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.