Notably missing was any word about Sunny Sawman. So Fawn’s judgment on that score was proven shrewd. Too early to guess at the consequences…
Dag was not sure how long the uproar would have continued in this vein, except that Aunt Nattie levered herself up, grasped a walking stick, and stumped around the table to Fawn’s side. “Let me see you, girl,” she said quietly, and Fawn hugged her—the first hug Dag had seen going the other way—and let the blind woman run her hands over her face. “Huh,” said Aunt Nattie. “Huh. Now introduce me to your patroller friend. It’s been a long time since I’ve met a Lakewalker.”
“Dag,” said Fawn, reverting to her breathless, anxious formality, “This is my aunt Nattie that I’ve told you about. She’d like to touch you, if that’s all right.”
“Of course,” said Dag.
The little woman stumped nearer, reached up, and bounced her fingers uncertainly off his collarbone. “Goodness, boy, where are you?”
“Say something,” Fawn whispered urgently.
“Um… up here, Aunt Nattie.”
Her hand went higher, to touch his chin; he obligingly bent his head. “Way up there!” she marveled. The knobby, dry fingers brushed firmly over his features, pausing at the slight heat of the bruises on his face from yesterday, circling his cheekbones and chin in inexplicable approval, tracing his lips and eyelids. Dag realized with a slight shock that this woman possessed a rudimentary groundsense, possibly developed in the shadow of her lifelong blindness, and he let his reach out to touch hers.
Her breath drew in. “Ah, Lakewalker, right enough.”
“Ma’am,” Dag responded, not knowing what else to say.
“Good voice, too,” Nattie observed, Dag wasn’t sure who to. She stopped short of checking his teeth like a horse’s, although by this time Dag would scarcely have blinked at it. She felt down his body, her touch hesitating briefly at the splints and sling; her eyebrows went up as she felt his arm harness through his shirt and briefly gripped his wooden hand. But she added only, “Nice deep voice.”
“Have you eaten?” asked Tril Bluefield, and when Fawn explained no, they’d ridden all day from Lumpton, shifted to what Dag guessed was her more normal motherly mode, driving a couple of her sons to set chairs and places. She put Fawn next to herself, and Fawn insisted Dag be placed on her own right, “On account of I promised to help him out with his broken arm.” They settled at last. Clover, finally introduced as Fletch’s betrothed, was also drafted to help, plopping plates and cups of what smelled like cider down in front of them. Dag, by this time very thirsty, was most interested in the drink. The food was a well-cooked stew, and Dag silently rejoiced at being confronted with something he could handle by himself, though he wondered who in the household had bad teeth.
“The fork-spoon, I think,” he murmured in Fawn’s ear, and she nodded and rummaged it out of his belt pouch.
“What happened to your arm?” asked Rush, across from them.
“Which one?” asked Dag. And endured the inevitable moment of rustling, craning, and stunned stares as Fawn calmly unscrewed his hand and replaced it with the more useful tool. “Thank you, Spark. Drink?” He smiled down at her as she lifted the cup to his lips. It was fresh cider, very tart from new summer apples. “And thanks again.”
“You’re welcome, Dag.”
He licked the spare drop off his lower lip, so she didn’t have to chase it with her napkin, yet.
Rush finally found his voice, more or less. “Er… I was going to ask about the, er, sling…”
Fawn answered briskly, “A sneak thief at Lumpton Market lifted my bedroll yesterday. Dag got it back, but his arm was broken in the fight before the thieves got scared and ran off. Dag gave a real good description to the Lumpton folks, though, so they might catch the fellows.” Her jaw set just a trifle. “So I kind of owe him for the arm.”
“Oh,” said Rush. Reed and Whit stared across the table with renewed, if daunted, interest.
Tril Bluefield, looking hungrily and now more carefully at her restored daughter, frowned and let her hand drift to Fawn’s cheek where the four parallel gouges were now paling pink scars. “What are those marks?”
She glanced sidelong at Dag; he shrugged, Go on. She said, “That’s where the mud-man hit me.”
“The what?” said her mother, face screwing up.
“A… sort of bandit,” Fawn revised this. “Two bandits grabbed me off the road near Glassforge.”
