“Strange,” he sighed. “At the end of last summer, that could have been the sum of my ambitions. It was exactly what I wanted from Hoharie. Train up as a medicine maker together with you, serve in camp. Let my tired feet rest from patrolling. But Hoharie choked on you, and that was the end of it. I think I’ve made it clear enough to these New Moon folks that we come as partners or not at all—they won’t make her mistake.”
“I wonder what mistake they will make?”
He snorted. “Hard to say, Spark.” His strong, dry hand found hers, and her cold little fingers stole warmth from it gratefully. “I do know Arkady’s not keen on spending two years of his time training me up as a groundsetter just to have me go off north and treat farmers. If I—we—became members of this camp, we’d have to abide by camp rules and discipline.”
“We?”
He sucked a fortifying breath through his nose. “Wouldn’t that be something to have done, though? For the first time ever, get a farmer girl accepted as a full-fledged member of a Lakewalker camp?”
“Would they?”
“I wouldn’t stay for less. I hope I made that plain.”
Fawn rather thought he had. Her brows scrunched. She felt rattled, and she suspected he did, too. This offer—if it got made—wasn’t anything she’d ever expected or planned on, but then, nothing about her life since she’d met Dag had been anything that she could have imagined back when she’d first fled West Blue. My whole life is an accident. But some of her accidents had been happy far beyond her dreams, and she had surely chosen to put herself in the way of both good and bad, when she’d first set foot to the road. Am I Dag’s greatest accident, too?
At Arkady’s place Dag lit a lantern against the cool gloom, smiled slowly, and observed, “Seems we have the house to ourselves.”
The gold glint in his eye wasn’t only from the lantern light. Fawn dimpled back. “That’s a nice change,” she said agreeably.
Dag had been reticent about offering lovemaking since the patroller boys had returned, only partly due to fatigue from his long training days and, now, occasional draining groundwork under Arkady’s supervision. The partners laid their bedrolls in the main room, and there was a door to close between, but wooden walls did not much block groundsense. Tonight Dag and Fawn had a brief gift of privacy, if they could seize it before the beer ran out at the pig roast. They took turns washing up quickly in the sink, then Dag carried the lantern to their end room.
Fawn unrolled their bedding, and helped Dag off with his shirt and arm harness. He returned the favor, folding down her blouse as though it were a flower’s petals; they stood facing on their knees, skin to skin, each leaning into the other for support and heat. They’d made love in many different moods, from merry to mournful; tonight, it seemed to Fawn, there was something almost desperate in Dag’s grip.
“Gods, Spark,” he muttered. “Help me remember who I am.”
She hugged him tight. He released his clutch in favor of a caress, long fingers gliding over her bare back, winding in her hair, and she thought, not for the first time, that with all his touch being channeled through his single hand, he paid it a more reverent attention. And so, as a consequence, did she.
She whispered into his shoulder, “Wherever we are, you can always come home to me.”
He bent his face to her curls, handless arm tightening around her, and breathed her in. It was gently done; she had no call to think of a drowning man drawing air. “Always,” he promised. They sank to their bedroll of residence.
Dag woke slowly in a gray morning light feeling vastly better, and he smiled to remember why. Fawn still slept. He lifted his arm from around her coiled warmth, then rolled over and opened his second eye.
At his face level, half a dozen pairs of beady little eyes stared back at him in unblinking fascination.
“You again!” he groaned at the field mice. “Go on! Shoo!”
Fawn came awake at his voice, sat up on her elbow, and took in their visitors. “Oh, my word. They’re back.”
“I thought you said you’d got rid of them yesterday. Again.”
“I did. Well, I thought I did. I took the box halfway around the lake and dumped them in the woods.”
Dag contemplated these leftovers from his frustrating shielding experiments. Survivors all; had they been especially determined? They’d have to be, to trek back across half of New Moon Camp. “I’d think a farmer girl like you would have more ruthless ways of getting rid of mice.”
“Well, if they were piddling up my pantry, sure. But the only crime this bunch committed was to fall in love with you. Death seemed too cruel a penalty for that.” Her big brown eyes blinked at him in consideration.
