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It was colder than usual the day the boys sailed away. I sat on the hilltop with Katia and watched the white sails unfurl like cloth-feathered wings, the canvas snapping in the winter wind. A hundred girls on the beach below waved wildly at the soon-to-be men as the ship’s prow turned to meet the waves. Watching them, I wondered how many would be married within weeks of the ship’s return. Even now, with the danger of the treacherous winter ocean before them, I was sure that it was the boys’ motivation to come home safely that waited on the strand.

We cheered when the wind took the sails with a heavy whoomph and the ship suddenly shot toward the open ocean. I could not help but smile at the sight; the beauty that is a ship in motion, every part striving together to keep the water below and the cargo within, never ceases to thrill me. It wove between the glaciers with exhilarating speed, rocking in the icy wind.

In time, the sails ceased to be even specks on the horizon, and slowly the crowd turned to go home. Katia waited with me until we were the only two left staring out at the water.

“Kolya,” she said, stamping her feet. “Can we go home? It’s cold.”

It was colder at the top of the hill. “Sure,” I replied, reaching for my crutches. She waited patiently while I hauled myself up, and slowed her pace to walk beside me down the hill.
Neither of us spoke; she was good at telling when I didn’t feel like being conversational. Every year since we were small children, we had watched together as the boys left to become men, but this time was different. This time I should have been on the ship.

The boys of the village could not become men before they had navigated their way through the tests that only the winter ocean could administer. A ship that seemed enormous before departure was miniscule in comparison to a first iceberg; endless lessons in steering became useless when the riptides found the rudder. When the battered ship made its way back to the harbor, it was no longer a crowd of boys who manned the decks, but men, fit to marry and to sail and to lead future generations in the all-encompassing way of the sea.

My ship was even now disappearing between the glaciers, with every boy my age facing down the dangers without me. Unfortunately for me, one must be able to walk a moving deck before one can take the test of adulthood – meaning that I would remain a boy for the rest of my life.

Katia and I crossed the village square. The absence of the sounds of hammers pounding and the smell of pitch-fires burning made the beat of our boots on the path seem deafening. Few people wandered the streets – most were at home, eating supper or praying at family shrines for their sons’ safety. We skirted the beams that the boys had not had the time to carry back to the shipyard, heading for the side street that would lead us to our respective houses.

Suddenly, the sound of Katia’s boots halted. I stopped and glanced back at her, and my heart sank at the expression on her face. That look of awed rapture was one that she reserved for only one person.

“Kolya!” she said breathlessly, clutching my arm. “It’s Vasska!”

Vasska was a year older than we and was widely regarded to be the most promising youth in the village. His journey had been stayed a year, but it was an honor rather than a punishment - he had been expressly chosen to lead a ship of younger boys out onto the water, a task rarely allotted to a seventeen-year-old. Though it irked me to no end, I could admit that he was the perfect boy to handle the responsibility – on top of being strong, brave, and daring, he was dependable and practical. And to my great chagrin, Katia was completely obsessed with him.

She hung onto my arm and craned her neck, trying to watch him as he moved between buildings without being seen herself. “There he goes,” she whispered as though he were going to hear. “Oh, he’s so amazing…”

“Admire him from someone else’s arm,” I said, pulling away, “You’re going to knock me over.” That would be all I needed, to be embarrassed in front of Vasska.

He vanished into the storehouse, and Katia came back to earth. She turned to face me, hands on her hips. “I don’t see why you don’t like him,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“That’s the problem. Don’t you find that the least bit eerie?” I was trying to joke, but it was true. Anyone would have been hard-pressed to name a fault of Vasska’s. Perhaps his apparent perfection was a fault in itself.

“Not at all,” she replied firmly, staring wistfully at the doors through which he had disappeared. “I can’t wait until he gets back from his journey.”

“Huh,” I said indifferently, wanting the conversation to end. “It’s cold. Let’s go.”
Dodging the patches of ice, we resumed our walk across the square. Our conversation was minimal, but both our minds were elsewhere. I could guess where Katia’s was, and it didn’t help my mood at all.

We parted ways where the end of the street split into two paths that led to our houses, only a few hundred feet apart. A light burned in Katia’s window, and I watched her from my doorstep as she took the last few steps to her door. She dropped her hood before she stepped inside, and the candlelight through the frosted glass turned her hair to gold and her skin to warm white pine. It was not until I could no longer even hear the sound of her voice echoing over the snow that I turned to go inside.

