As the shadows narrowed, Dag came up under their awning and sat beside her on his log seat. He propped his right elbow on his knee, neck bent, staring down at his sandals. At length he looked up toward the lake, face far away—Fawn couldn’t tell if he was trying to memorize the view or not seeing it at all. She thought of their visits to the lily marsh. This place nourishes him. Would he starve in his spirit, exiled? A man might die without a mark on him, from having his ground ripped in half.
She took a breath, sat straight. Began, “Beloved.”
His face turned sideways to her in a fleeting smile. He looked tired.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He seemed for an instant if he wanted to amend that bluntness in some reassuring fashion, but then just let it stand.
She angled her face away. “I wasn’t going to tell you this story, but now I think I will. When you were first gone to Raintree, I knitted up another pair of socks like those you’d been so pleased with, and took them to your mother for a present. A peace offering, like.”
“Didn’t work.” It wasn’t a guess, nor a chiding; more of a commiseration.
Fawn nodded. “She said—well, we said several things to each other that don’t matter now. But one thing she said sticks. She said, once a patroller sees a malice, he or she doesn’t ever put another thing—or person—ahead of patrolling.”
“I do wonder sometimes how she was betrayed, and who the patroller was. My father, I suspect.”
“Did sound like,” Fawn conceded. “But not with another woman, I don’t guess.”
“Me, either. Something Aunt Mari once let slip—Dar and I once may have had a sister who died as an infant in some tragic way. He says he doesn’t remember any such thing, so she would have had to be either before or within a few years after he was born. If so, she was buried in a deep, deep silence, because Father never mentioned her, either.”
“Huh.” Fawn considered this. “Could be…Well.” She bit her lip. “I’m no patroller, but I have seen a malice, and if there’s anything your mama was right about, it’s that. She said if you didn’t love me enough, you’d choose the patrol.” She held up a hand to stem his beginning protest. “And that if you loved me beyond all sense—you’d choose the patrol. Because you couldn’t protect me for real and true any other way.”
He subsided, silenced. She raised her face to meet his beautiful eyes square, and went on, “So I just want you to know, if you have to choose the patrol—I won’t die of it. Nor be worse off for having known and loved you for a space. I’ll still be richer going down the road than when you met me, by far, if only for the horse and the gear and the knowing. I never knew there was as much knowing as this to be had in the whole world. Maybe, looking back, I’ll remember this summer as a dream of wonders…even the nightmare parts. If I didn’t get to keep you for always, leastways I had you for a time. Which ought to be magic enough for any farmer girl.”
He listened gravely, not attempting, after his first protest, to interrupt. Trying to sort it out, maybe, for he said, “Are you saying you’re too tired to keep up this struggle anymore?”
She eyed him. “No, that’s you, I think.”
He gave a little self-derisive snort. “Could be.”
“Keep it straight. I love you, and I’ll walk with you down any path you choose, but…this one isn’t my choice to make. It’s yours.”
“True. And wise.” He sighed. “I thought we both chose in that scary little parlor back in West Blue. And yet your choice will be honored or betrayed by mine in turn. They don’t come separately.”
“No. They don’t. But they do come in order. And West Blue, well—that was before either you or I saw Greenspring. That town could’ve been West Blue, those people me and mine. I watched your lips move, counting down that line of dead…To keep you, there’s a lot of things I’d fight tooth and toenail. Your kin, my kin, another woman, sickness, farmer stupidity, you name it. Can’t fight Greenspring. Won’t.”
He blinked rapidly, and for a moment the gold in his eyes looked molten. He swiped the shiny water tracks from his cheekbones with the back of his hand, leaned forward, and kissed her on the forehead, that terrifying kiss of blessing again. “Thank you,” he whispered. “You have no idea how that helps.”
She nodded shortly, swallowing down the hot lump in her own throat.
They went into their tent to change, him out of his short trousers and sandals, her out of her somewhat grubby shift. When, on her knees sorting through his trunk, she tried to hand him up his cleanest shirt, he surprised her by saying, “No—my best shirt. The good one your Aunt Nattie wove.”
