The Mantooth
Copyright© 2018 by Christopher Leadem
Chapter 34
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.
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