Passage

24

The next day the Fetch floated through yet more of the bleak, treeless, unpeopled country they’d been passing for the last hundred miles. Berry promised there would only be about another day of this, then the banks of the river would grow more interesting than these endless scrubby sand bars: strange new trees, still green in the dead of winter and bearded with moss, mysterious creeper—hung side channels, an abundance of birds. Fawn mainly wondered if they would see any of those scary swamp lizards of Dag’s, and if Bo’s tales about the snakes were true. By noon the air was warm enough to go up on the roof without a jacket or boat cloak, and Fawn joined Berry, Dag, and Whit to keep company and to soak up the pale but valiant sun. With no duty to watch ahead for hazards, she was the first to look behind them.

“Hey, is that a narrow boat comin’ downstream, or—or not? If it is, that’s the biggest narrow boat I ever did see.”

Dag swung around. A slim vessel some thirty-five feet long was rapidly overtaking them. Paddles flashed in the hazy winter light, ten to a side; the occupants kept up a song to unite the rhythm of their strokes. Distance muffled the words, but Dag seemed to smile in recognition.

Barr, whose own watch was coming up soon, came out and stared over the stern rail, a half-eaten apple in his hand. “Isn’t that a Luthlian boat?” he called up excitedly.

“Yep,” said Dag. “But those aren’t Luthlians paddling, exactly. Those are southern Lakewalkers, heading home from a couple of years of exchange patrol.”

“How can you tell?” asked Fawn. “Their clothes? Their ages?”

The big narrow boat was already shooting past them—a quarter-mile off but still in the channel, as the river was a mile wide at this point. Even at that distance Fawn could see the mix of strong, young men and women, laughing and leaning into their work.

“That, and the enthusiasm. Though if you were outrunning the Luthlian winter, you’d paddle hard, too. That’s twenty or thirty new patrol leaders over there, young veterans. See, there’re areas to the south that haven’t seen a malice emergence in two, three hundred years. But the rule is, you can’t be a patrol leader till you’ve been in on at least one malice kill, preferably more. For obvious reasons.”

Fawn, who had not only seen but made a malice kill, nodded perfect understanding. Barr, who hadn’t, looked envious.

“So the southern Lakewalkers export all their best young patrollers up the Gray for a couple of seasons. And hope they get them back.”

“Do the malices take so many?” asked Berry.

“No, actually. The biggest causes of losing young patrollers in—or to—Luthlia are accidents and the weather, and marriage. The malices are a long ways down the list. There are those who say the malices aren’t nearly as scary as the Luthlian girls.” Dag grinned briefly.

“Not you!” said Fawn.

“I was a much braver man, when I was young.”

Whit cocked his head, watching the narrow boat pulling out of sight south around a broad curve of the great river. “Hey, Dag—it just occurred to me. I never asked. What was your name up in Luthlia when you were married to Kauneo? Because it wouldn’t have been Dag Redwing Hickory Oleana, then. Dag Something Something Luthlia, right?”

Barr, about to abandon the back deck again for the kitchen, paused and glanced up over the roof edge, ears plainly pricked.

Dag cleared his throat, and recited, “Dag Wolverine Leech Luthlia, in point of fact.” He added in hasty clarification, “Leech for Leech Lake, like Hickory Lake.”

“So Wolverine was Kauneo’s tent-name. And, er…Leech would have been your camp name?”

“Yep. It’s a pretty well-known camp, up in those parts.”

Whit scratched his chin. “Y’know, that Dag Bluefield thing is starting to make all kinds of sense, all of a sudden.”

Fawn ignored him to ask, “Did the lake really have leeches?”

“Oh, yes,” said Dag. “Big ones—six inches, a foot long. They were actually pretty harmless to frolic with. Kept you alert while swimming, though.”

He grinned to watch her wrinkle her nose and go Eew! Which made her wonder if that had actually been the aim of his anecdote.

