Read Online The navigator by Eoin McNamee - Free Book Online Page A

of the street. A gust of wind stirred the heads of the grasses and the trees and blew through the bare roofs of the houses with a melancholy whistling sound.
    Owen slipped back down the riverbank. The town was starting to crumble back into time, taking with it the memory of the people who had once walked its streets. He remembered what Cati had said about living things growing young but the things made by man decaying as time reeled backward.
    "Never pay no mind," Wesley said gentry. "That's just the way it is now. All them things can be put right if we put old Ma Time back the way she should be, running like a big clock going forward. You just stick with us. We'll put all yon people back in their minutes and hours, and Ma Time, she'll put us boys back to sleep again. Come on," he said, lifting Owen to his feet, "let's get on down to the harbor."
    This time Wesley walked alongside Owen. The water in the river got deeper as they approached the harbor and Owen found himself veering away from it, which Wesley noticed.
    "That's what I heard," he said, with something like satisfaction, "that you can't abide the water."
    "Who told you that?" demanded Owen.
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    "They was all talking about it," Wesley said, "that the new boy, Time's recruit, did fear the water."
    "I don't like it too much," Owen said.
    Wesley rounded on him sharply, his face close to Owen's, his voice suddenly low and urgent.
    "Do not be saying that to anyone. No one. Do you not know? I reckon not. The Harsh cannot cross any water--not fresh nor salt--and the touch of it revolts them unless they can first make ice of it. If any see you afeared of water, they will think you Harsh or a creature of the Harsh."
    Owen remembered how the long-haired man, Samual, had reacted when he had seen Owen's foot touch the water. "I think they know already," he said slowly.
    "Then it will be hard on you," Wesley said, "it will be fierce hard."
    "You don't think I'm one of the Harsh, do you?" Owen said. His voice trembled slightly, but Wesley just threw his head back and laughed.
    "Harsh. You? No, I don't think you're Harsh. I think you're like one of us, the Raggies. You been abandoned and the world treats you bad, and even though you ain't as thin as Raggies, I do know a hunger when I see it."
    Owen didn't expect the harbor to look the same and he wasn't disappointed. The metal cranes were twisted and rusted. Most of the sheds had gone and the fish-processing factory was a roofless shell. The boats were still tied up, but it was a ghost fleet. The metal-hulled boats lay half
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    sunk in oily water. The wooden boats had fared better and some of them still floated, but the paint had long faded from them, and their metal fittings had all gone.
    "It's like they've been abandoned for twenty years," Owen said.
    "Longer than that," said Wesley. "Ma Time, she goes back more fast than she goes forward."
    Thinking about time made Owen's head hurt. He looked back the way they had come. He could see the slateless roofs of the town, then a white mist where the Harsh camp was, and beyond that, the mountains that hemmed the town into this little corner of land, their tops white with snow. He saw that Wesley was making for the area of run-down warehouses that was always referred to as the Hollow. As they got closer, going out onto what Owen knew as the South Pier but which now seemed to be a causeway over dry land, he saw that the buildings had not changed at all. There were five or six stone-built warehouses with empty windows in the front of them. Owen thought he could see rags or cloths in each window. As he looked, many of the rags started to stir, and then it dawned on him that each one was a child or young person dressed the same way as Wesley. A shout went up from them and Owen thought that there was dismay in the sound. As they closed in rapidly, he saw that they were looking out to sea. Wesley said something under his breath and climbed the parapet of the South Pier. Owen