"Kate!" Johnny's head appeared above the top of the grass. "You're back!" He catapulted down the bank and grabbed her hand. "Come on! Come see what I've been doing!"

What he'd been doing was helping the four old women pick fish out of the fish wheel, head them, gut them, fillet them so that they were split into two halves still attached at the tail and hang them to dry. The rack inside the smokehouse was full, and the little fire beneath was smoking nicely. Some of the strips were already turning a rich, dark red. Kate's mouth watered. When the process was complete, the resulting product, when eaten, would smell up the house for three days afterwards, and your jaws would ache for at least that long, but oh, the taste. There was nothing like Auntie Joy's smoke fish, nothing.

But the rule was you didn't get any if you hadn't helped the process along, and in the waning light Kate pitched in, splitting lengths of alder (like Old Sam, Auntie Joy swore by alder for smoke fish) and taking a turn feeding the fire. Fish smoking was a long process, involving days and, depending on the weather, sometimes a whole week, during which time the fire could not be allowed to go out.

By the time the sun went down they were sitting around a fireplace constructed out of smooth rocks excavated from the stream bed. It wasn't really cold enough for one, but when you have been in and out of an Alaskan creek a dozen times in one day, the warmth of an open flame is a welcome thing. There was something very social about a fire, too, Kate thought, looking at the faces seated around it. Balasha and Edna had their heads bent over a quilt, gnarled fingers deft with needle and thread. It was a forget-me-not pattern, and Kate wished she had the guts to ask for it when it was done. Forget-me-nots were her favorite flower, the first to bud in the spring, the last to lose its blossoms in the fall, a tiny, exquisite, blue-petaled work of natural art. Balasha and Edna had appli-qued a delicate forget-me-not in the center of every square; when finished, the quilt was going to be drop-dead gorgeous. "You just made a forget-me-not quilt," Kate said, remembering the quilting bee at Bernie's the previous spring. They hadn't given her that one, either.

Edna bit off a thread. "We cut out pieces for four, same time all. Then we make."

Kate tried to sound casual. "So, who is this one for?"

Edna cocked an eyebrow. "You marrying up soon, Katya?"

Kate had to shake her head, and Edna heaved a mournful sigh and shook her own in response. "Then I guess this one we make for Dinah."