“I’m home!” I called as I pulled off my boots beside the door. My parents called back, mother from her room and father from the tool shed connected to the back of the small house. The hallways were wide to allow me room to walk with my cumbersome crutches, and the floors were kept clear. The only two doors led outside. Other rooms were partitioned with blankets or left open, so that a family might keep no secrets within itself.

In my own small room I flopped down on the bed and dropped my crutches in easy reach. I stretched out my legs with relief; their bones were far too brittle to take my whole weight, and even with the help of the crutches they grew tired easily. Staring up at the rafters, I sighed. With no distractions to keep my mind off of my abandonment, my loneliness was even more acute.

I raised my head and glanced at the picture tacked to the wall across from me. It was an artfully rendered blueprint of the ship traditionally built for the coming-of-age journey; every part was labeled and every measurement was exact. It was not a desire further to torture myself that had led to my asking the chief shipbuilder for this print, but simply that, in an ironic twist of fate, I loved ships. Every new journey brought a new design to my wall, and my own secret attempts at design were hidden beneath my bed. Usually all it would take to improve my mood would be an hour alone with a piece of paper and a lead pencil; but today, I was sure that thinking of ships would only depress me more.

It’s unfair, I thought. What, besides that fact that I can’t walk a rolling deck, makes me any less fit for manhood than every other boy my age? I learned the same lessons, I know everything about sailing they do. I could be a man just as easily as they could if my legs weren’t weak… I could make the journey, come back triumphant, and ask Katia to marry me. And maybe then she’d consider saying yes.

That was my fantasy, the dream that ended all my dreams: that Katia would look at me with the same adoring admiration that she looked at Vasska. I wanted her to call me “amazing” and hang on to my every word and action. I knew that she considered me her best friend, but there was so much more that I wanted to be for her and knew I never would. Previous years’ sailings had merely led up to the inevitable, but after today there was the crushing knowledge that I had missed my chance – I would only be able to watch, trapped as a child forever, while a newly returned man took Katia as his wife.

It was hard to hold back the sobs as I rolled over, buried my face in the blankets, and eventually fell asleep.

Katia appeared on the doorstep bright and early the next morning. Hers was the first face I saw as I clumped outside for a breath of the morning air. She stood when I appeared, brushing the snow from her leggings.

“Morning, Kolya,” she said, smiling. “Did you sleep late without the hammers going all night?”

The sun was already climbing the sky. I had slept far longer than I had intended to. “I guess so,” I said. “You?”

“I was up early,” she replied. “Vasska asked me to help him with some work for his journey… can you believe it’s only a year away?”

“Unbelievable.” I began walking up the path, trying to communicate that this subject was better left behind. But Katia, so empathetic in every other situation, was totally blind to anything else when Vasska was on her mind.

“He told me I was a good worker,” she said, trotting after me. “I helped him stack beams, and he said I was stronger than the other girls. Can you believe he said that to me, Kolya? I was so happy!”

It’s in his nature to compliment people, I told myself firmly. It’s just another reason that he’s such a good leader. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t-

“Do you think it means something, Kolya?”

I stopped. My frustration had had all night to build, and the last thing I needed at that moment was a dissertation on the many wonderful qualities of Vasska. “Look, Katia,” I said as quietly as I could manage through my urge to scream. “I don’t want to hear about Vasska right now, all right? I don’t want to hear about Vasska, or about his journey, or about yesterday’s journey, or anything about anybody’s journey. Just… talk about something else. Please.” Settling my crutches under my arms, I moved forward again, faster.

“Kolya!” I couldn’t help it. I slowed at the sound of Katia’s voice. She caught up to me quickly, stopping in front of me. “Kolya, I’m sorry. I should have thought… of course you’d be upset about that. That was cruel of me, to keep going on about it.” She met my eyes, her gaze sincere. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Of course she would know to ask. I stared at the snow, at the sky, anywhere but her face, trying to speak without confessing to her the true reason for my sadness. “I… I don’t want to be a boy forever, Katia. This way I’m just a burden on my parents – without a journey, I can’t get a house or… or a wife. I’ll always be the one left behind.”

Unexpectedly, she hugged me. I was too startled to do anything but blush as she held me close, then gently released me and stepped back. “I’ll never leave you behind, Kolya,” she said, smiling. “I know I’m only one person in a whole village… but maybe that helps a little?”

