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the river running out to … no one knew where, not even her father. It was against all wisdom, yes, it was. Of all Amaso people she, daughter of Oghi the sea turtle, knew that best. It was what she wanted—to be swept away by an immense force, to be taken .
    She pushed the log and flopped onto it. The current seized both of them and for a moment snatched her breath away. Once, several years ago, she’d felt loss of control like this. She’d dared some other girls to climb an oak tree that stood on the edge of the high river bank, roots peeping out below. Taunting them, Iona crept further and further out on a thick limb. She was agile as a squirrel and as sure-footed. Her best friend scooted out onto the branch and—
    It snapped off. The friend fell the height of two men to the flat ground and hollered like she’d been wounded mortally. Iona fell onto the sloping bank and tumbled head over heels all the way to the river sand. Her friends shrieked in fear. Iona stood up and roared like a bear, beating her chest. Not because she’d survived unhurt, but because of a feeling.During the moment of the fall—the moment that lasted half a lifetime—she had felt absolutely out of control. She exulted in it.
    Now— Let it come! —she lost control again. She rushed between the banks and swept out along the tidal flats. Where sweet river met salt ocean, the log spun in the churning sea. She whirled past the last point of land and into infinity. She felt triumphant. Let fate come—she wanted whatever it brought, she wanted an enormous blast of something, she wanted to throw away her daily wisp of a life, she wanted experience, real and strong. She wanted to feel alive today .
    She saw it now—the ocean was as big as the sky. She wasn’t a bird, she wasn’t a fish. She couldn’t swim in the one, couldn’t breathe in the other. She was going wherever the tide took her, and it was running toward the end of the world, wherever that might be. She was possessed wholly—she lived in immensity. She wanted to feel owned, lips, arms, breasts, legs, crotch, the heart that drove the blood, the blood itself, the place her feelings lived—she wanted to be usurped and melded into this sea, this world, this power.
    She stood up on the log, wobbly.
    It rolled.
    She plunged deep, took two strokes deeper, held herself underwater for a delicious moment, turned, and surged upward to the light. Her head popped into the air. At that moment the log banged her shoulder. She cried out in pain. With her other arm she grabbed a stud sticking out from the log and held on hard. She rotated her sore shoulder in several directions. It sort of worked. She clambered back onto the log and straddled it.
    She looked around. Grandmother Sun was well up from her watery bed, bright and strong—a strong woman like Iona.
    The girl looked straight up and saw an osprey cruising overhead, hunting. It wanted fish for its belly. It had the swiftness, strength, and skill to get what it wanted.
    Iona wanted a belly full of life, and she would take what she wanted.
    And she wanted to stay out here all day and play and ride the tide back.

    “It doesn’t look like much to me,” said Salya.
    She and Aku looked from the top of a low hill across sand flats toward Amaso. The huts were few and shabby and the sands barren. The wide river split into a lot of stringy braids. She wasn’t enticed by the horizon-to-horizon immensity of water to the east. It was just somewhere she would never be able to go. The sun, straight overhead, didn’t make the place look better. She was dispirited, missing Kumu. The six men came back with the food, but, true to his agreement with her father, Kumu would wait in Tusca until he and Salya were married.
    Aku said, “It’ll be fine.”
    Salya humphed. She was back to wondering why her twin let their father push them to this odd place without protest. Didn’t he love the mountains where they grew up? She liked the foothills full of canopied