“It’s only a step.”
The older boy had crossed already. He stood on the timber beyond the gap with his hands in his pockets, making a small thing of it.
William looked down. Water moved between the pilings, dark beneath the quay.
“You coming?”
He wanted to answer before they laughed.
His boot landed on the edge. For a moment he was upright, one arm wheeling in the air. Then the timber struck his ribs and the water closed over his head.
He tried to stand.
There was nothing.
His coat lifted around him and filled. Light moved somewhere above his face. He pushed towards it, or thought he did, and struck wood with his fingers.
When his mouth broke the surface, he heard running feet.
He called once. Water took the rest.
A hand caught his collar so hard that the cloth tightened across his throat. He kicked against a piling. Someone swore close to his ear.
“Stop fighting me.”
The words made no sense until he was lying on the quay with his cheek against a splinter.
A stranger knelt beside him. Thick sleeves. A rope burn across one hand. William could never afterwards settle on the man’s face.
“Where are your friends?”
William coughed until his stomach hurt.
The man took off William’s coat and wrung water from it. Farther along the quay, someone was unloading barrels. A gull picked at a torn sack.
“Can you walk?”
William nodded.
He kept looking towards the corner where the footsteps had stopped being audible.
No one came back.
