The Ferry Guild

The Customs of the Ferry Guild, as copied for apprentices at East Landing. Every apprentice copies them out by hand in their first winter, and keeps the copy for life. This text follows the East Landing book, with the notes that ferrywomen have written in its margins over three centuries, each marked with the Low Tide in which it was written.

Of the founding

In the year of the first Low Tide, seven women of the fisher quarter, all of them widowed by the sea, saw that the lanterns of their dead went out at the Markers when they were set on the ebb there. They rowed their lanterns out together. The next year their neighbours asked them to row out theirs as well, and the year after that the whole city asked. That is the guild.

Their names were Aya Kurose, Tane of the Shell Quay, Fumi Hase, Michi Ono, Sato the net-mender, Yuki Ban and Old Kaede. Their oars hang over the door of East Landing. There are six oars, because nobody can agree which of the seven never had one.

Fumi Hase's oar is the one with the crack. Do not lean on it. (LT 214)

Of the landings

The guild rows from four landings. East Landing is the oldest: a wooden boathouse on stilts, with lantern racks to the rafters, built on the spot where the seven first put out. Willow Landing was founded in the 88th Low Tide, Salt Steps Landing in the 151st, and North Canal Landing in the 240th. Each landing is led by its Mother. At an assembly of the guild, the Mother of East Landing speaks first and last.

Of the offices

Mother. Head of a landing. She keeps its book, its ledgers and its keys, and takes apprentices on her own word.
Steerswoman. Commands a ferry, and answers for every lantern on it.
Oar. A full member of the guild.
Apprentice. Rows under an oar, for at least a year, before she may be called one.
Reckoner. Keeps the tide tables and names Low Tide night.
Clerk of the ledgers. Writes every lantern's name, and keeps the archive.

The customs

The first custom. On Low Tide night the ferries carry the lanterns and nothing else.

The second custom. Every lantern is written in the ledger: the name, the house, the room where it appeared, and the landing that received it. A lantern whose name is not in the ledger is a lantern the city has forgotten.

The ledger is not for us. It is for whoever comes asking afterwards. (LT 203)

The third custom. An apprentice is taught first how to hold the oar so that the lanterns do not spill: low grip, quiet blade, long stroke. A lantern that spills is a person jostled.

The fourth custom. No ferry goes beyond the Markers.

Written at the assembly after the Floodyear. Before then there was no need of it. (LT 283)

The fifth custom. The guild closes the canals on Low Tide night, from dusk until the last ferry is home.

The sixth custom. The guild keeps the tide tables, and the night is named by East Landing's reckoners and nobody else's.

See the Contested Tide. Do not see it again. (LT 148)

The seventh custom. Of a lantern that does not go out, the oldest instruction, in Aya Kurose's own words, is this: "Row on. It is not yours."

Easy to write. (LT 151)

It is not ours. It is someone's. (LT 282)

The eighth custom. An apprentice is taken on by the word of a Mother and no one else. A year's waiting is customary.

Customary is not the same as required. (LT 312)

The ninth custom. The ledgers of every Low Tide are kept at East Landing, in the archive beneath the high racks. No apprentice may enter the archive without a Mother.

Apprentices will go in anyway. Leave the lamp where they can find it. (unmarked)

The tenth custom. The bow lanterns of the ferries are bought from the three houses, the Oda, the Ren and the Sugi, and from no one else, in equal number, and the guild does not take sides.

It has been asked to. Often. (LT 290)

The eleventh custom. On the morning after Low Tide, the Mother of each landing stands at the sea gate and counts her ferries home.

Of the guild's rights

The city grants the guild four rights, and has confirmed them at every change of Harbour Master since the 72nd Low Tide. The guild may close the canals on Low Tide night. It keeps the tide tables, and the city counts its years by them. It has first landing at East Landing at every tide. And it pays no harbour dues, on the grounds, as the first grant puts it, that "the guild carries what the harbour cannot".

A note for the apprentice copying this out

You will find that the customs say very little about why. That is deliberate. The seven did not know why the lanterns went out at the Markers, or where to, and neither does anyone since. They knew only what to do, and in what order, and how to do it gently. Learn that first. The why can wait.