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unbound his little cutting of hemp—and always, after hours of fumbled labor that strained his patience to a taut cord, the big hands would flash over his head with invisible swiftness and drop into his lap a perfect kellick hitch, sheepshank, double-overhand . . . whatever had just bested Wull and stripped the flesh from his hands.
    Then Wull would be scooped and carried upside down round the boathouse over Pappa’s laughing shoulders, all the blood running to his head.
    He looked now at the big hands, held by the knots they’d taught. If the bindings Wull had tied—simple bowlines—yielded or slipped then Pappa would escape, as he seemed intent on doing.
    Or he might not escape. Wull didn’t know what that would mean, but the thought of Pappa wandering loose in the boathouse while Wull slept beneath the glass buoys and the ropes filled him with a profound, stomach-chilling dread.
    So different to how it had been before, when Pappa’ssteady movements in the small hours—mending and readying the bäta—had acted as a balm for his childish night terrors.
    He went out to the storeroom and lifted one of the buckets of fish scraps, silver scales glinting green and blue and yellow in the fading light of the afternoon, dozens of gray, puddly eyes slack-staring at the ceiling. Wull’s nose no longer registered their presence, so he felt the stink only as an invisible press around his face as he lugged the bucket through and dropped it on the floor in front of Pappa’s chair.
    â€œEat!” said Pappa, sitting up. “It that speaks brings the food.”
    â€œMy name is Wulliam—Wulliam Braid Fobisher. You named me that: Braid for your pappa, my gran’pappa.”
    â€œIt dun’t matter’s name. Eat.”
    Wull lifted a breamcod’s head—it was heavy and cold, its drying skin tacky against his fingertips. They had eaten breamcod filets for supper the night Pappa had disappeared under the ice, bickering quietly about a deliberate nothing, leaving the understanding of Wulliam’s reluctant ascension hanging unspoken above them in the web-hung rafters.
    He held the head out to Pappa, who lunged at it. Wull could see the bonds cutting into his wrists as he stretched, pulling the skin like it might peel off.
    â€œUntie the arms,” said Pappa.
    â€œNo,” said Wull. “We’ve talked about this. You’ll just run off. We need to get you some help.”
    â€œNo help. Free. Now eat.”
    Wull held the head, mouth first, to Pappa’s face, and kept it there while he grabbed and pulled at it with lips and teeth. When it was gone, Pappa, in a choked and swollen version of his new voice, gurgled, “Again,” and Wull held up another head and another, until the bucket was nearly empty and the slack face was glistening with lost spit, scales, and skin scraps. There was part of a tail in his beard, Wull saw, and he reached to clean around Pappa’s mouth with a dampened cloth.
    â€œEnough!” said Pappa, head shaking to avoid the wipes. “Too hard!”
    â€œYou can’t sit there with that all over you. You’ll end up stinking, and then I won’t come near you at all.”
    â€œGood, it that speaks.”
    â€œYou don’t mean that,” said Wull. “And my name is Wulliam.”
    He cleaned Pappa’s face and beard as gently as he could, holding the back of his head in his hand. Pappa relaxed slowly, the muscles of his neck softening against Wull’s palm.
    â€œWulliam,” said Pappa, and his own voice was in the echo of the sound, quietly, like a word shouted from a great distance.
    â€œWulliam,” said Wull. He smiled, then cried on his knees as his pappa drifted into a fitful sleep.
    Eventually, joints stiff from the floor, Wull went and made tea, letting the leaves stew in the undrunk cup as he sat in his own chair, Pappa’s empty and brooding beside him, looking