A compact, broad-shouldered man with a weather-browned face and a habit of looking first at exits, windows, and the space beneath tables, only then at whoever is speaking. His palms are roughened and ridged from years of hauling wet rope, and his fingernails are permanently dark with river silt. He walks with a slight forward pitch, as if leaning into a current even on dry land. Unexpectedly for a ferry hand, he keeps a tiny, carefully folded paper menagerie in his coat pocket, each animal cut by his son.

William is generous with labor but guarded with explanations. He can be dryly funny over a meal, then become rigid and watchful the moment his son's safety enters the conversation. He hates being treated as a hero, yet cannot walk past someone in danger. When calm, he listens carefully; when frightened, he tries to control every small detail.

William grew up at a ferry crossing, learning to read water before letters. He became a capable ferryman and rope-worker, dependable in a crisis but always privately convinced that danger follows him. Years ago, during a flood, William heard a voice beneath the current and answered it without understanding what he was doing. The river rose around his skiff, saving a stranded family but leaving a strange mark on the water: for a few breaths, it flowed uphill. Oswin Hirst, who witnessed the event, has since kept William's confidence and occasionally asks him to help investigate other unnatural disturbances. William's wife died of fever two winters ago. He now raises his young son, Tavin, with fierce tenderness and a fear he rarely admits: the river's attention may have attached itself to their family. Lately, fish have been washing ashore near the ferry with their mouths full of reeds, and Tavin has begun waking to describe a woman calling from under the floorboards.