PUTNAM LEFT the shore and the little boat he’d seen there, thinking over his astonishing plan as he walked back to the tent. He could leave. He could sail away—south—and investigate the problem of the salt in the sea, and come back with information. With proof. Proof that his dad was wrong: too slow to act, too scared to do something to fix a problem.
He slipped home through the crowds and the singing and the storytelling to an empty tent. Putnam’s anger rose again. His dad must be at one of the bonfires, making his nightly rounds with the people. The Raft King prided himself on listening to his people. But, Putnam thought, listening isn’t the same as doing . . .
He, Putnam, was going to do. And he’d come back a hero, as someone who’d solved the problem of the bad water. He’d be a different kind of person—and someday a different and better kind of king—than his father. Not someone who stood by and let his son’s mother run off. Not someone who sat by while the sea turned to salt.
He packed a change of clothes—warm, wet-weather clothes—and some dried food and a few empty water sacks to fill with seawater when he got to shore. It was crazy to carry water with you when you traveled on water, but he didn’t know how brackish the sea would get before he reached the source of the problem. It was possible that it would become undrinkable.
Putnam slid out of the tent quietly. He didn’t leave a note. His dad probably wouldn’t miss him tomorrow; when the Session meeting started in the morning, his dad would simply think he was skipping it in a sulk, still angry about their argument. And when his dad didn’t see him at night, he’d just think he was sleeping in a different tent with other kids. After all, Olu had invited him to a big sleepover only the day before. His dad probably wouldn’t even realize he was missing for a couple of days. And by then he’d be long gone.
Putnam, his sack of supplies over his shoulder, stopped walking so suddenly that someone stumbled around him, muttering. He was about to do exactly what his adoptive mom had done when she’d left without explanation when he was five. There one day, and the next day gone. He’d seen her take off, and he’d thought for years that she might come back, but she never did.
And his dad had shrugged and let her go.
She didn’t even leave a note.
He couldn’t be like that, not even if his dad deserved it. He had to leave a note, so that when his dad did notice he was gone, at least he’d know where his only child had disappeared to.
And unlike his mom, Putnam would come back. He would.
Hastily, he returned home, jotted a couple of sentences, and thrust the note under the pillow. There it would stay, safely undiscovered until the king got worried and searched his room. Putnam would have enough time to escape—and yet the note would help his dad not to worry too much.
Although his dad would worry a little, of course. That couldn’t be helped. But it was the king’s own fault. If he’d agreed to do something about the bad water, Putnam wouldn’t have had to step forward. Really, he was saving the old man from embarrassment. Besides, his dad had said to stay out of the Session. Maybe he deserved a little worry.
PUTNAM SNUCK BACK to the beach and stuffed his pack into the bushes, returned to the crowds, and joined a campfire until the partying died down and the moon set and the beach cleared. Then he retrieved his pack. On the beach, poking out from under a small pile of rocks, he left money to pay for the little boat he’d chosen; he wasn’t a thief. He crept across the dark sand and climbed into the boat. It was perfect: small enough for one person to handle, and in the center a snug cabin with a latching door in which he could store things and stay warm. He peeked in the cabin’s window—there were some tarps piled in the corner and a small heater in the middle.
Pausing only long enough to lean his bag inside the cabin, Putnam rowed silently out to sea, loosening the sail when he was sure he’d gotten far enough from shore and it wouldn’t be spotted. He circled the big Island and headed south.
South was new territory for him. Even though Raftworld traveled constantly, they never went much farther south than the southern tip of the big Island of Tathenn that the Colay people lived on, because the water and weather quickly turned cold—and Raftworld was a warm-weather country. So Putnam wasn’t familiar with what might lie in this direction. But the fish had said the problem was in the deep south, so that was where he would go.
He didn’t know more than that: head south. But he was hopeful that things would become clearer once he got there. Wherever there was.
AS MORNING DAWNED, he was well out of sight of the Islands. Best of all, he’d found a narrow current that was carrying him almost directly southward, and he’d gratefully taken down the sail—which he found hard to use anyway, as modern Raftworlders favored hydraulics—and simply rode the current, the sun shining on his face and the light breeze making the world seem brand-new. Everything was perfect. In the light of this calm blue morning, his journey felt like destiny. He stretched his legs out, pulled the food bag out of the cabin, and removed a loaf of bread, along with some plums, the only food he’d packed that wasn’t dried.
As he broke the loaf open and dipped his nose to smell the rich yeastiness of Island bread, a noise behind him broke the silence. Not an expected noise. Not a birdcall, not waves splashing lightly against the boat’s side, not the creaking of the boat itself.
A human voice. Angry.
“Get off my boat!” said the voice, high-pitched and half strangled, the way a ghost might sound. “Or I’ll kill you.”