The light feeling that coursed through me made the snow suddenly seem very far below me. “It does,” I managed to say, smiling properly for the first time in days. Katia smiled back and fell in step beside me, and together we proceeded toward the square. Again, we did not speak, but this time the silence was companionable.

Of course you helped me, Katia, I thought. You helped me far more just now than you will ever know.

Seven days passed, and the boys returned as men.

Seven weeks passed, and a dozen girls were married off. Katia refused the one man who asked her, and though I knew deep down that it was her childish love of Vasska that prompted her rejection, the slight hope within me would not die.

Seven months passed, and construction began on the next year’s journey ship, with a helm specially fitted to Vasska’s hands. Again the sound of hammers pounding on beams filled the air day and night, and slowly the hull of a ship began to rise over the roof of the buildings in the square. Children climbed up and down the ribbing in play, and couples whispered together in the shade of the forming prow.

Every day, Katia led us down to the square, where we would spend the better part of the day watching Vasska work. The only reason I agreed to come was to see the shape of a ship rise from the piles of lumber lying in heaps on the ground. Every detail corresponded perfectly to the blueprint on my wall; this ship, like every journey ship before it, would be built with the same measurements, along the same lines. I could have built the ship myself after my hours of staring at the plans. As it was, though, I had to sit back and observe while Vasska’s leadership brought it up from nothing.

Though I admitted it only grudgingly, it was amazing to see him work. Under his orders, the construction went with startling efficiency. Never did I see him shirk or give an inane command, and never did he flare up at an incompetent worker. I began to count down the days until he would leave on his journey; seven days without having forcibly to remove Katia’s eyes from him every time we walked through the square would be a blessing after half a year of dealing with her obsession.

It was less than a month before Vasska was due to leave that Katia dashed up to my house, hair blowing backward, her eyes sparkling. I heard her excited shouts from my room and hurried out to her.

“He spoke to me!” she cried the instant I opened the door to her. “He came up to me and spoke to me, and we talked about the weather.” She spun around in a circle and fell back on the snow, laughing. “He touched my hair and I almost fainted. He was so tall, and strong, and he had a splinter in his finger… I wanted to kiss it out for him!”

“You can’t kiss out a splinter,” I said. My heart was suddenly pounding so loudly that I almost couldn’t hear myself speak. “And Vasska’s leaving soon. Don’t get so worked up.”

She raised her head, looking hurt. “Why are you being so mean, Kolya? Aren’t you happy for me?”

“Sure. You’ve been staring at him long enough.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“Oh. Well… try to sound more like it.”

I forced a smile. “I’m happy for you. Do you think he’ll take it any further?” Calm down, Kolya, they only talked about the weather, you don’t need to kill him for making polite conversation….

Her eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t know! Would he? I’m a whole year younger, but he did touch my hair…” She leaped up, too energetic to lie still. “I’m going to go and tell Sevina. Thank you, Kolya!” She whirled and sprinted back up the path, disappearing over the hill.

Slowly, I lowered myself to sit in the imprint that she had left in the fresh snow. My crutches lay beside me, and I looked at them with deep loathing. They were a symbol of all that made me unworthy, all that prevented me from being the man that I wanted so badly to be. I wished that I could fling them in a pitch-fire and stride to take my place on Vasska’s ship, a year late but uncaring. I wished that I could snatch the helm from Vasska’s hands and steer his ship through the treacherous winter sea, see the glow in Katia’s eyes when I returned every boy safely home.
But, as with all of my daydreams involving Katia, this was impossible. I could not change what my birth had made me. No matter how my frustration mounted, there was nothing that I could do about it.

Well, why not?

My dissatisfaction gave way to a burning fury. How could I help that I was born with legs unable to stand the rocking of a ship? I thought angrily. Why should I, as intelligent and as learned as every other boy in the village, have to live miserably because I could not make the journey that they told me to make? How could I be judged along the same lines as every other boy when I was so different from them? Why should I spend my life yearning after a journey on which I could never embark?

I realized, sitting there, that I had lived up until that point trying to make someone else’s journey. It was not the sea voyage that made the man; it was the lessons he learned out on the water: supporting others who in turn supported him, making decisions, accepting the responsibility for the other lives on the ship, and finding within himself the strength that adulthood required. I had deluded myself into believing with all my heart that the only way to prove myself to Katia was to face down an iceberg, but I had never stopped to think that if she was the Katia that I knew and loved with all my heart, she would not ask of me something that I could never do.

