He started singing a song about thieving goblins. Rownie turned away and looked at the pebble in his hand. “Hello,” he said, whispering low so the other two couldn’t hear him, and then he threw it as far as he could. The rock made a small splash when it hit the River, but the waters did not otherwise react.

Stubble stopped singing and smacked the side of Rownie’s head. “Don’t get the River’s attention,” he said. “The floods will come for you.”

Rownie rubbed his head with one hand. He didn’t look up. He watched the River. It was vast, and Rownie couldn’t look at it for long. There was too much of it to take in. He watched until he had to look away, and then he looked at the ravine walls to either side of the River, and after that he looked at the stones in front of him.

Rownie had a brother older than any of the siblings who shared Graba’s shack, an actual birth-brother. They looked alike, both of them dark with dark eyes—eyes you couldn’t easily see the bottom of. Everyone called the brothers Rowan and Little Rowan. After a while “Little Rowan” shortened into “Rownie.” Rownie had never had a name of his own. Their mother drowned before she’d had a chance to name him.

He also didn’t know how old he was. Vass kept saying that Rownie was eight years old. She remembered everyone’s birthday, but she didn’t always tell the truth about birthdays, and Rownie suspected that she was lying about his. He was sure he was closer to ten.

Rownie and Rowan used to throw pebbles together, right on this spot on the Fiddleway Bridge. They would listen to the musicians, and Rowan would tell stories about the River and about their mother; how she had skippered a barge and gone down with it just underneath the Fiddleway. Only Rowan was able to swim to shore. He carried Rownie with him.

Vass didn’t believe that story. No one can swim through that part of the River, she would argue. The currents are too strong. You would have drowned too. Rowan only shrugged. We didn’t drown, was all the answer he gave.

Later, he showed Rownie where to toss pebbles down from the bridge. We drop the stones to say hello. It’s like leaving a small pile of stones on a grave. The dead speak in stones. Pebbles are the proper way to tell them hello. So Rownie always said hello when he crossed the bridge, even though he didn’t remember his mother at all, or her barge, or a time before Rowan brought him to stay with Graba because they didn’t have anywhere else to stay.