Trim and lean with the sun-leathered look of someone who lives by water, he moves with a quiet, reedlike grace that reads like a practiced current. His cloak is threaded with small glossy river mussel shells kept for luck. He carries a longbow made from a single strip of blackwood with a faint silver inlay that maps the bends of the river near his home. Unexpectedly, one of his front teeth is filed into a neat notch and painted a dull green, a childhood promise to a river witch he still honors in private. When he stops walking he often seems to float a half-breath above the ground as if listening for the river beneath the earth.