Suddenly, realization hit me like a mast to the head: she never had asked. It was I who had convinced myself that she could never love me as I was. I had worked every day to be something that I was not. How could anyone as empathetic as Katia love someone who did not even understand his own feelings? As much as I had longed for her to see me as she saw Vasska, in my disbelief that she ever could, I had sealed my own fate.

No, I thought. I didn’t need her to see me as she saw Vasska, either. Had Vasska known her since she was a child? Could Vasska read her every mood, preempt her every sentence, understand every thought that flowed from her mind as I could? Though Katia might admire Vasska, there was no way that she could ever find in him what she could find in me. I knew down to my very core that I could be so much more for her than Vasska could – now, I just had to prove it to her.

I clenched my fist in silent defiance. If I could not prove myself to her working by the village’s standards of manhood, then I would create my own.

I snatched at my crutches and heaved myself up as quickly as I could. I stormed inside, not even bothering to throw off my boots or to close the door behind me. Dashing into my bedroom, I dove beneath the bed, drew forth pencil and paper, glanced once at the journey ship hanging on the wall, and began to draw.

Every night for the four weeks thereafter, I lay for hours with my pencil, designing my journey ship to perfection. Many times I erased and redrew, but as the days passed and the ship in the square filled out its ribs and bare wood with paint and pitch, my own became a thing of beauty, a representation of what made my journey mine.

As the ship in the square neared completion, Vasska had no more time to speak with Katia. Construction reached a frenzied pace, and the hammers began to pound through the night again. All day I sat with Katia and watched the masts go up and the painted emblems on the sails dry in the wind.

“They’ll definitely finish,” she said to me one day a week before their departure. “All they have left to do is caulk it.”

I smiled. “They always finish.”

“Yes, but this time they won’t have to start the journey sleepless from nailing in the last few planks the night before.”

I nodded absently, squinting against the sunlight at where a team worked on the deck, sanding splinters from the edges of the gunwale. Vasska stood by to direct them.

My stomach clenched as he glanced over the side. His gaze swung to Katia and stuck there as though nailed to her. She chattered on, unaware; but I caught his eye and glared back with all the strength I could, trying to show him from two hundred feet away that I would not tolerate his eyes on Katia. Perhaps the fervency of my stare troubled him, for after a moment, he averted his stare and retreated back to the foredeck.

Though we went back to the square every day, Vasska never again stared at Katia in my presence. Though a small enough victory, it was the final proof I needed that I was ready to tell Katia how I felt.

On the day before that year’s crop of boys sailed away to become men, I finally was able to sit back, lay down my pencil, and look at my journey ship with singular, unimaginable pride.

There would be no one telling me that I was not a man ever again.

Vasska’s ship left with the same ceremony and celebration as all the others did, and, as always, Katia and I watched its departure from our spot on the hill. The tiny figure of Vasska could be seen at the helm, and the unintelligible sound of his voice came to us with the wind. Katia sat beside me, her shoulder touching mine.

“There they go,” she said softly. “Do you suppose they’ll all make it back this year?”

“Katia,” I said. A year ago I would have been unable to lay my hand on her arm and lean close to her, but now it simply felt natural. I drew a rolled-up sheet of paper from my pack and laid it in her lap. “Do you remember when I told you how much it hurt to be left behind?”

She nodded, her brow furrowing slightly in puzzlement. Her hands went to the paper, and she unrolled it to its full length.

She gasped. “Kolya—“

“This is my journey, Katia. I don’t have to worry about being left behind anymore.”

The ship on the paper was small and slim, but her hull was strong, designed to cut deep through the waves. The masts were positioned to take the wind with all their strength, and the figurehead was a girl with golden hair and skin white as snow.

Katia turned to me, and the look in her eyes was one that she had never turned on me before. Nor was it was like the one that she gave to Vasska, but a new one entirely – not awe, not sympathy, but pride. Respect. Tenderness. And, at the bottom of it all, I swore I could see reflected in her eyes the same love that even now was threatening to flood my entire being.

Gently I removed the blueprint from her hands and clasped them in my own. And as the journey ship sailed into the horizon to make men of the boys upon it, I touched my lips to Katia’s, confident in the knowledge that I already was a man – that I had made my own journey on a ship of my own design, and that finally, finally, I was deserving of Katia’s love and could prove to her my own.

With Katia safe in my arms, my journey was complete.

