by John Boyne
“How big do you need it to be?” he asked. “How many will be sailing?”
“Four,” I replied with a sigh, wishing the number was half that.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” he replied. “You’re getting away before the Berserkers come, I suppose?”
I shrugged. Rumors were flying around the village that, along with his holy man, the King was sending an army of Berserkers to Iceland to put an end to the old beliefs once and for all. These warriors were legendary, each one stranger than the next, a group of men who barely belonged in this world at all and who would fight as if they were lost in trances, using weapons, their arms, their feet, their teeth, their heads, anything they could find in order to subdue their enemies. They screamed and roared like lunatics while they fought, putting so much fear into their opponents that many were known simply to run away in terror, but a Berserker never gave up and would run faster, trap them, throw themselves upon the coward’s body, before ripping him limb from limb in a great fury of bellicose antagonism. Some didn’t believe that the Berserkers were human at all, but I held to none of the old superstitions and preferred to think that they were nothing more than normal men who had lost their minds and returned to the ways of the beasts.
“It’s not that I fear them,” I said, although I did. Very much. “It’s just that I have a mission to fulfill. And I cannot accomplish it here.”
“Where will you sail to?” he asked.
“Around the coast of Hibernia,” I told him. “Then onward to Iberia.”
“A lengthy journey. And a dangerous one. Your mission must be an important one.”
“It is,” I agreed.
The boy whispered something in his father’s ear and Líus nodded, reaching into a bucket next to him and extracting a fish, which, still alive, flopped back and forth in his hands. The boy laid it on the ground then removed a wooden knife with an image of a shark carved into the hilt from inside his coat before driving it directly through the fish’s brain. The unfortunate creature shivered for only a few seconds before settling into the stillness of the dead. He slit it down the center then, removing the innards and piercing the flesh that remained with a stick before sitting quietly by the fire and staring at it closely as it started to roast. I watched as Líus observed him with great love in his eyes and felt a sudden pang for my own lost son, who had not even lived to see his second birthday. Anger burned inside me at the thought.
“I need to leave as soon as possible,” I told Líus in a determined voice.
“The day after tomorrow,” he replied. “I will have something for you by then. Although you may not want to leave on such an auspicious night.”
“The end of ten centuries?” I asked, raising an eyebrow skeptically. “If we retain faith in the old gods, then marking time from the birth of Jesus Christ should mean nothing to us anyway. The day after tomorrow will be fine.” I handed over my pouch of coins and he took them from me, counting the contents slowly, before putting them in his own pocket.
“And so it is agreed,” he said.
* * *
• • •
On the night of the millennium, Ími was still refusing to sail, so I made it clear to him that he could either come with us or stay behind, whichever he preferred, but that there were no other alternatives. Yanníka seemed annoyed by my insistence upon this but didn’t question my authority, and Garðr, who loathed the boy, clearly hoped that he would choose the second option. In the end, however, Ími gave in, albeit with an expression of abject misery on his face.
I chose to set sail at sunset and, as the sun began to fall and I pushed the boat out into the water, I observed another ship approaching from the east. The flag of King Óláfr could be seen flying from its mast and, as it drew closer to the shore, the strange and discordant echo of screaming men could be heard across the waves.
“The Berserkers,” I said as my companions looked in that direction in terror.
I shivered a little as I unfurled the sail and hoped that we would be guided to our destination without incident. The men from the encampment were coming down to the shore now in a large group, awaiting the arrival of these barbarian hordes, and each one was carrying weapons in their hands—spears, knives, shovels, ropes, whatever they could find. As our boat was docked around the curve of a bay, it was a stroke of good luck for us that no one could see us leaving and our boat found its path through the water just as the King’s men landed on the icy shores to unleash what I assumed would be scenes of unimaginable violence.
As we drifted further out to sea, we watched in a mixture of fascination and horror as the two tribes let fly at each other. Limbs were hacked off, heads were lopped from their bodies, blood scattered like spray above the waves, and a part of me felt guilty that I had not stayed to fight alongside my compatriots, but our stay at Vík í Mýrdal had only ever been intended as a short one and I had private business to take care of.
Soon, we had sailed out far enough that the sounds of violence would live on only in our nightmares and I took my place at the front of the deck, next to Garðr, trying to ignore the plaintive cries that were coming from our bear-boy, Ími.
“How many days, do you think?” Garðr asked, and I shrugged as I looked up at the sky, hoping that the stars would guide us correctly.
“Two weeks,” I said. “And even then, we’re relying on the gods not to throw storms in our way.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in the gods?” he said, smiling at me, and seeing his cheerful expression made me realize that I no longer even noticed the burn marks that had so disfigured him. Had they not been there, he might even have been a handsome boy.
“I’ll believe in whatever I have to believe in,” I told him. “If it means that I find my cousin. That’s the only star that guides my life now.”
MOZAMBIQUE
A.D. 1000
MY DREAMS WERE TERRIFYING.
For days, weeks, I knew not how long, I wandered alone, lost in fantasies of places I had never been, arguing with people I had never met, odd words and scraps of strange conversations floating through my mind.