“What? What happened?” her mother gasped. The assorted brothers, too, sat up; on Dag’s right, he could feel Fletch tense.
“Not too much,” said Fawn. “They roughed me up, but Dag, who was tracking them, came up just then and, um. Ran them off.” She glanced at him again, and he lowered his eyelids in thanks. He did not especially wish to begin his acquaintance with her family with a listing of all the dead bodies he’d left around Glassforge, the human ones at least. Far too many human ones, this last round. “That’s how we first met. His patrol had been called to Glassforge to deal with the bandits and the blight bogle.”
Rush asked, “What happened to the bandits after that?”
Fawn turned to Dag, who answered simply, “They were dealt with.” He applied himself to his stew, good plain farm food, in the hope of avoiding further expansion on this subject.
Fawn’s mother bent her head, eyes narrowing; her hand went out again, this time to the left side of Fawn’s neck and the deep red dent and three ugly black scabs. “Then what are those nasty-looking things?”
“Um… well, that was later.”
“What was later?”
In a desperately bright voice, Fawn replied, “That’s where the blight bogle lifted me up. They make those sorts of marks—their touch is deadly. It was big. How big, would you say, Dag? Eight feet tall, maybe?”
“Seven and a half, I’d guess,” he said blandly. “About four hundred pounds. Though I didn’t have the best vantage. Or light.”
Reed said, in a tone of growing disbelief, “So what happened to this supposed blight bogle, if it was so deadly?”
Fawn’s look begged help, so Dag replied, “It was dealt with, too.”
“Go on, Fawn,” said Fletch scornfully. “You can’t expect us to swallow your tall tales!”
Dag let his voice go very soft. “Are you calling your sister a liar… sir?” He let the and me? hang in implication.
Fletch’s thick brows wrinkled in honest bewilderment; he was not a man sensitive to implication, either, Dag guessed. “She’s my sister. I can call her anything I want!”
Dag drew breath, but Fawn whispered, “Dag, let it go. It doesn’t matter.”
He did not yet speak this family dialect, he reminded himself. He had worried about how to conceal the strange accident with the sharing knife; he’d not imagined such feeble curiosity or outright disbelief. It was not in his present interest—or capacity—to bang Bluefield heads together and bellow, Your sister’s courage saved my life, and dozens, maybe thousands, more. Honor her! He let it go and nodded for more cider.
Blatantly changing the subject, Fawn asked Clover after the progress of her wedding plans, listening to the lengthy reply with well-feigned interest. The addition in progress on the south end of the house, it appeared, was intended for the soon-to-be-newlyweds. The true purpose of the question—camouflage—was revealed to Dag when Fawn added casually, “Anyone hear from the Sawmans since Saree’s wedding?”
“Not too much,” said Reed. “Sunny’s spent a lot of time at his brother-in-law’s place, helping clear stumps from the new field.”
Fawn’s mother gave her a narrow-eyed look. “His mama tells me Sunny’s betrothed to Violet Stonecrop as of midsummer. Hope you’re not disappointed. I thought you might be getting kind of sweet on him at one point.”
Whit piped up, in a whiny, practiced brotherly chant, “Fawn is sweet on Suh-nee, Fawn is sweet on Suh-nee…”
Dag cringed at the spate of deathly blackness that ran through Fawn’s ground
. He does not know, he reminded himself. None of them do. Although he would not have cast bets on Tril Bluefield’s unvoiced suspicions, because she now said in a flat voice unlike any he’d yet heard from her, brooking no argument, “Stop that, Whit. You’d think you were twelve.”
Dag could see the little ripple in Fawn’s jaw as she unset her teeth. “Not sweet in the least. I think Violet deserves better.”
Whit looked disappointed at not having drawn a more spectacular rise out of his sister from his expert lure but, glancing at his mother, did not resume his heckling.
“Perhaps,” Dag suggested gently, “we should go see to Grace and Copperhead.”
“Who?” asked Rush.
“Miss Bluefield’s horse, and mine. They’ve been waiting patiently out there.”
“What?” said Reed. “Fawn doesn’t have a horse!”
“Hey, Fawn, where’d you get a horse?”
“Can I ride your horse?”