Description
It was colder than usual the day the boys sailed away. I sat on the hilltop with Katia and watched the white sails unfurl like cloth-feathered wings, the canvas snapping in the winter wind. A hundred girls on the beach below waved wildly at the soon-to-be men as the ship’s prow turned to meet the waves. Watching them, I wondered how many would be married within weeks of the ship’s return. Even now, with the danger of the treacherous winter ocean before them, I was sure that it was the boys’ motivation to come home safely that waited on the strand.

We cheered when the wind took the sails with a heavy whoomph and the ship suddenly shot toward the open ocean. I could not help but smile at the sight; the beauty that is a ship in motion, every part striving together to keep the water below and the cargo within, never ceases to thrill me. It wove between the glaciers with exhilarating speed, rocking in the icy wind.

In time, the sails ceased to be even specks on the horizon, and slowly the crowd turned to go home. Katia waited with me until we were the only two left staring out at the water.

“Kolya,” she said, stamping her feet. “Can we go home? It’s cold.”

It was colder at the top of the hill. “Sure,” I replied, reaching for my crutches. She waited patiently while I hauled myself up, and slowed her pace to walk beside me down the hill.
Neither of us spoke; she was good at telling when I didn’t feel like being conversational. Every year since we were small children, we had watched together as the boys left to become men, but this time was different. This time I should have been on the ship.

The boys of the village could not become men before they had navigated their way through the tests that only the winter ocean could administer. A ship that seemed enormous before departure was miniscule in comparison to a first iceberg; endless lessons in steering became useless when the riptides found the rudder. When the battered ship made its way back to the harbor, it was no longer a crowd of boys who manned the decks, but men, fit to marry and to sail and to lead future generations in the all-encompassing way of the sea.

My ship was even now disappearing between the glaciers, with every boy my age facing down the dangers without me. Unfortunately for me, one must be able to walk a moving deck before one can take the test of adulthood – meaning that I would remain a boy for the rest of my life.

Katia and I crossed the village square. The absence of the sounds of hammers pounding and the smell of pitch-fires burning made the beat of our boots on the path seem deafening. Few people wandered the streets – most were at home, eating supper or praying at family shrines for their sons’ safety. We skirted the beams that the boys had not had the time to carry back to the shipyard, heading for the side street that would lead us to our respective houses.

Suddenly, the sound of Katia’s boots halted. I stopped and glanced back at her, and my heart sank at the expression on her face. That look of awed rapture was one that she reserved for only one person.

“Kolya!” she said breathlessly, clutching my arm. “It’s Vasska!”

Vasska was a year older than we and was widely regarded to be the most promising youth in the village. His journey had been stayed a year, but it was an honor rather than a punishment - he had been expressly chosen to lead a ship of younger boys out onto the water, a task rarely allotted to a seventeen-year-old. Though it irked me to no end, I could admit that he was the perfect boy to handle the responsibility – on top of being strong, brave, and daring, he was dependable and practical. And to my great chagrin, Katia was completely obsessed with him.

She hung onto my arm and craned her neck, trying to watch him as he moved between buildings without being seen herself. “There he goes,” she whispered as though he were going to hear. “Oh, he’s so amazing…”

“Admire him from someone else’s arm,” I said, pulling away, “You’re going to knock me over.” That would be all I needed, to be embarrassed in front of Vasska.

He vanished into the storehouse, and Katia came back to earth. She turned to face me, hands on her hips. “I don’t see why you don’t like him,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“That’s the problem. Don’t you find that the least bit eerie?” I was trying to joke, but it was true. Anyone would have been hard-pressed to name a fault of Vasska’s. Perhaps his apparent perfection was a fault in itself.

“Not at all,” she replied firmly, staring wistfully at the doors through which he had disappeared. “I can’t wait until he gets back from his journey.”

“Huh,” I said indifferently, wanting the conversation to end. “It’s cold. Let’s go.”
Dodging the patches of ice, we resumed our walk across the square. Our conversation was minimal, but both our minds were elsewhere. I could guess where Katia’s was, and it didn’t help my mood at all.

We parted ways where the end of the street split into two paths that led to our houses, only a few hundred feet apart. A light burned in Katia’s window, and I watched her from my doorstep as she took the last few steps to her door. She dropped her hood before she stepped inside, and the candlelight through the frosted glass turned her hair to gold and her skin to warm white pine. It was not until I could no longer even hear the sound of her voice echoing over the snow that I turned to go inside.