He hadn’t worn his wedding shirt since their wedding. Wondering, she shook it out, its folds wrapped in other clothes to keep it from creasing—her green cotton dress, as it happened.
“Oh, yes, wear that one,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “It’s so pretty on you.”
“I don’t know, Dag. It’s awfully farmer-girl. Shouldn’t I dress more Lakewalker for this?”
He smiled crookedly down at her. “No.”
It was disquieting, in this context, to be all gussied up in their wedding-day clothes again. She adjusted the hang of the cord on her left wrist, and the gold beads knocked cool against her skin. Were they to be unmarried in this new noon hour, as if tracing back over some exact path after they had gotten lost? Maybe they had gone astray, somewhere along the way. But fingering the links of events back one by one in her memory, she couldn’t see where.
Dag had picked up his hickory stick, so she guessed they were in for a longish walk to this grove, since he’d stopped using it around the campsite a few days back. She brushed her skirts straight, slipped her shoes on, and followed him out of the tent.
Dag realized he’d walked for a mile without seeing a single thing that had passed his eyes, and it wasn’t because the route was so familiar. His mind seemed to have come to some still place, but he wasn’t sure if it was poised or simply numb. They were passing patroller headquarters when Fawn, uncharacteristically silent till then, asked her first question: “Where is this council grove, anyhow?”
He glanced down at her. The rosy flush from their walk in the noon warmth kept her from being pale, but her face was set. “Not much farther. Just past Hoharie’s medicine tent.”
She nodded. “Will there be very many people there? Is it like a town council?”
“I don’t know town councils. There are nearly eight thousand folks around Hickory Lake; the whole point of having a camp council is so they don’t have to all show up for these arguments. Anyone can come listen who’s interested, though. It depends on how many people or families or tents are involved in a dispute. It’s only Tent Redwing—and Tent Bluefield—today. There’ll be Dar and Mama, but not too many friends of theirs, because they wouldn’t care to have them watch this. My friends are mostly out on patrol this season. So I don’t expect a crowd.” He hesitated, swinging his staff along, then shrugged his left shoulder. “Depends on how they take our marriage cords. That affects most everyone, and could grow much wider.”
“How long will it take?”
“At the start of a session, the council leader lights a session candle. Session lasts as long as it takes to burn down, which is about three hours. They say of a dispute that it’s a one-candle or two-candle or ten-candle argument. They can spread over several days, see.” He added after a few more paces, “But this one won’t.” Not if I can help it.
“How do you know?” she asked, but then it was time to turn off into the grove.
Grove was a misnomer; it was more of a clearing, a wide circular space at the edge of the woods weeded of poison ivy and other noxious plant life and bordered by huge, flowering bushes people had planted over the years—elderberry, forsythia, lilac—some so old their trunks were thick as trees. Upended log seats were scattered about on grass that a couple of placid sheep were at work nibbling short. To one side rose an open frame nearly the size of
patrol headquarters under a shingled roof, for bad weather, but today a small circle of seats was set up in the shade at the clearing’s edge. A few more folks were walking in as Dag and Fawn arrived, so apparently they were not late.
Fairbolt Crow, talking head down with Mari, arrived last. They split off from each other, Fairbolt taking the remaining unoccupied log seat at the end of a close-set row of seven backed up to some venerable elderberry bushes, branches hanging heavy with fruit. Mari strode over to the gaggle of patrollers seated to Dag’s right. Dag was not surprised to see Saun, Razi, and Utau already there; Saun jumped to his feet and rolled up a log for her. He was a little more surprised to see Dirla—had she paddled all the way over from Beaver Sigh for this?—and Griff from Obio’s patrol.
Clustered to the left of the councilor’s row were only Dar, Cumbia, and Omba, the latter plainly not too happy to be there. His mother looked up from a bit of cord she was working in her lap for habit or comfort, shot Dag one glance of grim triumph, which he scarcely knew how to interpret—See what you made me do? maybe—then looked away. The looked away part he had no trouble understanding, since he did the same, like not watching a medicine maker rummage in one’s wound. Dar merely appeared as if he had a stomachache, and blamed Dag for it, hardly unusual for Dar.
