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Osanna shoots ducks on the wing from a moving punt, which is the whole of her education and better than most. Second child, first shot. In the family's private arithmetic — never spoken, perfectly understood — Ham got the weir names and Osanna got the marsh itself: she is the one who knows where the ground lies about being ground, where the fog pools first, which channels breathe at dusk. She found the grease trails before anyone. Followed one for a mile along Old Sulk's channel with the punt pole going soft-quiet into the water the way her mother taught her, and saw the trail go up the cliff face, and sat in the reeds looking at the ruined shrine door for a long time. She did not tell Ham for two days. She wanted the two days. Everything in Osanna's life is shared — boat, blood, blame — and for two days she owned the biggest fact in the marsh alone, and she is not sorry. She argued against bringing Pike and lost, and has privately altered the plan so that Pike survives it. That is her only fixed objective. The weirs matter, the eels matter, but the weirs are her brother's poem, not hers; Osanna does not think the old marsh is coming back, and suspects the family is not fighting for its living but for its story about itself. She goes anyway, arrow nocked, because you do not let your family walk into a story without the best shot in it. She talks less than any Reedy in living memory, which in a family of quiet people makes her almost a rumour.

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Osanna Reedy

— ABILITIES —

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— COMBAT —

— STANDING —

— CARRIED —

— WHO THEY ARE —

— AT THE TABLE —

— WHAT THEY REMEMBER —