Passage

As the pair came up to the fire, Dag leaned back, eyes crinkling, and called, “Congratulations!”

Whit looked faintly horrified.

“Lakewalkers,” sighed Berry.

“Dag!” Fawn poked him in reproof. “At least let them say it for themselves!”

“Well, um…” said Whit.

Berry scraped a strand of sea-blown hair out of her eyes. “Whit’s asked me to marry him.”

“And she said yes!” put in Whit, in a tone of wonder.

It made the ensuing picnic properly celebratory, to be sure. Hawthorn was quite taken with the notion that he would now have a tent-brother, in the Lakewalker style. Whit glanced at Hawthorn, glanced at Dag, and looked quite thoughtful all of a sudden.

Later, handing around the food, Fawn murmured to Whit, “Good work, but you sure took a chance. You were real lucky to bring it off so soon!”

He whispered back, “Well, you said I ought to wait till I was as far from that cave as it was possible to get.” He stared out at the gleaming sea. “You can’t get any farther than this.”

They ate, drank, rested—in some cases, napped—and watched the repeating miracle of the waves and the turning of the tide. The sun sloped down to the west, lighting distant clouds that towered peach and blue above the lavender horizon, making Fawn think of the tales of the great shining cities of the lost Lake League on a drowned shore halfway across the continent. On a lake so wide you could not see across, so it had to be something like this. I should like to see that lake, someday.

Dag was asleep with his head on her lap when a white speck out to sea resolved into a familiar sail. Distant figures waved at them from the deck as the fishing boat rode the tide and breeze into the estuary’s mouth. She awoke him with a kiss, and they packed up and climbed the line of dunes to meet it at their landing place.

At the top, Whit turned to walk backward, then stopped. “This is the end of the world, all right.”

I once said I would follow Dag to the end of the world. Well, here we are…

Whit continued, “Sure is impressive. But just too big. I think the river will be enough water for me, from now on.” He smiled at his river lady and tried to steal a kiss, thwarted because she gave him one first. Hawthorn only wrinkled his nose a little.

“The Fetch won’t go upstream,” Berry reminded him. “We’ll be walking home.”

“And all uphill, too,” said Whit, making a wry face.

“That’ll be one long walk,” said Remo, to which Barr added, “Yeah, I need to get me some new boots.”

Fawn turned from the sea to look out over the flat marsh, fading into immense hidden distances, and felt dizzy for a moment, imagining the wide green world tilting up before her feet.

“You know, Whit, it all depends which way you’re facing. This way around, it looks to me more like the world’s begi

Dag’s grip on her hand tightened convulsively, though he said nothing. Together, they all slid down the slope of sand to meet the boat.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Feeling that my memories of houseboating on the Ohio River in my youth weren’t quite enough to support my tale, I turned with great reading pleasure to additional sources. I quickly found that while material on steamboating ran the length of the Mississippi, the earlier era of keelboats, flatboats, and muscle power was much less widely documented.

Especially worth sharing with the reader curious for more are: The Keelboat Age on Western Waters (1941) by L.D. Baldwin; Old Times on the Upper Mississippi: The recollections of a steamboat pilot from 1854 to 1863 (1909) by George Byron Merrick; A-Rafting on the Mississip’ (1928) by Charles Edward Russell; A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, by Himself (1834) (Bison Books facsimile reprint 1987); and, rather a prize because it was only printed in a limited edition of 750 copies, The Adventures of T.C. Collins—Boatman: Twenty-four Years on the Western Waters, 1849–1873, (1985) compiled and edited by Herbert L. Roush, Sr.

The Merrick, the Russell, the Crockett, and the Collins were all authentic firsthand accounts, immensely valuable for the kind of detail that ca

About the Author

One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD burst onto the scene in 1986 with Shards of Honor, the first of her tremendously popular Vorkosigan Saga novels. She has received numerous accolades and prizes, including, for best novel, two Nebula Awards (Falling Free and Paladin of Souls), four Hugo Awards for Best Novel (Paladin of Souls, The Vor Game, Barrayar, and Mirror Dance), as well as the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novella The Mountains of Mourning. Her work has been translated into twenty-one languages. The mother of two, Bujold lives in Mi

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