“Eh, lovie. But it gars me to see Sunny get off free of all this.”
“Yes, but I couldn’t stand for my brothers to know. They’d either try to do something to Sunny and cause trouble, or they’d make a mock of me for being so stupid, and I don’t think I could bear that about this.” She added after a moment of consideration, “Or both.”
“I’m not sure even your brothers are thoughtless enough to make mock of this.”
Nattie hesitated, then conceded reluctantly, “Well, perhaps half-Whit.”
Fawn managed a watery smile at the old jibe. “Poor Whit, maybe it’s that old joke on his name that drives him to be such an awful thorn to everyone. Maybe should start calling him Whitesmith instead, see if it helps.”
“There’s a thought.” Nattie sat up, staring into her personal dark. “I think maybe you’re right about the bad blood, though. Oh my, yes. All right. This story will stop with me unless some other problem comes from it.”
Fawn breathed relief at this promise. “Thank you. Talking with you eases me, more than I expected.” She thought over Nattie’s last words, then said more firmly, “You have to understand, I’m going away with Dag. One way or another.”
Nattie did not immediately burst into objections and dire warnings, but said only, “Huh.” And then, after a moment, “Curious fellow, that Lakewalker. Tell me more.”
Fawn, busying herself once more about the kitchen, was only too glad to expand on her new favorite subject to an unexpectedly sympathetic, or at least not immediately outraged, ear. “I met his patrol in Glassforge…” She described Mari and Saun and Reela—if touching only lightly on Dirla and Razi and Utau—and Sassa’s proud tours to show off his town, and all the fascinating things folks found for work there that did not involve cows, sheep, or pigs. The bow-down, and Dag’s unexpected talents with a tambourine—a word picture that made Nattie laugh along with Fawn. At that point, Fawn came to a sudden stop.
“You’re heels-up in love with him, then,” Nattie said calmly. And, at Fawn’s gasp, “Come, girl, I’m not that blind.”
In love. It seemed too weak a term. She’d imagined herself in love back when she was mooning over Sunny. “More than that. I trust him… right down to the ground.”
“Oh, aye? After all that tale, I think I’m half in love with him myself.”
Nattie added after a thoughtful moment, “Haven’t heard such joy in your voice for a long, long time, lovie. Years.”
Fawn’s heart sprang up as though weights had been shifted from it, and she laughed aloud and gave Nattie a hug and a kiss that made the old woman smile foolishly. “Now, now. There’s still some provin’ to be done, you know.”
But then the pies were baked, and Fawn’s mother returned to start the rest of supper, sending Fawn to milk the cows so the boys could keep cutting hay while the light lasted. She went by the front porch on the way, but Dag had not yet returned to his thinking seat there. Dag made his way back to the house after a stroll around the lower perimeter of the farm, in part to stretch his legs and mind and in part to be certain Sunny had indeed packed off. Resentful and ripe for trouble, that boy, and his abrupt and satisfying removal from Fawn’s presence had likely been dangerously self-indulgent for a Lakewalker alone in farmer country, but Dag could not regret the act, despite the renewed throbbing of his jostled arm. Dag’s last veiled fear that, once back in the safety of her home, Fawn might repent her patroller and double back to her first love, faded altogether.
Once upon a time, Sunny had held star fire in his hand, and thrown it away in the mud of the road. He wouldn’t be getting that fortune back, ever. There seemed nothing in the wide green world Dag could do to him worse than what he had already done to himself. Smiling crookedly, Dag dismissed Sunny from his thoughts in favor of more urgent personal concerns.
In the kitchen, he found Fawn gone but her mother, Tril, buzzing about putting together supper for eight. A clicking and whirring from the next chamber proved to be Nattie at her spinning wheel, within sight and call of her sister, and he made sure to say how de’; she returned a friendly but unenlightening,
“Evening, patroller,” and carried on. Evidently the incident with Sunny was not to be discussed. On the whole, Dag was relieved.
He greeted Tril amiably and attempted to make himself useful hooking pots on and off the fire for her, while trying to think his way to other possibilities for a half-handed man to show his worth to the female who was, in Lakewalker terms, the head of Tent Bluefield. Tril watched him in such deep alarm, he began to fear he was looming, too tall for the room, and he finally just sat down and watched, which seemed to ease her. His comment about the weather fell flat, as did a leading question about her chickens; alas, Dag knew little about farm animals beyond horses. But a few questions about Fletch’s upcoming wedding led by a short route to West Blue marriage customs generally, which was exactly where Dag wanted her to go. The best way to keep her going, he quickly discovered, was to respond with comments on Lakewalker customs on the same head.
Tril paused in kneading biscuit dough to sigh. “I was afraid last spring Fawn was yearning after the Sawman boy, but that was never a hope. His papa and Jas Stonecrop had had it fixed between them for years that Sunny would marry Violet and the two farms would come together in the next generation. It’s going to be a rich spread, that one. If Violet has more than one boy, there may be enough to divide among them without the younger ones having to go off homesteading the way Reed and Rush keep talking of.”
The twins spoke of going to the edge of the cultivated zone, twenty miles or so west, and breaking new land between them, after Fletch married. It was a plan much discussed but so far little acted upon, Dag was given to understand.
“Fathers arrange marriages, among farmers?”
“Sometimes.” Tril smiled. “Sometimes they just think they do. Sometimes the fathers have to be arranged. The land, though, or the family due-share for children who aren’t getting land—that has to be understood and written out and kept by the village clerk, or you risk bad blood later.”
Land again; farmers were all about land. Other wealth was thought of as land’s equivalent, it seemed. He offered, “Lakewalker couples usually choose each other, but the man is expected to bring bride-gifts to her family, which he is considered to be joining. Horses and furs, traditionally, though it depends on what he has accumulated.” Dag added, as if casually, “I have eight horses at the moment. The other geldings are on loan to the camp pool, except for Copperhead, who is too evil-tempered to foist on anyone else. The three mares I keep in foal. My brother’s wife looks after them along with her mares.” “Camp pool?” Tril said, after a puzzled moment.
“If a man has more than he needs, he can’t just sit on it and let it rot. So it goes to the camp pool, usually to outfit a young patroller, and the camp scribe keeps a record of it. It’s very handy if you go to switch camps, because you can carry a letter of record and draw for your needs when you get there, instead of carrying all that burden along. At the hinterland meetings every two years, one of the jobs for the camp scribes is to meet and settle up any lingering differences. I have a long credit at Stores.” How to translate that into acreage temporarily defeated him, but he hoped she understood he was not by any measure destitute, despite his present road-worn appearance. He rubbed his nose reflectively with the side of his hook. “They tried me as a camp scribe for a while after I lost my hand, but I didn’t take to the fiddly work and all the writing. I wanted to be moving, out in the field.”
“You can read and write?” Tril looked as though this was a point in Dag’s favor—good.
“Pretty much all Lakewalkers can.”
“Hm. Are you the oldest in your family, or what?”
“Youngest by ten years, but I’ve only the one brother living. It was a great sorrow to my mother that she had no daughter to carry on her tent, but my brother married a younger sister of the Waterstriders—they had six—and she took our tent name so’s it wouldn’t be lost, and moved in so’s my mother wouldn’t be alone.” See, I’m a nice tame fellow, I have a family too. Of a sort. “My brother is a very gifted maker at our camp.” He decided not to say of what. The production of sharing knives was the most demanding of Lakewalker makings, and Dar was highly respected, but it seemed premature to introduce this to the Bluefields.