the Father's, the face of the slave owner and the slave. He was scowling, urging on his horse, shouting at me, words I could not hear.
I saw all that in a glance and waded on, crosscurrent, pulling the child with me as best I could. When I saw she was getting out of her depth I said, "Climb up on my shoulders, Melle. Don't hold me by the throat, but hold tight." She obeyed.
I knew where I was then. I had been in this river with this burden on my shoulders. I did not look around because I do not look around, I go forward, almost out of my depth, but still touching bottom, and there is the place that looks like the right way to go, straight up to the shore, but I don't go that way, the sand gives way beneath my foot. I must go to the right, and farther still to the right. Then the current seizes me with sudden terrific power and I'm off my feet, trying to swim, and sinking, floundering, sinking—but I have foothold again, the child clinging to me hard, I can climb against that terrible current, fight my way up into the shallows, scramble gasping up among the willows whose roots are in the river, and from there, only from there, I can look back.
The horse was struggling out in the deep current, riderless.
I could see how all the force of the river gathered in that channel, just downstream from where we had found our way.
Melle slipped down from my back and pressed up tight against me, shuddering. I held her close, but I could not move. I crouched staring at the river, at the horse being carried far down the river, swimming desperately. Now it began to find footing. I watched it make its way, plunging and slipping, back to the other shore. I scanned the water, the islets, the gravel bars, upriver and down, again and again. Sand, gravel, shining water.
"Gav, Gav, Beaky," the child was sobbing, "come on. Come on. We have to go on. We have to get away." She tugged at my legs.
"I think maybe we have," I tried to say, but I had no voice. I staggered after Melle for a few steps up into the willow grove, out of the water, onto dry land. There my legs gave way and I pitched down. I tried to tell Melle that I was all right, that it was all right, but I couldn't speak. I couldn't get air enough. I was in the water again, under the water. The water was clear and bright all round me, then clear and dark.
***
WHEN I CAME to myself it was night, mild and overcast. The river ran black among its pale shoals and bars. The little damp hot bundle pressed against my side was Melle. I roused her, and we groped and crawled up through the thickets to a kind of hollow that seemed to offer shelter. I was too clumsy to make a fire. Everything in our packs was damp, but we took off our wet clothes, rubbed ourselves hard, and rolled up in our damp blankets. We huddled together again and fell asleep at once.
My fear was gone. I had crossed the second river. I slept long and deep.
We woke to sunlight. We spread out all our damp things to dry and ate damp stale bread there in the hollow among the willow thickets. Melle seemed to have taken no harm, but was silent and watchful. She said at last, "Don't we have to run away any more?"
"I don't think so," I said. Before we ate, I had gone down to the shore and, concealed in the thickets, scanned the river and the shores for a long time. Reason told me I should fear, reason said that Hoby might well have swum across and be hiding near; but all the time unreason told me, You're safe; he's gone; the link is broken.
Melle was watching me, with a child's trust.
"We're in Urdile now," I said, "where there are no slaves. And no slave takers. And..." But I didn't know whether she'd even seen Hoby behind us in the river, and didn't know how to speak of him. "And I think we're free," I said.
She pondered this for a while.
"Can I call you Gav again?"
"My whole name is Gavir Aytana Sidoy," I said. "But I like Beaky."
"Beaky and Squeaky," Melle murmured, looking down, with her small, half-circle smile. "Can