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when we reached them, two old people stood up by the chimneys and yelled insults at us. They thought we were Heathens. We put the sail up and went on, eating cold food as we sailed, feeling very dejected. Gull would not eat again. “I’m glad we’re getting on,” he kept saying.
    We did not get on very well. The River turned, and the wind blew from the north, in gusts, straight in our faces. We had to tack from side to side against it. Often we found we were sailing right round a submerged roof, and nearly every one was burned or broken. We smelled burning the whole way. Up on the hills to either side were the burned ruins of more houses, burned haystacks, and burned woods. Where the trees were alive, they were not budding. It was like sailing back into winter. Just a few of the fields had been plowed in spite of the wars, and the earth was a curious red, as if the ground was wounded.
    â€œThe Heathens have been here,” Hern said. “Everyone’s run away.”
    None of us answered him. I think we were all becoming more and more uneasy at the way Gull insisted on our going toward where the Heathens must be. I know I was. It seemed to me we were in danger from both sides, and I began to wonder at how thoughtlessly we had set off into this danger. True, Zwitt had left us no choice, but there was no reason to have gone down the River more than a mile or two. I wondered why we were going on, and I wished my father were there to tell us what to do.
    Toward evening the River rushed again between steep hills of reddish earth that were covered in bare trees. Someone among the trees shot arrows at us. They all fell short as we raced with the flood, but after that we kept a blanket over us, and whichever of us was steering wrapped their head in a rugcoat. We did not dare think of landing until the River widened again and rushed past on either side of islands, long and boat-shaped and half submerged. The first islands were crowded with people who must have fled there from the Heathens. They were dark-haired, like Shelling people. As soon as they saw the boat, they crowded to the edge of the floods, shouting, “You can’t land here! No room!” Zwitt could hardly have been friendlier.
    Duck was steering. He stood up and put his tongue out at them, the fool, and the rugcoat slipped off his head. Then they all screamed, “Heathen!” and threw sticks and stones after us. We kept clear of all the other islands until night came on.
    As it grew dark, we could see fires here and there on the steep shores and the islands. But the last island we came to was dark. It was very small, with only one patch of dry ground under the trees. Robin said we must land there. She was tired out. We were all scared of landing. We drew in as quietly as we dared and went ashore whispering, even though there was no one there. We lit our fire in a hole among the roots of a tree and prayed to our Undying that nobody would see it.
    Gull would not eat again. He would not speak, and he was cold. But we were all cold that night. We pressed against one another in the boat, and every time I woke, the rest of them were shivering, too. I was woken by a dream I kept having. As far as I remember, it was just my mother’s voice, saying, “The watersmeet!” and with it a slight scent of tanaqui. But I find it hard to separate it in my head from the dream I have been having ever since I started weaving. In that dream I see my mother bending over me, just the shape of her, with fair hair as curly as Robin’s, but bushy like mine. “Wake up, Tanaqui,” she is saying. “Wake up and think!” There is a scent of tanaqui with that dream, too. And I do think I have been thinking, but nothing comes of it, except that I blame myself.
    In the morning the boat, our blankets, the ground, and the bare trees were all covered with frost. It looked odd, the white frost on the bloodred earth. The River here ran pink