana, which is safer….. But Kalus, these can't possibly be peyote.'
'Why not?'
'Because if the tiger had eaten them he'd have gone crazy: he wouldn't have understood. He wouldn't have been able to think it through.'
'And maybe for that same reason he wasn't afraid. You still don't see it, do you? An animal's mind isn't less than ours, only different. He lives in his world as clearly, and understands it as well, as you and I. He is not a half-wakened child.'
'Well, assuming all that's true, and that this is peyote. Do you think you're ready for it? Because I promise you, it would take your mind to places it's never been. It could be very frightening….. Now you're scaring me.'
Indeed, he had all but stopped listening, gazing instead with fixed intensity upon the mystical substance before him.
'I want to try, Sylviana, if only for the pains it cost me to bring it here.' He looked at her intently. 'Where Avatar leads, I want to follow if I can.'
'I can't stop you, but….. Oh, Kalus. I'm so afraid you'll hurt yourself. And after all we've been through.'
He saw the wisdom of this, and her deep concern. 'What if eat just one, and you are here with me?'
The endless conflict between safety and wild freedom once more presented itself. Both felt it clearly. She hesitated, then said.
'If we do it, we do it together.'
'All right.'
Kalus put a bud in his mouth. Sylviana did the same.
***
'This is amazing.'
Roughly an hour had passed, and these words so broke the stillness that it seemed as if Kalus had then and there invented speech. And indeed, so far as concerned the virgin sea on which they now sailed, eternal and boundless, these were the first words, and he and the woman-child, the true Adam and Eve.
For some time now he had remained as a near statue, only his eyes and forehead working, studying in alternate wonder his hand, the circle of stones, then the altar and mirror behind it. Sylviana watched him, feeling the same awe of the experience, and perhaps to a greater degree, the accompanying danger. She answered simply.
'Yes.'
Her voice, like a pebble in a pool, touched the glassy waters of his spirit, sending out ripples of thought and feeling which seemed as endless as the pool itself. Regaining his center, he became placid with the wisdom of silence, until the shoots that stirred within him were ready to blossom once more in true speech. Sylviana was becoming concerned, but he had not forgotten her.
'All my days,' he said finally, 'I've judged life by the pale shadow of it in which I've often been forced to live, never guessing that the heart. . .the very bones of it. . .are ALIVE.' He paused.
'It seems to me now, as it did when I was a child, that no hope, no dream is ever fully lost, so long as the least fragment remains alive inside you. It becomes like a seed—-sleeping, dormant. But not dead. Until, if we can endure, and fight our way to a better place where sun and water yet flow, it is called gently back to life.'
He looked at her, tears streaming down his face. 'I am alive! And you, my endless miracle. Are alive, and here with me.'
She took his hand, so close, and pressed it to her lips.
'Be gentle, my loving Kalus. Be gentle. There are still so many wounds.'
Never, it seemed to him, had she spoken more truly. For he now felt in the wrenching of his heart, as surely as if the flesh itself ached and bled, the many scars that lay across him. He became quiet, and put his head against her, knowing that for all his yearning, patience alone would heal him, and make those forgotten dreams possible.
Time passed.
At length Kalus raised himself, understanding, and better able to handle the heightened state of his senses, feeling once more like a peaceful sea from which the gale has passed, softened and grateful.
'Thank you,' he said to her. He took a deep breath.
'Are you all right?'
There was something more than womanly concern in her voice. An intense curiosity had taken hold of her, as if she too pondered some great riddle of her past. The questions twirled like serpents about the object she now surveyed.
'Yes. What are you thinking?'
'I've been looking at the mirror,' she said, gazing at it still. 'All this time we've taken the altar, and the visions of that night, for granted, perhaps because the questions were too deep, and they frightened us….. But what does it all mean, Kalus? What's BEHIND it?'
Turning toward the singular apparatus, which like her he had left aside until this night as simply too much to contemplate, he was again drawn by its silent mystery. But in his more earthy, less ethereal way, he took the question literally. What lay BEHIND it? And stirred at last to physical action, he took from his pouch the round hammer-stone and approached the blue-black mirror, which seemed to waver in strange patterns before him.
As the woman watched, he tapped first along the rock immediately surrounding the glass, then above, and around the altar. There could be no doubt: the sounds were hollow. Some hidden chamber lay beyond. He turned to his companion.
'Shall I break the glass?'
Again she felt an inner turmoil. But her need to know was so great…..'Yes.'
He shielded his eyes with his arm, much as he had on the night when together they heard the Voice. . .and hurled his stone into the heart of it.