“Beguiled,” he corrected austerely. “I don’t think mice have brains enough to fall in love.”
She dimpled. “I never noticed as it took brains.”
“There is that, Spark.” He creaked to his feet, peered a bit blearily around the room, found his slat box, tipped it on its side in front of the staring mice—whose heads turned in unison to track him—and chivvied them into it. Carrying them out the door onto Arkady’s roofless porch, he poured them over the rail. They fell with only a few faint squeaks, bouncing unharmed in the grass below, and, shocked out of their trance, scampered away. For now. Dag shook his head and trod back inside, where Fawn was sitting up lovely-naked and laughing behind her hand.
“The poor things!”
He grinned and opened himself to her bright ground as if basking in sunlight. Then went still, blinking.
Within her vivid swirl spun a brighter spark yet. He knew it at once, from that heartbreaking almost-month that he and Kauneo…
Fawn had no groundsense. It was his task to track when the brilliant changes in her ground signaled her time of fertility, and switch to alternate forms of pleasuring each other. For all the eight months of their marriage and before, she had trusted him to do so. How had he missed the signals last night? Blight it, he’d known it was almost time…!
No, not blight it, never in the same breath with this. That breath tangled in his throat in a ball of guilt, terror, and joy. If he’d taken one of Challa’s surgical knives and laid open his own chest wall, his heart could not be more exposed in this moment.
It might not catch. More than half of all such conceptions never did; many of the remainder failed in the first few weeks, barely delaying the woman’s monthly. It was one of the strongest, if least discussed, Lakewalker social rules to make no comment upon those blazing signs in a woman’s ground unless she brought them up herself. Should he say anything until he was more sure? When would that be? Fawn had been pregnant once before; how soon would she recognize her own symptoms? Would they be the same, for this half-blood child? If that spark survived to become a child…?
“Dag?” said Fawn doubtfully. “You feeling all right? Why’re you lookin’ at me like that?”
He fell to his knees beside her, crouched, gathered her up in his arms, hugged her fiercely and protectively. Feeling as helpless as he’d ever been. “Because I love you,” he told her.
“Well, sure,” she said, a bit shaken by his fervor. “I knew that.” She hugged him back, bemused.
Absent gods. What do we do now?
10
So, when are you going to tell her, Dag?” Arkady asked curiously.
Dag re-furled his reaching groundsense, anxiously following Fawn down the road toward the medicine tent. She was off early to help the herb girls prepare the morning’s load for the farmer’s market. Five dizzy days it had been since that careless hour in their bedroll…
He glanced up to find the Oleana boys grinning at him over their tea and plunkin, and clenched his teeth. He could endure, he supposed, their smirking at him; never at her. For that alone, he ought to tell her soon. Or pound them, whichever came first.
“It’s not going to be—we’re past that—gods. That horror you told me about. When it plants in the wrong place. And I’d have to—my own first—”
/>
Barr and Remo looked blank.
“Safely past,” Arkady soothed him.
Dag let out a pent breath. “That other thing—like Tawa Killdeer—”
“Not that, either,” said Arkady. “It looked this morning like a very nice implantation up in the right rear wall of the womb, just where it should be.”
And not twins, as far as Dag could tell. Lakewalker women almost never bore twins, but when they did, Arkady had said, there could be more problems, the added stress on the mother cascading to other troubles, or an even more bizarre tangling together of the children’s bodies. And Fawn was so little…Not that, either, Dag reminded himself. None of that. A whole category of complications he could cross right off.
“You know,” said Arkady, “almost all apprentices go through a phase where they’re convinced they’re coming down with every new disease they’ve just learned about. I thought you were going to be the notable exception. I suppose I didn’t think it through quite far enough.”
Barr snickered. Dag didn’t lunge across the table at him, and took a moment to feel proud of his self-control. He needed some positive thoughts, just now.
“It’s the women’s game,” Remo assured him, with all the certainty of his vast inexperience. “They look after all that stuff, Dag. Relax.”
