As for himself, he was used to the cold water, after all that practice, and the exertions involved in setting and binding the leg had kept him warm. So he worked on getting Kyokay as warm as possible.

Some of the shivering probably came from shock. But Umbo couldn’t do anything about that. If he was going to get help for Kyokay, he’d have to move fast.

He carried the boy swiftly, knowing that every stop caused him pain. But he had to get away before anybody from Fall Ford started searching for the body of the boy who had fallen.

He laid Kyokay on the gravel landing area at the ferry, then went for the cache of blankets and leather-cutting knife. With the blankets he made a kind of bed and then lifted Kyokay and put him back down in the bottom of the boat. With Kyokay’s weight, the boat was now firm on the gravel, though the current tugged at the other end. The rope connecting the boat to the iron ring was slack. So he could cut it without the boat getting away from him.

When the rope was cut—and it took only two swipes with the leather-cutter—Umbo thought of throwing the knife into the middle of the river, so Tegay could never again use it to beat a child. But no, that was one of the tools with which Tegay provided for the family. And in this world, Tegay had not beaten Umbo’s brains out. If this worked, would never beat young Umbo again. So Umbo laid the knife in plain sight in the middle of the gravel, where anyone using the ferry would stumble across it. It would get back to Tegay’s bench.

Then Umbo pushed the boat out into the water. The current took it so swiftly that Umbo had a few moments of fright as he struggled to climb up and over the side to get in it. Nothing deft about that operation. But he finally got into the boat and then laid the rower’s plank across the middle and sat with his legs straddling Kyokay, who wasn’t shivering as badly now, so maybe it had been only the cold and not the shock of the wound that had him shaking so much before.

“How did you get down into the water so fast?” Kyokay asked.

“You fell very slowly,” said Umbo.

“Yes,” said Kyokay in wonderment. “I did. But I still hit very hard.”

And then he closed his eyes. With all that pain, he couldn’t be asleep. Unconscious, then. Exhausted. Maybe in shock after all.