With a crash the mirror burst. And when she dared to open her eyes again, her first reaction was disappointment. Only a hole remained, lined about the edges with jagged bits of glass. But forbidding and tooth-like as these appeared, they could with care be removed, and the passage rendered safe. This Kalus set out to do, protecting his hand with a small skin and pulling out the pieces one by one, unable yet to penetrate the gloom of what lay beyond.
'Bring me the torch,' he said to her.
But now the girl became suddenly timid. Seeing the result of her handiwork, she wondered if in her restless curiosity she had not tempted the undoing of all Faith.
'It's all right,' he said, somehow knowing her thoughts. 'If a belief can be so easily destroyed, by the least physical reality, it is not worthy of the hope we place in it. I would rather put my faith in something that can be trusted.'
Her eyes pleaded.
'I know,' he said more quietly. 'Nothing is that simple. But the miracle of the Voice is not banished yet. Bring me the torch, and we'll see what lies beyond.'
Slowly she calmed the surge of religious fear, and took from its mount on the wall the torch that they had made. She handed it to him as he continued to reach across the polished granite, removing or brushing aside the broken glass that remained. He then moved the torch from side to side, trying to see…..
'There is a room, about the same size of the upper cave. But it is higher, and filled with objects I don't know.' Taking the fur canopy from his bed, he folded it and used it to line the edges, still rough, of the opening. Then tossing the light in gently ahead of him, he mounted the altar. And passed within.
'I'm coming, too,' came the woman's voice after him. Perceiving no immediate danger, he wedged the torch into an opening, and helped her through the empty, oval space. Upon regaining her feet, the girl looked around her. . .and gave voice to her dismay.
'Computers.' And so it was. One entire wall of the square-cut chamber consisted of nothing but the sterile MACHINES: voice and thought analyzers, communications and memory, species, mythology, and logic sequencers. The woman felt used, betrayed.
'All that time in the cave, alone and afraid. My only hope was the voice that spoke to me through the glass. To know that it was reading my thoughts and secret hopes, and telling me to remain there….. Just MACHINES. All a terrible hoax.'
'Not all, my sweet Sylvie, and not terrible. The warnings they spoke were true, and may have saved your life. And in the end, I did come to you.' He put his arm around her.
'And is it not a miracle after all? Think of it. I was born fully human, on a night when stars fell from the sky. Then Akar comes to me in Barabbas' cave: I see a terrible vision, and am made an outcast. The Mantis finds you in the mountains of the North and brings you here. We are brought together.' He turned towards her. 'Even if machines could accomplish all or part of that, so many miracles had to come first. Life on Earth. The Universe itself, rather than a great, formless void.
'What are the odds of it?' he continued. 'That you and I should be standing here now, alive and still young, with love and hope, and the chance to make a better life. Is that not miracle enough?'
'I know what you're saying. And of course you're right. It just felt better. . .I don't know. . .to think that God was watching me. That He loved and cared about ME….. I'm going to miss that.'
'When I was a child, I thought as a child,' he quoted. 'When we are young we need such illusions, such security. And who is to say what does and does not exist in the world beyond our sight? Not I. Here I stand, surrounded by wonders I could not dream of. To think that a light from a machine could reach inside my mind, and give me the power to speak.'
At this the woman suddenly stirred, and drew away from him. She examined the machinery more closely, confounded, overwhelmed. It wasn't possible.
'What is it, Sylviana?' Still for a time she could not speak, trying to follow the rapid, and incredible chain of thought.
'My father was a scientist,' she said finally. 'And I knew something of on-going research. This technology: the fire that burned from nothing, the ability to read my thoughts….. And the violet beam, GIVING YOU THE POWER OF SPEECH. Kalus, unless I'm dead wrong. This equipment, and the altar. . .weren't left here by men! We haven't advanced nearly this far.'
With this her weary despondency left her. She was consumed instead by the eager, questioning thought that her father had passed on to her almost without her knowing it: Science, the study of the visible God.
Examining the back of the chamber, she found a steep passage carved into the rock, after a single bend to the left, leading in a straight line upward and eastward. But surely carved' was not the right word. The walls were smooth as glass, the floor rippled, as if to accommodate some creature which had used the uneven surface to enter and return….. The slanting tube rose far out of sight—-to the top, she imagined, of Skither's fifteen-hundred foot mountain. A score of masons couldn't have done the fine work in twenty years.
'What does it mean?' asked Kalus, lost in the wake of her discovery and unable to follow.