“It’s not a game,” growled Dag. “Absent gods. Was I that stupid when I was your age? I suppose I was.” And Remo’s careless remark reminded him once more that Fawn had no kinswomen here to wrap their care around her like an heirloom quilt.
Barr shook his head. “I’ve never seen you dither like this, Dag.”
I’ve never been faced with this before, you young dolt…! It’s all new! New to him, at least. Old as the world. “Entertainin’, am I?” Dag snapped. He rose abruptly. “Come on, Arkady. Let’s go talk out on the porch. Leave these two to their swill.”
“It’s breakfast!” Barr protested in mock outrage. “We don’t swill breakfast!”
“Well, maybe the tea,” allowed Remo, tipping back his mug.
Arkady followed him out without protest. Dag slammed the porch door on their laughter.
It was better, leaning on the railing in the mild air. The sun was not high enough yet to warm Dag’s back, but it lit the golden haze across the surface of the lake and along the farther shore. The first faint green breathed in the trees, with a pink splash of redbud bright against stark gray branches. And, when Arkady leaned alongside him, Dag didn’t have to look him in the eye.
“I don’t know how it happened,” Dag said.
Arkady chuckled. “You can’t expect me to believe that.”
Dag’s hand clenched the rail; he bit back swearwords. “You know that’s not what I meant! I thought…not till we were more settled. Till we knew what we were doing. With this wedding trip behind us, which has gone on so long now I suppose I better start calling it a marriage trip. I even reckoned it—a child—was something I’d let Fawn choose, where and when. When—where—she’d be safe.” His grip tightened. “I don’t know enough!”
“You are aware,” said Arkady carefully, “nine out of ten women sail through this without special problems. Lakewalker, farmer, or half blood.”
Dag brooded. “Those used to sound like good odds.”
Arkady gazed out over the lake. “New Moon Cutoff would be about the safest place you could find for this, you do realize.”
“That thought had crossed my mind,” Dag admitted. “Maybe even safer than with her own kin. Certainly safer than somewhere in the north with just me, trying to figure out how to go on.”
“Then it might be time for a slightly more, ah, conciliating approach to people around here, do you suppose?” Arkady suggested mildly. “More adaptive?”
“What a delicate tongue you have, Arkady.” Dag sighed and turned to lean sideways, watching his profile. “Reckon you could near make lace with it.”
“I’d be satisfied if I could make a good groundsetter.” Arkady tilted his tea mug in toast to Dag, and drank. “But I think you know that by now.”
Dag stood silent for a while, letting the balmy air caress his winter skin. “You could find another apprentice. You always have. Where is the north going to find another Dag ’n Fawn?”
“Service is service. One man can only do his day’s work no matter where he is.”
“True enough.” So much rode on this pivot point of their lives, so unexpectedly aimed at Dag’s heart. Strange for such a tiny spark to weigh so heavily; it might move worlds.
Yet it all could still prove in vain. Dag reconsidered Arkady with new respect. How many times had he gone through these same gyrations, only to have his hopes wash away in sorrow? Dag felt abruptly ashamed. “Sorry to be dithering like this. It’s my first time, see.” It was surely as profound a ground transformation as any he’d experienced this punch-drunk year, when he’d become first Fawn’s patroller, then Fawn’s husband, then captain, makeshift mage, then not a patroller at all. An uprooted seeker…a new maker. And now, once again, Fawn remade him. Fawn’s child’s father. When this is over, I will be a different man. How agonizing was it, to begin such a transformation and then have it break off, incomplete? Fawn would know, he realized. He added, “Challa told me about you and Bryna.”
“Ah,” said Arkady. “Good.” And after a moment, “Then you’ll understand.”
Dag nodded. “Well…some.” Better than those two giggling louts indoors.
Arkady rubbed his chin and stared out at the morning light, eyes like two new copper coins. And then he said a strange thing: “Don’t let fear swallow all your happiness. Don’t forget to take joy.”
Dag gulped. Both of their grounds were nearly closed; it was Arkady’s voice alone that hinted how hard-bought this bit of wisdom might have been, yet the words had been nearly toneless.