“I’m home!” I called as I pulled off my boots beside the door. My parents called back, mother from her room and father from the tool shed connected to the back of the small house. The hallways were wide to allow me room to walk with my cumbersome crutches, and the floors were kept clear. The only two doors led outside. Other rooms were partitioned with blankets or left open, so that a family might keep no secrets within itself.

In my own small room I flopped down on the bed and dropped my crutches in easy reach. I stretched out my legs with relief; their bones were far too brittle to take my whole weight, and even with the help of the crutches they grew tired easily. Staring up at the rafters, I sighed. With no distractions to keep my mind off of my abandonment, my loneliness was even more acute.

I raised my head and glanced at the picture tacked to the wall across from me. It was an artfully rendered blueprint of the ship traditionally built for the coming-of-age journey; every part was labeled and every measurement was exact. It was not a desire further to torture myself that had led to my asking the chief shipbuilder for this print, but simply that, in an ironic twist of fate, I loved ships. Every new journey brought a new design to my wall, and my own secret attempts at design were hidden beneath my bed. Usually all it would take to improve my mood would be an hour alone with a piece of paper and a lead pencil; but today, I was sure that thinking of ships would only depress me more.

It’s unfair, I thought. What, besides that fact that I can’t walk a rolling deck, makes me any less fit for manhood than every other boy my age? I learned the same lessons, I know everything about sailing they do. I could be a man just as easily as they could if my legs weren’t weak… I could make the journey, come back triumphant, and ask Katia to marry me. And maybe then she’d consider saying yes.

That was my fantasy, the dream that ended all my dreams: that Katia would look at me with the same adoring admiration that she looked at Vasska. I wanted her to call me “amazing” and hang on to my every word and action. I knew that she considered me her best friend, but there was so much more that I wanted to be for her and knew I never would. Previous years’ sailings had merely led up to the inevitable, but after today there was the crushing knowledge that I had missed my chance – I would only be able to watch, trapped as a child forever, while a newly returned man took Katia as his wife.

It was hard to hold back the sobs as I rolled over, buried my face in the blankets, and eventually fell asleep.

Katia appeared on the doorstep bright and early the next morning. Hers was the first face I saw as I clumped outside for a breath of the morning air. She stood when I appeared, brushing the snow from her leggings.

“Morning, Kolya,” she said, smiling. “Did you sleep late without the hammers going all night?”

The sun was already climbing the sky. I had slept far longer than I had intended to. “I guess so,” I said. “You?”

“I was up early,” she replied. “Vasska asked me to help him with some work for his journey… can you believe it’s only a year away?”

“Unbelievable.” I began walking up the path, trying to communicate that this subject was better left behind. But Katia, so empathetic in every other situation, was totally blind to anything else when Vasska was on her mind.

“He told me I was a good worker,” she said, trotting after me. “I helped him stack beams, and he said I was stronger than the other girls. Can you believe he said that to me, Kolya? I was so happy!”

It’s in his nature to compliment people, I told myself firmly. It’s just another reason that he’s such a good leader. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t-

“Do you think it means something, Kolya?”

I stopped. My frustration had had all night to build, and the last thing I needed at that moment was a dissertation on the many wonderful qualities of Vasska. “Look, Katia,” I said as quietly as I could manage through my urge to scream. “I don’t want to hear about Vasska right now, all right? I don’t want to hear about Vasska, or about his journey, or about yesterday’s journey, or anything about anybody’s journey. Just… talk about something else. Please.” Settling my crutches under my arms, I moved forward again, faster.

“Kolya!” I couldn’t help it. I slowed at the sound of Katia’s voice. She caught up to me quickly, stopping in front of me. “Kolya, I’m sorry. I should have thought… of course you’d be upset about that. That was cruel of me, to keep going on about it.” She met my eyes, her gaze sincere. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Of course she would know to ask. I stared at the snow, at the sky, anywhere but her face, trying to speak without confessing to her the true reason for my sadness. “I… I don’t want to be a boy forever, Katia. This way I’m just a burden on my parents – without a journey, I can’t get a house or… or a wife. I’ll always be the one left behind.”

Unexpectedly, she hugged me. I was too startled to do anything but blush as she held me close, then gently released me and stepped back. “I’ll never leave you behind, Kolya,” she said, smiling. “I know I’m only one person in a whole village… but maybe that helps a little?”

