“Wait, are you saying your own king became the first malice?” Fawn rolled up on her elbow to stare in astonishment.
Dag tilted his head in doubt. “He became something. Some lords fell under his power—legend says—and some broke away. A war of matter and magic followed, which sank the lakes and left the Dead Lake and the Western Levels. Whether the malice-king’s enemies discovered how to destroy him, or it was another accident, any who knew died in the finding out. Someone back then must have discovered how to share mortality. It must have been a great sharing, is all I can say. Our malices came from some cataclysmic ground transformation when he, or it, was at last destroyed, and blew up into those ten thousand—or however many—shards or seeds or eggs. But that’s what we think the malices are all trying to do, clumsily, when they come out of the ground. Become kings again.
“Hence—to return roundabout to your original question—affinity. Malices take up Lakewalker mortality because they are, or were, partly us.”
Along the eaves, bones clanked in a breath of night wind. Fawn found herself trying to shrink under her blankets, which had crept, during this reciting, from her feet to her waist to her nose. This was worse than any tall tale her brothers had ever tormented her with. “Are you saying all those malices are your relatives?”
He lay back and, infuriatingly, laughed. “Don’t you just hate those family squabbles? Absent gods.” The chuckles died down before she got up the nerve to poke him in reproof. “Collateral ancestors at most, Spark. But I suggest you not share that insight around. Some folks are like to be offended.”
What have I married into, really? The revelations dismayed her. She thought back to her malice’s tormented, merciless eyes. They might have been tea-brown, with a certain now-familiar iridescence.
He let out the last of his black humor in a sigh. “If not relatives, they are certainly our legacy. Our joint inheritance. Not sure what my share is.” His hook drifted up to touch his heart. “One, I reckon.”
A chill shook Fawn at this vision of his mortal fate. “And you all so proud. Riding by us like lords.” And yet Lakewalkers lived, at home, in worse poverty than most farmers, unless the Bearsford camp was any more elaborate than this. She was beginning to suspect not. Noble grandeur was sadly lacking all around. Squalid scramble seemed a more apt description.
Dag shrugged. “We have to tell ourselves some flattering stories to keep ourselves going. Day after year after decade. What else? Lie down and die for the endless despair of it all?”
She lay back and followed his stare up into the dim rafters. “Is there an end?”
“Perhaps. If we just keep on. We think there were not an infinite number of malices planted. They don’t come up under water or ice or above the tree line, or on old blight. Our maps of the lairs we’ve destroyed show them thicker toward the Dead Lake, but fewer and farther apart going out. And we say they are immortal, but in fact all that have hatched have been slain. So maybe they wouldn’t live forever, but what they destroy betimes is more than enough. Maybe they’ll stop hatching out someday just for sheer age, but that’d be a bad hope to count on or dwell on. Like to make a man impatient, and this is no war for the impatient. Yet if all things end, even despair must, too. Not in my lifetime. But sometime.” He blinked up into the shadows. “I don’t believe in much, but I’ll believe that.”
That despair must end? Or, not in his lifetime? Both, likely.
He sat up and stretched his back, wincing, and, after a desultory futile prod at his arm-harness buckles with his splinted hand, extended it to Fawn to free him for the night. She unbuckled it and set it aside as usual, decided they weren’t going to do better than to sleep in their clothes, and, after a brief hesitation, cuddled down in her accustomed spot under his left arm, where she could press her ear to his heart. She pulled the blanket up over them both. Dag did not, by word or gesture, suggest lovemaking here tonight, and, relieved, neither did she. The fire died to embers before either of them slept.
5
D ag left on a mumbled errand soon after it was light, leaving Fawn to pack up. She had the bags and bedrolls stacked tidily on the porch, the cabin swept out, and even the fireplace ashes hauled away and scattered in the wet woods, with no sign of his return. She collected from the abundant new deadfall to replace the pile they’d burned last night, and then some, and finally sat on the porch steps with her chin in her hand, waiting. The flock of wild turkeys—or another flock, as there seemed to be a lot more of them this morning, upwards of forty—stalked through the clearing, and Fawn and they eyed each other gloomily.
