Dag cleared his throat, and recited, “Dag Wolverine Leech Luthlia, in point of fact.” He added in hasty clarification, “Leech for Leech Lake, like Hickory Lake.”
“So Wolverine was Kauneo’s tent-name. And, er…Leech would have been your camp name?”
“Yep. It’s a pretty well-known camp, up in those parts.”
Whit scratched his chin. “Y’know, that Dag Bluefield thing is starting to make all kinds of sense, all of a sudden.”
Fawn ignored him to ask, “Did the lake really have leeches?”
“Oh, yes,” said Dag. “Big ones—six inches, a foot long. They were actually pretty harmless to frolic with. Kept you alert while swimming, though.”
He grinned to watch her wrinkle her nose and go Eew! Which made her wonder if that had actually been the aim of his anecdote.
Six more days brought them to Graymouth.
But not, Fawn discovered to her disappointment, to the sea; the town lay not on the shore but ten miles inland. Downstream from the bluffs on which the town stood, the river split into several channels that ran out into a broad, marshy delta. The town itself was divided into two portions, Uptown along the bluff, Downtown—sometimes called Drowntown—along the riverbank. Fawn supposed she could think of them as the two lips of the Graymouth, and smiled at the notion.
Uptown, as near as Fawn could tell from this waterside vantage, was built of substantial houses and goods-sheds and pleasant inns; Downtown, of cheap temporary shacks, rough boatmen’s taverns, rickety sheds, and camps. The shore was lined with much the same sort of businesses as Silver Shoals, if not so many of them, plus long rows and double rows of flatboats—some for sale, some being used as floating shacks—and keelboats. On the southern end, the boats were of a very different shape and had tall masts sticking up; fishing boats and coasting vessels that actually dared thread the delta and put out to sea.
Downtown boasted a lively day market and trade of all sorts. Keelers looking to hire on upstream crewmen propositioned Whit and Hod within a short time of the Fetch tying to the bank, and another fellow tried to buy Copperhead right off the deck. Copperhead—rested, refreshed, and rowdy after his long boat ride—showed off by trying to kick out the pen slats. Dag rescued Berry’s boat and the innocent bystanders by saddling the beast and taking him out for a hard gallop.
Whit and Hawthorn took off down the row of boats; Fawn snagged Berry to guide her to the market to find fresh new food for supper. Barr and Remo followed them, trying to look tall and grim, like guardsmen of some sort. Fawn thought if it weren’t for the sheer embarrassment of it, they’d be clinging to each other like youngsters lost in the woods, surrounded by all these strange farmers. They stuck tight to her, anyhow, staring around warily.
“It’s not as big as Silver Shoals,” Remo muttered.
“Couldn’t prove it by me,” Barr muttered back.
Who’s protecting who? Fawn didn’t say aloud. Tact was a fine thing.
She did spot a pair of older Lakewalkers at the far end of the market square, a man and a woman, but they were too far away to hail, and by the time she worked around to that side, they had gone off. Were they local, or from upriver? Was there a camp near here? She would have to ask Dag. But they all returned to the Fetch before the Oleana boys had a chance to work each other into some sort of ground-panic.
There she discovered Whit had undermined her dinner menu by bringing in a fish the size and shape of a platter, which he said was fresh from the sea and which he’d bought off a sailboat a ways down the row.
Fawn stared at it in horror as he proudly held it out. “Whit, that fish has two eyes!”
“All fish do.”
“Not on the same side! Whit, those fellows spotted you for an upcountry boy and foisted off some defective fish on you.”
“No, this kind is supposed to look like that”—he studied it in some doubt himself—“they said. But the important thing is, I got us a ride down to the shore tomorrow morning in their boat. They go out every day the weather allows to do their fishing, see. They’ll drop us off on the beach in the morning and pick us up again on their way back. We can take a picnic!”
A picnic, in the heart of winter? Well, why not? In West Blue, a foot of snow would have fallen by now. Here, it was merely cloudy and chilly.
Bo vouched for the two-eyed fish, which didn’t exactly reassure Fawn, especially after his tale about the rolling hoop snakes used for cart wheels, but so did Berry, so she cooked it up as best she could. Dag ate it without hesitation, but, well, patrollers. Fawn, conscious of his crinkling eyes on her, eventually broke down and nibbled. It was alarmingly delicious.
So it was she found herself packing a big basket with food and another with blankets by lantern-light the next morning, as the laggard sun would not be up for another hour. Berry and Whit undertook to bring Hawthorn; Fawn supposed she and Dag would trail Remo and Barr behind them in a not-dissimilar fashion.
Hod elected to stay with the still-convalescing Bo, and not just due to the tales about the people-eating sea fish with giant teeth and the things with tentacles sporting suckers that popped blood from your skin. The two—parentless Hod and childless Bo—seemed in a fair way to adopting each other. They’d all come a long way from Oleana, Fawn thought, but Hod especially. He’d become a competent boat hand, and more. He was not so skinny, not so shy, and was a good two inches taller, partly from her cooking but mostly from not carrying himself so S-shaped. They’d be in Graymouth some weeks yet; when Bo felt better, she would make sure Hod found his chance to visit the shore.
Fawn had never ridden in a sailboat before. The creaking of its lines and tilting of its deck as the patched and discolored sails caught the faint dawn breeze made her nervous, but Dag was watching her closely, so she raised her chin and tried to sit bravely. The four fellows who ran the boat—two brothers and a couple of their half-grown sons—did appear to know what they were doing, and were glad to show the curious Whit, too. After a bit, even Barr and Remo unbent and horned in on the deal. Dag seemed content to lean back with his arm around Fawn.
Dawn over the marshes was gold and gray, a severe winter beauty all its own. Birds swarmed up to greet the light, though their cries seemed strange and sad in the misty air. From time to time along the channel Fawn could spot the decaying remains of flatboats amongst the other wrack, wrecked and washed down in a flood, or else simply abandoned and allowed to drift out to sea. Half in fear and half in hope, Fawn made out every drowned log to be a lurking swamp lizard, but Dag said not, though he promised to find her one later, an offer for which she thanked him politely but unencouragingly.
“One good thing about this time of year,” Whit called, slapping his neck. “Hardly any mosquitoes.”
“True enough,” Dag agreed amiably. “Come high summer, these southern mosquitoes carry off small children to feed to their young.”
“They do not!” Hawthorn cried indignantly, which made the fishermen grin. “You shouldn’t ought to tell such tales to Whit, he’s bound to believe you ’cause on account as you’re tent-brothers.”
The corners of Dag’s mouth tucked up. He murmured, “Ah, you never met my Luthlian tent-brothers. Those Wolverine boys trained me out of that right quick.”
The boat bore left at the next split in the channel, and in a half-hour more, a line of dun-colored sand dunes rippled across the flat horizon. The ascending sun began to draw up the mist, so that the far distance seemed to be veiled by a gilded gauze curtain shifting in a gentle draft. The boat scrunched bow-first into the sandy shore just behind the dunes, and the fellows jumped out, took the baskets, carried Fawn, Hawthorn, and Berry dry-shod across the last stretch of water, and united to help give the sailboat a good shove back out into the channel.