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travellers seemed to Henry to be drawn across the surface as if by a magnet, so inevitable was their motion, so silent their paddles in the calm waters of the bay. Their bark-and-hide canoes rode low, laden with sleeping robes of luxurious fur, tightly woven baskets, perfectly square birchbark boxes and intricately decorated clay pots, many open to the air, all empty. Their destination was a low stretch of land on the northwest horizon. From their great good cheer, Henry assumed the green and red shores in the near distance must be a pleasant place indeed.
    Canoes continued to stream past Reclamation . The ship posed no apparent threat, roused only passing curiosity. Perhaps this was a longhouse experimenting with Whale form. Perhaps the reverse. Such things were well known to L’nuk, The People, in story and in legend. In the Six Worlds, nothing remained static. At any given moment, the spirit of one object might transfer itself into the being of another. Its journey or destination was no one’s business but that of the questing entity. The great wooden creature towering above them with its personlike spirits who smelled like the dead would make its purpose known in time.
    Morgase steadied Her Lady at the rail. Eugainia’s battered spirit rose to the flood of joy streaming round the battered vessel.
    A young man, his brown skin artfully tattooed in vivid reds, yellows and blues, paddled with even, powerful strokes. The woman behind him, lithe and strong, not young, not old, held her own, matching him stroke for stroke. Unlike the others, theirs was a wary curiosity. They glanced up frequently, their expressions neutral.
    Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk found Eugainia. And she him. She pulled herself up to her full height, lifted her hand in greeting. Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk wavered in his dig, thrust and lift motion, not fully registering what stood above and before him. He fell one then two then three strokes out of rhythm.
    Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk and Eugainia couldn’t look away, one from the other. He saw an exhausted young woman, pale, worn, pregnant, her blonde hair a tangled mat, her fair skin ashen grey. He felt what the morning sun, low on the horizon behind Eugainia, wished him to feel. He felt a golden arc around her. It came not from the sun, but from within.
    Eugainia felt rather than observed Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk. A wave of uncertainty washed up the length of her body. She felt she was being held upright, not by Morgase, whose stout arm circled her waist, but by this strange young man’s lustrous eyes. For the first time since fleeing Scotland, Eugainia felt safe.
    Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk wrested his regard from Eugainia. He found his rhythm.
    Keswalqw knelt behind Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk in the canoe’s stern. Keswalqw’s open face rested simply in kind repose. Her doeskin dress clothed a tight and supple body. Her black hair shone, shot through with blue and gold reflected from the sky. Keswalqw’s glance slipped from Eugainia to Henry, where it lingered.
    Henry inclined his head in a greeting. Keswalqw returned the nod, then looked away.
    Athol Gunn made no sense to Keswalqw. Was this a bear or a man? She couldn’t catch his individual scent, such was the stink from the vessel. Nor—with sun above and behind him—could she make “the meeting of the eyes” to assess his spirit. Perhaps his was bear clan. Perhaps he was a moose-clan man.
    Keswalqw returned Morgase’s smile. Morgase experienced a tremor of recognition. I’m in the presence of someone ancient, Morgase thought. More ancient even than me.
    The canoe slipped away. In that briefest of moments, as the sleek craft slid silently past the battered galley, five persons’ fates were sealed.
    â€œI looked at her but saw a tree, a pine tree, in silhouette, on a hill, in a landscape I don’t recall but long to know,” Mimk ɨ tawo’qu’sk