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I’M SITTING on the docks, waiting for the boat to return – the longboat my dad hastily prepared to salvage Yorrick’s body. My uncle and my father left five minutes ago. They asked me if I wanted to join them, but I couldn’t. I’m sick with tension and my hands are gripping the edge of the quay so tightly my knuckles have turned white. I stare blindly at the horizon. A good thing it is low tide – once the Bookkeeper and my father get to the rocks at Samson, they’ll be able to moor the boat at the beach and walk to the cliffs to get Yorrick away from there and carry him back.
When I stumbled into Uncle Nathan’s residence a half hour ago, I couldn’t utter a single word besides ‘Yorrick’s dead’. Once my dad appeared at the scene, I incoherently told them it’d happened at the Samson Cliffs, right at the spot Yorrick always went to go running.
I haven’t told anyone about the Unbeliever I saw, because I’m afraid I’ll cause a war to break out if I did. My uncle is devastated. In his state of mind, he would most likely raise an army, tear down the Wall and burn down everything beyond it. But it won’t do us any good at this point. It won’t bring Yorrick back.
“Greetings, my son,” a soothing voice behind me says.
I turn around and see the three priests coming up to me with solemn faces. The oldest of the three brothers, Praed, puts a hand on my shoulder in consolation and grips it for a second.
“Our condolences on your loss,” his brother Finn adds.
I scramble to my feet and shake hands with each of them. “Thank you,” I murmur.
“What a tragic accident,” Praed says gently. “I wish we’d had the chance to bless him before this happened. Yorrick didn’t visit the temple for a long time.”
I nod absent-mindedly. What would have been the point? Blessing or not, he’s dead.
“Could I ask you something?” Praed inquires.
I give a non-committal shrug.
“How did you find him?”
I am about to open my mouth and tell him about the Unbeliever I saw – the assassin who took my cousin away from us – but then I reconsider. Can Praed keep a secret? Or will he tell Uncle Nathan that our enemies are to blame immediately?
A secret. I close my mouth again, frowning. Why did Praed just say that Yorrick hadn’t been round for a long time? He’d been with them this very morning. The high priests were supposed to have blessed him the minute he set foot in the temple. Is it a secret he went to talk to them?
“I agreed to meet Yorrick at the cliffs,” I say hoarsely. “But when I didn’t see him anywhere on the path, I started to worry. And then... then I saw part of the cliff’s edge had crumbled off. I...”
Praed puts his hand on my shoulder once more. “I’m deeply sorry for you, Walt. I know you were close friends.”
“He wasn’t like himself. This morning he didn’t even show up for school. I don’t know what was going on in his head.” A tear rolls down my cheek.
Praed nods sympathetically. “Boys at that age... They don’t talk to anyone. Don’t take it personal.”
I nod mutely.
“We’ll see you at his final journey,” Bram pipes up, the middle brother. “Take care.”
I shake hands with them again before they turn around and leave the quay. I narrow my eyes and stare at them warily as they walk away. My suspicion’s been aroused and its seed lies slumbering at the bottom of my heart.
The Unbelieving killer looked exactly like the bogeyman of myth and children’s tales about the other side of the Wall. A shadow from the dark recesses of our minds, shaped according to the priests’ description, because no Unbeliever has ever been sighted for real. Is it a coincidence that Yorrick was thrown off a cliff only hours after his secret meeting with the priests? Did someone want to silence him?
Under no circumstance should I let it slip that I knew of Yorrick’s plans, because I’m his successor. They’re bound to be watching me.
***
That evening, all of Hope Harbor has come out to be present at Yorrick’s final journey. My uncle and aunt are standing next to the funeral vessel in which Yorrick’s body is laid out, their eyes red-rimmed with sorrow. Yellow flowers adorn the white sheet drawn over his corpse. His body is so wrecked that my uncle thought it best to spare the Hope Harborers from that dreadful sight.
“Sail away now, my son,” Uncle Nathan speaks, his voice grave and muffled at once. “Seek out the current of eternity and find your way to Annabelle, she who will welcome you with open arms.”
Aunt Agetha is crying softly into a frumpled handkerchief. Yorrick was their only child. She’s inconsolable.
Praed comes forward to push off the funeral vessel. Helpless anger seeps into the fists I’ve clenched as I watch him.
Yorrick’s final resting place is taken away by the strong current in Bryher’s Bay. Before long, the sloop containing my cousin’s dead body has disappeared on the horizon. A week from now the smaller dinghy bearing gifts from our family will follow, to make sure he’ll be well-off in the afterlife as well.
Yorrick is on his way to the Island of Souls. Or maybe he will wash up on the shores of Cornwall, that mysterious land he longed to see. The World across the Waters is waiting for him. I burst out in tears when Grandpa Thomas takes my hand and whispers: “Faith, hope and love to Yorrick.”
When I close my eyes, I can still see his broad smile. The stories he told me about his father’s books are still with me, his enthusiastic voice telling me about his plans still ringing in my ears. And right at that moment, standing there in Bryher’s Bay, I decide to honor those memories in the best way possible.
I will see Yorrick’s plans through. I’ll go to the secret wharf and supervise the work myself. I’ll tell my father about the ship, and he’ll help me finish the three-master without informing the temple. Perhaps I’ll even include Uncle Nathan in our plans once I know for sure I can trust him not to blab to the priests. Beside that, I’ll have to prepare for my future task of Bookkeeper and become my uncle’s assistant... before I raise anyone’s suspicion and I end up on the rocks with a broken body myself.