Riverkeep by Martin Stewart

short of the spinning handle and fingers clawing nothing ashe fell. His chin burst on the gunwale, filling his mouth with numb heat and the thin copper of blood.
    Wull’s eyes rolled as he fell, crashing onto the floor of the boat.
    There was a moment, lying flat and being rocked by the floor of the bäta, when the pain and the cold vanished and the only things that existed were the patient stars glimmering behind the torn cotton of the winter clouds; then the agony returned, the cold flared in his joints, and the sounds of wood knocking against his ears pulled him back into reality.
    â€œOh gods!” said Wull, spraying blood. He pulled himself upright and leaned out, expecting to see the whale oil slip into the Danék.
    The bottle sat on the ice, unbroken, between the lantern and the bank.
    â€œOh, thank the gods—don’t move!” he shouted to the bottle. It rolled a little toward the water. “Don’t move!” Wull shouted again, wiping blood from his chin. There was a tug of raised flesh against his glove.
    It could wait. He pulled the bäta tight against the lantern and fumbled at the rope with fingers that were now little more than agonized lead stumps. He dropped the rope once, then twice, shooting panicked glances at the bottle. At last he managed a rough bowline and gave it a gentle, experimental tug, hardly daring to pull firmly lest it be unraveled intoa tangled mess. Then he lifted his foot over the gunwale and onto the ice.
    He stopped, heard Pappa’s voice:
Never get oot the bäta, Wulliam—the minute ye get oot that boat, ye’re lost—ye can’t be rescuin’ folk if ye need rescuing yersel’
.
    The ice creaked under his heel. He lifted it back, slightly, bracing himself against the wood. Then he remembered once more the other thing Pappa had said:
An’ don’t spill a drop o’ that bloody whale oil. . . . Liquid gold that stuff
.
    Wull leaned his weight onto the ice. He felt it move, settle, the studded soles of his boots locking on to its surface.
    So,
he thought.
This is fine. It’s not far. Just a few paces
. He looked at the bäta’s eyes. “Those might be painted on,” he muttered, “but you’re doing a bloody good job o’ lookin’ annoyed. Lump o’ firewood that you are.”
    He lifted over his other leg.
    Standing on the ice, he realized how little time he’d spent walking around the river. Apart from playing in the trees beside the boathouse when he was very young, he’d hardly ever taken walks or run around, because there had been no other children for miles.
And even if there had been,
he thought bitterly,
they’d never have played with the keep’s son. They think we eat the bodies.
    Walking the river gave the whole world a different sense, even less secure than with the bäta beneath him—and with thesharp awareness of the short distance that now separated him from the ursas. A cough might bring them running.
    He took a step forward.
    The ice lurched, a tabletop rolling with his feet and trembling with the river. The bottle rolled again toward the water.
    â€œNo, no, no, no, no . . .” whispered Wull, stepping backward. A groan came from the ice, like cattle under strain. In his mind Wull saw the moment of it cracking, sending him into the current and the weed beds to freeze there, floating to the surface in the summer as sun-melted flesh to be found by . . . no one. To be picked apart by birds and flies.
    And Pappa, tied to a chair, wasting to yellow bones just yards from buckets of stinking fish heads.
    That could not happen.
    â€œAaaaaarrrghhh!” he shouted, running at the whale oil as though trapping a wild animal. The ice leaned wildly as he leaped, but he grabbed the rolling bottle beneath his body and dug the stud of his toe into the ice.
    â€œYes!” he said, flushed. “Oh yes! Ha! Oh, I’ve got you. Oh,