She stepped up as Barr peered down into the basket in vague masculine alarm. She did lower her voice. “She’s still round-faced like a Bluefield, though I’m hoping for Dag’s cheekbones in time. Her head’s grown a lot this past month. And her hair, thankfully.” She bent and touched a finger to the black fuzz. “You can hold her, later on.”
“Um . . . thanks.” Barr backed carefully away from the basket and found his chair.
Fawn took up her wooden spoon and stirred her gray-green goop, which was thickening nicely. “Papa brought Mama all the way from West Blue, slogging through the mud—they got in just two days before Nattie-Mari was born. Stayed for three weeks, then Mama had to go back for Clover’s first. Mama says she doesn’t approve of men in birthing rooms, but Arkady won her right over. I think she was relieved, really—despite all the children she’s had, midwifery isn’t her best thing. Dag was pretty excited, but he kept his head real good, I thought. Better than I did, some stretches. It was the most pain I’d ever done, but I got a real fine baby out of the deal, so I figure it for a fair trade.” Barr stirred uncomfortably, and Fawn kindly decided to spare him all the terribly fascinating details. Other people’s babies, as she recalled, were much less interesting than one’s own. A little silence fell.
“Dag and Arkady should be back soon,” she offered. “They were called out for some fellow who’d hurt himself down at the landing, and meant to stop on the way back and look in on a neighbor woman with lung fever. I don’t ride out much just now on account of Nattie-Mari, but I am Dag’s other hand when folks stop in here. I do try to go along when I can, or Dag will get all wound up in the interesting parts and forget to ask for money. I swear Arkady’s rubbing off on him. And the other way around—Arkady’s getting quite used to having dirty ground these days.” Arkady hadn’t actually said, On me, it looks good, but Fawn thought it was implied.
“So . . . your medicine-making-for-farmers scheme is going well? ”
Fawn wasn’t sure if Barr was trying to draw her out, or avoid talking himself; in either case, she rattled obligingly on. “It was slow to start. Having Berry as a wedge to get us in did the trick. I can’t imagine how it would have gone if we’d just plunked down in a place like this as strangers. But Dag and Arkady did a few things for her kin and friends, and Bo and Hawthorn and even Hod talked us up all over town. The first night someone we barely knew knocked on the door for help was a big step, you’d best believe.” Her brows drew down in consideration. “But the most important thing, I think—this is going to sound strange to you, I know—the most important thing that happened this winter was losing some patients. Because makers must, you know—over enough time, it has to happen. Not the fellow who’d been dead for two days when they brought him to the door on a plank, no one blamed Dag for that one, though he did have words. Never saw him look so harassed.” Her lips twisted at the memory, which would be funny in a black way except for the distress of the dead fellow’s friends. “But people we’d got to know a bit.” The old man with the broken hip, the child with the strange raging fever, the woman who’d miscarried and bled dry almost before Dag had arrived, though he’d raced Copperhead to flying foam. “Dag tries his hardest, my word, he about turns himself inside out with the trying . . . but sometimes, it just isn’t enough. The sensible folks have seen that clear, though, and straightened out the couple of less sensible ones. It’s a tricky dance, but we all seem to be learning the steps, us and the folks around here both.”
“Huh.” Barr tilted his head. “I always knew you had to learn to be a medicine maker, but I never thought you had to learn how to be a patient.”
“Lakewalkers in camps teach those tricks, and that trust, to each other as offhandedly as how to swim, and as young. We have the ways of farmer midwives and bonesetters to follow up, but no one knew exactly what to expect of us at first. Not even us, so we’ve all had to learn together.”
Barr stretched, scratched his chin, looked around. “Did Berry and Whit get their fall flatboat built and launched after all? I didn’t spot them anywhere when I rode in.”
“Oh, they left months back—took Bo and Hod and Hawthorn for crew, though Bo claims this’ll be his last trip. It’s not quite time to be looking out for them, but soon. They weren’t sure if they’d be coming home by the river or the Trace. I hope it’s the river, and I hope Whit brings me an iron cookstove. Which I wouldn’t expect him to carry in a packsaddle, although with Whit you never know.”
