Chapter 14: The Pursuit

Yan slept in the cabin. Mei slept on the stern bench under the passengers' blanket, with her knees drawn up and the box of paper money for a pillow, and Fish sat in the bow and kept watch, because he said he didn't need sleep as much as mortals did, and because, Mei suspected, nobody had ever asked him to guard anything and he was enjoying it. She woke at dawn to find him exactly where he'd been, with the boathook across his knees like a sword. "Anybody come?" "A heron," said Fish. "I sent it away." By the middle of the morning the whole of Willow Crossing knew that the boat-girl had gone. Yan's father had come up out of the pot boat's hold in his fever, gray and shaking, and called her name along the landing until his voice gave out, and Mei had stood at her own…