One log seat waited directly across from the councilors. Utau muttered something to Razi, who hurried to collect another from nearby and set it beside the first. Not ten feet of open space was left in the middle. No one was going to have to bellow…at least, not merely to be heard.
Fawn, looking every bit as wary as a young deer, stopped Dag just out of earshot by clutching his arm; he bent his head to her urgent whisper, “Quick! Who are all those new people?”
Fairbolt was seated, perhaps not accidentally, closest to the patrollers, and Dowie Grayheron beside him. Dag whispered back, “Left from Fairbolt and Dowie is Pakona Pike. She’s council leader this season. Head of Tent Pike.” A woman of ninety or so, as straight-backed as Cumbia and one of her closer friends—Dag did not expect benign neutrality from her, but he didn’t say it to Fawn.
“Next to her are Laski Beaver and Rigni Hawk, councilor and alternate from Beaver Sigh.” Laski, a woman in her eighties, was head of Tent Beaver on Beaver Sigh, and a leather maker—it was her sister who made the coats that turned arrows. No one would ever have pulled her from her making for council duty. Rigni, closer to Dag’s age, came from a tent of makers specializing in boats and buildings, though she herself was just emerging from raising a brood of children. She was also one of Dirla’s aunts; she might have heard some good of Dag and Fawn.
“Next down from them, Tioca Cattail and her alternate Ogit Muskrat, from Heron Island. I don’t know them all that well.” Only that Tioca was a medicine maker, and since the recent death of her mother head of Tent Cattail on Heron. Ogit was a retired patroller of about Cumbia’s age, curmudgeonly as Cattagus but without the charm; of no special making skills, he liked being on council, Dag had heard. While he was not close friends with Cumbia, the two had certainly known each other for decades. Despite Ogit’s patrol connections Dag did not hold much hope for an ally in him.
Fawn blinked and nodded, and Dag wondered if she would remember all this and keep it straight. In any case, she now let him lead her forward. He seated her on his right, to the patroller side of things, and settled himself, laying his hickory staff at his feet and sitting up with a polite nod to the councilors across from him.
On a shorter sawed-off log in front of Pakona sat a beeswax candle. She nodded back grimly, lit the wick, and lowered a square parchment windbreak around it, lanternlike. From beside it she picked up a peeled wooden rod, the speaker’s stick, and tapped it three times against the makeshift table. Everyone fell silent and regarded her attentively.
“There’s been a deal of talk and gossip about this,” she began, “so I don’t think anyone here needs more explaining-to. The complaint in the matter comes from Tent Redwing against its member Dag Redwing. Who’s speaking for Tent Redwing?”
Dag stirred at his naming, but voiced no protest. Let that one go for now. You’ll find your chance.
“I do,” said Dar, holding up one hand; behind him, Cumbia nodded. Cumbia, as head of Tent Redwing, was more than capable of speaking for herself and everyone else, and Dag wondered at this trade-off. An extension of Dag’s shunning? Didn’t trust herself to keep her voice and argument steady? She looked like old iron, today. But mostly, she looked old.
“Pass this down to Dar, then,” said Pakona. The stick went from hand to hand. “Speak your tent’s complaint, Dar.”
He took the stick, inhaled, cast Dag a level stare, and began. “It won’t take long. As we all know, Dag returned late from a patrol this summer with a farmer paramour in tow that he named his wife, on the basis of a pair of wedding cords that no one had witnessed them make. We say that the cords are counterfeit, produced by trickery. Dag is in simple violation of the long-standing rule against bringing such…self-indulgences within the bounds of camp. Tent Redwing requests the camp and the patrol enforce the usual penalties, returning the girl to her people by whatever means required and fining Dag Redwing for his transgression.”
Dag, rigid with surprise, exhaled carefully. How interestingly clever of Dar—yes, this had to be Dar’s idea. He had entirely shifted his argument from the one threatened before Dag had departed for Raintree, of forced string-cutting or banishment. A glance at Fairbolt’s rising eyebrows told Dag the camp captain, too, had been taken by surprise; he cast Dag an apologetic glance. Dag wasn’t sure how long ago Dar had rethought his attack, but he had been shrewd enough to keep it from Fairbolt.