Six more days brought them to Graymouth.

But not, Fawn discovered to her disappointment, to the sea; the town lay not on the shore but ten miles inland. Downstream from the bluffs on which the town stood, the river split into several channels that ran out into a broad, marshy delta. The town itself was divided into two portions, Uptown along the bluff, Downtown—sometimes called Drowntown—along the riverbank. Fawn supposed she could think of them as the two lips of the Graymouth, and smiled at the notion.

Uptown, as near as Fawn could tell from this waterside vantage, was built of substantial houses and goods-sheds and pleasant inns; Downtown, of cheap temporary shacks, rough boatmen’s taverns, rickety sheds, and camps. The shore was lined with much the same sort of businesses as Silver Shoals, if not so many of them, plus long rows and double rows of flatboats—some for sale, some being used as floating shacks—and keelboats. On the southern end, the boats were of a very different shape and had tall masts sticking up; fishing boats and coasting vessels that actually dared thread the delta and put out to sea.

Downtown boasted a lively day market and trade of all sorts. Keelers looking to hire on upstream crewmen propositioned Whit and Hod within a short time of the Fetch tying to the bank, and another fellow tried to buy Copperhead right off the deck. Copperhead—rested, refreshed, and rowdy after his long boat ride—showed off by trying to kick out the pen slats. Dag rescued Berry’s boat and the innocent bystanders by saddling the beast and taking him out for a hard gallop.

Whit and Hawthorn took off down the row of boats; Fawn snagged Berry to guide her to the market to find fresh new food for supper. Barr and Remo followed them, trying to look tall and grim, like guardsmen of some sort. Fawn thought if it weren’t for the sheer embarrassment of it, they’d be clinging to each other like youngsters lost in the woods, surrounded by all these strange farmers. They stuck tight to her, anyhow, staring around warily.

“It’s not as big as Silver Shoals,” Remo muttered.

“Couldn’t prove it by me,” Barr muttered back.

Who’s protecting who? Fawn didn’t say aloud. Tact was a fine thing.

She did spot a pair of older Lakewalkers at the far end of the market square, a man and a woman, but they were too far away to hail, and by the time she worked around to that side, they had gone off. Were they local, or from upriver? Was there a camp near here? She would have to ask Dag. But they all returned to the Fetch before the Oleana boys had a chance to work each other into some sort of ground-panic.

There she discovered Whit had undermined her dinner menu by bringing in a fish the size and shape of a platter, which he said was fresh from the sea and which he’d bought off a sailboat a ways down the row.

Fawn stared at it in horror as he proudly held it out. “Whit, that fish has two eyes!”

“All fish do.”

“Not on the same side! Whit, those fellows spotted you for an upcountry boy and foisted off some defective fish on you.”

“No, this kind is supposed to look like that”—he studied it in some doubt himself—“they said. But the important thing is, I got us a ride down to the shore tomorrow morning in their boat. They go out every day the weather allows to do their fishing, see. They’ll drop us off on the beach in the morning and pick us up again on their way back. We can take a picnic!”

A picnic, in the heart of winter? Well, why not? In West Blue, a foot of snow would have fallen by now. Here, it was merely cloudy and chilly.

Bo vouched for the two-eyed fish, which didn’t exactly reassure Fawn, especially after his tale about the rolling hoop snakes used for cart wheels, but so did Berry, so she cooked it up as best she could. Dag ate it without hesitation, but, well, patrollers. Fawn, conscious of his crinkling eyes on her, eventually broke down and nibbled. It was alarmingly delicious.

So it was she found herself packing a big basket with food and another with blankets by lantern-light the next morning, as the laggard sun would not be up for another hour. Berry and Whit undertook to bring Hawthorn; Fawn supposed she and Dag would trail Remo and Barr behind them in a not-dissimilar fashion.

