Leah wouldn't stand on the ledge.
She looked down at it from the high bank, then went along the path to where the ground widened.
“You can't stand there either.”
“I got out there.”
“As the wolf.”
Daniel looked at the broken edge. In daylight he couldn't remember exactly where he'd put each foot. His body had known then. This one didn't.
“There,” he said, indicating the rough lower bank. “That's where I ended up.”
They went down to look.
The mud was soft near the water. Farther back, grass held the slope together, and there was a patch of uneven stone where the bank had been repaired long ago and then left. It was lower than the place above the race. A person could be dragged towards it without having to be lifted straight up the smooth side.
A person might.
Leah crouched, testing the ground with the heel of her boot.
“I'd stay back from this.”
“Right.”
“Don't say right as if we've sorted it.”
He kept quiet.
They went back up past the maintenance ledge. Daniel walked slowly. The right thigh had been worse since the weather turned, or since he'd begun walking here more often. He didn't know which explanation he preferred.
At the mooring post Leah stopped.
It was set well back on the high ground, beside the path leading to the workshop. The wood was old, weathered almost black. She put her hand on it and pushed.
Daniel watched.
“That doesn't tell us what it'll hold,” she said.
“I didn't think—”
“You did. You looked relieved.”
He looked away.
They had brought a line from the workshop. Ordinary rope, used and dried and coiled, something Cass had already looked over because Leah asked her to. Cass knew enough of what they were discussing to tell them it was a terrible idea and refuse to say the line made it otherwise.
She had shown Leah where another length was stored and then gone back to work.
Now Leah put the coil on the grass.
“I won't go in.”
“No.”
“If you're out of reach, I'm not going in after you.”
Daniel looked at the river.
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
He could remember her behind glass. He could remember failing. He didn't want to make her carry that moment in reverse.
“Yes.”
She put the loose end in his right hand.
“And I'm not standing there so he can come at me instead.”
“I wouldn't ask—”
“You're asking quite a lot.”
He accepted that.
The old office was above them, beyond the workshop wall. The path led from its outside door towards the slipway, then along the narrow stretch by the race. Silas would know the route. Daniel would have to make him take it.
He could picture the wolf moving, see how much faster it would be than him. Everything he'd enjoyed in October would belong to the man coming after him.
Leah followed his look.
“What makes him go in?”
Daniel pointed at the narrow part.
“If he comes close enough. If I can turn—”
“You can't outrun him.”
“I don't have to outrun him. I have to make him put his weight there.”
She looked at the wet ledge.
“The same way you fell.”
“Something like it.”
“He might not.”
“I know.”
“He might catch you before.”
“Yes.”
She sat on the grass beside the rope.
Daniel remained standing.
“We could stop,” he said.
She laughed without humour.
“Now you say that.”
“I mean it.”
She drew a loose piece of grass through her fingers, splitting it along the middle.
“I want him gone too,” she said.
He waited.
“I can still hear him talking while they brought me up the bank. I remember being cold. I remember you trying to get to me. And now every time I think about either of those things there's his hand on you afterwards.”
Daniel sat beside her.
“I don't want to keep living between them,” she said.
He reached towards her, then let his hand rest on the grass.
She looked at it.
“And I don't want to see what you'll do with another night.”
He looked towards the woods.
“No.”
They tried the line on dry ground.
Leah fitted a broad padded harness round his torso beneath his coat and fastened the line to it. The pull came across his ribs, clear of his neck. Leah checked how it sat when he moved. Daniel disliked the feeling immediately: the pressure around his ribs, the way it made each breath noticeable. He had imagined it as something he could forget until it saved him.
He couldn't forget it.
The post stood behind and uphill of Leah; Daniel's route ran below her, along the ledge on this same bank. She secured one end of the line to the post as a backstop. From there it lay in loose coils at her feet, passed through her hands and ran down to his harness. She let the coils feed out as he walked.
At the turn the rope caught against a low branch.
Daniel stopped.
“Keep going,” Leah said.
“It won't.”
She moved to change the angle. The branch released it, and he stumbled when the slack came free.
His hand reached for the line.
The left one.
Pain made him let go.
Leah stopped pulling.
They stood looking at each other across the patch of grass.
“That happens in the water,” she said, “and you won't get to stop and explain.”
He sat down before his leg forced him to.
They tried again, slowly. He learned where the pressure moved when Leah took some of his weight. She found that from one position she could scarcely move him at all. From another she could guide him downhill, but it brought the line across the path where debris might catch.
She walked downstream on firm land above the rough lower bank. The fixed end stayed at the post; the reserve coils behind her fed out as she moved. Then she hauled on the stretch leading to Daniel, dropping the rope she gained in a heap beside her feet. He felt the pull turn sideways across his ribs and stumbled towards her.
Daniel watched her, cold now.
“You'd be below me.”
“Farther along. Not underneath you.”
He looked down at the rough bank, beyond the lip where the smooth channel opened out.
They gathered the line before dark.
At the workshop Cass looked up when they came in.
“Well?”
Leah put the coil down.
“It catches.”
“Of course it catches.”
“And the pull's wrong from the first place.”
Cass looked at Daniel.
He didn't ask her to tell him it would work.
Leah said where she'd stand, where she would move, where she'd keep her phone. Cass listened and showed her the clearest way round the back of the building, a route she'd used carrying things too awkward for the slipway path. It stayed on land.
“If I call,” Leah said, “answer.”
Cass's face tightened.
“I'll answer.”
On the walk home Daniel carried nothing. Leah had left the line at the workshop.
They stopped outside a shop to let an elderly man with a trolley get past. He thanked them. Leah said he was welcome.
The ordinary exchange almost undid Daniel.
At home she took off her coat and said, “If we do it, I choose where I stand.”
“Yes.”
“And if I tell you we stop before midnight, we stop.”
He looked at her.
She was tired, muddy at the knees, her hands red from the line.
“We stop,” he said.
She went to wash.
Daniel sat by the kitchen table, feeling the remembered pressure round his ribs. He had pictured killing Silas. Now he could picture failing, and Leah left on a bank with a rope in her hands.
The picture didn't make the wolf less wanted.
It made letting it go feel like tearing something out of himself.