Slipping in the wet street, clumsy as a newborn calf, Utta struggled upright and hurried away even as someone let out a shout of pain and fury behind her. A larger roar went up, many voices shouting, and people began to step out of the tiny, close-quartered houses to see what was the matter.

The child who opened the oval door was so small and so wide-eyed that at first, despite herself, Sister Utta could nearly believe the Skimmers were indeed a different kind of creature entirely. She was still shaking badly, and not just because of her encounter with the street bullies. Everything was so strange here, the smells, the look of things, even the shapes of the doors and windows. Now she stood at the end of a swaying gangplank on the edge of the castle’s largest lagoon, waiting to be admitted to a floating houseboat. How odd her life had become!

There were no Skimmers left in the Vuttish Isles of Utta Fornsdodir’s childhood, but they still featured heavily in local stories, although those in the stories were far more magical than those who lived here beside the lagoon. Still, they were strange-looking folk, and Utta realized she had spent almost twenty years in Southmarch Castle without ever really speaking to one of them, let alone knowing them as neighbors or friends.

“H–hello,” she said to the child. “I’ve come to see Rafe.”

The urchin looked back at her. Because the child had no eyebrows, hair pulled back (as was the habit for both male and female Skimmers) and a face still in the androgynous roundness of childhood, Utta had no idea whether it was a boy or a girl. At last the little one turned and scuttled back inside, but left the door open. Utta could only guess that was an invitation of sorts, so she stepped up onto the deck and into the boat’s cabin.

The ceilings were so low she had to bend over. As she followed the child up the stairs she guessed that the cabin had at least three stories. It definitely seemed bigger inside than outside, full of nooks and narrow passages, with tiny stairwells scarcely as wide as her shoulders leading away both up and down from the first landing. Her guide was not the only child, either—she passed at least half a dozen others who looked back at her with no sign of either fear or favor. None of them wore much, and the youngest was naked although the day outside was cold even for Dimene and the houseboat did not seem to be heated. This smallest one was dragging a ragged doll by the ankle, a toy that had obviously once belonged to some very different child since it had long, golden tresses. None of the Skimmers Utta had ever seen were fair-haired, although their skins could be as pale as any of her own family back in the northern islands.

The first child led her up one more narrow staircase and then down another before stepping out onto the deck on what she guessed must be the lagoon side of the houseboat. Utta could not help thinking they seemed to have reached it by the most roundabout way possible.