I knew the marsh trails well. I had walked them many times as a child, violin under my chin, pretending to be a wandering troubadour. These trails taught me the power of music — my playing scared utter hell out of wildlife. Many of the marsh landmarks I'd named in honor of animals I'd frightened there. A patch of stinging nettles I'd christened Turtle Terror; a stretch of puckered mud was Heron Horror; and an OldTech horseless cart half-swallowed in bog I called the Frenzy of Frogs.

The OldTech machine was now no more than a stepping-stone across sucking muck. Four hundred years earlier, before the collapse of OldTech culture, there must have been a road running through this marsh; but it was gone now, swallowed by mud and time, just as everything else of twentieth-century Earth had been swallowed. When I was young, I sometimes like to scare myself with the image of a skeletal driver trapped inside the swampbound cart, fingers clutched on the steering wheel, bony feet still pressing the pedals. More likely, he simply abandoned the vehicle — stepped out and called to the sky, "I want to leave!" Then he was carried off to the stars by the so-called League of Peoples, just like all the other traitors who turned their backs on Earth in the Great Desertion.

Good riddance.

As I clambered onto the cart's grille, the music ahead of me stopped in mid-phrase. I paused and listened. Silence… then a shout followed by the splash of something hitting open water. I raced forward, swiping my way through head-high reeds till I came to a clear area on the bank of Cypress Creek itself.

Cappie stood waist-deep in the water, her spear held over her head and ready to plunge downward, as if she were going to jab a fish. I couldn't see what she was aiming for, just black water lapping around her. She waited, holding her breath, watching the stream in front of her.