Riverkeep by Martin Stewart Page A

thank gods.”
    He hugged the bottle, heard the thick gloop of oil, stood—then fell instantly, feet splayed out in front of him, the thud of his backside on the ice shaking his teeth and flashing fresh pain into his bleeding chin.
    As he watched the bottle fall he had time only to gasp before it broke with a deep round split and showered him in fish-stinking, flammable liquid gold.
    â€œOh . . .” he said, glistening under its coating. “Oh . . . oh . . . gods . . .”
    The bäta nodded, and a noise like a splitting branch told Wull the ice was breaking beneath him.
    Subconscious animal instinct lifted him to his feet and propelled him forward, almost without touching the surface. He launched himself into the bäta as the tabletop of ice split in two and the larger chunk, speckled merrily with shards of the porcelain bottle, drifted into the current.
    Wull sat in the back of the boat, in his old seat, watching half a winter’s worth of oil reflect the moonlight on its way downriver.
    â€œOh gods,” said Wull. “There’s not the coin to replace that. Oh gods, gods . . .”
    He looked around at the white world, unchanged and uncaring in the face of this fearful loss. A night lark released a burst of song.
    â€œHow can birds sing in the middle o’ this?” he said aloud. He found he was, again, addressing the bäta.
    From the back of the boat he couldn’t see its eyes, but they arrived without effort in his mind: hard and forward-looking.
    He returned to the Riverkeep’s seat and hefted theoars again, rowing to nowhere, oblivious to the pain in his hands and shoulders and the throb of his bloodied mouth and chin.
    â€œWhy do I have to do this?” he asked the bäta. “What difference would it make if the river locked? People could just drag their boats along the ice like sleds, couldn’t they?”
    He wondered why this had never occurred to him before.
    â€œCouldn’t they?” he said again. His voice seemed to travel no farther than his lips; the oppression of the freezing air was like being locked in a cupboard. The bäta lurched through the little islands of ice with his jerky, uneven strokes. The only other sound was the grinding of the oars in their rowlocks.
    â€œSome seulas’ll die,” Wull carried on, fighting for breath. “There’s bloody hundreds of ’em: rhats wi’ flippers, Pappa calls ’em. So why should we care? An’ why do we feed ’em? No wonder they hang about the boathouse. An’ if Pappa keeps eatin’ like he is, there’ll be nothin’ for ’em to eat anyway. So why bother? An’ why, when everyone else just carries on with themselves and their own lives, should I be out here in the freezing bloody cold, tryin’ to stop ice from freezin’ and talkin’ to a bloody boat?”
    The tiniest echo of his last shout sang across the water and was snuffed out by the heavy, winter silence, through which the bäta bobbled sternly.
    â€œAn’ without the oil, what am I to do anyways?” said Wull. “Use these things?”
    He released an oar, lifted an ice rod from beneath the bottom boards.
    â€œOn ice like this these’ll be worse’n useless. I might as well hit it wi’ grass.”
    Wull stood holding the rod, letting the oars drift in their rowlocks, turning the bäta against the current.
    â€œSo is this what I mus’ do?” he shouted, stabbing tentatively, then harder, thrusting the point of the rod more sharply on the surface of the ice until it began to chip and flake. “An’ how long mus’ I do it?”
    His voice rose as he began to thrash with the rod.
    â€œTo make such tiny dents in so big a thing”—he struck harder, the thud of connection jarring his bones—“I might hit its white face forever”—he struck again, still harder,