He glanced over to find her up on one elbow, looking at him with the same interested expression as ever. Happy eyes. Not shocked or scared or repelled. He said, “You don’t mind that it’s, well, strange? You think this is just the same as all the other things I do, don’t you?”
Her brows rose in consideration. “Well, you summon horses and bounce mosquitoes and make firefly lamps and kill malices and you know where everyone is for a country mile all around, and I don’t know what you did to Reed and Rush last night, but the effect was sure magical today. And what you do for me I can’t hardly begin to describe, not decently anyhow. How do you know it isn’t?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it, squinting at his question turned upside down.
She cocked her head, and continued, “You said Lakewalker folks’ groundsense doesn’t come in all at once, and not at all when they’re younger. Maybe this is just something you should have had all along, that got delayed. Or maybe it’s something you should have now, growing right on time.”
“There’s a new thought.” He lay back, frowning at the blameless evening sky. His life was full of new things, lately. Some of them were new problems, but he had to admit, a lot of the tired, dreary, old problems had been thoroughly shaken out. He began to suspect that it wasn’t only the breaking of his right arm that was triggering this bizarre development. The farmer girl was plowing his ground, it seemed. What was that phrase? Breaking new land. A very literal form of ground transformation. He blinked to chase away these twisting notions before his head started to ache.
“So, that’s twice,” said Fawn, pursuing the thought. “So it can happen, um, more than once, anyhow. And it seems you don’t have to be unhappy for it to work. That’s real promising.”
“I’m not sure I can do it again.”
“That’d be a shame,” she said in a meditative tone. But her eyes were merry. “So, try it again next time and we’ll see, eh? And if not, as it seems you have no end of ingenuity in a bedroll, we’ll just do something else, and that’ll be good, too.” She gave a short, decisive nod.
“Well,” he said in a bemused voice. “That’s settled.”
She flopped down again, nestling in close, hugging him tight. “You’d best believe it.”
To Fawn’s gladness they lingered late in the glade the next morning, attempting to repeat some of last night’s trials; some were successful, some not. Dag couldn’t seem to induce his ghost hand again—maybe he was too relaxed?—which appeared to leave him someplace between disappointment and relief. As Fawn had guessed, he found other ways to please her, although she thought he was trying a bit too hard, which made her worry for him, which didn’t help her relax.
She fed him a right fine breakfast, though, and they mounted up and found their way back to the river road by noon. In the late afternoon, they at last left the valley, Dag taking an unmarked track off to the west. They passed through a wide stretch of wooded country, sometimes in single file on twisty trails, sometimes side by side on broader tracks. Fawn was soon lost—well, if she struck east, she’d be sure to find the river again sometime, so she supposed she was only out of her reckoning for going forward, not back—but Dag seemed not to be.
For two days they pushed through similar woodland. Pushed might be too strong a term, with their early stops and late starts. Twice Dag persuaded his ghost hand to return, to her startled delight, twice he didn’t, for no obvious reason either way, which plainly puzzled him deeply. She wondered at his spooky choice of name for this ground ability. He worried over it equally afterwards whether or not he succeeded, and Fawn finally decided that it had been so long since he hadn’t known exactly what he was doing all the time, he’d forgotten what it felt like to be blundering around in the dark, which made her sniff with a certain lack of sympathy.
She gradually became aware that he was dragging his feet on this journey, despite his worries about beating his patrol back to Hickory Lake, and not only for the obvious reason of extending their bedroll time together. Fawn herself was growing intensely curious about what lay ahead, and inclined to move along more briskly, but it wasn’t till the third morning that they did so, and that only because of a threatened change in the weather. The high wispy clouds that both farmers and Lakewalkers called horsefeathers had moved in from the west last night, making fabulous pink streaks in the sunset indigo, and the air today was close and hazy, both signs of a broad storm brewing. When it blew through, it would bring a sparkling day in its wake, but was like to be violent before then. Dag said they might beat it to the lake by late afternoon.
Around noon the woods opened out in some flat meadowlands bordering a creek, with a dual track, and Fawn found herself riding alongside Dag again. “You once said you’d tell me the tale of Utau and Razi if you were either more drunk or more sober. You look pretty sober now.”
He smiled briefly. “Do I? Well, then.”
“Whenever I can get you to talk about your people, it helps me form up some better idea what I’m heading into.”
“I’m not sure Utau’s tale will help much, that way.”
“Maybe not, but at least I won’t say something stupid through not knowing any better.”
He shrugged, though he amended, “Unknowing, maybe. Never stupid.”
“Either way, I’d still end up red-faced.”
“You blush prettily, but I give you the point. Well. Utau was string-bound for a good ten years to Sarri Otter, but they had no children. It happens that way, sometimes, and even Lakewalker groundsense can’t tell why. Both his family and hers were pressuring them to cut their strings and try again with different mates—”
“Wait, what? People can cut their marriage strings? What does that mean, and how does it work?” Fawn wrapped a protective right hand around her left wrist, then put her palm hastily back on her thigh, kicking Grace’s plump sides to encourage her to step along and keep up with Copperhead’s longer legs.
