Turns out he's a boy, sixteen maybe. Skin like calf leather. A string of small white shells on his throat. Looks at her through brick-colored hair. Eyes like green medicine.

He says, Funny to be wearing a sweater on a morning like this.

What?

Warm for a sweater.

He casts again. She watches the line, watches him feed it into the cast from the neat coils floating around his ankles. Watches the line swing back and forth and back and forth and finally shoot into the sea. He strips it in, says, Tide's turned. Be coming in soon.

Dorothea nods, not sure what this information means.

She asks, What kind of fishing pole is that? I've never seen a pole like that.

Pole? Poles are for bait fishermen. This is a rod. A fly rod.

You don't fish with bait?

Bait, he says. No...Never bait. Bait makes it easy.

Makes what easy?

The fisherboy hauls in his line, casts again. This, Casting to fish. A'course striper or a blue will bite on a hunk of squid. A'course a mackerel will take a bloodworm. What is that? It's a game with the rules removed. No elegance.

Elegance. Dorothea considers this. Had no idea that elegance had something to do with fishing. But watch him cast! See the mist tear away from the pines.

The boy continues, Bait fisherman toss a herring out there, move it around a bit. Drag in a striper. That's not fishing. That's criminal.

Oh. Dorothea struggles to understand the coarseness of bait fishing.

He hauls in his line, pinches the leader. Holds the fly in front of Dorothea. White hair tied with neat wraps of thread to a steel hook. A tiny painted wooden head. Two round eyes.

Is that a lure?

A streamer. Bucktail streamer. That white hair there's dyed buck's tail.

Dorothea holds the fly gently in her palm. The neck wrapped with perfect tiny wraps. Did you paint this? The eyes?

Sure. Tied the whole thing. He reaches in his pocket, removes a paper bag. Pours its contents onto her palm. Dorothea sees three more flies, yellow, blue, brown. Imagines how they must look in the water, to a fish. Long and thin. Like little fish. Like a snack. Perfect. Marvelous. Soft beauty lashed to sharp steel,

He is casting again, splashing down the coast.

Dorothea follows. The water higher on her shins than before. Wait, she says. Your hooks. Your streamers.

You keep them, he says. I'll tie more.

She refuses. But does not take her eyes from them.

He casts. Sure, he says. A gift.