Of course he'd be crazy to go now. It was the wrong caravan!
After the spring caravan moved on... Harlow had fallen in love with Wave Rider, not Harold Winslow, maybe not Jeremy either. If Jeremy married her, she'd have his fifth of the inn after he was gone.
Come spring, speckles would be sprouting around the lettuce patch. He'd imposed that time limit on himself. Wave Rider was too public: a speckles crop couldn't be ignored for long. In early summer would come the outbound autumn caravan, and he must go.
But go how?
Hadn't he had this conversation once, long ago, with murderers trying to hijack a wagon? Nobody could cross the Neck alive, nobody could travel the Road, except with a caravan. Even a lone captured wagon would be attacked.
Tim Bednacourt had run the length of the Crab by keeping to the peaks no man had climbed. Now he was nearing fifty and he limped. Now he'd have a secure speckles supply; but could he still climb? Climb along the frost line, dip down for food and water, up and over to circle around any bandits. He'd even considered traveling up the narrow side of the Crab, but on the maps that looked lethal.
He'd need a way to cross the Neck. A boat, a surfboard: the currents ran the right way. He'd 'want a cockade, too. He hadn't found them growing anywhere.
What he was looking for was the least crazy way back.
And that was to talk himself aboard a caravan, if it was even possible. His family was serving dinner in the restaurant, out of earshot. He could sound out a few peripheral people, now.
The slow-cooking part of dinner was taking care of itself. Guests milled and sampled. Waver Rider's people milled and cooked. Jeremy joined a dozen guests out on the pier.
He knelt at the edge of the pier, water lapping just below his knees, and reached out with a slice of sweet potato. To the ten-year-old girl he said, “Shireen, go like this.”
Three flattish heads popped up.
“Winston,” he said, and one of the Otterfolk came forward to take the sweet potato. Short arms, wide hands with four thick, short fingers.
Jeremy handed sweet potato slices to Shireen. Shireen began distributing them to the other Otterfolk. Winston was still watching Jeremy.
Jeremy curled and uncurled just his fingers, no thumbs. Eight, sixteen, twenty-fourfish. Prawns, a double handful. One surf clam. Fingers wiggled: Don't bust your chops, we'll take what you can get.
Winston disappeared. Tomorrow he would be back with what he could collect, and would tell Jeremy what he wanted; but that was easier by daylight and while they were both in the water.
The little girl asked, “Jeremy, can I go in with them?”
“Depends. What are you wearing?”
“No!” cried Greta Schilling, unseen in shadow until now. “Tomorrow morning, yes, dear?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
Greta turned to Jeremy. “We wear our good clothes for your first night's banquet, you know.” Reproving.
“Mrs. Schilling, you flatter us.”
“Please, I am Greta. Jeremy, is it safe for a child to swim with Otterfolk?”
“Absolutely. We depend on it. If we don't entertain them, they don't fish for us. Greta, I know that name. Shireen?”
“Her great-grandmother Shireen died twelve years ago. Dzhokhar and I, we both loved her. So I married Dzhokhar Livnah and gave her name to our first daughter.”
It took Jeremy a moment to untangle that in his mind, but the implications-“So Dzhokhar settled with you? In Destiny Town.”
“Yes, for twelve years.”
And took Greta's surname, of course.
“His wife was with Armstrong wagon, you see, but she retired. Many merchants travel the Road for a time and then retire to a family shop. Dzhokhar could have married another merchant, but we knew each other-”
“Dzhokhar Livnah?”
“Yes. Why?”
“No, nothing.” But he'd always assumed that everyone on ibn-Rushd wagon was named ibn-Rushd! Assumed that Joker was single, too. “I only wondered how a man named Livnah joined ibn-Rushd wagon.”
She shook her head. “There are things I'm not supposed to tell.” If he forced too many merchants to say that too often, it would be noticed. But a caravan trainee was exactly who he wanted to question! He compromised. “Is there anything Ican tell you?”
She laughed.
“No, really. I've been listening to fire-pit talk for twenty-seven years. They speak a secret language, but I've picked up a little. Ibn-Rushd cooks, and that is my language.”
Shireen tugged at her mother's arm. “The fence,” she said.
“Yes. Jeremy, we walked down the beach this afternoon, as far as a razormesh fence. The beach beyond, it looked nice. Private. There were shells. Can you get us past that fence?”
“As I understand it,” Jeremy said, “if I could get you past that fence, you wouldn't see a restaurant here next year. That's the local birthground for the Otterfolk, Greta, and the Overview Bureau is very serious about that.”
“Oh.” She thought a moment, then asked, “After you fillet the tuna, where do you take the bones and head?”
“Soup stock. Everything interesting goes into the cauldron. On the caravans... you won't carry that size cauldron.”
“Why do you shudder?”
He shook his head, thinking that a chef could always break off conversation for some convenient urgency- “Is it true that we must get pregnant by men along the Road? And the men make the local women pregnant?”
“That's what they say. They say also that you merchants are almost inhumanly good at doing that with us mortals.”
She dimpled. “I thought Dzhokhar might have been having fun with me. Well, I haven't had the training yet.”
Most of the merchants had gone up the Road and the rest had gone to bed. The Winslow family cleaned up after them to some extent, then quit. Jeremy went up to bed. He could climb a flight of stairs, now, but not run up it.
He began stripping down, found he had some help. Harlow breathed in his ear. “So you want to join a caravan?”
She must have felt him lose his balance and wince as pain crunched in his healing knee. He said, “I've been thinking about it. Who told you?”
“Yvonne Dionne told me my husband was talking about hitting the Road. Yvonne and Wayne, the only thing between their shop and mine is a sandwich shop. Jeremy, were you serious? Is this a sudden thing?”
Still thinking as fast as ever in his life, Jeremy said, 'Not sudden, but I never could have talked Karen into doing it, and just to get away from here-“
“But with that limp-“
“Oh, I can wait for the autumn caravan. I'll be healed by then.” They were seated on the futon by now, and he took her face in his hands. “Will you marry me after the spring caravan leaves?”
“Well, I'd have to, wouldn't I?”
“What? Why?”
She laughed. “The caravans only take couples!”
“What?”
“You didn't know?” Still laughing. “But you asked me to marry you first. Good!”
He'd been thinking that she could vote his one-fifth share of Wave Rider. This blindsided him. “Everyone on a caravan is married?” What about Rian? and old Shireen? and Joker? Wait, Joker was married- “Well, no, not everyone. A woman in her teens or twenties, or a veteran who wants to die on the Road, but only if they're a caravan family, Jeremy. Anyone else, it's couples. Otherwise there would be too many men, I guess. Local help is supposed to be all men.”
He was still stunned. “Harlow, why didn't I think of coming to you before?”
“You may be an instinctive liar, Jeremy.”
She was the answer all along, and he'd been dodging and weaving- “No, wait, I'm a Spiral. You're a girl. We almost don't talk to each other in Spiral Town. I thought I'd got that... crap out of my head.”