🏝️ Chapter 12: The Keeper of the Lie
The rest of the day was a slow agony. The men avoided me, their glances a volatile mix of hope and resentment. I was no longer the innocent cabin boy; I was the selfish keeper of a life-saving secret. Harker's lie had built a cage around me, and every moment that passed reinforced its bars.
I was given a wide berth on the beach, left to sit alone with my back against the overturned longboat. The sun, reflecting off the bone-white sand and the pale sea, was merciless. The metallic taste of the island was in everything, even the hardtack and salted pork Gully handed me without a word. I ate without tasting, my mind racing, searching for a way out of the trap Harker had sprung.
As dusk began to bleed the color from the sky, painting the Ivory Isle in shades of grey and deepening blue, I felt a presence beside me. It was The Professor. He sat down, not looking at me, his gaze fixed on the darkening line of the Whispering Wood.
"The needle is still spinning," he said quietly, as if continuing a conversation we'd already started. "It does not point north. It points inward. Towards the heart of the island." He finally turned his head, his sharp eyes studying me in the twilight. "Harker's lie is a compass too. It points all their fear and hope directly at you."
"I don't know anything," I whispered, the words tasting like ash. "Thorne told me nothing else."
"I believe you," The Professor said, and the simple statement was a balm on my raw nerves. "But belief is not a shield. When we enter that wood tomorrow, they will expect you to lead them to safety. When you cannot, their hope will curdle into something far worse."
"What should I do?" I asked, desperation clawing at my throat.
"A lie, once set in motion, must be fed," he said, his voice low and pragmatic. "You must give them something. A small truth, or a convincing falsehood. A direction. A landmark. Something that fits the chart, but that Harker cannot immediately disprove. You must seize the compass from him."
He stood up, brushing the white dust from his trousers. "The island defends itself, boy. It uses our own fears against us. Harker is just its latest instrument. Do not let him be its most successful one."
He melted back into the gloom, leaving me with a terrifying, germinating idea. I was not a cartographer or a navigator. But I had held the chart. I had stared at it for hours in Harker's office, its every line and notation seared into my memory. The Whispering Wood. The river. The Spine of the Serpent. And the 'X'.
Harker had been fixated on the river. It was the obvious path. But what if the obvious path was the trap?
Later that night, as a watch was set and the men tried to sleep on the unforgiving ground, I approached Harker. He was sitting by a small, contained fire, studying the chart, his face a mask of shadow and flickering light.
"I remember something," I said, my voice barely audible over the crackle of the flames.
He looked up, his eyes gleaming with interest and suspicion. "Do you now?"
"Thorne… he was raving. I thought it was the rum. He said, 'The river is a vein, but the spine is the backbone. Don't follow the blood. Climb the bones.'" I recited the words I had crafted, forcing my voice to stay steady.
Harker's eyes narrowed. He looked down at the chart, at the river snaking from the mountains through the wood. "Climb the bones… the Spine of the Serpent." He traced the mountain range with a thick finger. "It would be harder. More exposed." He looked back at me, trying to dissect my soul. "Why would he say that?"
"I don't know," I said, layering my lie with the perfect truth of my own ignorance. "That's all he said. I didn't understand it until… until today."
It was a gamble. A direct challenge to his chosen route. But it was a gamble based on the island's own perverse logic. The river was clearly deadly. The high ground might offer a clearer view, a safer path, even if it was more arduous.
Harker stared at me for a long, tense minute, the fire popping between us. He was weighing my lie against the evidence of the eels, against the cost of the river path. He saw the same fear in me, but he could no longer be sure of its source. Was I afraid of being caught in a lie, or afraid of the river?
Finally, he gave a slow, deliberate nod. "The spine it is, then." He rolled up the chart, a new, calculating light in his eyes. "We march at first light. You will lead the way to the base of the mountains. And you will pray that your memory is true, boy. For your sake."
He had accepted it. Not because he believed me, but because my lie offered a strategic alternative he hadn't considered. I had taken a measure of control, however small and dangerous.
I walked back to my lonely spot by the boat, my heart still pounding. I had fed the lie. I had become its keeper. And tomorrow, I would have to lead a party of desperate men into the high, treacherous bones of the island, clinging to a hope I had fabricated myself. The weight of it was immense. I was no longer just a passenger on this journey. I was its reluctant, terrified navigator.