They pulled in that noon at a village that was seemingly a traditional stop for the Clearcreeks, where Berry found a fellow who both knew her and remembered the Briar Rose stopping last fall. So her papa had made it at least this far. The goods-shed man couldn’t recall Boss Clearcreek saying anything unusual about the trip, was very sorry to learn of his disappearance, and shook his head over the news about the lost Tripoint boats. Whit sold his first batch of window glass, and they took to the river once more. The cool autumn sun that made the water sparkle and the riverbanks glow delighted Fawn, but was not welcomed by Berry, eyeing the falling water.
Late that afternoon Berry’s glumness was unfortunately vindicated. The boat boss was sitting with Fawn, Dag, and Hod at the kitchen table, nibbling leftovers and asking about life in West Blue, when a grinding noise from the hull made her look up and set her teeth. She stared at the ceiling, thumping with sudden bootsteps, and muttered, “Bo, you’re too close to the bank, bring her over hard now—” but broke off with an aggravated snarl as the Fetch quite perceptibly ground to a halt.
“What is it?” asked Fawn sharply; Hod looked equally alarmed.
“Sand bar,” Berry called over her shoulder as she swung out the back hatch. They all followed her out and clambered up onto the roof, where she was peering over the side with her hands planted on her hips and saying to Bo, “What did you want to go and do that for? We’re scrunched in good now!”
Bo was apologetic, in a guilty-surly sort of way, blaming the island they were stuck beside for growing that bar out in an uncalled-for way. Whit was rather red-faced, and Remo, catching Dag’s eye, looked hangdog. Berry sighed in exasperation, which reassured Fawn that this was a normal sort of emergency, and Berry and Bo took up a practiced routine for efforts to push them off again.
The first step was to swing the oars down and use them as stilts to walk the boat off the bar. Dag and Remo actually broke their big oar with their grunting effort, but the Fetch did not budge, and Berry abandoned that method before they either broke another—she was not oversupplied with spares—or ripped out the massive oak oarlock as well. The next step was to send all the men ashore, lightening the load, to try tugging with ropes. Copperhead, whom Berry kept calling Dag’s land-skiff, was sent too, with a rope tied to his saddle. The men stripped to their drawers and boots and waded into the chill water, grimly or with yelps, which was pretty riveting—Fawn caught Berry staring too, and her wide grin flashed back—but still didn’t shift the boat.
The third method was to settle back and wait for a rise to float the Fetch off the bar, a choice the shivering crew had scorned a couple of hours back but now applauded. As they were yelling this debate across the little stretch of water between the boat and the churned-up bank, a long, low hoot, rising to three sharp toots, sounded from upriver. “That’s the Snapping Turtle’s horn,” Berry said, her head swiveling.
The keelboat appeared around the bend, riding easily down the center of the channel. A man in—dry—red-and-blue striped trousers cheerfully waved a tin horn as long as his arm at the mud-splashed crew of the Fetch strung along the shore. “That there’s a boat, not a plow, Boss Berry!” he called. “You tryin’ to dredge a new channel over there?” Berry snorted indignation, but her lips twitched.
As Boss Wain strode to the bow and stood with his thumbs in his green leather braces, grinning at them, Berry cupped her hands and shouted, “Hey, Wain! You’ve got muscle over there! How’s about a tow?”
He cupped his hands and yelled back, “I dunno, Berry—how’s about a kiss?”
Over on the bank, Whit, despite being mostly blue, flushed red.
“Daisy-goat’ll pucker up for you!” Berry shouted back. “You’ll think you’re back with the home girls!”
Wain shook his head. “Not good enough! What’s your cargo?”
“Mainly salt butter, Tripoint tools, and window glass!”
Wain’s grin stretched as the Snapping Turtle slid past. “Then I guess we’ll sell our tools and glass downstream before you!” He patted his lips in a broad gesture. “Unless you want to change your mind about that kiss?”
“Muscle-headed turkey-wit,” Berry muttered under her breath. “He never changes.” She raised her voice and shouted after him, “What, are all your fellers too weak and worn out with flipping those dice to pull a bitty flatboat anymore? All little girly-arms on the Turtle, so sad!” She flapped hers limply in mockery.
Wain raised his arm and slapped his massive biceps. “Nice try, Berry!”
Fawn considered volunteering a kiss in Berry’s place, in support of the Fetch, but looking over the rowdy keelboat men decided better of the impulse.
“I’ll play you over the bar!” Berry raised her arms back and mimicked fiddling.
This actually started a hot debate amongst the dozen or so men of the Snapping Turtle’s crew; before it could quite turn to mutiny, Wain shouted, “A concert and a kiss!”
Berry gritted her teeth. “I’ll wait for the rain!”
Moans of disappointment drifted back from the keelboat, but the river bore it inexorably on, and in a few more minutes it had floated out of hearing and then sight. Berry heaved a frustrated sigh. It had all been fairly good-humored, Fawn thought, but—they were still stuck on the sand bar.
Copperhead was turned loose to graze on the island, since, although he had jumped into the water readily enough under Dag’s practiced persuasion, getting him back aboard would be nigh impossible until they could again tie the Fetch to the bank bow-first and run out the gangplank. The men washed in the river and came back aboard, crowding the hearth where Fawn was trying to start an early supper, there seeming to be little else to do for the long evening. They stamped and shivered and rubbed their hands, all but Dag who tucked his under his left arm, but eventually settled down enough out of her way that she could make pies and stew. Dag asked if Fawn wanted him to catch her some fish, but for some reason this amiable suggestion was voted down.
In the night Fawn awoke to find their bedroll empty of Dag. At first she thought he’d gone to piss, but when he didn’t reappear after a reasonable time, she wrapped a blanket around herself and crept out to look for him. A light was seeping in from around the bow hatch, too amber to be the moon. She slipped out the door and closed it behind her. The night air was cold, damp, and smelled of fallen leaves and the river, with a whiff of warm goat and sleepy chicken, but overhead the stars burned bright.
The bench was pulled out from the wall, and Dag was sitting astride it, with a lantern glowing at the other end. He seemed dressed by guess, hair sticking up, and was without his arm harness. He was frowning down at two little piles of mixed oats and corn kernels on the board between his knees, although when she came to his shoulder he looked up and cast her a quick smile.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
He ran his hand through his hair, to no good effect. “I’ve gone back to oats. Figured you’d approve.”
She nodded provisionally. “Are you planning to ground-rip some?” She didn’t see any little piles of gray dust, so perhaps she’d caught him in time. Which begged the question In time for what? — although it was possible her mere presence would inhibit him from dodgier trials.
He made an odd face. “I got to thinking. Even a malice doesn’t normally ground-rip its victims down to deep physical structure—that gray slumping’s more an effect of prolonged draining blight. It only snatches the life-ground. The cream off the top, if you will.”
She frowned in concentration. “I remember when Dar told me about how sharing knives are primed. The knife just draws in a person’s dying ground. The whole person doesn’t dissolve. So it’s not just malices.”
His lips parted, closed. “That’s…a better thought. Though I don’t think of sharing knives as ground-ripping so much as accepting the greatest possible ground-gift. I…hm.” His brows drew in. After a moment he shook off the distracting notion, whatever it was, and went on. “Live ground is more complex than the ground of inert or dead things—lighter, brighter, more fleeting…and it seems”—he reached out with a fingertip beneath his hovering stump and shifted one more oat from the pile on his right to the pile on his left—“more digestible. Speaking of ground-colic.”