Castle of Water: A Novel(42)

“I was a little preoccupied at the time with a giant tidal wave, Sophie. So no, I don’t recall any pictures of canoes.”

“Pfff. Let’s get the flashlight. I’ll show you.”

A determined Sophie Ducel and an extremely bemused Barry Bleecker marched back to the campsite, where they picked up the waterproof flashlight from the survival kit as well as a pair of bananas and two strips of smoked octopus jerky before heading to the tower of rock that composed the island’s core. Sophie took the lead this time, which Barry did not mind in the least, as it afforded him a pleasant view of her derriere.

They took the climb slowly, which was nice, and not even the occasional vomit attack from nested terns was enough to sour the mood. It was a hot day, humid, too, and once they crested the tops of the palms, the unobstructed breeze was delicious on their skin.

“Here, regarde là.” Sophie had reached the mouth of the hollow and was jabbing at the darkness with the beam of her flashlight. “Look at the paintings.”

Barry pulled himself onto the ledge and ducked inside beneath the low-hanging rock. Squinting, he examined the illuminated wall inside. Just as she had described, almost too well preserved to be true, were what he had to assume were Polynesian rock paintings. And they were stunning—a sweeping, stylized seascape of boats, painted in whites and blacks, their edges nearly as sharp as the day they were put there.

“Wow” was all that Barry could muster, crouching in the darkness and staring up at the mural. “Wow,” he muttered again. Up until that point, it had never occurred to him that other human beings, let alone artists, had set foot on their island. The realization added a whole new dimension to its seemingly meager topography. He crept up close and touched ever so gently his fingers to the pigment, and in doing so he felt a shiver, as if caressing a ghost.

“See?” Sophie had assumed a crouch right beside him. “The big boat with all the little men on it is like a—Comment dit-on ‘catamaran’?”

“We say catamaran. Same word.”

“It’s like a catamaran, with a plank resting on top of two canoe floats. But the little ones…” And she jiggled the beam to point them out. “They’re thin and elegant, not big and bulky. And they have that thing hanging off the side to help keep them stable on the sea.”

Barry smacked his forehead. “Of course. They’re outrigger canoes. I remember reading that the Polynesians used them to go between islands. I think it was in that Michener book.”

“What Michener book?”

“Hawaii. It was historical fiction, like a thousand pages long. I read it in junior high.”

Sophie frowned at the middlebrow sound of the thing. “I don’t know about your paperback fake history book, but this is what we need for our canoe.”

“So now it’s our canoe?”

“If the damn thing floats and can get us out of here, you better believe that I’ll be on it with you.”

Barry’s face turned to a sad smile in the flashlight’s wan beam. “I don’t know about that, Sophie.”

“Don’t know about what?”

“I haven’t heard a radio transmission from a ship since the storm. I don’t even know if there will be another one.”

“Who said anything about ships? I’m talking about other islands.”

Barry burst out laughing; he couldn’t help it. “Other islands? Paddling a few miles out to the sea lane is one thing. But actually venturing out there blind and finding another island?”

“The people who made these paintings did it.” She shifted the flashlight away from the cave wall, almost accusingly right upon Barry. “They used boats to go between islands.”

Barry sighed and gently redirected her flashlight back on the paintings. “The people who made these knew what they were doing and where they were going. We’re probably hundreds if not thousands of miles from the closest island, and we don’t have the slightest clue. At a certain point, once you go out too far, there’s no turning back. And the odds of us surviving for weeks or months on the open ocean are one in a million.”

Sophie pfffed in frustration, although for once it wasn’t so much at Barry as at the seemingly arbitrary cruelty of fate. She knew he was right. Their only hope, and a dwindling hope it was, was that someone out there might still find them or that the ships that passed near the island might someday return. The uncertainty of it all was sickening, almost poisonous in its intensity.

Eager to change the subject, Barry unwrapped the smoked octopus and bananas from the bindle of his old dress shirt. “Should we have lunch while we’re up here?”

“Oui, pourquoi pas” was her dry reply as she reached for a banana.

“They are beautiful, though, aren’t they?” Barry remarked between chews.

Sophie nodded, still too polite to talk with a mouth full of food, her eyes still fixed on the wall’s armada of ancient ships.

“And I think you’re right,” Barry added. “If we make our canoe into an outrigger like those, the damn thing will float.”

Sophie swallowed and shone the flashlight ghost story style directly up at Barry’s face. “I know it will. Because I’m going to help you.”

This time, Barry didn’t push the flashlight away.