Since the current was heading north in the channel that passed the cove, Leif took up a paddle and dug it deep into the water next to the side of the cedar canoe and it slid forwards. He neither cried nor choked a sound at his fear and sadness because Little Carl was watching him and one should not cry nor show fear in the face of small children.

It was early in the day when Old Carl pushed them off and the sun came up to warm their bare backs and Leif kept paddling hard, as if the mere act of hard work would ease the misery and pain and homesickness that worked at him.

Little Carl was very young and when it became obvious that he could not work at using the second paddle, he ate a small strip of smoked fish and curled up against the bundle of supplies and went to sleep.

Leif kept stroking with his paddle and the canoe seemed to almost fly along with the moon-currents, but he kept digging the paddle deep even after his shoulders started to ache and his arms felt like they belonged to some other person.

All that day. They stopped once at a tiny stream that came falling out of the rocky edge of the forest, sitting in the canoe, and drank the water that they dipped with their hands, sweet and cold, and then Leif went back to paddling.

Heading north. Always north up through the wide channel all the afternoon and when the sun had moved over to shine on their shoulders Leif pulled into a narrow cove and used the braided rope to tie off the canoe to a small tree. He decided they would sleep in the canoe. What night came was exceedingly short this time of the year, and he was so tired he didn’t feel like trying to start a fire.

Still sleep did not come easily. Little Carl was restless and though he didn’t speak he kept coming to the edge of crying and would turn away without speaking. Leif touched the small boy’s forehead and thought it seemed warm and then felt his own to compare as those who became ill said first their foreheads grew hot. But it proved nothing because his forehead felt the same temperature as his hand, so he used the paddle across the thwarts of the canoe as a rest, leaned back against it, and doze-slept through the partial darkness that was night.

The forest was strangely silent through his sleep. No sound of birds nor squirrels until just at dawn when he awakened to hear some ravens gurgle-talking their morning chat-speak and he sat up and stretched. He had slept hard and dreamed but could not remember what the dream was about except that it was in some way dark, and he shook his head to shake the feeling away.