The Deep (7 page)

“But I need your help,” I
protest, trying to make my voice take on a pleading tone. To be
honest, I would probably survive a trip to Newexter on my own, but
I suddenly get the feeling that a trip home would be good for Ben.
If only to see his brother again. Ben can try to convince me all he
wants – he must miss his brother. Even though Saul is a dangerous
guy. Or was, anyway. After the revolution in both east and west,
nobody is the same anymore. It’s very well possible that Saul has
turned his life around, too.

Ben sighs deeply. “Okay,
fine,” he grunts reluctantly. “But I am not joining the
shipbuilders’ team in Newexter. Carl needs people for his mock team
at St Martin, so I’m going to stay in Hope Harbor.”

“Of course you can.
Nobody’s forcing you to go back.”

“Uhm – I think the
Bookkeeper did just that,” Ben says sarcastically.

I smile briefly. “Fair
enough. But I meant for good.”

“Good.” He stares at the
floor. “When do we leave?”

“Right now,” Carl’s voice
pipes up behind us. When I turn around, I catch the serious look in
his eyes. “As soon as you get the Eldest’s permission, you should
let me know so I can send my workers on their way.”

“Will do.” I pull Ben
along, through the hallway and outside, to pack some food and
drinks for our journey into the unknown.

The first part of our trip
isn’t too hard – we hitch a ride with a farmer, who is returning
home with an empty carriage after delivering some grain and wool in
town. His farm is in the suburbs close to the forest.

“Where are you lot going?”
he asks curiously when we have almost reached his destination.
Apparently, he has noticed our bulging backpacks.

“We’re visiting my
brother,” Ben replies. “He lives in Newexter.”

“Ah, yes.” The man gives
him a pondering look. “You came to live with us after the
reconciliation. Weren’t you a part of the team working on a second
ship?”

“Yes, but I quit,” Ben
gripes. “I don’t think there’s much point in going on. All of our
work was destroyed.”

“Yeah, well.” The farmer
pulls over and lets us get off. “You might be right.”

“We have to trust in the
Force within,” Ben continues. “And whatever’s waiting across the
Waters should come to us, not the other way around.”

When we take the footpath
leading to the forest, I can still feel the farmer’s gaze on us.
What could he be thinking – is he a supporter of Phileas, or is he
more inclined to listen to Samuel Senior?

“Well acted,” I compliment
him once we’ve disappeared into the woods. “I don’t think that man
suspects we’re going to set up a secret shipyard on the other side
of the island.”

Ben smirks. “I’m a good
liar.”

Sometime later, the path
gets so narrow that we can’t walk beside each other anymore. I
picked this neglected track on purpose. This way, hardly anyone
will notice us cross. Walt told me where he jumped the Wall the
first few times, and it seemed like a good idea to use his sneak
route.

“What was it like in Hope
Harbor, before everything changed?” Ben inquires, making his way
uphill behind me.

“Quiet,” I answer.
“Peaceful. But restrictive, too. It used to choke
Yorrick.”

“Who’s Yorrick?”

I close my eyes for a
second. “My fiancé,” I quietly respond.

“Aha, so you
are
tying the
knot soon,” he teases me. “I thought you said you weren’t ready for
that yet?”

I come to a stop and turn
around to face Ben. “Yorrick’s dead. That’s why I’m not ready to
get married yet.” It’s the truth. Even though it’s been three years
since Yorrick crashed to his death on the rocks. Even though I have
said goodbye to his beautifully decorated funeral barge, seeing it
off as it floated away toward the horizon. I can’t let go. It would
feel like betrayal if I did.

Ben’s eyes widen. “Oh, no.
I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. What happened to him?”

“He was killed by our
priests,” I whisper. “Because the horizon couldn’t stop
him.”

“Dark Father,” he mumbles,
distressed, as he reaches out for my hand. His fingers touch mine
and he squeezes them consolingly. “I’m really sorry for
you.”

I smile bitterly. “See? The
criminals don’t just live on your side of the Wall. We used to have
them too.”