I woke at random hours, perspiration seeping through my pores and soaking the sheets beneath me, an unpleasant residue clinging stickily to my chest and face. Sometimes, the sun leached through the cracks in the stone wall next to my head, scorching the lids of my eyes. When I tried to open them to make sense of where I was, I could make out nothing but blackness. My body was in perpetual pain and, if I tried to move my arms or legs, the agony grew so intense that it either threw me back into a fitful, unhappy sleep or left me crying out for someone who might put me out of my misery.
A hand placed cold, wet cloths upon my forehead and a soft voice sang unfamiliar melodies as I drifted in and out of consciousness.
Occasionally I would rise from my bed in an attempt to walk around the room, pressing a hand against the walls to keep myself from falling over, but the pain in my ankle was severe and I struggled to remain upright. The chamber itself appeared to have an oval shape and contained nothing but a bed on the floor and a wooden table with a roughly carved top. A door led to a second room and, inside, a fire remained lit throughout the day and night, but if I tried to enter, a figure would stand up and walk toward me, ushering me back whence I had come.
“You must sleep,” insisted the voice, a female. “Your strength will return only if you sleep.”
She fed me, too. Warm dishes of a distinctive broth, imbued with the flavors of roasted meats and unfamiliar vegetables, the scent of jasmine and lavender infusing my nostrils, forcing me to drink bowl after bowl. So starved was I that I could feel the food making its way through my body, rebuilding my energy, but as soon as I was satisfied, my eyes would grow heavy and I would return to my disturbed slumber.
Sometimes, I could hear music, the sound of strings being plucked and then a voice filteri
ng through the air once again, the voice of an old woman as she sang a lullaby. Her tone was deep and filled with texture, her intonation suggesting that she had experienced more suffering than most.
When I tried to speak, I found the words caught in my throat and she would shush me anyway, as one might a baby, telling me to wait, that all my senses and abilities would return in time, but that I needed to be patient.
I grew to value the woman’s presence, feeling safe whenever she was nearby. I tried to ask her name but could not seem to make myself understood. And throughout it all were the dreams, the endless, incessant dreams. Pyramids and sculptures, jewelry and wooden steles. Sandals, amulets and elaborate paintings decorating the hulls of boats. What did I know of any of these things? And yet they seemed more real to me than the solid world that surrounded me.
Finally, one morning I opened my eyes to see the sun breaking through the empty space in the stone that served as a window and across which the old woman would sometimes throw a sheet to block out the light. I lifted myself slowly, sitting up against the wall, and when she entered, I looked at her, my eyes able to focus at last. She was very old and wrapped in a tight body of cloths that hid her ancient form. Her skin was wrinkled, and it was obvious from the whites of her eyes and the manner in which she stared directly ahead that she was blind.
“Where am I?” I asked her. “What happened to me?”
* * *
• • •
The storm, it seemed, had broken late on the second night of our journey, and its effects were felt from the southern tip of our land to across the coastal regions. Although my intention had been to sail north toward Dar es Salaam, the head of the mainsail came loose from the mast once the winds began, leaving me to curse Lisula, the man who had sold me such a precarious vessel, and from there we were thrown around the seas at the mercy of an unforgiving God.
My memories were few at first—I could recall sleeting rain, the darkness of the night and our four bodies rolling around the deck every time the boat spun out of control—but these came back to me only gradually as the weeks passed. I had been sleeping in the cabin beneath the main deck when my apprentice, Guvesh, came down to fetch me. The skies were clouding over, he said, and lightning could be seen splitting the heavens in the distance. I could tell by his tone that he was growing anxious but I thought little of it at the time, assuming there would be many such incidents before we reached land but that they would simply test us, not destroy us. When I made my way up the steps, however, I looked around to see Yaya at the helm and the boy Indrus lamenting in a corner.
As I threw myself toward the tiller, Yaya turned back to ascend the grooves in the mast in an attempt to repair the sail that had come loose. As yet, I still believed that we would come to no great harm, that we would surely survive this calamity, but it quickly became obvious that she was struggling to reattach the canvas and, a moment later, the boat slipped further into the heart of the storm, whereupon it began to shake terribly, plunging up and down in the sea before throwing us all back across the deck.
I tried my best to steer but lost my footing in the water that was pouring in on top of us and fell, crashing toward the open door that led to the cabin and then tumbling downstairs, where my entire body slammed against the woodwork. When I pressed my hand to my forehead, it came away red with blood and, although I could feel myself growing dizzy, there was no time to attend to the wound. I ran back up as fast as I could.
Guvesh was at the helm now and when I looked up toward Yaya she was balanced precariously, one bare foot holding tight to a step, the other reaching for the sail, and for a moment it looked as if she might succeed, but then another great wind blew in our direction and I watched as she slipped, lost her footing and plunged into the sea below. I cried out, rushing to the side of the boat, where I saw her emerge from the water momentarily, her mouth open in a desperate gasp for air, before sinking below again, her arm reaching up forlornly. It would have been a fool’s errand to dive in after her—she was already gone—but to my horror I saw Guvesh kicking off his sandals and jumping onto the hull.