The light feeling that coursed through me made the snow suddenly seem very far below me. “It does,” I managed to say, smiling properly for the first time in days. Katia smiled back and fell in step beside me, and together we proceeded toward the square. Again, we did not speak, but this time the silence was companionable.

Of course you helped me, Katia, I thought. You helped me far more just now than you will ever know.

Seven days passed, and the boys returned as men.

Seven weeks passed, and a dozen girls were married off. Katia refused the one man who asked her, and though I knew deep down that it was her childish love of Vasska that prompted her rejection, the slight hope within me would not die.

Seven months passed, and construction began on the next year’s journey ship, with a helm specially fitted to Vasska’s hands. Again the sound of hammers pounding on beams filled the air day and night, and slowly the hull of a ship began to rise over the roof of the buildings in the square. Children climbed up and down the ribbing in play, and couples whispered together in the shade of the forming prow.

Every day, Katia led us down to the square, where we would spend the better part of the day watching Vasska work. The only reason I agreed to come was to see the shape of a ship rise from the piles of lumber lying in heaps on the ground. Every detail corresponded perfectly to the blueprint on my wall; this ship, like every journey ship before it, would be built with the same measurements, along the same lines. I could have built the ship myself after my hours of staring at the plans. As it was, though, I had to sit back and observe while Vasska’s leadership brought it up from nothing.

Though I admitted it only grudgingly, it was amazing to see him work. Under his orders, the construction went with startling efficiency. Never did I see him shirk or give an inane command, and never did he flare up at an incompetent worker. I began to count down the days until he would leave on his journey; seven days without having forcibly to remove Katia’s eyes from him every time we walked through the square would be a blessing after half a year of dealing with her obsession.

It was less than a month before Vasska was due to leave that Katia dashed up to my house, hair blowing backward, her eyes sparkling. I heard her excited shouts from my room and hurried out to her.

“He spoke to me!” she cried the instant I opened the door to her. “He came up to me and spoke to me, and we talked about the weather.” She spun around in a circle and fell back on the snow, laughing. “He touched my hair and I almost fainted. He was so tall, and strong, and he had a splinter in his finger… I wanted to kiss it out for him!”

“You can’t kiss out a splinter,” I said. My heart was suddenly pounding so loudly that I almost couldn’t hear myself speak. “And Vasska’s leaving soon. Don’t get so worked up.”

She raised her head, looking hurt. “Why are you being so mean, Kolya? Aren’t you happy for me?”

“Sure. You’ve been staring at him long enough.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“Oh. Well… try to sound more like it.”

I forced a smile. “I’m happy for you. Do you think he’ll take it any further?” Calm down, Kolya, they only talked about the weather, you don’t need to kill him for making polite conversation….

Her eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t know! Would he? I’m a whole year younger, but he did touch my hair…” She leaped up, too energetic to lie still. “I’m going to go and tell Sevina. Thank you, Kolya!” She whirled and sprinted back up the path, disappearing over the hill.

Slowly, I lowered myself to sit in the imprint that she had left in the fresh snow. My crutches lay beside me, and I looked at them with deep loathing. They were a symbol of all that made me unworthy, all that prevented me from being the man that I wanted so badly to be. I wished that I could fling them in a pitch-fire and stride to take my place on Vasska’s ship, a year late but uncaring. I wished that I could snatch the helm from Vasska’s hands and steer his ship through the treacherous winter sea, see the glow in Katia’s eyes when I returned every boy safely home.
But, as with all of my daydreams involving Katia, this was impossible. I could not change what my birth had made me. No matter how my frustration mounted, there was nothing that I could do about it.

Well, why not?

My dissatisfaction gave way to a burning fury. How could I help that I was born with legs unable to stand the rocking of a ship? I thought angrily. Why should I, as intelligent and as learned as every other boy in the village, have to live miserably because I could not make the journey that they told me to make? How could I be judged along the same lines as every other boy when I was so different from them? Why should I spend my life yearning after a journey on which I could never embark?

I realized, sitting there, that I had lived up until that point trying to make someone else’s journey. It was not the sea voyage that made the man; it was the lessons he learned out on the water: supporting others who in turn supported him, making decisions, accepting the responsibility for the other lives on the ship, and finding within himself the strength that adulthood required. I had deluded myself into believing with all my heart that the only way to prove myself to Katia was to face down an iceberg, but I had never stopped to think that if she was the Katia that I knew and loved with all my heart, she would not ask of me something that I could never do.