'The oldest question of all, Kalus. Is there life among the stars? But here, let's follow the passage and see where it leads. I'll tell you more when I know more.'
Now it was he who became trepid, not understanding. She couldn't help herself. She laughed.
'Oh, did I look as foolish when you broke the mirror? There's no reason to be afraid. I'm sure there's no one here now. Machinery this advanced could have been working completely on its own for centuries.'
She took his hand, and together they made their way up the long, arrow-straight passageway, pacing their steps and resting often, so as not to exhaust themselves in the climb and have nothing left. And yet at each pause their sense of wonder, as well as the now tenable magic of the peyote, only seemed to increase.
For so, too, do Science and the indescribable beauty Nature walk—-the study and living manifestation, respectively, of the enigmatic Spirit of the Universe.
And as they stepped out at last onto a high platform open to the stars, both felt it so clearly. The sabled dome of sky, scattered with living diamonds, throbbed and pulsed, undeniable: Eternity's Breath.
And though they found nothing more alien or fantastic than a smooth, half-crater floor, opening unbarriered on the East, still, this was more than enough. The vastness of the sky reached like a limitless ocean, islanded by countless suns and unseen planets.
And on the nearer, more tangible horizon, its pounding surf just audible in the distance….. Kalus' heart caught in his throat. How it called to him! Earth-mystical, everlasting, unvanquished by the follies of men. . .he saw it as for the first time. Endlessly living.
The Sea.
*
They remained there until morning, speaking or in silence, taking in the enormity of life, and thinking things they'd never thought before.
While the silent stars watched.
The Island of Ruins
Though nothing can bring back that hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flowers; We will not grieve, rather find Strength in what remains behind….
—-William Wordsworth
Sylviana strolled easily along the beach, the cub running playfully up ahead of her. As she walked the cool ocean breeze wrapped her face and body in its blanket of moist freshness. The water-pocked sand beneath her felt cold and invigorating. Tiny trills of foam nipped at her feet as if demanding her attention, before returning in hissing protest to the sea.
At long last, she thought, they had come to a place where this simple pleasure, a walk in the open air, did not mean exposure to imminent peril. High walls of stark, weather-beaten stone protected the cove from behind and to either side, reaching long tendrils out into the water. And between its arms and hollow chest a strip of sand, perhaps a mile long and a third as deep, lay open to the sea and sun. Lack of game, as much as the forbidding walls, kept the predatory threat of the land animals away from them. So Kalus had told her.
For this same reason he had never considered the margins of the sea as a home of any duration. But on that night when he felt its call so strongly, remaining upon the high watch until the fiery sun had risen from its depths to light the land, Sylviana had spoken of the many ways that food could be obtained there. His restless thought needed no other prompting. In the following weeks they had taken what they needed and could carry, and come the gray stone distance to the north and east, to live. That Kalus had another reason for doing so he kept to himself, a seeming contradiction to the intimate closeness of those days. But he knew the symptoms of his heart and would not cross them. Not yet. He was afraid, and at the same time drawn, to the thing he did not understand.
The girl watched happily as Alaska made a reckless charge back through the surf, crashing the shallow water against her chest with the inexhaustible energy of youth. Having lived more than half her life among humans, it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do: running in joyful frolic toward the outstretched, clapping hands of her soft, female friend. And as she came to a sudden, impulsive halt, shaking the cold water from her fur, she took little notice as Sylviana turned a puzzled gaze far out across the waters. It only meant that her friend no longer wished to play.
Sylviana couldn't believe her eyes. IT HAS TO BE AN ILLUSION, she thought. SOME KIND OF MIRAGE. But still the image lingered. Perhaps a half mile out, a lone human figure had just emerged from the water and propped itself gracefully atop a tiny islet, a mere rock at the edge of the continental shelf, which had somehow survived the weathering of the years.
At least it looked human. Just at the distance where eyesight begins to fail and imagination to fill the void, the creature looked strangely surreal: something from an ancient legend of the sea. Half blocked from her vision by the stone, only its naked back and blondish mane were visible. These seemed human enough. But she was sure she remembered something odd about the way it emerged. . .the way it moved. . something.
But suddenly her eyes descried a far more substantial form, undeniable. A huge, black dorsal fin split the surface of the water like a knife, then began to move in slow patient circles around the speck of land and shelter. Incredibly, the lone figure seemed not to notice.
