Rocha ran her small hand along the worked wood. “If you must make a canoe, Torr says, you should use bark. Bark canoes are easy to make. He showed me. You can use a single sheet of bark that you hold open with lumps of clay fore and aft, or else you sew it together from strips, and—”

“And you spend the whole journey bailing, and before you have got halfway across, you sink. Sister, I don’t have to sew my hull together, and it cannot rip; my canoe will not leak.”

“But Torr thinks—”

“Too many think,” he snapped. “Not enough do. I have finished the dates. Leave me now.” And he bent to his work, scraping assiduously at the wood.

But she did not leave. Instead she clambered nimbly into the boat’s rough interior. “If my words are of no use to you, brother, perhaps my hands will be. Give me a scraper.”

Surprised, he grinned at her, and handed her an adze.

After that the work progressed steadily. When the canoe was roughly shaped Ejan thinned out the walls from the inside, making enough room for two people and their gear. To dry and harden the wood, small fires were lit carefully inside and outside the canoe.

It was a great day when brother and sister first took the canoe out onto the river, Ejan in the prow, Rocha in the stern.

Rocha was still an inexperienced canoeist, and the cylindrical craft would capsize at the slightest opportunity. But it would right itself just as easily, and Rocha learned to extend her sense of her own body’s balance down through the canoe’s center line, so that she and Ejan were able to keep the canoe upright with small muscular counteractions. Soon — at least on the still waters of the river — they were able to keep the canoe balanced without thinking consciously about it, and with their paddles they were able to generate good speed.

After the trials on the river Ejan spent more days working on the canoe. In places the wood had cracked and split as it dried. He caulked the flaws with wax and clay, and he applied resin to the inner and outer surfaces to protect against further splits.

When that was done, he judged the craft was ready for its first ocean trial.

Rocha demanded that she be allowed to accompany him. But he was reluctant. Although she had learned fast, she was still young, unskilled, and not as strong as she would eventually become. In the end, of course, he respected her opinion. Young or not, her life was her own to spend as she wished. That was the way of hunter-gatherer folk like these, and always would be: Their culture of mutual reliance bred mutual respect.

At last, for the first time, the canoe slid out of the river’s broad mouth toward the open ocean. Ejan had loaded the canoe with boulders to simulate the cargo of food and water they would have to take with them for the real ocean crossing, which would likely be a journey of some days’ duration.

As they passed, fisher folk on rafts and canoes stood up and yelled, waving their harpoons and fishing nets, and children ran along the bank, screaming. Ejan flushed with pride.

At first everything went well. Even when they had emerged from the river’s mouth the water remained placid. Rocha gabbled excitedly about how easy the ocean was, how quickly they would make their crossing.

But Ejan was silent. He saw that the water around the canoe’s prow was stained faintly brown, littered with bits of leaf matter and other debris. They were still in the river’s outflow, where it pushed into the sea. If he tasted the water, probably it would be fresh. It was as if they had not yet left the river at all.

When they did hit the true ocean’s currents, as Ejan had feared, the water suddenly became much more turbulent, and sharp, malevolent waves scudded across its surface. The simple cylindrical canoe rolled, and Ejan was immersed in cold, salty water. With practiced coordination they threw their bodies sideways to right the boat, and they came up gasping and soaked. But almost immediately the canoe capsized again. As the rolling went on, the bindings of their dummy cargo broke, and Ejan glimpsed the boulders he had stowed falling away into the deeper water.

When at last the boat stabilized he saw that Rocha had been thrown out. She quickly came up, spluttering and gasping.

He knew that the experiment was over. He dumped out the rest of the rocks, briskly paddled the canoe to his sister and hauled her out, and they began to make their way back to the river’s mouth.

When they got back to their camp, their reception was subdued. Torr helped them berth the canoe, but he had little to say. Their mother was nowhere to be found. They had been close enough to the shore for their antics to be visible to everybody, painfully reminiscent of what had become of their brothers, Osa, Born and Iner.

Still Ejan was not put off. He knew that the crossing was possible in the canoe; it was just a question of skill and endurance — and he knew that determined as she was, poor Rocha did not yet have those qualities. If he was to reach the southern lands, he needed a stronger companion.

So he approached Torr.

Torr was working on a new canoe of his own, an elaborate construction of sewn bark. But he spent most of his time now gathering food and hunting. His back was bent from stooping over bushes and roots, and a great gash over his ribs, inflicted by a boar, was slow to heal.

Ejan thought his brother looked much older. In Torr he saw the solid, earthbound sense of responsibility that he took from the great-grandfather who had given him his name.

“Come with me,” Ejan said. “It will be a great adventure.”

“To attempt the crossing is not — necessary,” Torr said awkwardly. “There is much to do here. Things are difficult for us now, Ejan. There are so few of us. It is not as it was.” He forced a smile, but his eyes were flat. “Imagine the two of us out on the river in your magnificent canoe. How the girls will holler! And I pity any crocodile that breaks its teeth on our hull.”

“I did not build the canoe for the river,” Ejan said evenly. “I built it for the ocean. You know that. And to reach the southern land was the reason our brothers gave their lives.”

Torr’s face grew hard. “You think too much about our brothers. They are gone. Their souls are with Ja’an until they return in the hearts of new children. I have tried to help you, Ejan. I helped you bring back your log. I hoped all this work would clear your head of your troubled dreams. But now it has gotten to the point where you are prepared to let the ocean kill you, as it did our brothers.”

“I have no intention of being killed,” Ejan said, his anger burning deep.

“And Rocha?” Torr snapped. “Will you lead her to her death for the sake of your dream?”

Ejan shook his head, baffled. “If Osa were alive, he would come with me.” He slapped the sewn hull of Torr’s new canoe. “Two canoes are better than one. If this were Osa’s canoe, he would strap it to mine and we would sail side by side across the ocean, until—”

“Until you both drowned!” Torr cried. “I am not Osa. And this is not his canoe.” His anger and frustration were visible in his face now, Ejan saw, shocked — as was his fear. “Ejan, if we lose you—”

“Come with me,” Ejan said evenly. “Strap your canoe to mine. We will defeat the ocean together.”

Torr shook his head tightly, avoiding Ejan’s eyes.

Sadly Ejan prepared to take his leave.

“Wait,” said Torr softly. “I will not go with you. But you will take my canoe. It will ride alongside yours. My body will be here, digging roots.” He grinned now, wistfully. “But my soul will be with you, in the canoe.”

“Brother—”

“Just come back.”

The use of Torr’s canoe gave Ejan a new idea.

The second canoe, though it would be laden with food and other supplies, would not be manned. That meant it would not be as heavy as Ejan’s, and to lash the canoes together side by side would not be the best solution for stability.