Daniel Hatch - In Forest Afloat Upon the Sea

A murmur passed through the prisoners. Some cried out. Others simply cried. No one from Schenker Float cheered. But neither did they express any remorse for the condemned men.

A short while later, with as many of Schenker Float’s population watching as Telly had ever seen massed together, the execution was carried out.

The warriors, still bound together, watched aghast as the heavy line that bound them was lashed tight to a ballast log—a hollow tube filled with crushed pumice. A half dozen men carried the log to the edge of the Great Lagoon, where Henry Adorno stood beside the council secretary with the logbook. The prisoners were lined up along the edge of the dark water.

Henry said a few words that were snatched away by the wind.

Then the ballast log was thrown into the bottomless waters of the lagoon. In one swift motion down the line, the warriors were pulled in with it, one after the other in quick succession, reminding Telly of the tearing of a rotten waterskin. Some gasped, some yelled, some scrambled to avoid their fate at the last instant. But within a minute, they were all under the sea.

In a few days, when the bones were stripped clean and had fallen free from the line, the ballast log would be recovered. Little was ever wasted on Schenker Float.

That evening, while it was still dark, they held the funeral for those killed in the battle.

The pyre was large and nearly filled the treeless verge outboard of the boatyards in Landfall Bay. A lot of charcoal and firewood would be consumed this nightwatch—almost more than the float could afford. But there was no choice. The remains of loved ones were not left to the merciless tenders of the gyre’s deep.

Oils were poured on shrouded bodies, and sweetwoods were stoked around the pyre’s fuel. Grief-stricken family members lingered at the sides of their dead, though Telly could not bring himself to cry here in the open. He’d already said his farewell.

Pastor Kline read the words of the service, but Telly didn’t hear them. He watched the way the torches danced in the wind. He remembered the faces of his father and mother, their voices, their words.

Then the pastor walked the length of the pyre, setting his torch to the fuel. The fire was slow to start, but then roared to life when it reached the oil-soaked shrouds. The smoke rose thick and black into the star-filled sky.

Telly waited until he could feel the heat from where he stood, then approached the point in the pyre that held his parents. When it was almost too hot to stand, he stopped, looked one last time at the broom in his hands, and threw it into the flames.

Then he returned to the edge of the wood, where he sat on the ground, and waited for the fire to burn itself out.

Part of the mystery that lingered in Telly’s mind was solved when the Relief arrived several days later.

Wayland had been aboard a ship sent out by Bishop Anchorage a few weeks ago on a routine patrol. The vessel was to have returned within the past week but when the Relief left for Schenker it had still been overdue. When told of the discovery of Wayland’s body Master DuPage, who was aboard the Relief, was sure that the ship had been lost—another victim of Ajax’s warriors.

Nym had given them little information back on Kronos. He claimed that he knew nothing about what went on within the stockade, though Telly felt he knew more than he would admit.

Telly had had time to think while waiting for the Relief to arrive, time to sort things out. Some things still remained unclear, but he had come to a number of conclusions.

No matter what the immediate cause of the young apprentice’s death, Telly could not help but see a more removed meaning.

It was his own personal twining. Or so it looked. Telly had come to grow suspicious of the meanings of events.

If it was a twining, then its meaning was clear. As was the entire encounter with Kronos Float. Certainly the consequences were.

“I’m going,” he told Eppie the night the Relief arrived. They were on the bridge together, shooting the stars in a clear sky marked by three small, bright moons.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said.

“Afraid? Why?”

“Because I love you, Telemachus McMahon,” she said. “That’s why.”

Telly was glad that the night hid his face and that Eppie could not see him blush. He realized that he was only dimly aware of the truth of what she said. And he realized that he should have been more than dimly aware of it for a long time now.

“I know,” he said. He didn’t add anything, though he was sure she was waiting for him to.

After a long silence, she said: “What do you think now? About your mother and about things?”

“You mean am I a believer? Do you think I’m following God’s Plan?”

“Sort of,” she said. “You seemed so troubled about it before.”

“A lot has changed since then,” he said. “I still don’t know what to believe, but I know what I think.”

“What’s that?”

“That no matter what you believe, things still look like they’ve been arranged by God to accomplish what He wants.”

“Are you sure it’s more than just appearances?”

“No, I’m not,” he said. “In fact, I lean more toward that idea than the other. But I think that’s because I don’t want to believe in a God that would do all the things that He must have done to bring me to this point.”

“Neither do I,” she said. “So what’s the problem?”

“I’m afraid that my own feelings may be slanting my judgment. And that maybe there is no simpler explanation than that. Maybe it is God’s Plan.”

“Is that why you’re going?” she asked, her voice threatening to crack on the mention of Telly’s plans.

“No. I’m going because it’s what I want to do—what I’ve always wanted to do,” he said. “And I’m going because now I’m free to go. And because even if my mother was alive, I’ve reached the point your grandfather talked about. If you’re ready to go, you don’t have to ask.”

“I wish I could change your mind,” she said.

He made no reply. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. But he knew there wasn’t a thing she could do to alter his course.

There were other things he could not tell Eppie. He was reluctant to share what had become a terribly private vision.

Because now he knew deep in his soul how the first colonists must have felt after The Fall: alone, stripped of all connection to the past, faced with a monstrous and vast uncertainty. No wonder they finally came to believe so strongly in the certainty of the De-terminist faith in God’s Plan.

But Telly knew he was different. He knew that he had what it would take to face that uncertainty. He knew how to be a navigator.