He’d gone to a great deal of trouble for this private talk, Dag thought, only to choke off now. Caution reined in Dag’s curiosity just enough to convert his What can I do for you? into a more noncommittal general eyebrow lift.
It was enough to break the logjam, anyway. Remo blurted, “Take me with you.”
“And, ah—why should I do that?”
The return stare was uncomfortably Hod-like.
“Do you even know where I’m going?” Dag prodded.
“Downriver. Away. Anywhere away from here.”
This was the one, Dag reminded himself, who’d had to take his great-grandmother’s broken and wasted bone back and present it to his waiting family. It wasn’t hard to guess that the scene hadn’t gone well, though that still left a wide range of badly to choose from. Remo had been the more conscientious of the feckless partners, the one who’d tried to do the right thing. And had it come out all wrong. Well, you know how that goes, old patroller. Dag rubbed his head and sat down on the bench against the cabin wall. His arm harness being off for the night, he rested his stump unobtrusively down by his left side and laid his hand on his right knee.
Remo dropped hastily to the deck and sat cross-legged, perhaps feeling dimly that supplication went ill with looming.
“There are ten other boats heading the same way,” Dag pointed out. “Why the Fetch?”
Remo shot him a look of tight-lipped exasperation. “Because they’re all full of farmers.”
Dag wasn’t quite sure how to take that emphasis. He was tempted to haul Remo by the nose in a few more circles till he recanted his tone, but it was late and Dag was tired. One circle, maybe. “So is this one.”
Remo’s second shaft wobbled closer to the real target. “You left.”
“I was not—”
“If you weren’t banished, they as much as drove you out. Made it impossible for you to stay. I thought you’d understand.” His bitter laugh betrayed both his youth and how close to the end of his rope he dangled.
Oh, I do.
“You threw off their old rules. You rebelled. You took your own path, alone. And no one is going to say to you it’s just because you’re a stupid fool kid!”
We see the world not as it is, but as we are. “That’s not exactly what I’m about, here. Now, I can say, whatever’s going on over there between you and your family, it will pass. Great griefs must, if only because no one has the stamina to keep them up that long.” Not more than twenty years, leastways.
Remo just shook his head. Too sunk in his own misery to listen? To hear?
Dag thought ruefully of his own family, and revised his sage advice. “And while you’re waiting, there’s always the patrol.”
Remo shook his head harder. “The Pearl Riffle patrol is lousy with my family. Most of my brothers and sisters and half my cousins. Uncles and aunts. And every one of them thinks they should have been left great-grandmama’s knife instead, and they’re right.” He gulped and added, “I went to the camp knife maker yesterday to ask for my own bonded knife, and he wouldn’t even agree to make it for me!”
In your mood? Dag mentally commended the cautious knife maker. He said patiently, “Whatever your troubles are, you won’t defeat them by running away from them. My road’s not for you. What I’m saying is, the best thing you can do for yourself and Pearl Riffle Camp is go back over there and pretend this swim didn’t happen.”
Remo’s jaw worked. “I could swim halfway back. That would solve all my troubles.”
Dag sighed, but before he could marshal his next argument, the door swung quietly open and Fawn slipped through. She had a blanket wrapped around her nightdress, shawl-fashion, and a lumpy cloth in her hand. She glanced at Dag and tossed her head. “Maybe I can put a word in here. Being the resident expert at running away from home.” She opened her cloth. “Here, have a chunk of cornbread. I make it sweet.”
Remo accepted it mechanically, but stared at it in some bewilderment. Fawn handed a piece to Dag and took the last one herself. Dag took a grave bite of his own and motioned Remo to proceed. Fawn leaned against the cabin wall and nibbled, then nudged Dag’s knee with her bare foot. “This is your Remo, right? Or is it Barr?”
Dag swallowed crumbs and made the demanded introduction. “Remo, yes. Remo, this is my wife, Fawn Bluefield.”
Remo, food in hand, made a confused half-effort to stand, then settled back as Fawn waved him down. He returned her nod instead. “You’re the farmer bride? I thought you’d be…taller.”
Dag quelled his curiosity as to what several adjectives Remo had just swallowed along with his cornbread, there. Older was undoubtedly one.
“Now,” said Fawn cheerily, “the first thing I know for sure about running away from home is, plans made in the middle of the night are not always the best. In the morning—after breakfast—you can generally think of much better ones.” She exchanged a meaningful look with Dag, and went on, “It’s the middle of the night now, and you’re keeping Dag from my bed. But I just laid a big pile o’ those furs and blankets we used for last night’s visitors in front of the hearth. They’re real warm now. Toasty, even.”
Remo was shivering, his damp skin clammy in the misty chill. Strands of hair escaping his soaked braid draggled across his furrowed forehead.
“If you got yourself warm, I bet you’d drop off right quick despite your troubles, tired as you look. All that swimming, after all. I expect you’re still hurting, too.”
In all ways, not just his bruises, thought Dag. He suppressed a smile at the way Remo stared up open-mouthed, blatantly susceptible to what were likely the first kindly words he’d had from anyone for days. A pretty young woman offering him food, a soft bed, and sympathy was not someone he was going to argue too hard with, even if she was a farmer.
“Wise Spark,” Dag commended this. “Take her up, Remo; you won’t get a better offer tonight.” He had the bare wisdom himself not to add aloud, It beats swimming halfway across the river all hollow. No good sprinkling salt on wounds, even self-inflicted ones.
Remo glanced as if surprised at his hand, now empty of leftover cornbread, and around at the flatboat and the darkness of the rippling river. Only a few orange lights from Pearl Riffle Camp shone through the half-naked trees on the far hillside.
“This boat’s not going anywhere tonight anyhow,” Fawn pointed out.
Remo shook his damp head. “No, but a rise is coming on. You can feel it, out in the middle. That’s why I swam across now. By morning it’ll be too dangerous, and by tomorrow night, these boats will all be gone.”
Remo had lived in this ferry camp all his life; Dag expected he knew the river’s moods well. Further, swimming the river left no evidence behind of what direction he’d taken. A missing horse would have said north; crossing on the ferry would have left witnesses who could say south. Once he was gone beyond groundsense range, none could guess if he’d gone north, south, east, or west. Or halfway across the river.
A faint breeze raised goose bumps on Remo’s lavender-tinged skin, and he yielded abruptly. “All right.”
“Be real quiet,” whispered Fawn, her hand on the door latch. “They’re mostly asleep in there.”
“Berry?” Dag murmured.
“I told her you’ll explain in the morning. She rolled back over.”
“Ah.”
With Remo tucked into the bedding before the hearth like an oversized, overtired child, Dag and Fawn at last made it back to their own curtained bed. Their bedroll, unfairly, had chilled down. They rubbed each other half-warm, and laced limbs together for the rest.
“Wondered why you chose just then to come popping out,” Dag murmured into Fawn’s curls. “You thought he meant it about that half-river, did you?”