Like wildfire, the thoughts and fears chased each other through her mind. MY GOD, ANOTHER HUMAN! PERHAPS THE LAST. AND A SHARK! I'VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING! Cupping her hands in front of her mouth, she inhaled as deeply as her anxiety and thumping heart would allow, and shouted in desperation:
'Look out! Stay out of the water, there's a shark!' It was no use, the north wind and crashing surf devoured her feeble warning. Trying to master her panic, she took several deep breaths, and cried out at the top of her lungs.
'Shark! Shark! Stay out of the water. A SHARK!'
This time the creature reacted. Turning towards the sound, it returned her startled gaze with one of its own, revealing for an instant a young, almost childish face. Then to her horror, it leapt into the water immediately beside the giant killer. Frozen in terror she could only watch, unable to move or think. She didn't breathe.
Reaching the orca's back, the young male mounted quickly and was gone.
Still on the shore, Sylviana stood incredulous. The boy must have seen it. Had he really grabbed hold of the fin, or had she just imagined it? Her eyes detecting motion farther out, once more she beheld the impossible pairing. This time there could be no doubt. A young boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen, had resurfaced with his mount, a massive killer whale. Clutching with hand and foot both the dorsal and pectoral fins, his limbs spread spider-like against the surging torso, he rode as if he had been born to it.
In fact, he had.
*
'Kalus!' The girl came running to the place where he stood tacitly shaping a net, surprised he hadn't heard her shouts. He saw her but did not immediately react, half knowing what she was going to say. She was going to tell him she'd seen a water-child. He waited patiently, hoping she would understand.
'Kalus,' she repeated, closer and out of breath. 'I saw another human. . .or something that looked like one. It saw me and dashed off to sea, on the back of a killer whale!'
'Yes. I know.'
'You saw it, too?'
'No, but I have seen them before.'
She looked him full in the face, perplexed. 'You knew there were other humans, and you never told me? My God, Kalus, why?'
'Because I was afraid.'
'Afraid of what?' she demanded.
'Afraid that if you knew there were others, you would have less need of me. That you would not love me as much, always wondering…..'
'Oh, Kalus, that's so unfair! How could you think so little of me?' But even as she denied his words, she knew they held a grain of truth.
'I'm sorry,' he said. Finding no other expression, he repeated.'I'm sorry.'
For a moment she had forgotten him, and the effect her resentment would have. Now she looked at him, at the weary, washed-out face of long ago, and remembered.
'OH.' She came behind and wrapped her arms around his chest and held him tightly. 'It's all right. I understand.'
With little further speech the two worked on the nets until night forced them back into the cave, a small hollow bored into smooth stone twenty feet above the sand. It was neither spacious nor comfortable, but Kalus did not intend to remain there long.
Both knew, as later in the dead of night he opened his heart to her, that they must leave the roots of their past and strike out to a new destination. To the Island, where Kalus had often marked the smoke of fires, and where he hoped to find some answer to the questions that unsettled him, not the least of which was the riddle of the Children of the Sea.
The beauty of the Sea was not lost on him, for all his preoccupation with the Island. Every day it revealed new wonders, and more and more he came to realize that it was not only a home and harbinger of infinite life, but a living, tangible thing unto itself. When Sylviana told him it had been the birthplace of life on Earth he was not surprised. When she remarked that little seemed to have changed, despite the nuclear holocaust, he believed, and felt quietly reassured.
But he also saw clearly the darker, more savage aspect of the waters, which the poetic (usually from the detached safety of an untroubled ship or peaceful shoreline) often seemed to overlook. For if the Valley had been ruthless and produced, with few exceptions, a grim array of thoughtless, thankless creatures, their only creed survival of the fittest, then the Sea was the very creator, and composer of the theme. Fierce, desperate mating followed by birth in huge numbers, of which not one in a hundred reached adulthood to fight and breed again, seemed the unbroken rule of this world without shelter, where life and death chased each other like madness, and none were immune.
One morning he watched as a pair of tiny animals, some forgotten offshoot of the hermit crab, dueled at the bottom of a small, clear tidal pool for the affections of a waiting female. Not only was their battle as cruel and fierce as any he had ever seen on land, but the speed and nature of their movements was so reminiscent of the small, poisonous spiders of the Carak that he, an immense land animal infinitely safe upon the inaccessible rock, had unconsciously recoiled in fear and disgust.