Hod elected to stay with the still-convalescing Bo, and not just due to the tales about the people-eating sea fish with giant teeth and the things with tentacles sporting suckers that popped blood from your skin. The two—parentless Hod and childless Bo—seemed in a fair way to adopting each other. They’d all come a long way from Oleana, Fawn thought, but Hod especially. He’d become a competent boat hand, and more. He was not so skinny, not so shy, and was a good two inches taller, partly from her cooking but mostly from not carrying himself so S-shaped. They’d be in Graymouth some weeks yet; when Bo felt better, she would make sure Hod found his chance to visit the shore.

Fawn had never ridden in a sailboat before. The creaking of its lines and tilting of its deck as the patched and discolored sails caught the faint dawn breeze made her nervous, but Dag was watching her closely, so she raised her chin and tried to sit bravely. The four fellows who ran the boat—two brothers and a couple of their half-grown sons—did appear to know what they were doing, and were glad to show the curious Whit, too. After a bit, even Barr and Remo unbent and horned in on the deal. Dag seemed content to lean back with his arm around Fawn.

Dawn over the marshes was gold and gray, a severe winter beauty all its own. Birds swarmed up to greet the light, though their cries seemed strange and sad in the misty air. From time to time along the channel Fawn could spot the decaying remains of flatboats amongst the other wrack, wrecked and washed down in a flood, or else simply abandoned and allowed to drift out to sea. Half in fear and half in hope, Fawn made out every drowned log to be a lurking swamp lizard, but Dag said not, though he promised to find her one later, an offer for which she thanked him politely but unencouragingly.

“One good thing about this time of year,” Whit called, slapping his neck. “Hardly any mosquitoes.”

“True enough,” Dag agreed amiably. “Come high summer, these southern mosquitoes carry off small children to feed to their young.”

“They do not!” Hawthorn cried indignantly, which made the fishermen grin. “You shouldn’t ought to tell such tales to Whit, he’s bound to believe you ’cause on account as you’re tent-brothers.”

The corners of Dag’s mouth tucked up. He murmured, “Ah, you never met my Luthlian tent-brothers. Those Wolverine boys trained me out of that right quick.”

The boat bore left at the next split in the channel, and in a half-hour more, a line of dun-colored sand dunes rippled across the flat horizon. The ascending sun began to draw up the mist, so that the far distance seemed to be veiled by a gilded gauze curtain shifting in a gentle draft. The boat scrunched bow-first into the sandy shore just behind the dunes, and the fellows jumped out, took the baskets, carried Fawn, Hawthorn, and Berry dry-shod across the last stretch of water, and united to help give the sailboat a good shove back out into the channel.

Fawn watched it drift away. So, if the boat sank out there on the big sea, would they ever be able to get back to Graymouth? Far up the channel, a faded red sail loomed, so perhaps they would be able to hail another fisherman, and not be stranded. On that reassuring thought, she took Dag’s proffered hand, warm in the cool light, and scrambled up the dune, sand shifting under her sliding feet, which made her laugh breathlessly. Dag watched her profile anxiously as she pressed to the crest, and the world’s rim opened before her astonished eyes.

The vast expanse of water gleamed like steel, blending in a muted, distant, silvery-gold line with the equally vast, lavender-edged sky. It was like being inside a great bowl of liquid light. On the strand, stretching away like wool rolled for spinning, waves broke and murmured. The damp, strange-smelling air caressed Fawn’s flushed cheeks as she stared and stared. The smell seemed to be some stronger cousin to that of a riverbank or creek bed, but with a tang all its own like nothing she’d smelled before. She took in a huge breath of it. “Oh. My.”

Hawthorn whooped and ran down the sand dune; Berry, laughing, called him to slow down and slid after, Whit on her heels. Remo and Barr, with a wild look at each other, followed.

Dag scanned the horizon, brows pinched. “It was all warm and blue, first time I was down here,” he muttered. “Which was fifty or a hundred miles west of here, though.”

