My thoughts are all in a tangle, Dag had complained to her. What if it wasn’t just his thoughts? What if it was his ground, as well? Which would be no surprise after all the chancy groundwork he’d been doing, lately. Miracles and horrors. Maybe he really needed another maker to help straighten it all out.

Groundsetter. Fawn rolled the word over in her mind. It sounded mysterious and promising. Her chin ducked in a firm nod as her feet rapped across the Fetch’s gangplank.

–-

The wagon roads from the lower to the upper halves of Graymouth wound around the far ends of the long bluff, but several sets of stairs zigzagged more breathlessly up the steep slope. They were built, inevitably, of old flatboat timbers, generously enough for folks to pass four abreast in places. Dag turned his head for a quick glimpse of the busy riverside laid out below, with the gleaming river receding into level haze in both directions. He breathed in the cool air of this midwinter noon, contemplating the array of people about to officially become part of, well… his family, he supposed. Tent Bluefield. The growth of it had happened so gradually over the weeks of their disastrous quest, Dag was almost shocked to look back and realize how far they’d come, and not just in river miles. Yet here we all are.

The Fetch’s party climbed two by two. In the lead wheezed Berry’s uncle Bo, gnarled riverman, the one member of the young flatboat boss’s family back in Clearcreek who had volunteered to come help her on this long journey. Beside him thumped Hod, an arm ready to boost Bo along, but Dag judged the wheezing misleading; Bo was as tough as the old boot leather that he resembled, and the knife slash in his belly was almost fully healed. Hod had become far more than a mere boat hand after all their shared adventures, being as near as made-no-nevermind to adopted into the Fetch’s family.

Berry’s eleven-year-old brother, Hawthorn, came next, his pet raccoon riding on his shoulder, both boy and animal sniffing the air in bright-eyed curiosity.