Suddenly, realization hit me like a mast to the head: she never had asked. It was I who had convinced myself that she could never love me as I was. I had worked every day to be something that I was not. How could anyone as empathetic as Katia love someone who did not even understand his own feelings? As much as I had longed for her to see me as she saw Vasska, in my disbelief that she ever could, I had sealed my own fate.

No, I thought. I didn’t need her to see me as she saw Vasska, either. Had Vasska known her since she was a child? Could Vasska read her every mood, preempt her every sentence, understand every thought that flowed from her mind as I could? Though Katia might admire Vasska, there was no way that she could ever find in him what she could find in me. I knew down to my very core that I could be so much more for her than Vasska could – now, I just had to prove it to her.

I clenched my fist in silent defiance. If I could not prove myself to her working by the village’s standards of manhood, then I would create my own.

I snatched at my crutches and heaved myself up as quickly as I could. I stormed inside, not even bothering to throw off my boots or to close the door behind me. Dashing into my bedroom, I dove beneath the bed, drew forth pencil and paper, glanced once at the journey ship hanging on the wall, and began to draw.

Every night for the four weeks thereafter, I lay for hours with my pencil, designing my journey ship to perfection. Many times I erased and redrew, but as the days passed and the ship in the square filled out its ribs and bare wood with paint and pitch, my own became a thing of beauty, a representation of what made my journey mine.

As the ship in the square neared completion, Vasska had no more time to speak with Katia. Construction reached a frenzied pace, and the hammers began to pound through the night again. All day I sat with Katia and watched the masts go up and the painted emblems on the sails dry in the wind.

“They’ll definitely finish,” she said to me one day a week before their departure. “All they have left to do is caulk it.”

I smiled. “They always finish.”

“Yes, but this time they won’t have to start the journey sleepless from nailing in the last few planks the night before.”

I nodded absently, squinting against the sunlight at where a team worked on the deck, sanding splinters from the edges of the gunwale. Vasska stood by to direct them.

My stomach clenched as he glanced over the side. His gaze swung to Katia and stuck there as though nailed to her. She chattered on, unaware; but I caught his eye and glared back with all the strength I could, trying to show him from two hundred feet away that I would not tolerate his eyes on Katia. Perhaps the fervency of my stare troubled him, for after a moment, he averted his stare and retreated back to the foredeck.

Though we went back to the square every day, Vasska never again stared at Katia in my presence. Though a small enough victory, it was the final proof I needed that I was ready to tell Katia how I felt.

On the day before that year’s crop of boys sailed away to become men, I finally was able to sit back, lay down my pencil, and look at my journey ship with singular, unimaginable pride.

There would be no one telling me that I was not a man ever again.

Vasska’s ship left with the same ceremony and celebration as all the others did, and, as always, Katia and I watched its departure from our spot on the hill. The tiny figure of Vasska could be seen at the helm, and the unintelligible sound of his voice came to us with the wind. Katia sat beside me, her shoulder touching mine.

“There they go,” she said softly. “Do you suppose they’ll all make it back this year?”

“Katia,” I said. A year ago I would have been unable to lay my hand on her arm and lean close to her, but now it simply felt natural. I drew a rolled-up sheet of paper from my pack and laid it in her lap. “Do you remember when I told you how much it hurt to be left behind?”

She nodded, her brow furrowing slightly in puzzlement. Her hands went to the paper, and she unrolled it to its full length.

She gasped. “Kolya—“

“This is my journey, Katia. I don’t have to worry about being left behind anymore.”

The ship on the paper was small and slim, but her hull was strong, designed to cut deep through the waves. The masts were positioned to take the wind with all their strength, and the figurehead was a girl with golden hair and skin white as snow.

Katia turned to me, and the look in her eyes was one that she had never turned on me before. Nor was it was like the one that she gave to Vasska, but a new one entirely – not awe, not sympathy, but pride. Respect. Tenderness. And, at the bottom of it all, I swore I could see reflected in her eyes the same love that even now was threatening to flood my entire being.

Gently I removed the blueprint from her hands and clasped them in my own. And as the journey ship sailed into the horizon to make men of the boys upon it, I touched my lips to Katia’s, confident in the knowledge that I already was a man – that I had made my own journey on a ship of my own design, and that finally, finally, I was deserving of Katia’s love and could prove to her my own.

With Katia safe in my arms, my journey was complete.