“That was late spring, too, you said. ’Course it was warmer,” said Fawn.

He cast her a grave look, and swallowed. “This isn’t…this wasn’t the wedding trip I’d promised you, I’m afraid.”

“You promised to show me the sea. That there is it, isn’t it?” Most amazingly the sea. Fawn tossed her head.

“I didn’t anticipate Crane, nor river bandits, nor exposing you to all those horrors.” With a hesitant finger, he traced her neck where Crane’s knife had lain. He added after a moment, “Nor making you cook for a boatload of folks the whole way.”

Blight Crane. “I don’t think we anticipated the Fetch at all, nor Berry, nor Bo and Hawthorn and Chicory and Wain and all those others, but I’m glad to have met them. Even Remo and Barr turned out pretty good, in the end. I’ve learned so many new things I’ve lost count, which I wouldn’t want to give back nohow.” She hesitated, searching for the right words to ease his misplaced fear of disappointing her, without pretending that the cave hadn’t mattered. “Mama used to say to me, when I was young and pining for my birthday or some other treat to come quick, right now, Don’t go wishing your life away.” She tightened her grip on his hand. “Don’t you go wishing my life away, either.”

He smiled a little, although she was afraid it was half for amusement at that when I was young part. “There’s a point, Spark.”

“You’d best believe it.” Firmly, she pulled him down the slope.

Hawthorn already had his shoes and socks stripped off and trouser legs rolled up, and was prancing about in the foam that bubbled and hissed around his feet. Barr and Remo watched him rather enviously. They set down their baskets beside a likely-looking mess of driftwood and all walked up the beach together. Everyone including Dag bent to collect seashells and marvel at the strange shapes and colors. Fawn was especially taken with the round, hollow ones, like sugar cookies with flower patterns pressed in the center, trying to imagine what wondrous creatures had made them or lived in them.

Noting that no blood-sucking tentacles had yet reached out to grab Hawthorn’s ankles, she took off her shoes and socks, too, gave them to Dag to carry, and walked through the tickling foam despite the chill. She scooped up a handful of the water and, not that she hadn’t been warned, tasted it—salty, metallic, and vile! But for all that, not regretted. She spat it out and made a face that made Dag grin, or at least smirk.

A half-mile on, they came upon a huge dead fish washed ashore. It was even bigger than Dag’s channel cat, sleek gray with a pale belly, with an ugly underslung mouth lined with far too many sharp, triangular teeth. It had teeth in rows. It had evidently been there awhile, because it also stank to the sky, which at least saved any argument about its edibility and whether Fawn should be made to attempt to cook it. Hawthorn, Remo, and Barr were delighted by it, especially the jaws. Dag and Fawn walked on, leaving them crouching down trying to cut out the jawbones from the smelly carcass to carry off for a souvenir, possibly to work the teeth later into some sort of Lakewalker hair ornaments. There certainly seemed to be plenty of teeth to go around. Berry and Whit wrinkled their noses at the aroma wafting up from this process and retreated as well, to walk side by side along the top of the dunes.

Fawn and Dag held hands and strolled on, though after the fish with the teeth Fawn put her shoes back on and kept her feet safely to the damp sand. You just never could tell about Bo’s stories. Fawn glanced up to find Dag’s brows had pinched again. She thought of shaking him out of his abstraction, or making him wade in the water to wake up, or something. Instead, she simply asked, “What’s weighing so heavy on your mind?”

He pressed her hand, smiled too briefly. “Too much. It’s all a tangle, in my head.”

“Start somewhere. Doesn’t matter which end.” Whatever had bit him was still gnawing, that was plain.

He shook his head, but drew a long breath, so he wasn’t going to go all surly-quiet, anyhow. “My healing work, for one. I saved two fellows in the cave. If there’d been three or more hurt that bad, the rest would have died all the same. How can I set myself up as a medicine maker for farmers when I know it’d be a cruel false promise for all but the first-comers?”

