When the water skins were slung and the last straps tightened, the camp did not make a ceremony of their leaving. Mava handed Osha a cloth sack of hard-baked barley biscuits and cold roast turnips over the kitchen rail; Bren tossed Chaska two spare coils of braided hemp line for the canyon anchors; and the quicksilver ferret watched Pip from the roof of the drying shed without offering to return the wooden clothespin it had stolen on the first day.
They walked single file down the northern boardwalk toward the trailhead where the peat marsh rose into broken limestone scree.
Chaska and Lilt went first, the big sandray stepping wide on the frosty planks with the folded struts of the gliding frame lashed neatly along her gray harness. Ashaun came behind them, carrying the heavy iron-shod probing staff in her right hand and her pack balanced high across her shoulders, followed by Osha with Suth’s journal tucked safely inside her buttoned coat. Ysabet walked at the rear with Mother Suth’s plain wooden walking staff in her left hand and Pip pacing beside her knee, its green-and-white patchwork shell uncovered in the morning sun.
Thirty yards before the last willow hurdle, where the wooden boardwalk ended at the stony track leading up into the canyon mouth, two people and a young marsh deer stood waiting on the grass verge.