A figure appeared on the path, and the turkeys ambled off. Fawn sat up eagerly, only to slump in disappointment. It was Dar, not Dag.
He glowered at her without approval but without surprise; likely his groundsense had told him where she and Dag had gone to hole up last night.
“Morning,” she tried cautiously.
She received a grunt and a grudging nod in return. “Where’s Dag?” he asked.
“He went off.” She added warily, “He told me to wait here for him till he got back.”
Another grunt. Dar inspected his lathe, wet but undamaged by the storm, and went around the cabin fastening open the shutters. He trod up the steps, stared down at her, slipped off his muddy shoes, and went inside; he came back out in a few minutes looking faintly frustrated, perhaps because she’d left nothing to complain of.
He asked abruptly, “You didn’t couple in there last night, did you?”
Fawn stared up in offense. “No, but what business is that of yours?”
“I’d have to do a ground cleansing if you did.” He stared at the firewood stack. “Did you collect that, or Dag?”
“I did, of course.”
He looked as though he was reaching for a reason to reject it, but couldn’t come up with one. Fortunately, at that point Dag came striding up the path. He looked reasonably cheerful; perhaps his errand had prospered?
“Ah.” He paused when he saw his brother; they exchanged equally laconic nods.
Dar waited a moment as if for Dag to speak, then when nothing was forthcoming, said, “That was a clever retreat last night. You didn’t have to listen to the complaints.”
“You could’ve gone for a walk.”
“In the rain? Anyway, I thought that was your trick—patroller.”
Dag lowered his eyelids. “As you say.” He nodded to Fawn and hooked his saddlebags and hers up over his shoulder. “Come along, Spark. G’day, Dar.”
Fawn found herself trotting at his heels, casting a farewell nod over her shoulder at Dar, who by the opening and tight closing of his mouth clearly had wanted to say more.
“Were you all right?” Dag asked, as soon as they were out of earshot. “With Dar, I mean.”
“I guess. Except that he asked one really rude question.”
“Which was?”
Fawn flushed. “He asked if we’d made love in his cabin.”
“Ah. Well, he actually does have a legitimate reason for wanting to know that, but he should have asked me. If he really couldn’t trust me to know better.”
“I hadn’t worked round yet to asking him if your mama had softened any overnight. Didn’t you want to ask?”
“If she had,” Dag said distantly, “I’m sure Dar was able to stiffen her up again.”
Fawn asked more quietly, looking down at her feet pacing along the muddy, leaf-and-stick-strewn path, “Did this—marrying me—mess things up any between you and your brother?”
“No.”
“Because he seems pretty angry at you. At us.”
“He’s always annoyed at me for something. It’s a habit. Don’t worry about it, Spark.”
They reached the road and turned right. Dag barely glanced aside as they passed his family’s clearing. He made no move to turn in there. The road followed the shoreline around the island and curved south, running between the woods and more groups of cabins hugging the bank. The dripping trees sparkled i
n the morning light, and the sun, now well up above the farther shore, sent golden beams between the boles through the cool, moist air, which smelled of rain and moss.
Not a quarter mile along, Dag turned left into a clearing featuring three tent-cabins and a dock much like all the others. It was set a little apart from its neighbors by a stand of tall black walnut trees to its north and an orchard of stubbier fruit trees to its south; Fawn could see a few beehives tucked away among the latter. On a stump in front of one of the cabins sat an aging man dressed only in trousers cut off above the knees and held up by a rope belt, and leather sandals. His gray hair was knotted at his nape. He was carving away with long strokes on what looked to be some sort of oar or paddle in the making, but when he saw them he waved the knife in amiable greeting.
Dag dumped their saddlebags atop another stump and led Fawn over to the fellow. By his gnarly feet, she suspected he was an old patroller. He’d clearly been a big man once, now going a little stringy with age, except around his—for a Lakewalker—ample middle. He eyed Fawn as curiously as she eyed him.
Dag said, “Fawn, this is Cattagus Redwing, Mari’s husband.”