“What leads up to a string-cutting varies pretty wildly with the couple, but lack of children after a good long time trying is considered a reason to part without dishonor to either side. More difficult if only one partner assents to the cutting; then the argument can spread out to both their families’ tents and get very divisive. Or tedious, if you have to listen to them all go on. But if both partners agree to it, the ceremony is much like string-binding, in reverse. The wedding cords are taken off and re-wrapped around both partners’ arms, only with the opposite twist, and knotted, but then the string-blesser takes a knife and cuts the knot apart, and each takes back the pieces of their own.”
Fawn wondered if that knife was carved of bone.
“The grounds drain out back to their sources, and, well, it’s done. People usually burn the dead strings, after.” He glanced aside at her deepening frown. “Don’t farmer marriages ever come apart?”
“I think sometimes, but not often. The land and the families hold them together. And there’s considered to be a shame in the failure. People do up and leave, sometimes, men or women, but it’s more like chewing off your leg to escape a trap. You have to leave so much behind, so much work. So much hope, too, I suppose.” She added, “Though I heard tell of one marriage down south of the village that came apart again in two weeks. The bride and all her things just got carted right back to her family, being hardly settled in yet, and the entry was scratched out in the family book. Nobody would ever explain to me why, although the twins and Fletch were snickering over it, so I suppose it might have had to do with bed problems, though she wasn’t pregnant by someone else or anything. It was all undone right quick with no argument, though, so someone must have had something pretty big to apologize for, I’d guess.”
“Sounds like.” His brows rose as he considered this in curiosity, possibly of the more idle sort. “Anyway. Utau and Sarri loved each other despite their sorrow, and didn’t want to part. And they were both good friends with Utau’s cousin Razi. I’m not just sure who persuaded who to what, but one day Razi up and
moved all his things into Sarri’s tent with the pair of them. And a few months later Sarri was pregnant. And, to top the matter, not only did Razi get string-bound with Sarri, Razi and Utau got string-bound with each other, so the circle went all the way around and each ended up wearing the strings of both the others. All Otters now. And everyone’s families went around for a while looking like their heads ached, but then there came this beautiful girl baby, and a while after, this bright little boy, that all three just dote on, and everyone else pretty much gave up the worrying. Although not the lewd speculation, naturally.”
Fawn laughed. “Naturally.” Her mind started to drift off in a little lewd speculating of its own, abruptly jerked back to attention when Dag continued in his thoughtful-voice.
“I’ve never made a child, myself. I was always very careful, if not always for the same reasons. There’s not a few who have trouble when they switch over from trying to miss that target to trying to hit it. All their prior care seeming a great waste of a sudden. The sort of useless thing you wonder about late at night.”
Had Dag been doing so, staring up at the stars? Fawn said, “You’d think, with that pattern showing in women’s grounds, it would be easier rather than harder to get a baby just when you wanted.” She was still appalled at how easy it had been for her.
“So you would. Yet so often people miss, and no one knows why. Kauneo and I—” His voice jerked to a halt in that now-familiar way.
She held her peace, and her breath.
“Here’s one I never told anyone ever—”
“You need not,” she said quietly. “Some people are in favor of spitting out hurts, but poking at them too much doesn’t let them heal, either.”
“This one’s ridden in my memory for a long, long time. Maybe it would look a different size if I got it outside my head rather than in it, for once.”
“Then I’m listenin’.” Was he about to uncork another horror-tale?
“Indeed.” He stared ahead between Copperhead’s ears. “We’d been string-bound upwards of a year, and I felt I was getting astride my duties as a company captain, and we decided it was time to start a child. This was in the months just before the wolf war broke. We tried two months running, and missed. Third month, I was away on my duties at the vital time; for the life of me I can’t now remember what seemed so important about them. I can’t even remember what they were. Riding out and checking on something or other. And in the fourth month, the wolf war was starting up, and we were both caught up in the rush.” He drew a long, long breath. “But if I could have made Kauneo pregnant by then, she would have stayed in camp, and not led out her patrol to Wolf Ridge. And whatever else had happened, she and the child would both have lived. If not for that lost month.”
Fawn’s heart felt hot and strange, as if his old wound were being shared through the very ground of his words. Not a good secret to lug around, that one. She tried the obvious patch. “You can’t know that.”
“I know I can’t. I don’t think there’s a second thought I can have about this that I haven’t worn out by now. Maybe Kauneo’s leadership, down at the anchor end of the line, was what held the ridge that extra time after I went down. Maybe…A patroller friend of mine, his first wife died in childbed. I know he harbors regrets just as ferocious for the exact opposite cause. There is no knowing. You just have to grow used to the not knowing, I guess.”
He fell quiet for a time, and Fawn, daunted, said nothing. Though maybe the listening had been all he’d needed. She wondered, suddenly, if Dag was doubting whether he could sire children. Fifty-five years was a long time to go without doing so, for a man, although she had the impression that it wasn’t that he’d been with so many women, before or after Kauneo, as that he’d paid really good attention when he had. In the light of her own history, if no child appeared when finally wanted, it would seem clear who was responsible. Did he fear to disappoint?
