Dag nodded. “It’s the beguilement. Can’t say as I’ve had any fresh ideas about that, yet.”
“You trying? Because—ow!” Fawn grimaced and stopped. The branch she’d carelessly shoved out of her face had whipped back, proving to be from a thorny honey locust. After scratching her scalp, it had snagged in her hair.
“Hold up.” Dag reached over and gently detangled her, snapped the branch, and bent it down away from the trail. “I do purely hate these evil trees. Find ’em on patrol all over Oleana. They don’t bear fruit, their wood’s not good for much, and there’s just no excuse for those thorns.”
“I suppose a hedge of them would be good for stopping unwanted visitors.”
“Better for a bonfire.” Dag hadn’t released the branch; he had an absent look on his face that made Fawn suddenly uneasy. “Nobody would miss this tree. If a malice was to ground-rip a tree like this, it would be a positive good.” He paused. “Remember that mosquito I ground-ripped back in Lumpton Market?”
“Yes. It made you very sick.”
“I’ve been wondering ever since what would happen if I tried something else.”
“Dag, I’m not sure that’s such a great idea.” Just what kind of mood was he in right now, after whatever frustrations he’d encountered up at that camp?
“Yes, but see—medicine makers. I’ve been wondering about medicine makers. The senior ones do have craft secrets. They have such dense grounds—it’s pretty much a marker of the gift. Not necessarily long groundsense ranges, mind. Hoharie would never make a patroller, but she can give ground reinforcements day after day. I always thought that was a natural ability, but what if it’s something else? I never saw…”
“No more mosquitoes,” said Fawn firmly. “No more bugs of any kind. Mind what happened to your arm?”
“Yes, but what about this here tree? It never would be missed.”
“It’s about a hundred million times bigger than a mosquito.”
“I grant you, that mosquito did make me itch. Maybe this would make me all thorny and sessile.”
“What, are you saying that no one would be able to tell?” And at his bland look, added insincerely, “Sorry.” His lips twitched.
Fawn couldn’t imagine what taking in the ground of a whole tree would do to a person. Neither could Dag, she suspected. But he was getting an alarmingly intent look on his face, eyeing the thorn-studded branches and bole. The spines were three-pronged and stuck out in jagged packs from every possible part of the repulsive thing.
“Use some sense,” she begged. “At least don’t start with a whole tree. Start with something smaller.” She scrabbled in the pocket of her skirt, found a few tiny lumps still stuck in the seams, and freed one. “Here.”
Dag held out his hand to receive the gift. “An oat?”
“I was feeding Daisy and Copperhead earlier.”
“One oat?” He stared down at his palm.
“If you ate an oat it wouldn’t make you sick, even if you ate a whole bowl of oats. Not like a big bowl of mosquitoes. Or of nasty thorns. Even Copperhead wouldn’t eat off that tree!”
“That’s…an interesting parallel. Huh. We do take in the ground of our food and convert it—everyone does. Lakewalkers, farmers, animals, every living thing. Natural ground reinforcement.” He glanced up and down the trail. They were quite alone. He closed his palm, rubbed his hook across the back of his hand, and opened it again. The oat was gone. He wiped a faint gray powder off against the seam of his trouser leg. “Huh,” he said again. His face was suddenly very sober.
“What did it do?” Fawn asked anxiously.
He rubbed his left arm. “Well, I can feel that bit of ground stuck in me. Not near as unpleasant as the mosquito’s. Got any more oats in your pocket?”
“Remember, your fever and swelling didn’t come on right away. Give that one a day. Then try another. Maybe.”
“Berry’s got a whole barrel of oats on the Fetch,” Dag said thoughtfully. “There’s a notion to test. If you can eat it safely, can you ground-rip it safely? I think I’d rather just eat my food, but I can see where this might be faster in some emergency.”
“I don’t know, Dag. I think maybe you need a Lakewalker partner for this sort of experiment.” Someone who could tell if he was doing dreadful things to his ground—and warn her, so she could put her foot down. Because, remember that catfish. “Do you think Remo would be any help?”
Dag let his breath trickle out through pursed lips. “I’m not sure I would want to try this in front of young Remo. This is a pretty disturbing sort of groundwork for any Lakewalker who’s seen a malice operate.”
“Has Remo?”
Dag’s brows twitched up. “Maybe not, Spark. There’s been no reports of malice finds in the Pearl Riffle patrol area for quite a few years. If he’s never exchanged, then no, he’s not had that chance yet.”
“So he wouldn’t know malice magic if he saw it.”
“Maybe not.”
Leaving the thorny honey locust unmolested, to her intense relief, Dag started back down the trail. He hugged Fawn close to his side as they dodged hindering branches.
“So,” said Fawn, “if dense ground marks a medicine maker, and long groundsense range marks a patroller, what do you call someone who has everything?”
“Knife maker. Sir. Or ma’am.”
“There are women knife makers?” She had only met Dar, Dag’s hostile knife maker brother. Hostile to farmer brides, anyhow.
“Oh, yes.”
“So what do you call someone who hasn’t got either density or range?”
“A farmer,” Dag replied with a twitch of his lips, then looked down. “Sorry.”
Except that he actually was, a little. Fawn tossed her head.
“Only it isn’t so,” he went on more thoughtfully. “We meet a sprinkling of farmers near the threshold of ground function—at least, we do if we get out of the camps to patrol, and are paying attention. Aunt Nattie. You, in a way.”
“Me?” said Fawn, surprised. “I’ve got no groundsense range. I’ve got no groundsense to have a range.”
“None at all,” he agreed cheerfully. She almost poked him. “But you have unusual ground…not density, though there’s that, too, but brightness. Your ground is very beautiful, you know. Why do you think I call you Spark, Spark?”
“I thought it was a pet name. For a pet,” she added provokingly.
He gave her a pained look, but said, “No, it’s pure description. As natural as it would be to call red-haired Sassa Carrot Top.”
“Carrot tops are green. I’m a farmer girl, trust me.” Still, she had to smile a little. Was beauty in the groundsense of the beholder? Evidently. Other Lakewalkers had not seemed as entranced by her ground as Dag. Maybe it was a matter of taste, as the old lady said as she kissed the cow—Fawn smiled outright in memory at Aunt Nattie’s old saw. Yet—elusive thought—what if it was so? What if it was neither flattery nor infatuation, but true report? Dag was a truthful sort of fellow, by preference. What if Dag really did see her as brighter, the way sensitive or sore eyes squinted at the sun? The way thirst saw water…? She asked abruptly, “What do I give you?”
“Breath.”
“No, seriously.” She stopped; he turned to face her.
“I was serious.” He wore his serious smile, anyhow.
“Back when Hod first came on the Fetch, you said I didn’t know what I gave you, every day. Do you?”
In that moment, she discovered the difference between stopped and stopped cold. “What?” he said.
“What do I give you in your ground?”
A slow blink. He wrapped her in a hug, bent his head, and explored her mouth in a long kiss. Not evading the question—testing it. He released her at last, his brows drawn in, and she came down off her toes.
“Balance,” he said. “You—untangle me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
“Dag…” she protested. “If you can’t figure this out and tell me, who else can?”
He ducked his head in wry accord. “You make my ground disappear. No, that’s not right,” he continued, as she began to protest again. “Imagine…imagine your muscles all full of knots, pulled and sore and stiff, fighting you with every move you try to make. Now imagine your muscles when they’re working smooth and warm, effortlessly, without thought. To will is to have is to be, all one. Like a perfect shot.”