“Whatever he brings, I imagine it’ll turn a profit. I don’t know how he does it.”
“Nobody in our family would have guessed that talent of his back home. Neither one of us had much chance to shine there, I reckon.” The town of Clearcreek was only about twice the size of the village of West Blue; Fawn wasn’t sure how it managed to seem worlds larger.
Barr cleared his throat. “You, ah . . . ever hear anything more from Calla and Indigo? And Sage,” he added in afterthought.
“Oh, yes! Calla sent letters twice. I’ll let you read them, later. We get mail up and down the river fairly regular.”
“How are they getting on? ”
“Well, Sage got work in a foundry, and he’s learning lots of new things, just as he’d hoped. Calla says he still wants his own place in due time. Indigo found a job driving a delivery wagon, and his boss thinks the world of his way with the horses, though Indigo doesn’t much care for town life—too crowded. He says it makes him feel funny and tense. We wrote back that he’d be welcome in Clearcreek, but he hasn’t taken us up yet. But here’s the best thing—Calla got so interested in medicine making in her time with Arkady, she went and apprenticed herself to this midwife in Tripoint. Her bit o’ groundsense gave her such an edge, she finally ’fessed up to her half blood. And instead of throwing her out on her ear, the woman took her to someone who knew one of the local Lakewalkers, and now Calla goes and trains one week in the month with the medicine makers at the Tripoint camp—same place Fairbolt was born, if you can believe it!”
“Oh!” said Barr, brightening. “That’s . . . good.” His brow wrinkled.
“Unexpected.”
“Was to me, too, till I got to thinking about it. Seems Calla was tested to be let in to her papa’s camp back south, but she wouldn’t join up because they wouldn’t take Indigo, too.”
“Huh. I didn’t know that.” Barr looked very pensive, which was not an expression Fawn was used to seeing on him. Before she could ask what was troubling him, another set of clumps sounded from the stoop.
Fawn looked up eagerly. “Ah, here’s Dag!”
As the door swung open, Barr cast her a crooked smile. “You developing groundsense these days? ”
“No, but I’d know those boot steps anywhere.” Like my child’s cry, or my own hand in the dark.
Dag ducked through, straightened up, and grinned broadly. “Hey, Barr! What brings you here? ” Things must have gone well with his patients; he wasn’t drooping with fatigue, or low with gloom, or spattered with blood.
Before Barr could answer, Nattie-Mari stirred in her basket and meeped. “Be right with you, Sparkle,” Dag called to her, and hastily slipped off his jacket and went to wash his hand in the basin in the sink.
The meeping grew more anxious, if not yet a full-throated cry. Dag tossed the towel over the sink rim and went to gaze down into the basket a moment, his expression curious and tender. Barr, brow furrowing, watched him pick up his child and position her on his left shoulder, hand spread securely over her little back, and take a comfortable seat in the rocker on the other side of the hearth.
“Is she wet? ” asked Fawn. “Hungry? ”
“No, she just wants to join the party.”
“She likes the rumble of Dag’s voice,” Fawn informed Barr, and, reassured, went back to her stirring. “I do wonder that Lakewalker children ever learn to talk, with the grown-ups able to figure out everything they want by groundsense.”
Dag shook his head. “Not everything, I assure you. The littl
e ones have to train us up just like farmer babies train their parents. Don’t you, Sparkle? You’re teaching your old papa all kinds of tricks, aren’t you? ”
Nattie-Mari settled in her new perch with an air of ownership, little fingers flexing, eyelids half shutting. Her eyes had been rather muddy at birth, but lately had cleared to a deep brown, with exciting redgold flecks. Dag added to Barr, “How are things at Pearl Riffle? How’s Maker Verel doing with my ground shields? ”
“Better, since Whit came by last fall, puffed off his walnut pendant and his malice kill in every tavern in the Landing and the Bend, and had Verel quadruple the price. Which last also settled the camp council— and increased the number of farmers wanting to try one, which I don’t understand but Whit said would work.”
“Whit has that knack,” said Fawn complacently. She tapped her wooden spoon on the pot edge, readjusted the pot’s distance to the coals, and settled on the hearth edge by Dag’s knees to listen.