Dag opened his ground just enough to catch the councilors’ sevenfold flicker of ground examination upon him and Fawn. Tioca Cattail tilted her head, and said, “Pardon, but they appear to be perfectly usual cords to me. Can’t that girl shut down her—no, I suppose not. How do you think they are false?”
“They were falsified in the making,” said Dar. “The exchange of grounds in the cords marks a true marriage, yes, but the making also acts—normally—as a barrier against anyone not bearing Lakewalker bloodlines from contaminating our kinships. It’s not a great making, true. It’s more like the lowest boundary. We tend to think everyone can do it, but that is itself the sign of the value of this custom in the past.
“I say the farmer girl did not make her own cord, but that Dag made it for her, with a trick he stole from my knife-making techniques, of using blood to lead live ground into an object. It represents nothing but cunning.”
“How do you know this, Dar?” asked Fairbolt, frowning.
Dar said, a trifle reluctantly, “Dag told me himself.”
“That’s not what I said!” Dag said sharply.
Pakona held up a quelling hand. “Wait for the stick, Dag.”
“Hold on,” said Rigni Hawk, her nose wrinkling. “We’re taking hearsay testimony on a matter when we have two eyewitnesses sitting right in the circle?”
“Thank you, Rigni,” huffed Fairbolt in relief. “Quite right. Pakona, I think the stick should go to Dag for this tale.”
“He has reason to lie,” said Dar, looking sullen.
“That’ll be for us to sort out,” said Rigni firmly.
Pakona waved, and Dar reluctantly handed the stick around via Omba to Dag.
“So how did you make those cords?” asked Tioca in curiosity.
“Fawn and I made both cords together,” Dag said tightly. “As some of you may remember, my right arm was broken at the time”—he made the old sling-gesture—“and the other is, well, as you see. Lakewalker blood or no, I was quite incapable of weaving any cord at all. Fawn wove the cord she now wears, I sat behind her on the bench with my arms along hers, and I cast my ground into it in the usual way. I don’t see how anyone in his right mind can maintain that cord is invalid!”
Pakona waved to quell him again, but murmured, “So, go on. What about the other?”
?
??I admit, I attempted to aid her in catching up her ground to weave into the second cord. We were having no luck at all when suddenly, all on her own, she cut open both her index fingers and wove while bleeding. Her ground welled right up and into the cord. I didn’t help her any more than she helped me; less, I’d say.”
“You instructed her to do this, then,” said Tioca.
“No, she came up with it—”
“A few nights earlier, Dag and I had been talking about ground,” Fawn put in breathlessly, “and he’d told me blood held ground after it left the body, because it was, like, alive separately from the person. Which I thought was a right disturbing idea, so I remembered it.”
“You’ve not been given leave to speak here, girl,” said Pakona sharply.
Fawn sat back and clapped her hand over her mouth in apology and alarm. Dag set his jaw, but added, “Fawn is exactly right. I recognized it as a technique that any of us here who have been bonded to sharing knives have likewise seen, but I didn’t suggest it. Fawn thought of it herself.”
“They used a knife-making technique on wedding cords,” Dar said in a voice of outrage.
“Groundwork is groundwork, Hoharie says,” Dag shot back. “I defy you to find a rule anywhere says you can’t.”
Tioca’s eyes narrowed in considerable intrigue. “Medicine-making does have to be a little more…adaptable than some other kinds of making,” she allowed. Such as knife-work hung implied. In a kindly sort of tone. Dag allowed himself an instant of enjoyment, watching Dar’s teeth grit.
“One brother’s word against t’other’s,” rumbled Ogit Muskrat from his end of the row. “One’s a maker, one’s not. Given the matter is making, I know which I’d trust.”
Fawn, her lips pressed tight, cast a look up at Dag: But you’re a maker, too! He gave her a small headshake. He was letting himself get distracted, wound up in side issues. This wasn’t about their cords.