“No.” Fawn thrust back her chair. Dag rose more quietly with her.
“Where did you get a horse, Fawn?” asked Papa Bluefield curiously, staring anew at Dag.
Fawn stood very straight. “She was my share for helping deal with the blight bogle. Which Fletch here doesn’t believe in. I must have ridden all the way from Glassforge on a wish horse, huh?”
She tossed her head and marched out. Dag cast a polite nod of farewell in the general direction of the table, thought to add a spoken, “Good evening, Aunt Nattie,” and followed. Behind him, he could hear her father’s growl, “Reed, go help your sister and that fellow with their horses.” Which in fact launched a general migration of Bluefields onto the porch to examine the new horse.
Grace was exhaustively discussed. At last Dag swapped back for his hook and led his own horse in an escape to the old barn, where spare stalls were to be found. He lingered looking over the stall partition, keeping a light contact with his groundsense so the gelding wouldn’t snake around and attempt to savage Reed, his unfamiliar groom. Copperhead was not named for his chestnut color, despite appearances. When both horses were at last safely rubbed down, watered, and fed, Dag walked back to the house through the sunset light with Fawn, temporarily out of earshot of the rest of her relations.
“Well,” she said under her breath, “that could have gone worse.”
“Really?” said Dag.
“Really.”
“I’ll take your word. Truth to tell, I’m finding your family a bit strange. My nearest kin don’t often like what I have to say, but they certainly hear what I have to say, and not something else altogether.”
“They’re better one at a time than in a bunch like that.”
“Hm. So… what was that about market-day night?”
“What?”
“When Rush said they’d missed you market-day night.”
“Oh. Nothing much. Except that I left market-day morning while it was still dark. Wonder where they thought I was all day?”
A number of Bluefields had collected in the front parlor, including Aunt Nattie, now plying a drop spindle, and Fawn’s mother. Dag set down his saddlebags and let Fawn unpack her gifts. Fletch, about to escort his betrothed home to her nearby farm, paused to watch as well.
Tril held the sparkling glass bowl up to the light of an oil lamp in astonishment. “You really did go to Glassforge!”
Fawn, who had wobbled all evening between trying to put on a good show and what seemed to Dag a most unfamiliar silent shrinking, said only, “That’s what I told you, Mama.”
Fawn pressed the corked scent bottle into her aunt’s hands and urged her to splash some on her wrists, which, smiling agreeably, she did. “Very pretty, lovie, but this sort of foolery is for courtin’ girls to entice their boys, not for lumpy old women like me. Better you should give it to Clover.”
“That’s Fletcher’s job,” said Fawn, with a more Spark-like edged grin at her brother. “Anyhow, all sorts of folks wear it in Glassforge—patroller men and women both, for some.”
Reed, hovering, snorted at the idea of men wearing scent, but Nattie showed willing and eased Dag’s heart by splashing a bit more on both herself and her younger sister Tril, and some on Fawn as well. “There! Sweet of you to think of me, lovie.”
It was growing dark outside. The boys dispersed to various evening chores, and Clover made farewells to her prospective in-laws. The two young women, Fawn and Clover, eyed each other a little stiffly as Clover made more congratulations on Fawn’s safe return, and Dag wondered anew at the strangeness of farmer customs. A Lakewalker only-girlchild would have been the chief inheritor of her family’s tent, but that position here was apparently held by Fletch; and not Fawn but Clover would take Tril Bluefield’s place as female head of this household in due time. Leaving Fawn to go… where?
“I suppose,” said Papa Bluefield a trifle grudgingly, “if your friend here has a bedroll, he could lay it in the loft. Keep an eye on his horse.”
“Don’t be daft, Sorrel,” Aunt Nattie spoke up unexpectedly. “The man can’t climb the loft ladder with that broken arm.”
“He needs to be close by me, so’s I can help him,” said Fawn firmly. “Dag can lay his bedroll in Nattie’s weaving room.”
“Good idea, Fawn,” said Nattie cheerily.
Fawn slept in with her aunt; the boys shared rooms upstairs, as did their parents. Papa Bluefield looked as though he was thinking hard, suddenly, about the implications of leaving Fawn and Dag downstairs with a blind chaperone. And then—inevitably—of the implications of how long Dag and Fawn had been on the road together. Did he know anything about his aging sister-in-law’s groundsense?