After this, we don’t speak
for a long while. In my head, I go over the directions Walt has
given me to get to the stretch of Wall he could easily scale. Like
he said, there’s an old chestnut tree whose branches droop down
over the edge of this bit of the Wall. “We need to climb this
tree,” I explain. “Walt crossed here the first time.”

Ben follows me.
Fortunately, he turns out to be as good at climbing trees as I am.
In no time, we are on the other side. My gaze drifts to a set of
flat stones on the ground forming some kind of road. Thoughtlessly,
I trace the cracks in the surface with my big toe. “Shall we follow
this path?” I suggest.

“How do you know where
that’s going?” Ben asks.

“Well, I take it
you
know.” I give
him a sideward glance. “We’re on your turf, aren’t we?”

“Just follow me,” he snaps,
taking off so hastily that I need to scamper after him just to keep
up. I roll my eyes. Why exactly did I think it was a good idea to
drag Ben along to this place?

It’s not until we leave the
woodland and end up at a large meadow that I understand the reason
for his black mood. A giant building looms in the distance. The
manor he lived in most of his life – the place where they executed
Henry. He would probably have preferred to steer clear of this
house.

Ben slows down more and
more as we get closer, and finally comes to a full stop.
“What
is
this?” he mumbles, completely stunned.

Teenagers are sprawled out
on the lawn in front of the house, lounging in the sun and eating
sandwiches. The main doors are wide open. A few elderly ladies are
sitting on the terrace enjoying fresh fruit from a bowl on the
table they’re sitting at. And a big sign above the entrance
proclaims this building is a ‘Youngster School’.

“Looks like lunch break to
me,” I say flippantly.

“They teach here?” Ben’s
eyes almost pop out of their sockets. “To youngsters?” He dazedly
shakes his head. I don’t think he is even aware of doing it. It’s
clear he’s completely weirded out by the idea of his old home being
a place for education now.

“Maybe the Bookkeeper
suggested it,” I continue. “We have a similar kind of school in
Hope Harbor. People in our town attend school until they’re
eighteen. And these people need to learn new things about what the
world looks like now. Survival is no longer the most important
subject of the curriculum, I think.”

My words don’t seem to help
him cope any better. “I can’t believe they accepted this,” he says
at last. “That girl over there always hated the house.” He points
at a red-head under a chestnut tree. “She loathed this
place.”

“I guess it had more to do
with Saul and you than the manor itself,” I reply. When I see him
cringe, I add: “Look, I’m sorry, but that is the truth. At least
now she has the chance to build some better memories of this
place.”

Ben closes his eyes. “Let’s
just go to the village,” he mutters. “I don’t want to go in
here.”

“Fine with me.” Though I
wouldn’t have minded taking a look around. After all, this is the
first time I’m visiting Unbeliever territory. It might not be as
exciting as sailing to the World across the Waters, but it’s still
a huge step.

A well-kept path runs from
the manor house to Newexter, the village where all the older
easterners and their children used to live. When the first houses
appear through the trees, I see that nearly all of them are made of
wood. Ben is right – there must be enough timber in Newexter. Most
houses in Hope Harbor are made of stone and consist of two floors.
For the first time ever, I wonder if our ancestors even built those
houses themselves. A few months ago, both lighthouses had to be
repaired, and that was quite a tough job – so hard, in fact, that
the builders marveled at how our forefathers had ever managed to
build them in the first place. The priests claimed Annabelle had
put them there as a gift to us, so we could look out for her Fleet.
But that doesn’t explain why all of Hope Harbor looks far more
structured and neatly-ordered than Newexter. If we all descend from
little children who were stranded here, it is far more likely that
the bigger group of children who decided to stay near the harbor
started living in dwellings that were already there.

Newexter is an entirely
different story. Every house looks different. Some have beautiful
wooden carvings along the rooftops, while others are mostly
decorated with brightly-colored paint that is probably made from
the same plants that we use to dye our wool. And in the middle of
the village square is a gigantic building that looks more beautiful
than all the others: dark-red, with fanciful yellow and green
stripes running up the walls like flower vines.