On another occasion a smallish gray shark, deceived this far north by an alluring current of warm water, became entangled in one of the nets they had strung at the end of a natural jetty. When dragged ashore with the meager catch that had lured it, its death struggle had been so ferocious that it haunted Kalus' sleep for weeks afterward. Hopelessly entangled, drowning in a sea of air, it had nonetheless thrashed and snapped for what seemed a eternity, destroying the net and reeking such havoc that the startled fisherman, had he been able, would gladly have thrown it back into the sea. And even when it finally expired, the razor-sharp teeth and leering jaws had presented such a frightening specter that he refused, instinctively, to touch it.
Reluctantly Sylviana had admitted that this behavior, either in killing or being killed, was in no way exceptional among sharks. And far from being the archetype of its race, this relatively small and undeveloped creature could not begin to match the rakish refinements of the Blue, the Tiger, and the ineffable Great White. That they preferred to feed upon the dead and dying, that they usually left substantial, uninjured creatures alone, was robbed of all comforting assurance by the fact that their perceptions were so dim, their mental development so limited, that the actions of a given individual in a given situation could in no way be safely predicted. Like life itself, there was just no telling. From this experience these thriving, thoughtless killers became for him the very symbol of the dark, violent side of nature that had always so terrified and appalled him.
'There must be something more to life,' he said, on the thirteenth night since their arrival. They sat before a driftwood fire in the sand, protected from the wind by the high north wall, a short distance from their cave. With the stars above and the soft murmur of the waves before them, there was peace and sadness enough in his heart to speak of it, and to admit the vague emptiness he found so hard and painful to express. For he knew that she felt an emptiness, too.
'All the birth and dying,' he continued, 'The endless struggle just to survive, and to create new beings to struggle and die when you are gone. It is very hard for me to say this, Sylviana, but there are times when I think Nature is very cruel, and I can see no wisdom in living only by her laws.'
'But aren't you the one who's always saying that the societies of men must have failed because they had forgotten the simple goodness of Nature, primal virtue' and all of that? That society had overridden the subtle ways of the Tao, creating its own, alternative order in which Man's will alone was powerful? That there were no natural, softening influences to prevent man's ignorance and violence?' Her words seemed mockery, but there was a reason for them. She was trying to draw him to the heart of the matter, which could be difficult when he became thoughtful and began to withdraw.
'You know I've said these things, and you know I still believe them. But why couldn't men do both: raise themselves above the endless struggle, and still have the thought and compassion to put away war and racial hatred, to feed and clothe and give medicine to those who need it? Why does it have to be one or the other?' There was no answer to such a question. Impatiently, she stirred the fire with a stick.
'Aren't you really trying to tell me that you've decided to visit the island at all costs, and that you're afraid of what you might find there?'
'Yes,' he replied dourly, confused.
'Why are you so threatened by the Children? From everything you've told me, they sound even more primitive than the hill-people.' For a moment his eyes flashed, but he knew she meant no insult.
'Because I think there could be some other colony on the Island as well.' Her eyes became suddenly large, and she turned toward him intently. He continued reluctantly.
'I told you I've seen the smoke of campfires, and as many as twelve riders at once making toward the island at sunset. But I've also seen other lights, bright and unnatural, and broad beams that split the night….. I don't know what they mean.'
As she heard this her heart beat suddenly faster. It was all too fantastic. Old voices and dreams that she had thought dead and in the past, surged recklessly to life inside her.
'We've got to go there! We've got to find out.'
'Yes.' He paused, watching her intently in his turn. 'I'm sorry I couldn't tell you all at once. It was a lot to think about.'
'I understand.' She got up and began to pace restlessly, breathing too deep, unable to control it. 'Oh, Kalus, I feel as if I'm going to burst.'
'I'll be there with you.'
'Yes. YES.' Like a child she ran and wrapped her arms about him.
But later that night, unable to sleep and watching his familiar form beside her in the darkness, she was dismayed by a strange voice that told her she wished she was going alone. Even as he had said, she began to wonder how deep, how true, how honest was their love? And for the first time in many months she felt the terrible uncertainty of the dreamer who has wrapped all hope and affection about the shoulders of a single lover.
IS THIS THE MAN I WANT TO SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE WITH? And as much as she wanted to say yes, she couldn't. Because she didn't know.
*
In the chill hour of dawn Kalus woke, and in turn looked upon the sleeping figure into whom he had poured his life's blood. To see her lying there beside him, breathing evenly, her face warm and softened like a child's, was all that he had ever asked, or ever could ask, of the Nameless. His love for her in that moment, when he knew, or feared, that her loyalty to him would soon be put to its severest test, was almost unbearable. Thoughts of a life without her he could not begin to face, and he, too, felt a moment of doubt.
