The Mere Shore · Reedmouth Landing

A patched keelboat, a dead man's letter, and the ferryman who wanted it back

Three friends dragged an abandoned keelboat out of the reeds to start a lake trade of their own. By sunrise they were standing between a smuggler and a sealed letter nobody would name the sender of.

Aelis reading a sealed letter by lantern-light on the ferry stage with Col and Tansy beside her — The letter on the stage: a gull's-wing seal, addressed to a man who drowned last winter.

Tansy Burrow, net-mender, halfling — Tansy Burrownet-mender, halfling

Aelis Fen, hedge-witch's apprentice, elf — Aelis Fenhedge-witch's apprentice, elf

Col Reedman, fisherman, human — Col Reedmanfisherman, human

The Mere Shore is nets, smokehouses and reed-cutters on the lake, a long way from the guild halls of Harrowmere — and every pot of salt and every bolt of wool that crosses the water goes by someone else's boat. Three friends meant to change that.

Tansy Burrow, a halfling net-mender, wanted a real ferry with a real trade: smoked fish over, salt and iron back. Aelis Fen, an elf hedge-witch's apprentice, wanted to learn to read the lake well enough to be the pilot who always knows when the Mere will kill you. Col Reedman, the strongest rower on the shore, had put his family's boat-shed into the venture and wanted to stop their debts. At grey dawn they dragged an abandoned keelboat out of the reeds, and the reed-cutters came down to see whether it would float.

Tansy, Aelis and Col pushing the patched keelboat toward the water as reed-cutters gather on the stones — Reedmouth Landing at dawn: the keelboat comes out of the mud.

The first job

A trader with a cart of wool and iron pots needed to be across the lake before the dark bell. Tansy didn't wait to find out whether the boat was ready:

Tansy’s order: Tansy grabs her net-mending needle and a coil of tarred line, then waves the reed-cutters over to help shove the keelboat into the shallows while she shouts to the trader that the Mere Shore will carry his load across before dark.

She knelt in the cold shallows packing tarred line into the worst seams until they stopped weeping, and by midnight the boat floated level for the first time since the mud. 'Two silver on landing,' she told the trader, 'and not a copper less.' He swore at the dark bell, then nodded.

The letter

But the ferryman already working the landing, Dun Corrie, had something else on his stage: a sealed letter that had come over on the late boat, addressed to a man who drowned in the ice last winter. Whoever carried a reply back would be paid, he said. Good silver. Aelis turned it over by the lantern. The wax was pressed with a gull's wing, and the ink smelled of smoke and tar — no Harrowmere clerk's ink.

Then whoever sent it is paying for a dead man's post. I carry nothing I cannot name.Aelis, to the ferryman

Meanwhile Col had gone the other way entirely: he grabbed the other end of Dun Corrie's flat boat before the man could wave him off, and got two coppers and a warning for it — 'Lift when I say, and don't ask what's under the tarpaulin.' Later, at the net-sheds, he asked anyway. Smoked eel for the Tide Captains' buyers, a silver a run, after the dark bell. Keep your mouth shut.

Col holding an oar-blade on the stage, Aelis and Tansy by the boats behind him — Col, back from the net-sheds with the ferryman's offer: come alone at the dark bell.

Standing in the gap

Then the letter went missing from the stage — into Aelis's sleeve. Dun Corrie noticed. 'Give my post back before the boat goes out, or you row it yourself.' And here the three friends did not agree. Tansy tried to slip it out of Aelis's sleeve to hide it in her own hood; Aelis caught her wrist and held it, hard enough to hurt. Col stepped between the ferryman and the elf and stayed there, a folding knife hidden in his fist.

Col’s order: I keep my body planted between Dun Corrie and Aelis, lift my chin toward the lake, and tell Tansy to hand me the letter so I can slide it into my oar-blade's wrapping.

Friends in this game can disagree, keep secrets, even show each other a decoy order while they do something else. What they did here was hold the line anyway. Tansy stood up off her knees, opened her empty hands at Dun Corrie and asked, loud enough for his lads at the oars to hear, why the ferryman was so keen to count the lake's fish before sunrise. One of the lads laughed before he thought better of it.

The ferry pulling away at sunrise while Col stands with a knife and Tansy and Aelis watch from the landing — Sunrise. The ferry goes, and the letter stays.

Where it stands

Dun Corrie would not start a brawl on his own stage with a trader watching, and he could not take the letter off three people without one. 'Keep your post, elf,' he said. 'Dark bell tomorrow, I'll be back.' The trader's load went across the lake in his boat, not theirs — the keelboat floats, but the first job got away.

What the friends have instead is a boat that holds water, a smuggler who now knows their names, a sealed letter from someone who writes to the dead, and Aelis's reading of the wind: whitecaps off the reed-mouth within the hour. The dark bell rings tomorrow night. Every one of them has a reason to be on that stage.

Bring your friends.

In The Churn you write what your character tries, in your own words, and the world answers — honestly. Begin beside a friend and you start as allies, in the same place, on the same turn. No class, no script: whatever you build, you build.

Begin your own life — free