Making him Dag’s uncle, then. So, this marriage hadn’t estranged Dag from quite all his family. Fawn dipped her knees and smiled anxiously, looking around covertly for Mari. It would be wonderful to see a familiar face. She saw no one else, but heard cheery voices coming from down over the bank.
Cattagus tilted his head in dry greeting. “So, this is what all the fuss is about. Cute as a kitten, I’ll grant you that.” His voice was wheezy, with a sharp whistling running through it. He looked her up and down, a little smile playing around his lips, shook his head wryly, drew breath again, and added, “Absent gods, boy. I’d never have got away with something like this. Not even when I was thirty years younger.”
Dag snorted, sounding more amused than offended. “’Course not. Aunt Mari would’ve have had your hide for a tent flap.”
Cattagus chuckled and coughed. “That’s a fact.” He waved aside with his knife. “The girls from Stores brought your tent by.”
“Already?” said Dag. “That was quick.”
Fawn tracked their gazes to a large handcart set at the side of one cabin, piled high with what appeared to be old hides, with a stack of long poles sticking out the back.
“They said, bring back their cart soon as you get it empty.”
“That I can do. Where do Mari and Sarri want me to set up?”
“Better go ask ’em.” Cattagus gestured toward the shore.
Fawn followed Dag to peek over the bank. To the left of the dock, at which two narrow boats were tied, a sort of wooden cradle lay in the water, perhaps ten feet long and six feet wide. A woman wearing long black hair to her hips and nothing else, and a black-haired girl-child, were tromping vigorously up and down in it. Marching with them, Razi, equally nude, was clapping his hands and calling to the little girl, who looked to be about four, “Jump, Tesy! Jump!” She squealed with laughter and hopped like a frog, splashing the woman, who ducked and grinned. The cradle was apparently for retting some sort of long-stemmed plant, and the treaders were engaged in kicking off the rotting matter to clean the fibers. Beyond them, Utau, standing in water to his waist, was supporting the clutching fists of a small boy of perhaps two, whose fat little legs kicked up a fountain of foam. Mari, dressed in only a simple sleeveless shift hemmed at the calf and sandals like her husband’s, stood on the dock with her hands on her hips watching them, smiling. She seemed to be halfway through either loading or unloading a couple dozen coils of rough-looking rope from one of the boats, much like the rope netting Fawn had seen on the plunkin panniers.
Dag called down over the bank, “Hey, Mari! We’re back.”
Indicating that he’d been here once already this morning, likely to arrange this. Fawn wondered if this had been his first idea, or his third, and just how he had gone about explaining his needs. His ability to persuade had not entirely deserted him, it seemed.
Mari waved back. “Be right with you!”
Steps laid from flat stones made a stairway down the steep bank to the dock. In a few moments, Fawn was treated to the somewhat startling sight of a whole family of nude, wet Lakewalkers climbing up from the shore. They seemed quite unconscious of their undress. Fawn, who had never done more than wade in the shallows of the river with her skirts rolled up, supposed it made sense, given that these people were likely in and out of the water a dozen times a day for various purposes. She was nonetheless relieved when they streamed past her with only the briefest greetings and emerged a few minutes later from the cabin on the north of the clearing dressed, if simply: Razi and Utau in truncated trousers like Cattagus’s, and Sarri and her daughter in shifts. The little boy, escaping, streaked past still in his skin in a beeline for the water, only to be scooped up and tickled into distraction from his purpose by Utau.
Mari followed up the steps and stopped by Dag. “Morning, Fawn.” Her expression today was ironic but not unsympathetic. “Dag, Sarri thought you could set up under the apple tree over there. There’s a bit of rising ground there, though you can hardly see it. It’ll be the driest spot.”
Utau, with the boy now riding atop his shoulders, small hands pulling his hair from its knot, came up with the long-haired woman. To Fawn’s eyes, she looked to be about thirty; Fawn added the accustomed fifteen years to her guess. “Hello, Fawn,” Utau greeted her, without surprise. Clearly, he’d been given the whole tale by now. “This is our wife, Sarri Otter.” A nod at Razi, who had been inspecting the cart and now strode over to join them, confirmed the other part of that our.
