Out on the river it was broad and fast flowing. The hedgehogs would not let Song or her friends use the raft poles, so they worked on the Swallow, putting the finishing touches to their sleek craft. Torrab and the others formed two lines, port and starboard, and they punted deep with their poles. Gawjo sat on the stern rail, using a broad paddle as a rudder to steer the sprawling vessel. By mid-noon they were cruising free along a wide calm stretch, while the crew sat eating cold hodgepodge pie and drinking cider, watching the raft drift steadily downriver. Song joined her grandpa at the stern rail and showed him her parchment, torn, tattered and barely decipherable from the batterings it had endured.

“Grandpa, ’tis not very clear now, but there were a few lines of the rhyme here, let me see now. Ah, here it is.

“And should you live to seek the lake,

Watch for the fish of blue and gray,

Betwixt those two’s the path you take,

Good fortune wend you on your way!”

Gawjo’s hooded eyes scanned the waters ahead. “Aye, the fish of blue an’ gray, I know ’em well. You’ll see those fish afore twilight. I’ll say nothin’, pretty one. See if’n you can spot ’em—yore young an’ sharp.”

Twilight came as a relief after the long hot day, gold and crimson flakes of dying sunlight dancing on the waters. Song had positioned herself on the forward rail of the raft. She watched keenly from side to side, taking in all, searching for the signs. From the cabin window she could see Grandpa Gawjo and her friends observing her. The young squirrelmaid paid attention to the tiniest details. Rocks lining the banks, trees growing either side, any patches of bare earth. Then she sighted the fork ahead. A rock that was so large it was almost an island in midriver, causing the waters to part and run both sides of it. The left fork wound off sharply east, the right one curving slightly west, but farther downriver straightening to flow due south. It was on the right fork of the island rock that Song spotted the fish. It was a natural spur of the grayish-hued rock, sticking out at an awkward angle, high up. Curiously, it closely resembled a trout, for the shrubbery growing atop it looked like the fish’s small dorsal fin. Where the eye would be positioned there was a crack in the stone, with a thick spray of delicate blue-flowering wall speedwell growing out of it.

“Ahoy, me beauty,” Gawjo called from the cabin window, “which course do we steer? Has the fish showed you yet?”

Without turning Song held up her right paw. “Take the west fork an’ sail due south, Grandpa!”

Gawjo chuckled as he emerged from the cabin to attend his steering paddle at the stern. “Yore a born Swifteye, gel. West’n’south it is!”