“I’m sorry,” Eppie said. “It’s just that you haven’t looked very happy the last couple of days, and I want to help.”
“I don’t think you can.”
“You can tell me what’s bothering you. Are you still worried that your mother has other plans for you?”
“I don’t know,” Telly said. “I guess so. I don’t know what I’m worried about now. When the Relief first got here, I was afraid that she would tell me it was God’s Plan for me to stay right here on Schenker Float for the rest of my life. And I didn’t want to believe in God’s Plan because that wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“And you don’t think that way anymore?”
“I don’t know. Now I look at the twining with Duncan Blake and his brother and wonder if maybe there is a plan—and maybe it includes me.”
“Then why don’t you tell your mother that?”
“Because she’s not that kind of believer,” Telly said, realizing the truth for the first time. “She’s one of those who thinks God’s Plan is an excuse to keep doing the same thing year after year. Like Pastor Kline—it means pretending you aren’t there, pretending you don’t have dreams and plans of your own.”
“And you think it means something else?”
“Maybe. Maybe God’s Plan is something you have to figure out only for yourself. And it’s different for everyone. Maybe you just have to listen to what He’s telling you and never mind what everyone else says.”
“Maybe,” Eppie said. “Or maybe you’re making it more complicated than it really is.”
Telly looked at her face, but could see little expression in the fading twilight. He realized with a start how late it must be.
“We’ve got to go back,” he said suddenly. “We’ll be late for the festival.” And worse than that, he thought, he might be too late to find his mother before she dropped off into the dark depths of her night mood.
“Do you really want to leave Schenker Float, Telly?” Eppie asked as they picked their way through the gloom to find the path.
For a moment he was ready to tell her how much he hated his cramped and limited world, where the only adventure consisted of a few brief years in late adolescence when boys and girls wondered which of them would wind up paired off with the other. But he thought better of it.
“I really want to go to Navigation School,” he said. “Come on, let’s go. Here’s the path.” He picked up the pace, almost leaving her behind as he nearly sprinted back to the waters of the Great Lagoon.
By the time he reached the water-front, torches and oil lamps had been lit, the assembly of the discussion group had been transformed into the audience for the festival, and charcoal grills had been set up for barbecuing pork ribs, phib legs, and fish.
Telly arrived just as Duncan Blake walked into the glare of the footlamps set up along the front row of benches.
“My friends, before I begin tonight’s presentation, I just want to thank you all for your kindness and attention,” he said, with a bow and a sweep of his hand. “I am still in something of a fog at the reunion with my brother, but I would like to introduce him to you all now. For more than a side-year, we have been apart, but now we are together—Menelaos to my Agamemnon, Marc Antony to my Caesar.”
Malcolm Blake stepped into the light and bowed his head at the round of applause.
Telly walked through the rows of benches, the smell of roasting meat drifting on the air around him, as he searched for his mother. She would be here somewhere—she never missed a festival.
“Tonight, I will continue with The Iliad,” Duncan Blake said when his brother had resumed his seat and the crowd had grown quiet again. “We left off last time with Book Five, which sings the praises of Diomedes.”
Blake turned his back on the audience and reached down into a rucksack on the ground. He pulled out a leather helmet with a tall bristling brush along the crest and placed it on his head, then removed a wooden breastplate and strapped it loosely across his shoulders. When he turned back to face the audience, he had transformed himself into an Akhaian warrior, telling the tale of humanity’s first and greatest war.
“ ‘No gods, but only Trojans and Akhaians were left now in the great fight upon the plain.’ ” Blake recited. “ ‘It swayed this way and that between the rivers, with levelled spears moving on one another.’ ”
He went on, describing the slaughter of the Trojan battlefield, Achaian and Trojan killing one another in intricate and bloody detail.
Telly spotted his mother and father sitting together at the end of a bench. They chewed on grilled phib legs, his father wiping his fingers on his tunic and his mother pulling the meat apart nervously.
He stopped and watched from where he stood, afraid to get any closer. If he sat with them now, his mother would only harass him and argue over imaginary problems. And there was no way of predicting where that would lead.
No. it would be best to wait until the moment was right. Perhaps at the end of tonight’s Homer, before the play. His mother didn’t like Shakespeare—it required too much concentration to make sense of the dialog and the plot. She would head for home when Blake was through.
Telly grabbed a small rack of pork ribs, using a leaf for a napkin, and found a place to sit where he could watch his parents, biding his time, as Blake told the story of Hektor’s return to Troy.
Before Telly realized it, Blake’s show was over, and the crowd was on its feet cheering. He lost sight of his parents and felt a stab of fear.
He saw them again, gathering their things together, a blanket against the chill of dark and a basket of food. They pressed their way through the crowd towards the path back to Workshop Village.
Telly struggled against the mass of people as he tried to follow them, growing panicky as the people closed in around him. Time was critical now. He had to catch his mother as quickly as possible. Her mood turned so swiftly, and there was seldom any warning. She would be approachable for only a short time. He tried not to think that it might already be too late.
Despite the crowding, Telly worked his way into the open in a couple of minutes, only a few dozen meters behind his parents. He raced to catch up with them.
“Telly,” his father called when he approached. “I didn’t see you back there.”
“I was sitting in the back,” he said, pausing to catch his breath, labored now from the sudden exertion and from his nervous fear. “Mother, I have to talk to you about something.”
Telly studied her face in the flickering torchlight at the edge of the assembly area. She looked surprised and puzzled, but she seemed to have lost the hard edge of the day’s frenzied rhythms. “Talk? What about? Are you in trouble?”
“No, Mother. I’m not in trouble. I need to talk to you about Navigation School.”
Telly felt his body dissolve into nothingness. He seemed to float in the air before his parents, watching himself watch himself talk.
“Navigation School? What about it?”
“Mother, I want to go. I want to be a navigator. I’m Duncan Blake’s best student. His best ever. He told me so himself. And he said he would get me into the school. And I want to go.”
“But the Navigation School is in an anchorage,” she said. Telly saw the shadows under her deepset eyes and the wrinkles around the shadows. She looked tired and older than her years.
“Yes, it is. In Bishop Anchorage. Where the Relief came from.”
“Bishop Anchorage?”
“Yes, Mother. I want to go with the Relief. Tomorrow, when they sail for home.” Telly felt the words clog in his throat. He was afraid, afraid to say what was in his heart. Finally they came spilling out, like water overflowing the edge of a bucket. “Can I go? Will you let me?”