JUNE 1670, HADLEY, NEW ENGLAND

As soon as it was light, Ned pulled his ferry, hand over hand on the rope, to the west side of the river and made an interrogative owl’s hoot into the darkness of the forest. He sat down at the foot of a tree and waited, his eyes towards the shadows of the forest, so that they would remain sharp and not be dazzled by the gray sheen of the quietly moving river. A little while later a female owl answered “whoo whoo.”

“Come,” Ned whispered, and without a sound a woman stepped from the shelter of the trees.

“Nippe Sannup?” she said. “You are early? This is our time: it’s us who are named the People of the Dawn.”

“Quiet Squirrel, I thank you for coming,” Ned said formally in English. She squatted beside him and he took in her lined face, the cracked and worn skin of her hands. He smelled the scent of her: red cedar wood, sassafras, and the soft clean smell of her buckskin cape.

“What do you want, Netop?”

“Mind ferry?” he asked, attempting her language. “Me walk with friends to sea.”

She smiled at his attempt at her speech. “They are weary of being men of the twilight?”

He frowned, trying to understand. “Want to go. Want walk.”

“They walk in the forest and by the river when at dusk, thinking they are hidden by the shadows.” She smiled. “Of course we see them.”

“They are good men. Safe? Safe with Dawnland People?”

“They’re safe with us. It is your rulers who say where people can and cannot go. We know that a man can walk anywhere. But your friends had better not go back to where they hid before. Won’t your king send his men to look there?”

He frowned at the ripple of words. “Somewhere else?”

She nodded. “Somewhere better. I will ask someone to take you. He knows the lands here and at the coast. He will know a good place.”

“He come now? Quick quick?”

She thought that the white men were like children, not just in speech but in thought, in the impatience of their demands.

“You can start the journey, he will find you on the way,” she said. “He has his own business before he travels.”

Ned shifted awkwardly, feeling his knees stiffening up. “What doing…? What he doing?”

No child of the People would be so rude as to ask a direct question. Especially when asking for a favor.

“He does his own business, Ferryman. We do not answer to you.”

“No trouble?” Ned asked, awkwardly conscious of his lack of fluency. “He friendly?”

“I don’t know his business. I don’t ask him. Do I keep the fees for the ferry?”

“Take fees, I give nails too.” Ned knew she would get little profit from the ferry, she would not charge a crossing fee to any of her people, nor any of the neighboring people. They lived in a world of gifting and favors to show power and to strengthen family bonds. They would never charge money for a favor as the settlers did; they thought it beneath them to make little profits off each other. And there was no point paying her in food—she was a better gardener, fisher, and gatherer than he would ever be. But all the native people loved anything made of metal, to hammer into their own use. He knew she would be glad of nails.

“And little iron rods,” she specified.

He knew that the Indian craftsmen could repair muskets if they had metal. But he had no choice but to pay her the fee she wanted.

“Nails and rods.”

“Very well.” She got to her feet in one sinuous motion as Ned pushed himself upwards, giving a little grunt at the effort.

“That’s your shoes,” she told him. “Those shoes make your bones ache.”

“It’s age,” Ned told her. “I am more than fifty.”

She laughed and her dark eyes gleamed at him. “I am far older than you,” she told him. “Many winters older, and I can still outrun you. It’s those shoes you wear.” She patted his shoulder. “And your ridiculous hat,” she said affectionately, knowing he could not understand her words.

Ned was still smiling at her condemnation of his shoes, as he pulled the two of them over the river on the ferry. The pale light of the dawn summer sky reflected on the sleek water. “I’ll wait here,” she said, her hand on the ferry rope. “Will you bring the Coatmen now?”

“Yes,” he said. “We come quick.”

She smiled at him, knowing that Englishmen would take a long time to start a journey, they always fussed about a thousand things, they always carried far too much.

In the house, William and Edward were up and dressed, eating cornmeal biscuits. “Where have you been?” Edward asked.

“I’ve got us a guide,” Ned said. “He’s going to find us on the way.”

He filled his birch-bark bottle with water from the earthenware jar and wiped his face and neck with sassafras oil. “Want some of this?” He offered them the oil.

“What is it?” Edward asked.

“Sassafras oil, keeps the flies off.”

“Nothing keeps the flies off,” Edward said pessimistically, and William laughed.

Ned did not pull on the jacket that he wore to go to town but swung a cape of knotted reeds over his shirt.

“You look like a savage,” Edward remarked. “Will you wear a feather in your hair?”

“Keeps the flies off,” Ned claimed.

“Nothing keeps the flies off,” Edward repeated.

The three men came silently out of the house, climbed the riverbank, and looked back to the grazed wide way to the sleeping town, then they turned towards the river.

“Who’s that on the ferry?” William demanded.

“A woman of the Norwottuck,” Ned said. “My neighbor. She minds the ferry when I go into the woods.”

“An old lady?” Edward asked.

“She’s the elder of the village. She knows everything that happens that side of the river, and everything that happens in Hadley too.”

“Is she trustworthy?” William asked. “Does she know of us?”

“Aye,” Ned replied. “I said. She knows everything that goes on within fifty miles. She minds the ferry for me, she sells me sassafras and all sorts of things from the forest. Things I didn’t even know when I first got here.”

Ned snapped his fingers and his dog Red bounded down the bank and jumped neatly onto the ferry. Ned and the men followed and climbed on board as Quiet Squirrel wordlessly pulled on the rope to haul them across to the opposite bank. The ferry grounded on the pebble beach, William and Edward took up their little sacks, and went at once into the shelter of the woods. Ned turned to say good-bye to Quiet Squirrel.

“Tomorrow night I come back,” he said, and raised a hand.

“Tomorrow night, Ned.”

“Guide meets us?”

She smiled at him. “Quick! Quick!” she mocked him. “He will find you. You start—if you can walk at all in those shoes.”

Ned chuckled at the insult, threw her a salute, and turned, his dog at his heels, his musket slung over his back, to lead the way south.