“Even Lakewalker medicine makers have helpers,” Fawn pointed out.

He frowned thoughtfully. “I sure do understand now why they leave as much to heal on its own as they can.”

“Two’s still more than none. And most days they wouldn’t come in mobs like that.”

“But on days they did, it could sure get ugly.” His frown did not lift.

“There were other problems came clear to me at the cave, ones I hadn’t thought of. Justice, for one. How can Lakewalkers and farmers live together if they have to have separate justice? Because there’s bound to be clashes, that’s what justice is all about, dealing with clashes folks can’t settle for themselves.”

Now it was Fawn’s turn to say, “Hm.”

“Crane said…” He hesitated.

“You shouldn’t let Crane’s lies get under your skin.”

“Isn’t his lies that bother me. It’s his truths.”

“Did he tell any?”

“A few. You are what you eat, for one.”

Fawn sucked her lower lip. “All folks learn from the folks around them. Good behavior and bad behavior both. You can’t hardly help it.”

He ducked his head. “Lakewalkers tend to think themselves above that, when they’re amongst farmers. Takes ’em by surprise to be taught anything, it does.” He added after a moment, “It did me, leastways. But the other thing he said…”

Sudden silence. Now we’re getting down to it. “Mm…?”

“About Lakewalkers rising to the top. One way or another. Whether they want to or not. That, I’m afraid I’ve seen. On her own boat, Berry defers to me!”

Fawn wrinkled her nose in doubt. “You’re also a man near three times her age,” she pointed out. “You’d be a leader amongst Lakewalkers. You wouldn’t expect to be less a leader amongst farmers.”

“Amongst Lakewalkers, there would be others to keep me in line.”

“Well…Wain didn’t defer so easy, for one.”

“Oh, yeah, Wain. I sure settled him down, didn’t I?” His hand waved and clenched in a gesture of disgust—or self-disgust?

“Um…before the attack, you mean, when the boat bosses were all arguing?”

“You spotted that, did you? Yes, I persuaded him. What Barr tried to do to Berry but was too clumsy to bring off.” His face seemed to set in a permanent grimace, contemplating this. “Though at least I didn’t leave him beguiled.”

“It was an emergency,” Fawn offered.

“There will always be another emergency along. How long before a need becomes a habit becomes a corruption? Lordship comes too easy, for some. And it was lordship near slew the world.”

His stride, scrunching through the sand, had lengthened. Fawn quickened her steps to keep up. He continued, “Unless we keep separate lives. Did we come all this way down that long river just to find out the folks we were arguing with back at Hickory Lake were right all along?”

“Slow down, Dag!” Fawn panted.

He stopped. She gripped his sleeve and turned him to face her, looking up into his troubled gold eyes. “If that’s the truth, then that is what we came all this way to find, yes. And we’ll need to face it square. But I can’t believe it’s a truth so solid that there’s no cracks at all with space left for us to fit in.”

“As long as malices exist, then the patrol must be maintained, and everything that backs it.”

“Nobody’s arguing with that. But making farmers less ignorant and Lakewalkers less obnoxious doesn’t have to mean turning the whole world tail over teakettle. You made a good start on the way down here, I thought!”

“Yeah?” He dug his toe in the sand, bent, scooped up a smoothed rock lying there, swung back, and flung it out over the waves. It vanished with a faint plop. “I made a start like throwing a rock into this sea. I could stand here and throw for years and never make a difference you could tell.”

Fawn straightened her spine and scowled up at him. “You’re not fretting because you couldn’t keep your promise to show me the sea. You’re fretting because somewhere in that murky head of yours you were hoping to have the whole problem solved by now, and hand it to me tied up in a bow for my birthday present!”

His long silence after that broke in a rueful chuckle. “Oh, Spark. I’m afraid so.”

“I should have thought a patroller would be more patient.”

