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THE SUN has already set when I finally get home. My dad’s sitting at the table together with Grandpa, his face like thunder.
“Where did you go this time?” he snarls.
“William.” My grandfather tries to appease him, putting a hand on my fathers’s arm.
Dad impatiently swats him away. “No, don’t. I have a right to know where my son was.”
“I was with Yorrick...” I start out.
He glares at me. “Please, spare me your lies. I was worried sick. Yorrick was here to pick you up for your lighthouse shift and he told me you’d taken off for a stroll all by yourself this afternoon. He had no idea where you could be.”
Oh no. Our watchtower shift together – I completely forgot. Yorrick and I were supposed to man the left tower tonight. My cousin’s probably livid.
“I’m going to the harbor,” I say, walking to the kitchen top to grab some fruit.
“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me where you were,” my father snaps.
Suddenly, something collapses inside of me. “I went to the Wall,” I blurt out in a rage. “It’s not all as scary as it’s made out to be, trust me.” I look at Grandpa defiantly. “Oh, and by the way, you know where I was before I went to the Wall? At Grandma’s. And she told me about Mom. She didn’t die of a disease, did she? She was driven straight into the arms of a suicide cult. Because you wanted her to be as pious as possible, and you...” I turn to Dad. “You were too blind to see what was wrong with her. So don’t you talk to me about lies!” If looks could kill, the two men at the table would now wither away.
“Walt, I...” My dad looks at me helplessly. Grandpa has averted his eyes and is staring out the window, his jaw working.
“Don’t know what to say?” I finish for him. “Better keep your mouth shut then. I’m going to the harbor. Have a splendid night together, you two.”
With tears of anger welling up in my eyes, I barrel out the door. I’m completely out of breath when I arrive at the harbor after only five minutes, starting up the narrow path leading up to the left watchtower. The fire up there burns peacefully, but the fire in my heart is starting to consume me from the inside. I have to talk to Yorrick.
“Sit down.” Yorrick points at a stool in the corner of the tower room when I get to the upstairs floor. “I’m half-tempted to tie you to your chair so you won’t run out of here again.” He sounds gruff, but his brown eyes sparkle good-humoredly.
I exhale loudly. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m late and I’m acting weird. But that’s because my life is weird in general.”
My cousin gives me a searching look, and that’s when I spill everything to him about how my life was turned upside down in the past few days – Grandpa’s confession about Toja, Dad’s warning about the temple, Grandma’s revelation about my mother’s death.
“Now I get why my parents never want to talk about Aunt Sara.” Yorrick sounds upset. “Is that why you left us at the park? To talk to your grandma?”
I shake my head. “I went to the Wall.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I think they’ve told us lies about that as well.”
Yorrick nods slowly, pulling a case of cigarettes from his pocket. He always rolls some before we come here on our shifts. I stoke the fire in the pit and then hand over the hot poker to Yorrick so he can light cigarettes for the two of us.
We sit quietly shoulder to shoulder smoking our cigarettes. At last, Yorrick clears his throat. “I also want to tell you something,” he says quietly. “I’ve been reading things, Walt. There’s more to know about the Other Side than the common people here are aware of.”
“What kind of things?” Even more stuff to tear my safe life to pieces. Bring it on.
“There are maps. Maps from a time before our history. Our island apparently used to consist of several smaller islands. They were called the Scilly Isles. It wasn’t until massive earthquakes caused the seabed to rise that they became one, in the era of our ancestors. And this one island isn’t actually that far away from the Other Side.”
He pulls a black crayon from his pocket and gets up from his stool. I watch Yorrick use the seat to draw six jagged shapes, putting names next to each of them. “Tresco,” I mumble. Our own island. “Bryher. Samson. St Martin. St Agnes. St Mary.” I blink my eyes in disbelief at the islands, because they all bear names I’ve known since childhood.
Yorrick nods. “That’s right. Agnes and Mary – Annabelle’s daughters. Martin – Annabelle’s partner. And of course we know those other names too.”
Samson’s Cliffs. Bryher Beach. “Were the islands named after the daughters of the Goddess?” I ask haltingly.
The silence stretches. Yorrick wipes out his drawing and takes a long drag of his cigarette. “I don’t know,” he speaks up at last. “Were the places on our island named after the gods, or were the gods named after the old places?”
I don’t know what to say, because I know what his words mean. That map he discovered discredits the entire religious theory as avowed by the three high priests. “What about the priests’ claim that our island is the only one in the world? That there’s nothing beyond it that we can see? That the Other Side is so far away only Annabelle can make the journey?” I fire off one question after another.
Yorrick stubs out his cigarette. “I saw a coastline on the map. According to the old books, the region is called Cornwall. I have no clue whether Annabelle lives there or not, but I intend to find out.”
He stares at me silently. Slowly but surely, the meaning of his words sinks in. “You want to actually go there,” I say flatly.
“Yes. The minute I succeed my father as Bookkeeper, I’m sailing out.”
“You mean you want to have a ship built?”
Yorrick hesitates for a beat. “Actually, work has already started.”
“What?”
The words spill out of him as though he can’t keep them in any longer. “I’ve compiled a team to build a ship in secret. We deserve to know what’s on the Other Side, Walt. We’re using the old harbor near St. Martin’s to work on a three-master. I was going to ask your dad to help out in a few more weeks.”
“But what about the priests?”
Yorrick laughs derisively. “The priests don’t rule Hope Harbor, Walt – our family does. If they insist on keeping everyone in the dark about things and shying away from learning new things, that’s their problem. But I’m not going to help them do it. Under my rule, we’ll see the dawn of a new age.”
In a soft but resolute voice, Yorrick continues to lay out his plans. He wants to arrange a meeting with the high priests as soon as possible. He wants to take Finn, the youngest priest, on board his ship as an emissary. He’s even come up with a name for the ship: it’ll be called the Explorer. The crew should consist of men and women of all different kinds of trades.
I can’t focus on his story completely, because something’s bothering me. Even though Yorrick’s enthusiasm should be infectious, I can’t ignore one very important question playing through my mind.
If the World across the Waters is really as close as Yorrick claims, why has no one ever come to us?
I’m not so sure I really believe in the land of Cornwall.
I’m not sure of anything anymore.
With a sinking feeling, I realize that I’ve turned into an Unbeliever myself.