The Coming of the Whirlpool Read Free

birds shrieked, weaving on the wind. Then one folded its wings and dropped away down the escarpment, a white stone plummeting until it was lost to sight. Dow’s heart stung to follow.
    â€˜They fly to each of the Four Isles, it’s said,’ one of the other men commented, ‘without ever having to land.’
    Dow asked, ‘How far is it? To the other Isles?’
    â€˜Far, and beyond far,’ the man replied.
    â€˜Only the Ship Kings know,’ said the fourth man.
    â€˜And they don’t tell,’ added Dow’s father, with a warning in his voice. ‘Nor is it allowed that anyone should ask.’
    But Dow ignored the warning. ‘Has no one from New Island ever been across the sea then?’
    His father shook his head. ‘Not in our lifetimes.’ The other two men were watching silently, and Dow knew he could enquire no further.
    But for a long time he stayed on the cliff top while the other three ate lunch down by the forest’s edge. He could not define to himself exactly what kept him there, or why the ocean drew him so. After all, he would never be able to climb down the cliff to actually touch the water. And even if he did, he would only be swept from the rocks. Dow could swim – all the village children could, they swam in the Long River when it flowed calm in summer – but even from so far above he could tell that the boiling ocean at the cliff’s foot was no place for any human. So why did he desire so badly to descend?
    Howard Amber led the gang abruptly south that afternoon, away from the headland, and they did not go near it again. The snows came and the teams descended into the valley. Dow resigned himself to the long imprisonment of winter and the summer to follow, knowing that all the while he would be waiting for autumn again, and hoping for another chance to spy the sea.
    That hope would be cheated. The next year Dow’s father kept his gang entirely to the southern regions of the plateau, far from the headland, ignoring the question in his son’s eyes, and even the displeasure of the other men, for in fact the best timber was to be found in the north. Dow soon understood that he must battle to hide his disappointment from his father, or risk never visiting the headland again. And he must have succeeded, for the following autumn, when Dow had turned fourteen, Howard Amber once more took his team north.
    This time Dow knew better than to let his excitement show as they neared the headland. And yet once again he was denied, for on the day that they emerged from the forest and climbed to the rocky edge, they found themselves in thick cloud. The ocean below was hidden, even the sound and the smell of it. Dow turned away heartbroken, and his father watched him.
    â€˜We need not come here again, I think,’ he told his son.
    Dow bowed his head. Truly, it might be better if they never did return. This yearning for the sea only seemed to bring him unhappiness, especially if it could be frustrated by something as simple as fog.
    He resolved to forget the ocean.
    Perhaps because of that resolve life in the village did not seem so bad to Dow that winter, or that spring, or indeed that summer. The valley became sunny and warm, scented breezes wafted down from the hills, and the river grew languid and slow and fit for swimming on the long afternoons.
    Also, there was a girl . . .
    Her name was Clara. She was a half-year younger than Dow, the daughter of one of the men in Dow’s own gang. He’d known her all his life, but this year was different. Clara was different: her voice, her laugh, the way she looked at him. She too liked to swim, and there came an evening when it was just the two of them sitting together in the warm shadows on the riverbank, cool water beading on their skin. They were talking of small things only, but every time one of them stretched or shifted, they seemed to inch closer to the other.
    Finally Clara appeared to