But his mind had turned down another path now, apparently, for he said, “My immediate family’s not so large as yours. Just my mother, my brother, and his wife at present. All my brother’s children are out of the tent, on patrol or apprenticed to makers. One son’s string-bound, so far.”
Dag’s nephews and nieces were just about the same age range as Fawn and her brothers, from his descriptions. She nodded.
He went on, “I hope to slip into camp quietly. I’m of two minds whether to report to Fairbolt or my family first. It’s likely rumors have trickled back about the Glassforge malice kill ahead of Mari’s return, in which case Fairbolt will want the news in full. And I have to tell him about the knife. But I’d like to introduce you to my brother and mother in my own way, before they hear anything from anyone else.”
“Well, which one would be less offended to be put second?” asked Fawn.
“Hard to say.” He smiled dryly. “Mama can hold a grudge longer, but Fairbolt has a keen memory for lapses as well.”
“I should not like to begin by offending my new mama-in-law.”
“Spark, I’m afraid some people are going to be offended no matter what you and I do. What we’ve done…isn’t done, though it was done in all honor.”
“Well,” she said, trying for optimism, “some people are like that among farmers, too. No pleasing them. You just try, or at least try not to be the first to break.” She considered the problem. “Makes sense to put the worst one first. Then, if you have to, you can get away by saying you need to go off and see the second.”
He laughed. “Good thinking. Perhaps I will.”
But he didn’t say which he believed was which.
They rode on through the afternoon without stopping. Fawn thought she could tell when they were nearing the lake by a certain lightness growing in the sky and a certain darkness growing in Dag. At any rate, he got quieter and quieter, though his gaze ahead seemed to sharpen. Finally, his head came up, and he murmured, “The bridge guard and I just bumped grounds. Only another mile.”
They came off the lesser track they’d been following onto a wider road, which ran in a sweeping curve. The land here was very flat; the woods, mixed beech and oak and hickory, gave way to another broad meadow. On the far side, someone lying on the back of what looked to be a grazing cart horse, his legs dangling down over the horse’s barrel, sat up and waved. He kicked the horse into a canter and approached.
The horse wore neither saddle nor bridle, and the young man aboard it was scarcely more dressed. He wore boots, some rather damp-looking linen drawers, a leather belt with a scabbard for a knife, and his sun-darkened skin. As he approached, he yanked the grass stem he’d been chewing from his mouth and threw it aside. “Dag! You’re alive!” He pulled up his horse and stared at the sling, and at Fawn trailing shyly behind. “Aren’t you a sight, now! Nobody said anything about a broken bone! Your right arm, too, absent gods, how have you been managing anything at all?”
Dag returned an uninformative nod of greeting, although he smiled faintly. “I’ve had a little help.”
“Is that your farmer girl?” The guard stared at Fawn as though farmer girls were a novelty out of song, like dancing bears. “Mari Redwing thought you’d been gelded by a mob of furious farmers. Fairbolt’s fuming, your mama thinks you’re dead and blames Mari, and your brother’s complaining he can’t work in the din.”
“Ah,” said Dag in a hollow voice. “Mari’s patrol get back early, did it?” “Yesterday afternoon.”
“Lots of time for everyone to get home and gossip, I see.”
“You’re the talk of the lake. Again.” The guard squinted and urged his horse closer, which made Copperhead squeal in warning, or at least in ill manners. The man was trying to get a clear look at Fawn’s left wrist, she realized. “All day, people have been giving me urgent messages to pass on the instant I saw you. Fairbolt, Mari, your mama—despite the fact she insists you’re dead, mind—and your brother all want to see you first thing.” He grinned, delivering this impossible demand.
Dag came very close, Fawn thoug
ht, to just laying his head down on his horse’s mane and not moving. “Welcome home, Dag,” he muttered. But he straightened up instead and kicked Copperhead around head to tail beside Grace. He leaned over leftward to Fawn, and said, “Roll up my sleeve, Spark. Looks like it’s going to be a hot afternoon.
2
T he bridge the young man guarded was crudely cut timber, long and low, wide enough for two horses to cross abreast. Fawn craned her neck eagerly as she and Dag passed over. The murky water beneath was obscured with lily pads and drifting pond weed; farther along, a few green-headed ducks paddled desultorily in and out of the cattails bordering the banks. “Is this a river or an arm of the lake?”
“A bit of both,” said Dag. “One of the tributary creeks comes in just up the way. But the water widens out around both curves. Welcome to Two Bridge Island.”
“Are there two bridges?”
“Really three, but the third goes to Mare Island. The other bridge to the mainland is on the western end, about two miles thataway. This is the narrowest separation.”
“Like a moat?”
“In summer, very like a moat. All of the island chain backing up behind could be defended right here, if it wanted defending. After the hard freeze, this is more like an ice causeway, but the most of us will be gone to winter camp at Bearsford by then. Which, while it does have a ford, is mostly lacking in bears. Camp’s set on some low hills, as much as we have hills in these parts. People who haven’t walked out of this hinterland think they’re hills.”