Dag considered his most secret fear. If Fawn dies of this, I will have killed her, sure as if I’d led her out to battle on a ridge against impossible foes. So was that fear for her, or for himself? He’d known a couple of men whose wives had died in childbed; it wasn’t something a man got over, despite how time wore away all things. His remorse would be no novelty. But I have a new bonded knife, now. I wouldn’t have to get over this one. Not for long. It was a peculiar enticement to courage.
Gods, he was getting morbid. He’d better tell Fawn soon just so she could give him a dose of her calm good sense and cheerful optimism. He could almost hear her voice: Stands to reason, Dag!
Well, once she got over being mad at him. With justice. If she threw things, he wouldn’t duck, he decided gallantly.
“I’ll tell her tonight,” he said. “We have a lot to talk about, I reckon.”
“Good,” said Arkady.
An hour into the farmers market, the medicine table had already enjoyed a fair sprinkling of trade. With the bright weather, and several days for the roads to dry since the last rain, Nola and Cerie thought it might be busy enough for them to sell out early and take a few hours off in the sunshine. Fawn made cordial hellos to their regular customers, smiling at faces starting to be familiar. She’d even begun to recognize folks’ rigs, spotting Finch what’s-his-name in his open cart as he drove in. His mare was dark with sweat, and stood quietly when he dropped his reins and vaulted down.
He strode quickly to the medicine table, eyes seeking, to her surprise, Fawn. “You’re here, you’re here, oh thanks be! Can I talk to you privately, Missus Bluefield?”
“Well, sure, I suppose so.” Fawn looked around. “Would over by the trees be private enough?”
“Yes, anything.” His hand stretched and clenched, as if he wanted to grab her arm and hurry her along, but didn’t quite dare. They came to a halt at the fringe of the woods, in sight of the market but out of earshot. Not out of groundsense range, naturally, but she doubted groundsense could make anything more of the agitated farm youth than she did. Finch’s tense face was damp with perspiration and flushed with exertion, making his blue eyes look incongruously bri
ght.
“Is your husband still of a mind to treat farmers?” he asked abruptly. He watched her mouth with painful intensity, as if expecting his heart’s salvation to issue from her lips.
“Well…in the north, in due course, sure. But he’s just an apprentice here. He’s not allowed.”
His hand swept this aside as if he barely heard her. His words fell out in a breathless tumble. “It’s my nephew Sparrow. My brother’s little boy. He’s barely five. He’s got the lockjaw. And it’s all my fault! I let him run barefoot in the barn. There was this nail, went halfway though his poor little foot. I was supposed to be watching him! He cries and cries, when he can. The fever came on first. The straining started last night. The screams are bad, but the silences are worse, oh gods.”
“Yeah, I know lockjaw,” said Fawn slowly. “Violet Stonecrop’s little brother died of it, oh, years back. They were neighbors of ours, when I was growing up in West Blue. I didn’t see, but Violet told me all about it, later.” Horrifying descriptions.
“Can he come? Can your Lakewalker husband help?” Finch clutched her sleeve. “Can you ask—him, whatever his name is? Please? My sister-in-law cries, and Mama’s so mad she won’t even look at me. Please, can you ask him?” The clutch became a shaking grip, painful. “It’s all so awful!”
“Dag,” said Fawn, answering his least question while trying desperately to think. “Dag Bluefield. He insisted on taking my name when we were wed, the way Lakewalkers do. Took a farmer name to be more Lakewalker. ’S funny.” She would have to catch Dag alone, not in front of everyone in the medicine tent. She glanced at the sun. Near noon—he might be back to the house for lunch.
Or she could spare Dag the decision. Because this one was going to be hard no matter what way it played out, though with a youngster involved, she didn’t have a lot of doubt which way Dag would jump. She knew the camp rules as well as he did. She could send Finch packing, back to his daylight nightmare, and never share the dilemma. It wasn’t a good time for Dag. He’d seemed so strained since the pig roast. Constantly looking at her, as if wondering—what? As if regretting how his farmer bride divided him from his people?