'Sometimes if you love someone, you have to let them go.' She hadn't meant the words then, but what if now….. If their love could not stand, in the bright and hard light of day, then the efforts of a lifetime were in vain. For if she, who knew him to the depths of his being—-his trials and broken dreams, his personal weakness and indomitable strength—-if she found in him nothing to love and cherish and hold on to, then who in all the cold, lonely world ever would?
If he had known the full quotation, or she the effect its partial phrasing would have on him, perhaps they could have talked it out, and both found in these simple but profound words some solace:
'If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it is yours. If it does not, it never was.'
And if, in that moment he had woken her, perhaps she would have seen in his eyes a depth of love that put aside all questions, and in the returning echo of her heart, sealed their bond forever. But he did not wake her, because he was afraid. And she never told him the full quote, because like so many of life's precious and irretrievable moments, it was gone forever.
He couldn't cage her, and he knew it. She couldn't love him fully without knowing. So be it.
So it was.
It had been decided that they should build a boat. The only questions left to them were what kind of vessel it should be, and whether to cast off directly from the cove, or to build the craft some distance upstream along the banks of the Broad River, and follow its currents through the delta which then spilled to either side of the Island.
Two considerations made Kalus choose the latter course. First there was the problem of acquiring the wood. There were no trees of substance within a mile of their rock-bound haven, and no way of transporting the farther wood here. Second, neither he nor the girl had sufficient experience in ship-building to put an adequate vessel to sea, and perform the long, slow tack against both wind and current, northward. And though building the craft upstream meant exposure to the returning land animals, this danger, at least, he understood and could in some measure anticipate. For he knew without being told that only a fool takes to the sea unprepared.
So for the first long days, until Kalus understood well enough to continue on his own, they made the journey together to the riverside clearing where he had cut a single trunk of elm. Eighteen feet long, it would be halved and hollowed out, later to be lashed together into a sturdy, double canoe. James Michener had described such a boat in his tales of Hawaii, and Sylviana had never forgotten. Nor had she dreamed in those easy, carefree days at Ithaca College that she would one day be drawing her very existence from the precious knowledge such men passed on.
'Great fullness seems empty, yet it can never be exhausted.' So Lao Tsu had said, and more and more in these uncertain days he was proving the most trustworthy guide. Her life had become like a precious ring dropped into a shallow stream: the thrashing of her hands only muddied the waters, and made it impossible to find. Let the stream flow and cleanse, let the sediments sink back. Then, and only then, could she see what lay at the bottom.
But if Sylviana felt the need and desire to surrender, Kalus experienced a vastly different emotion: raw and intolerable frustration. He could not understand why Nature seemed to resist him at every turn, in an endeavor which he knew must be put forward and carried out. And the conditions in which he was expected to pull off this miracle were appalling. He had neither saw nor plane nor adze, every day the threat from the returning animals grew, and yet somehow he must construct a boat in which to trust the very lives of those he loved.
Each morning he would rise, his back aching from the previous day's labor, and make the five mile journey across rock and open land to the small clearing, there to struggle and shape until the sun began to set. Then the journey back, to a place he could hardly think of as home, and a life which began to seem more and more alien, without the roots of his past. The girl massaged him, encouraged him. But since the night of his full disclosure a subtle wedge had been driven between them, intensified by Kalus' need to concentrate all his energies on personal safety and construction of the craft.
It reminded her at times of the way he had spent himself in constructing the barrier to the Mantis' cave, and its later effect on him. But she kept this to herself, knowing that previous labor had been essential as well, and completed not a day too soon. Hidden fires drove him, and if they tended to turn him in upon himself there was little she could, or possibly should do to change it. He became once more an enigma to her, and at times it seemed they met at nightfall like loyal strangers, cast upon a desert island and enjoined, of necessity, to live and work, and carry out disparate dreams of love, together. It was a cold metaphor, perhaps, but there was no denying it. He had been to her, literally, the last man on Earth. And she to him? The fact that he truly loved her, and would have if given the choice of thousands, he could not tell her, and she didn't ask. His love was primal, unquestioned. And though she too had felt these pure, gut-level urgings, she was reluctant to be bound by them, when there were so many other things to consider. And to look at it from every possible angle didn't help. The questions only brought more questions. Only time, and trial, would tell.
In the end Kalus' will proved stronger than the knotted wood and lack of tools. The boat was finished and rigged, and the moment was at hand. They waited for a day when the winds were not contrary, then set out together for the clearing, the vessel, and the mystery that lay beyond.
