In the sky, stars began to fade. Light seeped up from the eastern horizon, pasty-faced and watery as predawn usually is. (Zephram once observed to me, "Master Day is not a morning person.") In the wan yellow light, flies began to buzz and frogs to chug, while loons still called night songs to each other and fish splashed the surface of open water, on the grab for fluff and insects.

Buzz, chug, hoo-ee-oo, splash.

Buzz, chug, hoo-ee-oo, splash.

In time, I eased the violin off my shoulder and let the marsh sing without me. Or at least make noise. I couldn't tell if the sound was wholesomely relaxing… or getting on my nerves.

After minutes of sitting, my stomach rolled with a puma-like growl. I put my instrument back in its case, then pulled out the bread and cheese I had taken from Zephram's. As I worried the rock-old cheddar with my teeth, I considered what to do next. Officially, my vigil would end as soon as the sun cleared the horizon… not that I could see the horizon with bulrushes all around me, but if I climbed the dead tree near the duck flats, I'd have a clear view all the way to Mother Lake. I still might not see the sun directly, but I'd easily catch its glare spooning the water to sparkles.

When I reached the flats, they were still jumbled with footprints from Steck's boots, plus the occasional smudge of moccasins from Cappie and me. No sign of ducks. I crossed to the dead tree and tried to waggle it, just to check how securely it was set into the wet ground. As far as I could tell it was rooted like stone, though it had stood bare and sapless since I came to practice violin as a child. Back then, I could only reach the lowest branch if I stood on tiptoe and jumped; now, I scrambled up easily, as high as I wanted to go. That was just high enough to see Mother Lake — you can't trust old bleached wood to hold your weight, even when the tree feels solid. I intended to peek for the sun, then get down again before the branches snapped beneath me.

That was before I saw Hakoore coming in a canoe.

Cypress Creek runs down the very center of the marsh, a meander of clear water among the cattails. If you start at Mother Lake, you can boat up the creek as far as Stickleback Falls, and even then it's an easy portage to Camron Lake and points south. The duck flats don't touch the creek itself, but when the water is high enough you can paddle to the flats if you know the right route through the reedy mat of marsh… at least I assume that's true, because the canoe was doing precisely that.

Hakoore wasn't paddling. He sat stiffly in the front while his granddaughter Dorr stroked in the stern. Dorr was twenty-five years old and tyrannized by the old man. I found her intermittently attractive, or at least pretty-ish, but she had no idea how to put herself together for good effect. On hot days, you might see her wearing a sweater; on cold, she might wander barefoot around the town common, hair tumbled shapelessly around her face. If Dorr had been a violinist, she'd be the sort who played with the energy of a devil, but never bothered to tune up first… and would always be slashing her way through a scherzo when the audience wanted a ballad.

Dorr wasn't a musician, though — she made quilts and dyed blankets that were eagerly sought by well-to-do buyers down-peninsula. Her designs were striking: sad-eyed trees with blood dribbling down their bark; catfish leaping into bonfires; horses with human faces crushed under stone-weight thunderclouds. I often said to myself that Dorr desperately needed a man… but until Hakoore was gone she was chained to the old despot, like a heifer marked with her owner's brand.

By the time I caught sight of the canoe, Dorr had already spotted me in the tree. Our eyes met. Her face was expressionless and her mouth stayed closed — she wouldn't tell Hakoore I was there. (The more he treated her like a dumb animal, the more she behaved that way… at least when he was around.) I had hopes of scurrying back to the ground without being seen, but Hakoore must have possessed enough dregs of eyesight to notice me backlit against the brightening sky.

"Who's in that tree?" he hissed.

Dorr didn't answer his question. I forced myself to call down, "Me. Fullin."

"What are you doing?"

"Checking whether it's dawn yet."

"Is it?"

"Yes." Truth was, I couldn't make out any sunlight shining on Mother Lake, but I decided to feather the issue. If the sun hadn't risen, I was breaking vigil again by communicating with people; therefore, the sun had risen.

"Come down," said Hakoore. "It's time we talked."

I didn't like the sound of that — Hakoore's talks could shrivel a man's testicles at fifty paces. On the other hand, I had no choice. Moving slowly, trying to look the soul of cautious prudence when I was actually just delaying the confrontation, I descended from one branch to the next until my feet touched solid mud. By that time, Dorr had run the nose of the canoe onto the flats and helped her grandfather get out.

"So, boy," Hakoore said, hobbling toward me, "up a tree, were you? To see if it was dawn."

"Yes."

"Woman!" he snapped at Dorr. "Go do something productive. Don't you use these plants for dyes? Pick some. Don't hurry back."

Dorr said nothing. She brushed noiselessly through the nearest stand of rushes and disappeared. Hakoore peered whitely after her for a time, then turned back to me. "I climbed a tree on my vigil too… to see if it was dawn."

Some men would say that with a companionable smile of nostalgia. Hakoore didn't, but his hissing voice did seem less venomous than usual. That worried me — the old snake was setting me up for something.

After a moment he said, "Take me to the boat." He held out his bony hand, and reluctantly I let him take my arm, the way he always walked with Dorr. I couldn't remember him touching me before — he preferred to commandeer the help of important people like the mayor, or ignorable ones like Dorr. Then again, we were in the middle of a marsh. If he needed help walking, he didn't have a lot of choices.

His grip on my arm was tight and he leaned hard against me… not that he weighed enough to be a burden. Hakoore might be close to the same age as my foster father, but he looked several decades older: shriveled, gaunt and hunched. He had an old man's smell to him, a mix of ancient sweat and urine, rising from his clothes like a sad memory. As we walked toward the canoe, I could hear him clack his molars together every few steps, as if he were still chewing the ghost of some long-ago breakfast.

"So," he said as we walked, "your Cappie intends to be priestess."

"Not my Cappie," I answered quickly. "I don't control her."

"True." Hakoore nudged me knowingly with his elbow. "Cappie is just a girl you live with, right, boy? She's the only female your age, so it's natural you two would… be boy and girl together. But beyond that?" He made a rasping sound in his throat. "I don't suppose you have feelings for her."

The old snake said "feelings" with so much intensity, I clenched my jaw. Did he want me to agree with him, that she was just some meaningless convenience? Even if I'd outgrown Cappie, a gentleman doesn't talk about a lady as if she's something he wants to scrape off his moccasin. I couldn't tell Hakoore Cappie meant nothing to me, whether or not it was true. But the Patriarch's Man was waiting for me to speak — to deny her, to say something disloyal.

"There's feelings and there's feelings," I answered carefully. "Depends what feelings you mean."

Hakoore actually smiled — as much as a frown-lined face like his could ever support an amiable expression. He reached out with his free hand and patted my wrist almost fondly.

"You're a weasel, aren't you, boy?"

His thumb suddenly dug into my flesh, gouging the soft web between my thumb and index finger. There's a nerve there that hurts when it gets squeezed. Hakoore knew all about that nerve.