And though building the craft upstream meant exposure to the returning
land animals, this danger, at least, he understood and could in some
measure anticipate. For he knew without being told that only a fool
takes to the sea unprepared.
So for the first long days, until Kalus understood well enough to
continue on his own, they made the journey together to the riverside
clearing where he had cut a single trunk of elm. Eighteen feet long, it
would be halved and hollowed out, later to be lashed together into a
sturdy, double canoe. James Michener had described such a boat in his
tales of Hawaii, and Sylviana had never forgotten. Nor had she dreamed
in those easy, carefree days at Ithaca College that she would one day be
drawing her very existence from the precious knowledge such men passed
on.
'Great fullness seems empty, yet it can never be exhausted.' So
Lao Tsu had said, and more and more in these uncertain days he was
proving the most trustworthy guide. Her life had become like a precious
ring dropped into a shallow stream: the thrashing of her hands only
muddied the waters, and made it impossible to find. Let the stream flow
and cleanse, let the sediments sink back. Then, and only then, could
she see what lay at the bottom.
But if Sylviana felt the need and desire to surrender, Kalus experienced
a vastly different emotion: raw and intolerable frustration.
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