The double prow of the canoe floated gently in the swirling backwater of the launch, its stern still bound by gravity to the sloping earth of the bank behind. The supplies (what there were of them) had been loaded, and the make-shift sail unfurled from the high, horizontal yard. There in the shelter of trees, and running parallel to the wind, it rocked gently against the mast as the newly tied ends waved fitfully, showing every sign of readiness.
But Kalus, looking out upon the wide, sweeping waters and thinking of the still greater pool beyond, could not bring himself to force the vessel farther. His emotions were running much too high, and the fear of the unknown wrapped about him so thickly that he could not shake off its clinging dread and despair. And despite the presence of the girl and the cub, he felt as small and helpless and alone as he ever had. Courage alone would not forge this crossing. He needed guidance as well.
And in this he showed not cowardice, but wisdom. For we are all at the mercy of winds and currents we cannot always see or understand, and those who strut about pretending to be in firm control, are usually in such control all the way past the maw of death, and into the belly of unmaking.
'Sylviana,' he said finally. 'It may be foolish….. I would like to say a prayer first.'
She was surprised by the request, but in no way opposed. She felt much the same uncertainty. So without kneeling or folding hands, whose gestures he had never learned, he bowed his head and spoke in deepest earnest.
'Nameless God. Perhaps you cannot hear me, or perhaps you laugh at my weakness. I do not wish to ask you this. But I am just a small and simple man; I cannot control all things. The waters into which I lower this boat seem cold to me, and I am afraid. Please, if you care and can hear me, bring us safely to the Island.'
He paused, and for the first time in many days the woman was intently aware of his existence. His eyes closed hard and his hands folded together unknowingly. This was coming from the heart.
'I do not wish to die,' he continued. 'But if one of us must die. . then let it be me. For I could not live without my Sylviana. She is my life.' He choked back wretched tears until he felt a soft pressure against him, and sweet arms enfolding his gnarled head and scarred shoulders.
'Don't,' she said gently, reproaching herself for her coldness.'I'm here with you. I'm with you.'
But to her surprise he did not return this overture. Instead he stepped back, shook his head severely, and said to her. 'I thank you, Sylviana. And I am sorry for this moment of weakness when I must be strong. But whatever you feel for me, it must not be pity.'
'I only thought—-'
'No. Not now. The passage we are about to make is perilous, and we must put all our thought and effort into it. There will be time for emotions later. There is no other way. Are you prepared?'
.. 'Yes.' He moved away from her and lifted the balking cub, placing her in the left-hand shell, where the woman would ride. 'We must be off.'
Without further speech they pushed the craft the remaining distance, then clambered in to take up their positions near the back of the parallel hulls, there both to paddle and steer, using only the awkward, bladed shafts that he had made.
*
Almost at once Kalus perceived the most serious flaw of his construction. The vessel was too heavy. As soon as they left the dreamy backwater he knew it. The catamaran-like craft responded to the current, and as the sail slowly filled, to the wind as well. But it often moved (or failed to move) with a will of its own. The strokes of their paddles, and even with the girl joining him for a time in the right-hand shell, were barely enough to move them a safe distance from the shore. A less auspicious beginning was hard to imagine.
And the boat was horribly slow to tack, or even move to counter the wind. This concerned Kalus more than anything. For at the meeting of the Broad River and the River of the North—-in the wide water-tract of the delta—-the southward flow of the latter would try to carry them away from their destination, and out into the open sea. He had cut the hulls as sharply as possible in lieu of a keel, and even leaned them slightly outward at the girl's suggestion. But rudderless, keelless, this was not enough. The best he could manage with the now deployed steering oar was a straight line eastward, by precious yards slowly gaining the center of the stream. How he would hold it at the meeting of the two rivers and the open sea he could not imagine, though he exhausted his mind in trying. His fear and sense of helplessness grew with each passing moment.
Strange to say, Sylviana's impressions at this early stage of their journey were nearly the opposite. To her the waters had a soothing, almost hypnotic effect. Kalus had not told her the possible complications of the voyage, being uncertain himself; and for reasons all her own she felt a naive (and perhaps misguided) assurance that all would be well. The river was broad and quiet and tranquil. The sun shone bright in an open sky lightly touched with cirrus, and a great adventure was at hand. Everything was so wide open and free: alive, still young, and in the future. The world of her past seemed to slip behind with the running coast, so easily, leaving hardly a trace of memory. But for the presence of Kalus and the pup, she would almost have believed all the tribulations of the War and the Valley to have been nothing more than a bad dream, from which she was finally waking.