“Verel’s taken on two new apprentices to help out,” Barr continued.
“So the shield work doesn’t put him too far behind.”
“Good,” said Dag. “And Captain Amma? Was she willing to try our experiment yet? ”
“Yeah, finally. She sent four farmer boys out with my patrol, with me detailed to ride herd on ’em, since she said I knew farmers better than any other patroller she had. Two of ’em quit after their first stint, when they found out how boring and uncomfortable it is, especially in the winter, and no sign of a malice anywhere, of course. And all the dirty work piled on, though I kept explaining that all new patrollers get the dirty work. But the others stuck it out, and two more came on.
We’re to go again next week.”
Dag said, “You know, Arkady trained Hoharie in shield making when he was up to visit Hickory Lake Camp with Sumac, same as I trained Verel.”
Barr nodded.
“Well, half a dozen Raintree boys—survivors of their malice outbreak— heard the rumors and turned up at the gate to volunteer. Fairbolt claimed it was a patrol matter, and made sure the camp council was too divided to overrule him. He had the boys partner with Rase and Remo to teach them how to go on, which answered fairly well. The boredom and grind didn’t daunt them, with kinfolk to avenge. I had a letter from Remo just last week—they’ve survived their first test with a real malice. It was just a little sessile, but Hoharie’s shields held, and none of the dire predictions of the naysayers came true. So far, so good.”
“Will you ever go back there? To Hickory Lake? ”
Dag shook his head. “Not soon. I don’t have time. So far, Arkady and I have had eleven different makers from nine different camps turn up here to learn our tricks, shields and unbeguiling and more. New folks come every week, seems like.”
“We got so we keep a bunk room ready for visitors,” Fawn added.
“We’ll put you up in there tonight.”
Barr nodded gratefully.
“That’s in addition to all those long descriptions Arkady wrote up for Hoharie and Verel to send out all over the hinterland with their medicine-tent circulars, and for Fairbolt and Amma with their patrol circulars. Even if Copperhead achieves his lifelong ambition of bashing me into a tree tomorrow, the ideas are out there.”
“Does Remo sound happy there, up at Hickory? As happy as Remo ever gets, that is,” Barr added.
“Seems to be.” Dag smiled slowly. “Tioca Crow got mentioned three times in the letter. She was a good-looking girl, in a strappy sort of way, as I recall.”
Barr shook his head. “I hope he has better luck in love this time.”
“If it’s really Tioca, I expect she’ll see to that.”
“He didn’t have to go, you know. Amma was all ready to put him back in the Pearl Riffle patrol. I suppose it was better that he did things in order and transferred properly, though. He’s always happier when he thinks he’s following the rules.”
Dag’s eyebrow twitch made provisional agreement. “Rules aren’t actually made to be broken. They’re generally invented because someone made a mistake or a mess, and folks didn’t ever want to have to clean up after another one like it.”
Barr cleared his throat. “Yeah. About that.”
Now he’s getting to it, thought Fawn. She didn’t think Barr would’ve ridden a day and a half in this raw weather just to party with Nattie-
Mari. Something was preying on his mind, for sure.
“You know, I could be a bit of a blight, when I was a younger patroller.”
Fawn supposed it would not be polite to agree too wholeheartedly.
She hunkered on the hearth, don’t let me interrupt. Dag limited himself to an encouraging, “Hm? ”
“I thought most of the rules were stupid. And, I suppose, I was still new to my powers, wanting to test them out. Like boys running races, or lifting logs, or something. Anyway, I did this thing . . .” His eyes shifted Fawn’s way. “Fawn’s not going to like this.”
Fawn rubbed her lips. Not that she exactly wanted to make it easy for him, but . . . “If you’re talking about the time you persuaded some farmer girl to go out to the woodpile with you, and then tried to talk Remo into seducing her sister, I already heard.”
Barr’s lips made a silent Oh. “Uh . . . when? ”
“Remo told us, back before you first came on the Fetch. When we were all trying to work out unbeguilement.”
“Remo said!” Barr sat up, looking betrayed.
