Free The Tale of Oriel by Cynthia Voigt

have. Any man would. When they hold your hand in fire to make you tell, and if the hand burns away and so they hold your arm—he died in the fever of burns and the pain had burned away his mind—that’s what they said, isn’t it? So he must have told them.”
    â€œUnder such compulsion, I’d speak,” Griff said. “But I don’t think you would.”
    â€œIt’s only gold. Silver. One beryl. It’s only wealth. It isn’t life.”
    â€œWould you give the island’s treasure to pirates?”
    â€œI would, and I should,” he answered. “But afterwards, unless there was urgent need not to, I would chase after them, track them down, come upon them when they suspected nothing and—take back what was my own. I think the fifth Damall must have told them where the treasure lay hidden. Under torture. Under the pain.”
    â€œThen the pirates would have taken it. Was there any treasure on the island?”
    â€œThere was. Gold, silver, one beryl.”
    â€œSo,” Griff said, “the pirates didn’t take it. The fifth Damall didn’t tell. Neither would you.”
    â€œUnless,” he answered Griff, “the treasure wasn’t where the fifth Damall thought it was. Unless he told them where it was and when they went to find it, it wasn’t there.”
    They sat on a long flat rock, watching the sea. They were on guard, although neither had spoken of it. If Nikol were following them, this was a day he would use.
    â€œWho else knew where the treasure was hidden?” Griff asked. He answered himself, “No one. Except the heir, if he’d been named. And he—” Griff didn’t want to finish the sentence. Griff had never wondered; he had only feared. “What about the others,” Griff said then. “Not Nikol but—what about the other boys?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” he asked.
    â€œI mean, because they’re still there on the island, under the new Damall.” Griff looked out over the water, his eyes dark. “With Nikol,” Griff said.
    He tried to separate his thoughts. “I couldn’t do anything. Because of the way they were. What they expected,” he said. “I could have been Damall, I don’t mean that. But—I have to make my own way, choose for myself and make my own way.”
    â€œWhat about me, then?” Griff asked.
    â€œYou taught me to swim,” he said, which seemed to him enough. Then, “It seems so far away, doesn’t it? And long ago? Even though this is only the second morning, and we aren’t even safely away.”
    They sat on the sun-warmed rock, with sea birds wheeling above. He wondered if Griff was also remembering fear, and helplessness, and—
    He rose to his feet. “I wasn’t powerless.”
    But he had chosen to be. In the circle around the whipping box, each boy was alone. But each boy shared the shame, his heart shriveling up like a leaf on the fire, like his shriveled-up man-part, everything that might have been strong about any of them shriveled up and useless, like the discarded skin of a snake.
    â€œYou couldn’t have done anything. What could you have done?” Griff asked.
    â€œI could have attacked him, and I thought of it. With a log. Or the whip.”
    â€œHe’d have set the others on you.”
    â€œYou’d have stood by me.”
    â€œBut I am only one.” Griff thought, and then spoke the truth, because Griff would always speak truly, if he could. “Some of the others, too, they might have.”
    â€œAnd I never tried. Because I was afraid. I never have to be afraid again.” He realized it.
    Griff turned to smile at him. “Maybe you don’t. Who can tell? But the sixth Damall never will be.”
    It took him a time to understand Griff’s meaning, while waves washed up at the base of the rock, a time of staring down at the back of Griff’s head,