“Stop!” I roared toward him. “You’ll drown.”
He shook his head, the foolish boy, and dived in after her, while I did the only sensible thing that I could think of at such a moment, which was to continue to try to steer the boat back to safety, shouting to Indrus to help me.
My eyes clouded with red as the blood poured down my face and, to my astonishment, I felt myself beginning to laugh hysterically. Yaya and Guvesh were certainly drowned, there was no way that they could have survived such treacherous waters, and all I could do now was try to save myself and Indrus.
A great burst of noise from the sky, a streak of lightning to my left, another to my right and then—darkness.
* * *
• • •
It took almost a month for me to be on my feet again, having broken my left arm, several ribs and my right ankle, all of which the old lady, who told me that her name was Tozia, had strapped with splints of wood while they healed. She had lived on the beaches of Quelimane her entire life, giving birth to nineteen children there, almost all of whom had either perished in the sea or in the tribal wars that plagued our country. Blind since birth, she had no idea what it was to see a sunset, to look up at the stars or to witness an expression of love on another person’s face. Others had described to her what trees looked like, how flowers were shaped, how people were formed, but it was impossible to know whether the images drawn in her mind were accurate.
Tozia had discovered me lying on the beach on the morning that I washed in with the tide, clinging to a piece of the boat’s hull, barely alive. Of Yaya and Guvesh there was no sign and I guessed that they now lay together at the bottom of the ocean. Miraculously, however, Indrus had survived and Tozia had taken him to the hut, too, where she had done her best to nurse him back to health, but after a week or so, he succumbed to his injuries. When I was able to walk again, she led me to one of the forest clearings, where she had buried the boy, a simple cross in the ground marking the place where his body lay. She had carved it herself, she told me, using a wooden knife with an image of a shark etched into the hilt, her fingers doing the job of her eyes to see the shapes as they formed before her.
“Did he speak at all?” I asked, imagining how frightened he must have been when he found himself hugging a piece of broken wood and floating in an unknown direction. “Did he know what had happened?”
“He did,” she told me as we stood side by side over the place where his bones lay. “And of the two of you, I thought he would be the one to recover, for he seemed to be growing healthier by the day, but then one evening, he began to cough up blood and was dead within the hour. He was broken on the inside, I think. Your wounds were easier to identify and to heal.”
“And what did he say?” I asked.
“He told me about his parents,” she replied. “How they sold him to a man who treated him badly.”
“I met that man,” I said. “He forced Indrus to wear the skins of animals when they performed the marriage act.”
Tozia turned to the sound of my voice and raised an eyebrow in surprise. “The skins of animals?” she asked. “What manner of insult is that?”
“Some men have very peculiar ways,” I told her.
“I’ve known all types of men,” she said, shivering a little. “But I’ve never heard tell of such a thing before. Anyway, he will be at peace now. Spearthrower Owl will guide him to the next world. And you?” she asked as we stood up and walked away from the boy’s grave, making our way back in the direction of the hut. “What will you do now? Where will you go?”
“Onward,” I said. “Deeper into the continent. I go in search of—”
“A boy with twisted legs,” said Tozia, interrupting me, and I looked at her in surprise.
“Yes,” I said. “My cousin, or s
o I thought of him. And the source of a great betrayal. How did you know?”
She held both hands, palms out, to the sky. “I see more than most men or women do,” she told me. “When I was deprived of my sight at birth, I was given different senses in compensation. Also,” she added with a mischievous smile, “when you were lost in your delirium, you often spoke of him.”
* * *
• • •
And so I began again. More companions lost and a journey to undertake by myself. I sat by the shore that night, planning the boat that I would build when I was fully restored to health, a safer vessel than the one that had brought me to this place, and for the first time I wondered whether my mission was even worth undertaking. My cousin deserved to be hunted down for what he had done, of course, but would I derive any satisfaction from killing him, particularly now that it had cost the lives of three innocent people? Would even more be lost before our paths crossed? And then there was the question of whether I would even be able to find him. I could waste years in my quest, years that could be more usefully spent.
In the distance the sun began to set, and I closed my eyes, listening as the sounds of the waves lapping against the shore echoed around me. The truth was, I had no choice; I was not at ease, and would never be at ease, until I stood face-to-face with him once again and made him answer for his actions.
I would continue on. Alone.
BELGIUM
A.D. 1050
THE BEER TAVERNS OF BRUGES seemed as good a place as any for me to spend some time while I planned my next move. My wounds had healed and when I left the blind woman’s home on Haringvliet island to sail the short distance back to the mainland, it seemed as if the continent was opening up before me like an oyster, with my traitorous cousin the black pearl lying at its deceitful heart. While Tesia had been uncommonly kind, saving my life and nursing me back to health, the deaths of my three companions weighed heavily on my conscience and I felt glad to be among the noise and bustle of mankind once again, where I could smother my guilt by taking frequent advantage of the city’s inns.
