Night Gate by Isobelle Carmody

seem to be any passengers.
    “We ought to go,” Billy prompted her gently.
    Rage hesitated. The centaur had called the water the River of No Return. Now that the moment of crossing was upon them, she hoped that the name would not prove to be an ill omen. Maybe I should go over alone, she thought.
    “We must stay together.”
    She turned to find that Bear had spoken, and wondered if it was possible that the old dog could read her mind. She knew better than to ask. Since they had come to Valley, Bear had communicated almost as little as when she was a dog, though she had given up bossing the other dogs.
    Rage drew a deep breath. “Billy and I will go first. Remember, you three must convince them that you are wild things wanting an audience with the High Keeper.”
    “What about me?” Mr. Walker asked sleepily.
    “You can go in my pocket.”
    “What I want to know is, how are we going to find out about the wizard if we don’t ask the keepers?” Elle demanded.
    “We have to go to an inn, of course,” Mr. Walker said. “Then we’ll find a keeper who doesn’t like the other keepers, or one of their servants, and they’ll tell us what we need to know.”
    Rage looked at Mr. Walker and wondered if he was ever going to realize that life was never as easy as stories made it out to be. She did not voice her fears about the nature of banding or of keepers. She glanced over Billy’s shoulder and saw that there was an increase in activity around the winch. She wondered if they ought to wait and catch a later boat. But if there were more passengers, it would be more dangerous. Better to use the cover of darkness while they could.
    “We’d better go before we miss the boat,” she said.
    Mr. Walker climbed into Rage’s pocket. Then she and Billy set off, having instructed the others to wait a little before following.
    A big-bellied man, wearing a white cap and a thick black jumper that matched his wooly beard, watched them come down the hill.
    “We would like to cross,” Billy announced.
    The man jerked his head at a small ramp running from the shore to the deck of the ferry. “Get aboard, then. Ferry casts off in ten minutes.”
    The ferryman’s eyes slid down to Rage’s wrists, but she had deliberately let her coat sleeves fall down over her hands. Then he looked up and past her, his eyes narrowing a fraction, and she knew the others must have arrived already.
    “You together?” he asked Rage.
    She turned and made a play of looking behind her vaguely, then shook her head. “Of course not,” she said, and went aboard, followed by Billy.
    “We three wild things wish to see the High Keeper,” Elle announced to the ferryman, exactly as Rage had bidden her.
    “Three, you say?” Rage turned in time to see the ferryman’s eyes harden as they settled on Bear. “What is a true animal doing this side of the river?”
    “What is the matter?” Rage asked, trying to sound like a curious bystander.
    He slanted her a look. “Surely even folk from the outer villages know that keeper laws allow only cats and dogs and domestic true beasts this side of the river. A bear belongs in the provinces. The stone mountains, maybe, or the greenland. The keepers are bound to want to know how it got out of Order and into the hands of the wild things.”
    Rage swallowed. “I heard its friend say it was a wild thing.”
    “It’s a bear, or my life on it.”
    Bear lumbered forward and gave a rumbling gurgle that was almost a growl. The man paled and held up his hands. “Take no offense, bear! It’s keeper business, keeping Order. I’m a riverman, and river folk go with the flow. I’ll take you, for there’s no law against natural creatures crossing from the wild side, but you won’t be allowed back.”
    Bear came aboard, followed by Elle and Goaty. The man kept a wary eye on them all as he untied the ropes that held the boat stable against the pier.
    Once they got into the middle of the river they lost sight of both banks.