Calla added after a moment, in an oddly wistful tone, “Folks always wanted to buy his work, though. Harness and bridles and saddles. It was plain, but it was extra pretty, somehow. And it never broke.” She straightened, jaw clamping as though she regretted letting even this mild memory escape.
“I remember that,” said Sage.
For a little while Fawn was able to get Sage-but not Calla-to reminisce about growing up in Alligator Hat, and she offered tales of West Blue in trade. Then Indigo cantered back from scouting ahead, claiming to have spotted one of those rentable pastures too fine and cheap to pass up. Arriving at the site, everyone agreed he was right, and they turned off for the night.
Sage drew the wagon to a halt in a stand of pecan trees just coming into leaf, overlooking a sparkling creek much too shallow to conceal alligators. Fawn approved. He went off to find the farmhouse and offer his coins, and Fawn followed Calla down from the box, glad to have unmoving ground under her feet. The two came briefly face-to-face, and Fawn smiled brightly.
“Why do you keep bothering me? ” said Calla through her teeth.
“I’d like to be friends. We’ve a long road ahead.” Why Fawn should feel a maternal regard for a girl five or six years older than herself was hard to explain, but she did. Or maybe not so hard. “Seems I’m newly interested in happiness for half bloods.”
“If you really wanted to increase happiness, you wouldn’t be making more half bloods,” snapped Calla, and strode away.
Fawn blinked, a bit discouraged. That did not go well. Yet. Keep trying.
She made her way over to the less-prickly Indigo, who was starting to unharness the mules, thinking up some unexceptionable praise for his animal handling.
–-
As darkness fell, Dag walked the perimeter of the pasture in pure patroller habit, but sensed no danger for a mile in any direction. He wandered back to the creek and eased himself down on a rock, listening to the gurgle of the water and the munching of the mules. Copperhead came over and lipped his hair, and Dag took a moment to impress upon the gelding, again, that there were to be no random attacks upon his pasture mates tonight. Magpie, being more ladylike, needed no such persuasion.
The two horses wandered away downstream in search of sweeter grass.
Dag became aware that he was being stalked, more or less. A thin figure approached from the shadows as cautiously as a hunter sneaking up on a bear or a catamount, or some other dangerous beast that might turn and rend. He sat still and waited.
Before long, Calla’s hoarse voice demanded, “What do you want? ”
“Beg pardon? ” said Dag.
“What is it that you’ll take, to leave me and mine alone? ”
Dag’s brows drew down. “Missus Smith, I truly do not understand that question.”
“Don’t make mock of me!” Her voice was sharp, but with a quaver at the end.
He reckoned a year of living with Fawn must have made him more fluent in female. He could already tell it was going to be one of those conversations. “Ma’am, I’m not. I’d take it as a privilege to help you out. And your brother, though it’s plain you’re the more gifted in groundsense. Someone should have taken you both in hand before this.”
“We don’t need help. We don’t need Lakewalkers.” Her voice went lower and, if possible, more bitter. “Lakewalkers don’t need us.”
“Maybe not at Moss River, but not all Lakewalkers think like that. What was that test Finch was talking about-weaving your ground into a cord? ”
“What about it? ”
“You should have passed.”
Her voice went lower still. “Indigo didn’t. So I didn’t.”
Dag’s brows rose. “You deliberately failed? ”
“They would have separated us. Kept me, thrown Indigo away. Everyone else had left us, one way or another. I wasn’t going to do that to him, not again.”
“Whose idea was it to go north? Yours, or his, or…? ”
“The boys always talked about it. But it was just talk. After Moss River, I wanted to get away from everything so bad, but it was too dangerous to go by ourselves. I had enough magic to make us targets, but not enough to protect us. We had to have the others, we had to.”
“Seems sensible thinking to me,” Dag said cautiously.
“Please”-her voice broke-“don’t take that away from us.”
Dag held his ground open wide, in the hopes she might sense he told no lies. “You talking about that attempt of yours to persuade Sage? ”
“You sensed it? ” A sharp-drawn breath. “Don’t touch it, you-! I’ll give you-I don’t know what. I don’t have much money, but I can give you some.”
“Absent gods, I don’t want your money!”
A long pause. “I’ve only got one other thing.” And from the scrunch in her shoulders, not something she’d be pleased to part with, not to him.
Dag was startled, bemused, and more than a little offended. “Absent gods! No. You’re young enough to be my daughter, you know.”
“So’s your wife.” A brittle pause. “Oh, full blood, you have to be older than you look. Granddaughter.”
“Now, that’s going a mite too far!” He didn’t know whether to laugh or be horrified.
Calla stood rigid. “It seemed it might be a fixation of yours. Younger women.”
Dag said sternly, “Fawn and I are a long story that you might learn more of if you listen, but in the meanwhile, don’t talk ignorant rubbish. Fawn’s earned every bit of loyalty I can give her.” His voice slowed. “We have a fair trade going on, that way.”
Calla flinched.
It finally clicked in. Oh gods, I’m slow. “I take it you believe you magicked young Sage into marrying you and taking you and your brother north? ”
“You know I did, Lakewalker. His family suspected. His sister told me to my face Sage wouldn’t have looked twice at such a horse-faced rack of bones without it.”
Dag began to speak, hesitated, and reversed the order. “You figure your spell is still holding? He hasn’t treated you any different, the past couple of days? ” It was a safe question; there had been a couple of happy grounds in that feather bed just last night, together with some faint, distinctive creaking from the wagon that sheltered it.
“Of course it’s holding. Or he’d have cast me off by now.”
“Well, no. If you’d had the training you should have, you’d know those sorts of persuasions are absorbed over time, and have to be renewed to keep working. That groundwork of yours faded weeks ago. In any case, I cleared the last of it out of Sage early yesterday.”
A faint cry, choked off. She quivered like a filly about to bolt.
“Stand still!” Dag used his old patrol captain’s voice; she froze rigid.
“Straighten up, girl, and gather the wits you were born with. I’m not saying your initial persuasion didn’t cause Sage to take a second look at you, because I think it likely did. But it was what he saw that made him stay. He doesn’t love you because you magicked him.” Dag’s voice softened.
“He loves you because you’re lovable.”
The kindness nearly broke her as the sternness never would; once again, Dag was reminded of Fawn. Tears laced her gasp, but she steadied her breathing. And listened; oh my, she was listening with all her heart now. Here’s your chance, old patroller; go carefully.
“More to the point,” he went on, “Sage was never a bit beguiled by you. And for the same reason that my groundwork on Fawn doesn’t beguile her. Your heart was entirely open to him, so your grounds flowed both ways, and he never choked on the imbalance.
“So as he loves you, and as you like him right well, too-and both your grounds prove it-there’s not a reason in the wide green world you can’t rub along as well or better than any other married couple. You could have set your persuasion into any other youth in Alligator Hat. You picked well when you picked Sage. I think you know that.”
“Oh…!”
“Though you might care to clear the air with a confession. It’s bound to make it easier between you not to be hiding that useless secret. And it will straighten out your ground for your next lessons in groundwork.”
“He’ll hate me!”
“Well”-Dag scratched his head for show-“I’m not saying he won’t be a touch unsettled, but he knew about your powers before, and they didn’t scare him off none. He might be flattered. A tall, handsome”-alarming-“older girl plucks him out from all the other fellows… he might even be proud.”