“He was still plenty mad at you about the accident with his sharing knife, recall. You two only fell into that ambush in the first place because that flatboat girl led you there by the nose—or whatever she led you by—and he followed you.”
“Oh. Um. Yeah.” Barr shot another look at Fawn. “Was that why you wouldn’t hardly give me the time of day, when I first came aboard?”
“Well, let’s just say it didn’t help your cause.”
Barr gave up betrayal in favor of glum. “Well, it was true. That farmer girl wasn’t unwilling, mind, even before . . . er. And then Remo pitched such a fit, I never dared it again. And so much has happened since, I’d almost forgotten about it, till this last patrol. Took us back through that same little village. About thirty miles northwest of the Riffle.”
Dag leaned back, looking very bland. Fawn was chilly but silent; she’d get no tale if she rushed to judgment.
“It was a joke, almost. At the time. I thought.”
“I doubt it was such a big laugh for her,” said Fawn.
“Yeah. I found that out.”
Fawn sat up. “She didn’t go and hang herself, did she? ”
Barr’s eyes flew wide. “Hang herself! Do farmer girls really do that? ”
“Sometimes. Or drown themselves.”
“No, it wasn’t that, um . . . bad. Kind of the opposite. I asked the blacksmith, after I saw her . . . she’d got married. And had a child.”
“One of those seven-months children with the nine-months hair? ” said Dag. “We get them around these parts, time to time.”
“I think they get them everywhere,” conceded Fawn. I might have had one myself, once, but for some strange mortal chances.
“We ran into each other outside the village smithy. Cold day, but bright, the sort you sometimes get just before the first thaws. My patrol’d stopped to get a couple of cast shoes fixed. She was carting away some tools that had been repaired. She recognized me right off, but she pretended not to know me. Like I was invisible, or she wished I was. She had her little girl toddling after her, about Owlet’s size, blond-headed, curls everywhere, in this knit cap with a long pink tassel. She kept tossing her head to make it fly around, and giggling. Dag, she was mine.”
Fawn scowled. “How can you be sure? Just from her age and hair color? ”
“No, from her ground!”
Fawn cast Dag up a doubtful look; he returned a nod. “Barr would know, yes.”
“Then what did you do? ” Fawn asked in worry.
“Rode after her,
of course. I caught up with her cart the first bend out of sight of the village. First she said she didn’t know me, and then she told me to leave off because she hated me, and go away or she’d scream, and I said the little girl was mine, and she said no she wasn’t, and I said yes she was, and then the girl started to cry from the yelling and her mama finally stopped the cart to talk.” He added after a moment, “She’d named her Lily.”
Barr took a breath and went on, as if afraid that if he halted he wouldn’t be able to get started again. “She said she had a good life now, and a good husband, and I didn’t have no call to ride after her and wreck her world.”
“Again,” murmured Fawn.
“And I said, did this fellow think my girl was his? And she said yes. And she offered me all the money in her purse to go away quiet.”
“Did you take it? ” asked Fawn sweetly.
Barr glared, outraged.
“Now, Fawn,” chided Dag.
Fawn sighed. It was much too late for a traditional farmer horsewhipping to do Barr the least good, after all. Or anyone else, she supposed.
He was learning his lessons in other ways, possibly no less painful.
“So she said if I wanted the other favor from her she wasn’t going to give it to me, because she was pregnant now, and this one was her husband’s, and I said no, I didn’t, and yes, I could see, it was a farmer boy, and healthy, too. She seemed glad to learn that, and calmed down a little. But she said that I should ride away and stay away, because I’d done her enough harm for one lifetime.” Barr blinked. “She didn’t actually look like she was suffering that much.”
“How would you know? ” said Fawn tartly. “You weren’t there to see the bad parts. Just because you survive a hurt doesn’t mean you didn’t bleed plenty at the time.”
“So what did you do?” Dag’s deep voice cut in before Fawn could expand on this theme.
Barr’s face scrunched up. “I didn’t know what to do. So I turned around and rode off like she wanted. But Dag—that little girl—she could’ve, should’ve, might have been my, my tent-heiress. In some other world.”