“I’ll try harder not to cut your throat with your razor tomorrow, Dag,” Fawn said.
“I’ve lost more blood for less,” he assured her.
“We should likely try to get on the road early.”
“What?” said Papa Bluefield, coming out of his frowning cogitation. “You’re not going anywhere, girl!”
She turned to him, stiffening up tight. “I told you first thing, Papa. I have an obligation to give witness.”
“Are you stupid, Fawn!”
Dag caught his breath at the hard black rip through Fawn’s ground; his eyes went to Nattie, but she gave no visible reaction, though her face was turned toward the pair.
Papa Bluefield went on, “Your obligations are here, for all you’ve run off and turned your back on them this past month! You’ve had enough gallivanting for a while, believe you me!”
Dag interposed quietly and quite truthfully, “Actually, Spark, my arm’s not doing all that well tonight. I wouldn’t mind a day or two to rest up.”
She turned anxious eyes up at him, as if not sure whether she was hearing support or betrayal. He gave her a small, reassuring nod.
Papa Bluefield gave Dag a sideways look. “You’d be welcome to go on, if you’ve a need.”
“Papa!” snapped Fawn, gyrating back to something not strained show, but blazingly sincere. “The idea! Dag saved my life three times, twice at great risk to his own, once from the bandits, once from the malice—the bogle—and once again the night after the bogle… hurt me, because I would have bled to death right there in the woods if he hadn’t helped me. I will not have him turned out on the road by himself with two bad arms! For shame! Shame on this house if you dare!” She actually stamped her foot; the parlor floor sounded like a drum.
Papa Bluefield had stepped backward. His wife was staring at Dag with eyes wide, holding the glass bowl tightly. Nattie… was amazingly hard to read, but she had a strange little smile on her lips.
“Oh.” Papa Bluefield cleared his throat. “You hadn’t exactly made that plain, Fawn.”
Fawn said wearily, “How could I? No one would let me finish a story without telling me I must be making things up.”
Her father glanced at Dag. “He’s a quiet one.”
Dag could not touch his temple; he had to settle for a short nod. “Thinking. Sir.”
�
�Are you, now?”
It was not, in the Bluefield household, apparently possible to finish a debate. But when the squabbling finally died into assorted mumblings, drifting away up stairs or down halls in the dark, Dag ended up with his bedroll set down beside Aunt Nattie’s loom, with an impressive pile of quilts and pillows arranged for his ease. He could hear the shortest two women of the family rustling around in the bedroom beyond in low-voiced preparation for bed, and then the creak of the bed frames as they settled down.
Dag disposed his throbbing arm awkwardly, grateful for the pillows. Save for the night on the Horsefords’ kitchen floor, he had never slept inside a farmer’s house, certainly not as an invited guest, though his patrols had sometimes been put up, by arrangement, in farmers’ barns. This beat a drafty hayloft with snow sifting in all hollow. Before he’d met Fawn’s family, he would scarcely have understood why she would want to leave such comforts.
He wasn’t sure if it was worse to be loved yet not valued than valued but not loved, but surely it was better to be both. For the first time, he began to think a farm’s brightest treasure need not be furtively stolen; it might be honestly won. But the hopes forming in his mind would have to wait on tomorrow for their testing.
Chapter 14
The next morning passed quietly. To Fawn’s eye Dag looked tired, moved slowly, and said little, and she thought his arm was probably troubling him more than he let on. She found herself caught up, will or nil, in the never-ending rhythm of farm chores; cows took no holidays even for homecomings. She and Dag did take a walk around the place in the midmorning, and she pointed out the scenes and sites from her tales of childhood. But her guess about his arm was confirmed when, after lunch, he took some more of the pain powder that had helped him through yesterday’s long ride. He slipped out—wordlessly—to the front porch overlooking the river valley and sat leaning against the house wall, nursing the arm and thinking… whatever he was thinking about all this. Fawn found herself assigned to stirring apple butter in the kitchen, and while you are about it, dear, why don’t you make up some pies for supper?
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