Because the stone is washed by the riverspray, and pine needles litter its surface, the girl walks carefully. As the root-stained water boils through the canyon, its incessant stirring cutting cauldrons in the bedrock, as pebbles are spun around and around and around, the voice of the current is a roar that doesn't pause for breath, is almost a magnetic force, and the girl inches forward to look over the lip into the froth. Inches forward, as the stone itself slopes down into the water, polished and pulled by rising and lowering volume, it's as if (the mother feels, without putting thoughts to the feeling) as if a hand were reaching up to draw her daughter down and in. It is true (the mother knows, without putting feelings to the thoughts) that there are meters of stone before girl and water meet; some is dry; the girl is careful and agile; today is not her day to depart... But knowing is one room of the self; and from another room, decorated by generations of mothers and their losses, a cry rises up of avenging, protecting angels and shouts the girl back from the edge. Her voice is small against the water's fall, it seems a wisp, a whispered plea, a fleck of sound, a seed in a stronger wind.

Her daughter takes a last, almost longing, look into the swirling muscle of the river, and then steps back, one sliding step, another. She looks up, then turns and darts up the avenue of rock, sure-footed as a young goat, carried by her confidence and spring sinew.

An invisible hand releases the mother's throat, breath comes back into the lungs, like a dipper to the well, a deep draught of tannic Upper Peninsula air. She closes her eyes. One breath, two. Something like a flame begins to drain from her arms and legs, as though there were scurrying fire-creatures standing down from action, running back through cracks and crevasses to the deep place inside her. Sky cleared, breeze blew. All was well.

Her daughter jumped up to the point, grabbed the exposed root of a tree, and pulled herself up to where her mother stood. --Did you see how the water made those holes? I threw a stick above the falls, and watched it go down into one after another. It spun around in the last one and couldn't get out.

The mother had seen.

--It was so loud down there, it felt like I was inside a thunderstorm. I couldn't hear a thing!

Even my shout was powerless. The daughter standing there, full of sight and sound, triumphant, untouchable, having ridden the prince of the river. In her face, the mother's face, so few years before, the same unmarked, unsaddened smile, the same breathless infinity, so good when you haven't lived the narrow line between standing and sinking. She was glad, now that nothing had happened, that the girl had not heard her, hadn't been touched by experience that wasn't hers, not yet, not yet, don't hurry, tomorrow will wait for you, let all your songs be so innocent the grandmothers smile and the grandfathers get teary-eyed, let me watch you never falter and never fall, I'll carry all the worry for you, you run like a little goat in the spring, I chose to shepherd when I chose you...

On the way back down the trail, she saw a flash of red and green beside her feet, and called the girl back to teach the shape and the name of Wintergreen, to crack the shiny leaf and release its scent, and share the tiny berry with its drop of sweetness, its chalky tang of spice.

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