‘Well. I’ll leave you be.’ He meant to walk away, but did not move. She seemed no more than a girl, but they were about some heathen ritual, perhaps. He had heard such stories of the family.

‘She ran because I tried to wash her.’

‘Oh?’

‘Aye. She’s teeming. Lops.’

‘L— what?’

‘You know.’ She imitated scratching her hair.

‘Oh.’ Perhaps a more earthly reason than witchcraft after all. He remembered once again her smile as he tamed the mare.

The contempt the girl wore was a thin shell, which barely hid a depth filled with fear. His instinct, as with any creature that attacked because it was afraid, was to calm it.

The brother’s face drifted through his mind. Was she a demon like he? Had she willed Daniel to seek her out, for he could not fathom why he had? He should go.

He wanted to flee now. Every part of him poised to leave. The child was slight, hair dirty and matted, the girl’s eyes a storm of defiance and doubt. They needed help, not fear. Just as in his attempt to protect the lamb from her brother, and against every warning crying out within, moved once again by another’s pain he stepped forward when he should have stepped away.

Daniel crouched so that he was level with the child’s filthy face. ‘Don’t you like the river?’

She bared her teeth.

‘You know there are fishes in there the colour of the moon.’

She unfolded her arms.

‘And shells that whisper the sound of the sea.’

She inclined her head.

Daniel stood and shrugged. ‘Still. If you don’t want to see, we’ll leave them.’

The child looked up at her sister, tugging on her arm. ‘We could just look,’ the older girl said. ‘If you like.’

They all walked to the water’s edge. Daniel unlaced his boots and took off his socks, picking his way through the rocks to paddle in the shallows, head bent to the water. A glance showed them lingering at the bank.

‘Quick,’ he said. ‘A fish. Come, see. Take a step in, just cover your toes.’

‘I’m going to,’ the girl said, leaving the child and walking in.

Daniel touched her arm, and she glanced at him, startled, expression guarded. He pointed to the little fish swimming near her ankle. She peered down with delight, as though he had shown her the actual moon. ‘You’ve seen them before?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘We don’t like the water.’

He did not question. The sea and river both sustained and destroyed, providing food and taking its pay in the lives of the men that sailed it, the women that washed clothes in it. Most could not swim, and even he only did so in the calmer waters of the river. ‘You’re safe here,’ he said.