But the sight of Kalus brought her back: the look of worried consternation, his desperate struggle as he wrestled with the steering oar. She watched him for a time, unwilling, and it all came back.
Only once, on the first day she hunted with him, had she witnessed this kind of ruthless determination, and through it, felt the harshness of the world that had shaped such creatures: what he had called the hungry, haunted look of a predator. So severe were his efforts, so wholly single-minded, that despite her resolve to face the crossing bravely, his unspoken fears began to rub off on her. And the rising walls to either side of them, the quickening current they now entered, turned the world ominous and forbidding once more. Almost she resented him for it, as if his actions had somehow changed the very nature of the stream.
As for Kalus, he had said his prayer, and now set out with every weapon at his disposal to make it unnecessary. Self-reliance remained the golden rule of his existence, and he knew that all their lives were in his hands. The hands of the Nameless, if they existed at all, were a thing beyond his (or any man's) control.
But there was no more time for such thoughts. The Broad River was broad no longer, its shore no longer peaceful and forested. Great cliffs rose up on their right, the last reaches of the granite ridge. To the north the gray rock was not as steep, but its effect on the river was the same. All its wide and lazy waters now issued with great force through a deep, narrow channel scarcely sixty yards wide, falling nearly twice that distance in less than a mile. The result was a horrific, white-water chute, now drawing them swiftly to itself. Kalus' harsh voice cut through the growing roar.
'Tie down the cub,' he commanded, 'And then yourself. Take solid hold of the paddle; we've got to keep the boat running straight. And for anything short of death, DON'T LET GO OF THE PADDLE. Now!'
Half stunned, hardly knowing where she was, Sylviana obeyed him. She made the whimpering pup lie down, and bound her securely. Then with shaking hands she tied the waist-rope about herself. She straightened and took hold of the shaft, both knuckles and face turning coldly white. She glimpsed at Kalus, who nodded gravely. This danger they both understood.
Several times through the roar and spray of their passage, the boat tried to whip about and dash itself against the rocks, or turn sideways to be rolled and lost. But each time, one of the rowers would pull forward with desperate strength while the other steered or slapped back at the water till the blade finally dug in against the fume: straight ahead, blocking out the screaming fear, determined.
And when the smoking mists cleared and the chaos died away, as the tract broadened and the waters smoothed again just as swiftly, their craft remained, unbroken and undaunted. Kalus gave a cry and shook his fist at the sky, while the girl wept. Another obstacle had failed to defeat them.
But Kalus was given no time for celebration, and he knew it. Soon they would enter the delta, and the meeting with the more voluminous North River. Immediately he threw down the paddle and took up the longer, stouter steering oar. The sail was heavy and wet, bunched unevenly along the yard; but with supreme, unyielding effort he tried to angle the craft into the wind, which to his dismay now turned nearly straight from the North.
The mast gave a troubled groan; the right hull and stern sank dangerously low in the water. But that was all. He could change the direction of the prow but not their course. The hulls' edges simply would not bite and drive them forward. For all his cursing the craft barely held center. And soon the North River would be upon them. Sylviana raised her dripping face, her chest heaving both with oxygen and emotion. And for all her trauma, she felt a swift and stark moment of recognition. Creeping feelers of memory had been pushing at her consciousness for weeks, since they came to the cove and she caught her first glimpse of the Island in the distance. Now their message hammered through.
The island that lay before them, broad and flat across the muddy waters of the delta. . .was the ruin of once proud New York City. The river to the north was the Hudson.
She gazed at it in a stupor of disbelief. Not a single scraper touched the skies of Manhattan, only mangled upheavals of stone and steel. The City had been stripped to a foundation of jagged, broken teeth, then left to endure ten thousand years of weathering.
NEW YORK! All this time, feeling at the ends of the earth, she had been less than twenty miles from the place of her birth. It was too incredible to accept, too unlikely to be anything but the truth. Her spirit swooned at the sight of it.
But whatever the Christian name of the river they now encountered, to Kalus it might as well have been the Finger of Satan. The two currents merged into an uneasy bay, lapping slowly but steadily south-eastward. He redoubled his efforts with both sail and paddle, striking furiously at the water till the veins of his forehead seemed ready to burst. But he could not fight the devilish pull.
Away! It carried them away! With all Sylviana's help, he could draw no closer to the Island. The SEA lay beyond, nothing but the sea! Dear God, it was slow, certain death that awaited them! In the final measure he had failed, miserably and utterly. He tore down the Judas sail and fell forward and surrendered to despair.
They were lost.