He snorted. “You should have met me at age nineteen. I was going to save the whole world that year, I was. Patience and exhaustion turn out to have a lot in common.”

“Well, then, you ought to be real patient right now!”

He laughed out loud, a real laugh finally, and hugged her in tight. “You would think so, wouldn’t you?”

They turned around and started walking back toward the distant carcass. Fawn was pleased to see that Barr and Remo had finally taken their boots off and were wading around in the surf with Hawthorn, even if they were only washing up after the fish-butchery. But there was a suspicious amount of splashing going on for such a practical purpose.

They collected the boys and their prizes—Fawn was fascinated to handle the sculpted teeth with their strange serrated edges, once the blood and smelly gristly bits had been cleaned off—and made their way back to their cache, where the men built a driftwood fire. Hawthorn made Dag light it while he watched closely, venting hoots of delight. Fawn was grateful for the orange heat on her face, because the breeze was still chilly and damp. Even the patrollers thought the colors licking up around the bleached wood—blues, greens, spurts of deep red—were magical.

At length, Berry and Whit came back. Only now they walked up the wet sand not just side by side, but holding hands tightly. As they came near, Fawn saw that Berry looked wistful, and Whit looked sappy. She and Dag, sharing a blanket like a cloak, glanced at each other and grinned in recognition.

As the pair came up to the fire, Dag leaned back, eyes crinkling, and called, “Congratulations!”

Whit looked faintly horrified.

“Lakewalkers,” sighed Berry.

“Dag!” Fawn poked him in reproof. “At least let them say it for themselves!”

“Well, um…” said Whit.

Berry scraped a strand of sea-blown hair out of her eyes. “Whit’s asked me to marry him.”

“And she said yes!” put in Whit, in a tone of wonder.

It made the ensuing picnic properly celebratory, to be sure. Hawthorn was quite taken with the notion that he would now have a tent-brother, in the Lakewalker style. Whit glanced at Hawthorn, glanced at Dag, and looked quite thoughtful all of a sudden.

Later, handing around the food, Fawn murmured to Whit, “Good work, but you sure took a chance. You were real lucky to bring it off so soon!”

He whispered back, “Well, you said I ought to wait till I was as far from that cave as it was possible to get.” He stared out at the gleaming sea. “You can’t get any farther than this.”

They ate, drank, rested—in some cases, napped—and watched the repeating miracle of the waves and the turning of the tide. The sun sloped down to the west, lighting distant clouds that towered peach and blue above the lavender horizon, making Fawn think of the tales of the great shining cities of the lost Lake League on a drowned shore halfway across the continent. On a lake so wide you could not see across, so it had to be something like this. I should like to see that lake, someday.

Dag was asleep with his head on her lap when a white speck out to sea resolved into a familiar sail. Distant figures waved at them from the deck as the fishing boat rode the tide and breeze into the estuary’s mouth. She awoke him with a kiss, and they packed up and climbed the line of dunes to meet it at their landing place.

At the top, Whit turned to walk backward, then stopped. “This is the end of the world, all right.”

I once said I would follow Dag to the end of the world. Well, here we are…

Whit continued, “Sure is impressive. But just too big. I think the river will be enough water for me, from now on.” He smiled at his river lady and tried to steal a kiss, thwarted because she gave him one first. Hawthorn only wrinkled his nose a little.

“The Fetch won’t go upstream,” Berry reminded him. “We’ll be walking home.”

“And all uphill, too,” said Whit, making a wry face.

“That’ll be one long walk,” said Remo, to which Barr added, “Yeah, I need to get me some new boots.”

Fawn turned from the sea to look out over the flat marsh, fading into immense hidden distances, and felt dizzy for a moment, imagining the wide green world tilting up before her feet.

“You know, Whit, it all depends which way you’re facing. This way around, it looks to me more like the world’s beginning.”

Dag’s grip on her hand tightened convulsively, though he said nothing. Together, they all slid down the slope of sand to meet the boat.