“Groundsetting isn’t so sweet and delicate as all that, that I’ve seen.”
“Your projection changes everything you touch with it.”
“My hand changes everything I touch with it. Always has. Anyway, I want to change folks.”
“Dag, you can’t treat farmers. Not at New Moon Cutoff.”
“What if Fawn falls ill? I will sure enough treat her!”
Arkady waved this away. “That’s different.”
“Oh? How? Groundwise.”
Arkady sighed and rubbed his brow. “I can see I’m going to have to give you the set speech. For my usual apprentices it starts out, When I was your age… but I suppose that won’t do for you.”
“When you were my age? ” Fawn suggested helpfully.
Arkady eyed her. “A little older than that. Not much, I grant.”
Dag eased back and occupied his protesting mouth with another bite of bread. He nodded to signal that Arkady had his full attention.
Arkady drew a long breath. “When I was much younger, and stupider, and vastly more energetic, my wife and I were training up together as medicine makers at a camp called Hatchet Slough, which is about a hundred and fifty miles northeast of here.”
What wife? Fawn hadn’t seen hide nor hair of a Missus Arkady since she’d arrived, nor, more tellingly, heard any word. Dag nodded understanding- of the geography? Or of something else? She wasn’t sure if Arkady saw the little flinch that went-with. Tales of the ill fates of first wives would likely do that to Dag. Fawn gulped and shut up hard.
“We were both newly come into our full maker’s powers. Bryna had a special talent for women’s ailments. There were already hints that I’d be a groundsetter when I grew into myself. It seemed we had more enthusiasm than sick or injured to treat at Hatchet Slough. An excess of energy that’s hard to imagine, now…
“Being young, we talked about the problems of our neighboring farmers. She thought it a grand idea to offer treatments to them- perhaps set up a little medicine tent at the camp farmer’s market, next to the table for herbs and preparations. Our mentors put their feet down hard on that before it became more than talk, of course, but you can see how far our thinking had gone. Your notions aren’t new, Dag.”
Dag’s eyes lit. “But with unbeguilement, you could really do that!”
Arkady made a little wait-for-the-rest gesture. “A desperate farmer woman with a dying husband who’d heard our loose talk came to Bryna for help. She went.”
“Is this one of those failed-and-blamed tales?” Dag said uneasily.
Fawn shivered. Accusations of black sorcery could get a lone Lakewalker beaten up-or burned alive, if the mob was vicious enough. Lakewalkers in pairs or groups were much harder to tackle.
“No. She succeeded. The man wasn’t even beguiled.” Arkady drew another fortifying breath. “Word got out. Another frantic farmer came, and another. I started going out with her. One sick woman became deeply beguiled, and began haunting the camp. Her husband decided she’d been seduced, and tried to waylay and kill me. Fortunately, there were some patrollers nearby who rescued me and drove him off.
“It all came to a head when there was a riot at the camp gates by the kin of some desperately ill folks, trying to break in and carry us away by force. It was repulsed with a lot of bloodied heads on both sides-one patroller was killed, and two farmers. The camp council decided to break the impasse by smuggling us out in the night. We were taken in secret to Moss River Camp to continue our training. The Hatchet Slough Lakewalkers misdirected anyone inclined to search for us. And that was the end of our experiments with farmers.” Arkady sat up straight and fixed Dag with a glare. “As I don’t care to relive that nightmare, you will stay away from farmers as long as you reside at New Moon Cutoff. Is that very clear? ”
Dag returned a short nod like some unhappily disciplined patroller.
“Yes, sir.”
Arkady said in a more conciliating tone, “Of course that does not apply to Fawn. She doesn’t trail a jealous farmer spouse, nor does she have kin here to foment a riot. She’s not likely to create a camp problem.”
He added after a moment, “At least, not in that sense.”
Fawn’s brows drew down in puzzlement. “But what happened to your wife, sir? ”
Dag gave her an urgent head shake, but whether it meant No, don’t ask! or I’ll explain later, she wasn’t sure.
But Arkady replied merely, “She works at Moss River Camp these days.” Voice and expression both flat and uninviting, so Fawn swallowed the dozen questions that begged.
“As guests here,” Dag said, “Fawn and I are of course obliged to abide by your camp rules. I won’t give you trouble, sir.”
Fawn wasn’t at all sure how to take the skeptical lift of Arkady’s brows, but his tension eased; he accepted Dag’s assurance with a nod.
The maker opened his mouth as if to add something, but then apparently thought better of it, taking a belated bite of his dinner instead.
–-
It wasn’t till they were settling down in their bedroll, laid out in the spare room at the house’s farthest end, that Fawn found the chance to ask more.
“So what was all that about Missus Arkady? Missus Maker Arkady, I guess. For a horrible minute I thought Arkady was going to tell us she’d been murdered by farmers, but seemingly not.”
Dag sighed and folded her in close to him. “I had the tale from Challa a few days back. Seems Arkady and his wife worked together happily in the medicine tent here for years and years. They were partners, as well as spouses, close as close. But they had some of the same problems that Utau and Sarri had.”
“No children?” A sorrow that the Hickory Lake couple had solved radically by taking another member into their marriage, Utau’s cousin Razi; not the usual course, Fawn had gathered. But their toddlers were darling, however many parents they possessed.
Dag nodded. “Not just no conceptions. Miscarriage after miscarriage, getting worse as she grew older. Arkady was especially frustrated, Challa says, because as a senior medicine maker he thought he ought to be able to fix it somehow. Seems that’s why the miscarriages got more dangerous, actually. When the troubles weren’t let go early, they were worse when they did break. It’s not an uncommon problem-I’ve seen it in camps all over the north. Two exceptional people get string-bound, and their tent-kin settle back happily to wait for the exceptional children to start popping out, and nothing happens. Kauneo and I…” He bit his lip.
She stroked his brow. “You don’t have to say.”
He nodded gratefully, but went on anyhow. “We didn’t have long enough together to find out if we’d be more of that. There was one month we had hopes… anyway, Arkady’s wife Bryna. She was getting older, time was running out, then suddenly she asked him to cut strings with her.”
Lakewalker divorce. Fawn nodded.
“Arkady wasn’t too happy, I reckon, but he didn’t fight it. They divided up New Moon and Moss River medicine tents between them, more or less, and very soon after, she got string-bound with a widowed patroller from over there. They had two children before she had her change of life. I guess they’re nearly grown by now.”
Fawn tried to decide if this was a happy ending or not. Half a one, maybe. “You wonder why Arkady didn’t remarry.”
“Even my groundsense doesn’t help me figure what goes on in his head. I do see he’s a right sensitive man, and maybe only partly from training his groundsense to a pitch like I’ve never seen.”
“Do you think that’s why he’s so… I don’t know how to say it- tidy? Maybe turmoil hurts him in his ground.”
He raised his brows at her. “Could be, Spark.”
She cuddled in closer, planting a kiss on his collarbone. His hand tightened on her hip. Before they gave over talking in favor of other sorts of exchange, she said, “So, what should I write to Whit and Berry? ”
He sighed uncertainly. “What do you want to do, Spark? ”
She went still beneath his warm grip, stemming her first thought before it could leap off her tongue. I want to go home made no sense. The West Blue farmhouse would belong to her eldest brother’s wife, in due course. Dag had been all but banished from Hickory Lake. All the home she had was right here beneath her, a square of blanket on somebody else’s floor. And Dag. It was enough for two.