“Did you come all the way from Tripoint?” asked Fawn in awe, fingering a shiny new plow blade.

“No, only from about halfway. We pick up things in one place, sell them downstream in another, as chance offers.”

The back end of the shack was living quarters, lit by two little glazed windows and another door up to the back deck. Two narrow bunk beds with pallets stacked three-high along the walls had more cargo jammed underneath; one bunk had a curtain. This was one of the boats with a real stone hearth. A few coals glowed under a black iron water-kettle. A cleverly hinged tabletop could be raised up and hooked flat to a wall, its legs folded in tight, to cover and contain a shelf full of metal dishes and cups and cooking supplies.

“How did you come to own this nice boat?”

Berry’s smile faded to a grimace. “My papa builds—built—builds one every year, to float down to Graymouth. He and my big brother do the timberwork, and I do the caulking and fitting. He’s been taking us kids along ever since my mama died when I was ten.” Her expression softened. “He’d come back upriver working as a hand on a keelboat, he and my big brother, with me and my little brother as cargo, till I learned me how to play the fiddle for the keelers. Then I got paid more than him! He used to complain mightily about that, in a proud sort of way.”

Fawn nodded understanding. “Papas,” she offered. Berry sighed agreement.

Fawn considered the worrisome hesitation in Berry’s description of her papa, and how to tactfully phrase her next question. “Does he, um…not build boats anymore?”

Berry crossed her arms under her breasts and regarded Fawn with a hard-to-figure stare. She drew breath and seemed to come to some decision. “I don’t know. He and my big brother took a boat down last fall and never came back in the spring. Never heard anything about them, though I asked all the keelers I knew to watch out for signs and pass the word back. This here boat, he’d left half-finished. I finished it up and loaded it, and I’m taking it down myself. So’s his work won’t be wasted.” Her voice fell. “If it’s his last work, it’s about all he left to me. I mean to stop a lot along the way and ask after them. See if I can find out anything.”

“I see,” said Fawn. “I think that’s right clever of you.”

There were numerous reasons a man might not come back from a down-river trip, and most of them were dire. A family man, anyway. A young fellow you might picture running off on some new adventure found along the way, selfishly sending no word back to his anxious kin, but not a papa. “How was it you didn’t go along, his last trip?”

A brief silence. Berry said abruptly, “Come see the rest of my boat.” And led the way out the back, twin to the hatch in front.

Fawn stepped, blinking in the light glimmering off the water, onto what she decided was the boat’s back porch. A long, heavy oar mounted on sturdy wooden hinges extended at an angle from the roof above to the water below, and Fawn realized it must be the rudder. Berry or someone had dropped a few fishing lines out over the stern, tied to a cord with a little bell dangling off it.

“Catch much?” said Fawn, nodding to it.

“Now and then. Not much right here—there’s too much competition.” She glanced down the long row of flatboats, most of which also had similar lines sagging out into the water.

“Dag—my husband—is pretty clever at catching fish.”

“Is he?” Berry hesitated. “Does he know boats?”

“A lot more than I do, but that’s not saying much. I’m not sure if he’s ever been on a flatboat, but he can paddle a narrow boat, and sail. And swim. And do most anything he sets his mind to, really.”

“Huh,” said Berry, and rubbed her nose.

Fawn gathered her resolve. “How much would it cost to go on your boat? For two people and a horse?”

“Well, there’s this,” said Berry, and fell silent. Fawn waited anxiously.

Berry looked out over the bright river, absently rolling a fishing line between her fingertips, and went on, “We might find some extra room. But…two of my crew, the strong-arm boys who man my sweeps—those are the big oars on the sides—got themselves in some stupid fight up behind the Landing last night and haven’t come back.” She glanced over to the shore. “It’s beginning to look like they’ve run off permanent. Leaving just me, my brother, and old Bo to run this boat. Me, I can man—woman—the rudder, but I can’t do that all day and be lookout and cook the meals as well, which is what I had been doing. You say you can cook. Now, if this husband of yours is a good strapping farm lad with two strong arms who isn’t afraid of the water, Uncle Bo ’n I could likely teach him to man a sweep pretty quick. And we could make a deal for you to work your passage. If you’ve a mind for it,” she added a shade uncertainly.

“I could cook, sure,” said Fawn valiantly, stirred by the thought of the savings on their purse. Which, to her mind, was none too fat for a trip of this length, though she’d shied from confiding her money doubts to Dag. “I used to help cook for eight every night, back home. Dag, well…” Dag did not exactly fit Berry’s description of the sort of crewman she was looking for, though Fawn had no doubt he could man any sweep made. “Dag’ll have to speak for himself, when he comes.”

Berry ducked her head. “Fair enough.”

An awkward silence followed this, which Berry broke by saying lightly, “Fancy a mug of cider? We’ve got lots. It’s all going hard in the warm. I’ve been selling some to the boatmen here, who like it better fizzy, so I’ve not lost my whole trouble, but even they won’t drink it after it goes vinegar.”

“Sure,” said Fawn, happy for the chance to maybe sit and talk more with this intriguing riverwoman. Fawn had been stuck on one farm her whole life, till this past spring. She tried to imagine instead traveling the length of the Grace and the Gray not once, but eight or ten—no, sixteen or twenty—times. Berry seemed very tall and enviably competent as she led Fawn back inside, picked up a couple of battered tankards in passing, and turned the barrel’s spigot. The cider was indeed fizzy and fuzzy, but it hadn’t lost quite all its sweetness yet, and Fawn, who had been growing hungry, smiled gratefully over the rim of her mug. Berry led her back to the folding table, and they both pulled up stools.

“I wish it would hurry up and rain,” said Berry. “I was done asking around here the first day, but I’ve been stuck for ten days more. I need at least eighteen inches of rise to get the Fetch over the Riffle, and that’d be scraping bottom.” She took a pull and wiped her mouth on her sleeve, and said more diffidently, “You haven’t been long on the river, I take it?”

Fawn shook her head, and answered the real question. “No, we wouldn’t have heard anything of your people.” She added conscientiously, “Well, Whit and I wouldn’t. Can’t speak for Dag.”

“Whit?”

“My brother. He’s just along for the ride as far as the Grace. He’ll go home with the glass-men tomorrow.” Fawn explained about Warp and Weft, and Whit’s financial schemes. With half her cider gone, Fawn felt bold enough to ask, “So how come you stayed home this past fall?” Fawn knew exactly how agonizing it was not to know what disaster had befallen one’s beloved, but she couldn’t help thinking Berry might have been lucky not to have shared it, whatever it had been.

“You really got married this summer?” said Berry, in a wistful tone.

Fawn nodded. Beneath the table, she touched Dag’s wedding cord wrapping her left wrist. The sense of his direction that he had laid in it, or in her, before Raintree had almost faded away. Maybe, with his ghost hand coming back, he could renew the spell? Groundwork, she diligently corrected her thought.

“I thought I would be wed by then, too,” sighed Berry. “I stayed behind to fix up what was going to be my—our—new house, see, and so papa left my little brother with me, because I was going to be a grown-up woman. Alder, my betrothed, he went with papa too, because he’d never been down the river, and papa thought he ought to learn the boatman’s trade. We were to be married in the spring when they all came back with the profits. Papa said this was going to be his best run ever. ’Course, he says that every fall, whether it’s true or not.” She drank more cider. “Spring came back to Clear Creek, but they never did, not any of the three or their hired hands. I had everything ready, everything—” She broke off.