“That’s the village hall,”
Ben says. “If you want to talk to the Eldest, that’s where you’ll
find him.” To my utter amazement, he then turns away from me and
stalks off without saying another word.

“Hey, Ben!” I call after
him, but he doesn’t listen. The path he takes runs up the hill
behind the village hall. I have no idea where it leads. “Where are
you going?”

When Ben doesn’t reply or
come back, I pace toward the entrance of the hall, fuming inwardly.
Ben dodging off like that means I will have to talk to the Eldest
all by myself, and I don’t feel that confident all of a sudden. I’m
a nobody. I have no clout in this village. The old guy doesn’t even
know who I am. How Ben can possibly think it’s a good idea to let
me do all the work is beyond me. What a jackass.

When I step into the foyer,
I spot a nicely-dressed lady behind a sort of desk. She must be the
receptionist.

“Good afternoon,” she
greets me with an inquisitive look in her eyes. “Do you have an
appointment?”

I stand a little bit
straighter. “No, I don’t, but I was sent here by the Bookkeeper,” I
hear myself say in a tone of voice I hadn’t expected to use at all.
“My name is Alisa. I was engaged to the Bookkeeper’s son before he
died, and now, I am the Bookkeeper’s acting assistant.”

The woman nods briefly. “I
will fetch the Eldest,” she says, indicating a row of chairs to the
left of her desk. “Please, have a seat.”

When the Eldest makes an
appearance at last, I was about to give up hope. I guess he wasn’t
near, or busy, or both. With hurried steps, he comes up to me and
shakes my hand.

“Welcome, Alisa,” he says.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. I was in the middle of a rather heated
meeting.”

“Oh?” I cock my head. “What
about?”

“Well, let’s just say that
it hasn’t exactly been easy for us since Leia decided to turn our
world upside down together with Walt and Tony.” He leads me to his
study and continues to talk on our way there. “Young and old fight
each other. Some parents got so fed up with their children that
they told them to move out again. The youngsters can’t get used to
parental rules anymore. One week ago, a small group of about twenty
youngsters decided to leave Newexter altogether. They went north
and started a new village there called Newmanor.”

“And the parents agreed to
let them go?” I muse.

The Eldest nods, a frown
knitting his gray eyebrows together. “It’s not as crazy as it
sounds. After all, we were all raised with the idea that a
ten-year-old is an adult person.”

“And those children in
Newmanor are that young, too?

“No, not them. The youngest
is fifteen and the eldest is seventeen, from the top of my head. To
be honest, I’m rather relieved they left. The youngsters and their
parents were at each other’s throats. The situation became
untenable.”

I raise an eyebrow almost
imperceptibly. Is he really that surprised that those
fifteen-year-olds got into fights with their parents? Everyone
knows that’s a difficult age. On the other hand, they might not
know that here. How would they? Children move out before they even
get to that rebellious phase in their lives. What word had Tony
used for it again? Puberty, or something to that effect.

“Is that where Saul went?”
I inquire.

“No. Saul keeps a low
profile. Besides, the Newmanor group wants nothing to do with him.
Saul took up residence in a deserted part of the woods behind the
burial grounds. Just like those two priests from Hope Harbor, by
the way. They come into Newexter every now and then to do some
groceries, but that’s about it as far as socializing
goes.”

“The burial grounds?” I
echo. What exactly do they bury there?

The Eldest smiles faintly.
“Yes, we bury our dead. You people use boats, don’t
you?”

I nod curtly. “Speaking of
boats,” I start hesitantly. “That’s the reason I’m here.” I take a
seat across from Newexter’s leader and start explaining about the
trouble we’ve experienced in Hope Harbor. My voice is subdued when
I tell him of the religious group looking to sabotage the creation
of our own fleet. “And so Ben said it might be possible for us to
move the shipyard to this part of the island,” I surmise. “Now that
our own harbor is no longer safe.”