And so he kept working on the carvings when he made long stops. Then, too, he had normal work that was necessary. He had lost one paddle during the whirlpool and when he found a dried split of cedar on a dead tree, he fashioned a flattened board that he axed and carved into a spare paddle. When it was carved to shape he polished it by rubbing the wood with handfuls of wet sand – as he polished the memory carvings – until it was smooth, then tied it securely into the bottom of the canoe along with the blanket bundle and other equipment. He saw, had seen many other whirlpools – although none as big as the one that had captured him – and avoided them carefully. Sometimes they were only mere eddies, curving ripples of tidal current, but he knew now how they were formed and found it no problem to get clear of them.

Long-stopping, as he thought it, was no longer . . . difficult. At first much of it seemed strange. Until now, his life had been mostly in a quiet dark corner of a stinking ship, eating food with his fingers off something close to a wooden trough, fighting for each bite of greasy eel meat – which he had cooked – to keep it from the sailors who were also eating from the trough. He slept on mouldy sailcloth jammed onto the rope in the rot-stinking anchor locker and wore clothing made from the same cloth. He had no real usable life then and if the boat stopped at some shore or port he was locked in the forward chain locker until they were at sea again. Always governed, held captive by men who seemed to own him.

But now he was alone.

Wonderfully, gloriously alone. And while it was tricky at first – getting free of unwanted company (bears), making a fire, some kind of shelter – he quickly came to enjoy it, then later love the freedom of it.

It took him almost no time to pull up the canoe, flip it over to make a lean-to shelter, find an abandoned mouse or squirrel nest to use for a fire starter, flick a spark, shelter it, nurse it into flame, and get a pot of soup going, made from dry salmon and grass, while he settled back on a rock to work on the story board, or make a spear, or to . . .

Just be.

It was as if the outside had become his inside. His place of life had gone from a dark little hovel in a half-rotten ship to all of everything. The forest, the sky, the water – all of it had become his home.

And he wondered, sitting by a drying fire when it was mist-raining, how in Odin’s name could you carve that in a memory story?

Maybe there were some things you just had to live.

And so he did.