Years passed. New people came.

Some of them wore plain clothes and simple hats. They were called Friends. At the outlet, where Keuka tips toward Seneca, they watched the water fall. They measured the drop. They stacked logs and stones. They let the river test their work.

At last, the big wooden wheel began to turn on its own. Water filled its cups, pulled it around, and let it go again.

"We'll call this place Friend's Landing," someone said.

Under the bright bend of the river, Karl watched. He liked the new hum. It was steady, not wild like a storm. It was the sound of water doing a new kind of work without forgetting the old.

A girl named Patience rinsed a wooden cup in the shallows. Her face was quiet and kind, the kind of face that made you want to tell the truth.

She spotted Karl's lantern eyes in the glare and did not scream. "Good afternoon," she said, as if a green-gold lake keeper appeared every day.

"Good," Karl answered. "And new." He nodded toward the turning wheel.

"New indeed," Patience said. "Back where we came from, the fields did all the work. Now the water helps grind our grain. On hard days, this wheel will be bread."

Patience kept a small notebook tucked into her apron. "I write down little miracles," she told Karl. "They are too small for sermons. But they are too lovely to lose. May I write you, if you stay gentle?"

"Write the water," Karl said, pleased. "I am only how it says hello."

Just then, a log stuck in the saw. Men pushed and muttered. The saw squealed and stopped.

Patience narrowed her eyes. "That log is stubborn," she said.

Karl slipped under the surface, pressed up on the blind side, and lifted the river just a hand's-width. The log shuddered. It slid. The teeth bit again.

"Ha!" Patience cried. "MOVE, please." The log obeyed. Patience wrote in her book: A stubborn log slid when the water laughed.

More mills grew along the outlet. A sawmill. A gristmill. A fulling mill. Children began to count the falls the way other children count stairs.

Up above, a town began to form, plank by plank and hope by hope.

On market mornings, a girl named Mercy Pennington walked in from the Pennsylvania side. She counted her steps in a soft, rolling voice. A boy named Nathaniel Yancey came from the New England side. He counted the same steps, but he always stopped one short, just to feel the tug of almost.

They met at a barrel in the middle of the lane—salt pork on one side, winter apples on the other.

"What do we call this place?" Mercy asked. "Just 'the outlet' sounds like we might move away."

"Penn," said Nathaniel, thinking fondly of her home.

"Yan," said Mercy, liking the bounce of "Yankee" in his voice.

They tried the two pieces together.

"Penn Yan," they said.

It felt right. It felt like a paddle that fit your hand, not too heavy and not too light.

By evening, grown-ups were saying the name. By morning, it was painted on a sign. Karl tasted the new word where its letters brushed the river. It felt like the lake itself—two arms, one story.

Soon, two men arrived with a very long board and sticks of chalk. They drew boxes from the outlet down toward Seneca. They were lock men. They wanted to build a canal so boats could step down the hill in many small splashes instead of one big fall.

"This will be Lock One," one man said. "Then Lock Two. Then Lock Three." His voice jumped with every number.

Karl watched the white boxes grow. He counted along with his bubbles. "One. Two. Oh…" He let his counting drift away. He liked the idea of boats stepping down more than the exact number of steps.

When the canal was finished, the first boat tried the new water stair. At Lock One, Karl smoothed the surface so the bow slid in like a foot into a good shoe. At Lock Two, he lifted a small bulge when the boat bumped the gate too hard. At Lock Three, the crew began to understand the timing. By Lock Four, they were grinning.

By the time the boat dropped into Seneca, flour and timber had a new road. Letters and news would travel back the other way. Penn Yan stood a little taller.

The lake had learned yet another way to help, and Karl was there for every step, keeping the water kind.