Fawn had twigged that they were on Sarri’s territory, and maybe Mari’s; she gave her knee-dip, and said to the women, “Thank you for having us here.”
Sarri folded her arms and nodded shortly, face not unfriendly, eyes curious. “Dag…well, Dag,” she said, as if that explained something.
Dag, Razi, Utau, and Mari, with Cattagus following along and supplying wheezing commentary, then turned their attention to the alleged tent. The men hauled the cart to the orchard and swiftly unloaded it. The bewildering mess of poles and ropes was transformed with startling speed into a square frame with hides over its arching top and hanging down for walls, neatly staked to the earth. It had a sort of miniature porch, more hides raised up on poles, for an awning in front, which they arranged facing the lakeshore, canted so that the rising sun would not shine in directly. They rolled up and tied the front walls beneath the awning, leaving the little room open to the air much like the more solid structures.
“There!” said Dag in a satisfied voice, standing back and regarding the results. “Tent Bluefield!”
Fawn thought it looked more like Pup-Tent Bluefield; it made the other cabins seem positively palatial. She ventured near and peered in dubiously. It’s all right, I’m just temporary, the tent seemed to say of itself. But temporary on the way to what?
Dag followed, looking down at her a shade anxiously. “Many’s the young couple who starts with no more,” he said.
Likely, but you aren’t young. “Mm,” said Fawn, and nodded to show willing. There was space inside for a double bedroll and a few possessions, but little else. At least the stubby apple tree was not likely to drop lethal branches atop.
“Don’t lay anything out in it yet—let the ground dry a while more,” said Dag. “We’ll get reeds for bedding, rocks for a fire pit, maybe do something for flooring.” He strode back to the clearing and collected a pair of short logs, hooking up the smaller and rolling the larger along with his foot, and set them upright beneath the awning for seats. “There.”
Excited by this novelty, the little girl Tesy went inside and pranced and danced about, singing to herself. Truly, the tent seemed more playhouse-sized than Dag-sized, though the curved roof would allow him to stand upright, barely. Sarri made to call her daughter back out, but Fawn said, “No—let her. It’s a sort of house blessing, I guess,” which earned her a grate
ful and suddenly shrewd look from Sarri.
“If I might borrow your husbands once more,” said Dag to Sarri, “I thought we’d go get my things before I take the cart back.”
“Sure thing, Dag.”
“Mari”—his gaze seemed to test his patrol-leader-and-relative’s willingness—“maybe you could show Fawn around while we’re gone?”
Implying, among other things, that Fawn was not invited on this expedition. But Mari nodded readily enough. It seemed Fawn was to be accepted by this branch of Dag’s family, at least. If temporarily, like the tent. The three men went off with the cart, not altogether unloaded, as both children immediately scrambled atop for the ride. Or rather, Tesy scrambled up, and her little brother wailed in dismay till Razi popped him aboard with her.
“It’s normally a bit livelier than this,” Mari told Fawn, who was gazing around the clearing. “But as soon as I got back from patrol and could take charge of Cattagus, my daughter took her family across to Heron Island to visit with her husband’s folks. They’re building a new boat for her.” A wave of her hand indicated the third cabin as belonging to this absent family. Was the daughter Mari’s name-heiress? What else did Lakewalkers inherit, if they did not own land? Besides their fair share of malices. Was this site apportioned out like tents and horses from some camp pool?
Mari, with Sarri trailing in silent curiosity, took Fawn out back and showed her where the privy was hidden among the trees: not a shed but a slit trench with a hide blind, very tentlike. Water was drawn from the lake, and kettles kept permanently on the hob to boil that intended for drinking. Inside Mari’s cabin, Fawn saw that the fireplace had a real oven, which she eyed enviously. Lakewalker women were not limited to pan bread cooked over an open fire, evidently. Though it seemed futile to ask to borrow the oven when Fawn owned no flour, baking pans, lard, butter, eggs, milk, or yeast.