Fawn couldn’t decide if that would have been good or not, so only tilted her head, I hear you. But she pounced quickly on the important point. “That was well before you ground-ripped the malice in Raintree, right?”
“Yes…?”
“So these new abilities”—she leaned back and gripped his left arm—“can’t be some sort of malice-contagion you picked up then, because you developed them before. I don’t think you’re turning into a malice.” Or you would be more scary, instead of just more aggravating. “If that’s what’s worrying you.”
From the play of expression on his face—first dismay, then relief—she realized she’d just spoken his most secret fear. And that, once dragged out into open air, it shrank hearteningly. “It…was a passing thought, I admit.” He ducked his head, then smiled crookedly and held her closer. “So if I turned into a malice, would you still love me?”
“If you really turned into a malice, you’d just eat me, and the question wouldn’t arise,” she said a bit tartly.
“That’s how we’d know, I suppose,” he allowed.
“You’d know, anyhow.” She thought about it. “Or maybe you wouldn’t. You’d be too stuck inside your own torment to even see mine.”
“Ah. Yes. You did look one straight in the eye, that time.” His fingers brushed the scars on her neck, not to say I forgot so much as I should have realized. His eyes darkened with his own memories. “From what I’ve seen of the inside of a malice, you’re right. You have an uncomfortably acute way of looking at things sometimes, Spark.”
Fawn just shook her head. This conversation was spiraling into the dark, or at least into the creepy, in a way that suggested it was time for bed, because no further good could come of it tonight. She picked up the lantern and led the way.
15
Dag was reassured early the next morning of the health of the raccoon kit, as it woke him by nosing curiously in his ear. It also conveniently left a scat on the end of their blankets, not for the first time, as the creature seemed to have a partiality for their bed-nook. Dag took the pellet outside to the goat pen in the gray light to squash open with a stick. He would not have been surprised to find that the ripped grains had passed through whole, or even some odder effect, but they appeared to have been digested normally, with no sign of blood or blight to the kit’s gut. So it seemed he could leave a trail of sterile seeds in his wake and do the world no harm. Though he was still deeply suspicious of their reuse as feed; perhaps he would buy his own chicken at the next stop to test them upon in a more methodical way. And put Fawn in charge of it, as he was by no means sure of his ability to keep a chicken alive in the first place, and he wouldn’t want to make a mistake, here.
He leaned on the boat rail and watched the sky lighten from steel to silver to gold in a pure autumn sunrise, color seeping into the low hills lining the mist-shrouded river. It looked to be another brisk blue day like yesterday, which did not bode well for getting the Fetch off the sand bar. But a day of rest would be welcome. Perhaps he and Fawn could take a two-person picnic to the other end of the island. He extended his groundsense to check the chances of privacy, assuming they could successfully lose Whit, Hod, Remo, Hawthorn, and the raccoon. The island was a good two miles long, rich in natural ground, free of blight-sign, and, he found, unpeopled.
His breath drew in sharply, and he tested that range again, turning slowly. To both ends of the island, yes; he could clearly sense the head and tail where the stolidity of land met the melting motion of water. He cast his inner senses up along the farther hills, taking in the trees settling down root-deep for their winter sleep; drying, dying plants with bright seed-sparks armored in burrs; a multitude of small creatures burrowing, nesting, nosing through the brush, flitting from branch to branch; the slower lumbering of a family of black bears in the shadow of a ravine. It’s back. It’s all back, my full range! If only he were still at Hickory Lake, he could go out on patrol again.
He could hear the rattle of Fawn starting breakfast, and her voice scolding the kit out from underfoot and Hawthorn out of his bunk to take charge of it. His mouth quirked in the sure realization that if he were given, right this minute, the unfettered choice of whether to go back or go on—he’d go on. Smiling, he ducked inside and made his way to the back deck to wash up.
The morning meal was leisurely, abundant, and prolonged; the sun was high over the hills before Fawn stopped thinking of amusing new treats to try cooking up out of the Fetch’s stores. The younger male eaters, originally ravenous, showed signs of going sessile, losing interest in the idea of hunting on the island in favor of lazing on the boat, at least till Berry starting reeling off a long list of maintenance chores that a fellow with time on his hands could turn to.
On impulse, Dag interrupted this: “Actually, I’d like to borrow Remo and Hod this morning. And Fawn. I want to try some things.”
Berry looked up shrewdly. “Is this about Hod’s beguilement thing?”
“Yep,” said Dag, and marveled at how far they’d come, that he could say such a thing openly—and be understood, at least well enough to go on with.
Boss Berry nodded. “Fine by me.” She added wistfully, “Say, I don’t suppose you two Lakewalkers can magic up some rain for us while you’re at it?”
“I don’t know of any groundwork that manages weather, sorry,” said Dag seriously. “Though who knows what the old lake lords could do, back before the world broke?”
Berry eyed him. “That was a joke, Dag.”
“Oh.”
Fawn patted his hand. “That’s all right. I don’t always get patroller humor, either. Though if something’s appalling, patrollers likely think it’s hilarious.”
Remo looked as though he wanted to object to this, but his mouth was too full.
Dag originally thought to retreat to the boat roof for the trials he had in mind, but then decided it would be best to get more out of groundsense range from the others. They rowed to shore dry-shod in the Fetch’s little skiff, though they might almost have waded, and hiked up the bank, waving good-bye to Berry and Whit, who were setting up a makeshift water-gauge in hopes of spotting some slight rise that might be just enough to lift the flatboat out of its sandy trap. At a high-ish spot near the towhead, with a view up the river valley framed by sand bar willows, Fawn laid out a blanket, and they all settled cross-legged in a circle and looked to Dag. Hod gulped nervously. Remo frowned in misgiving. Fawn just waited, watching him.
Dag cleared his throat, wishing he were more sure of, well, anything. “Fawn said the answer to this puzzle ought to lie between us all, if only we could see it. I mean to try harder to see it. Why is Hod beguiled, but Fawn not? Why don’t Lakewalkers beguile each other? What are our grounds really doing, when we feel what we feel? My notion is that Remo and I will each open our grounds as wide as we can, try trading little ground reinforcements all around, and watch each other.”
“What would we be looking for?” asked Remo, a trifle plaintively. “I mean—it’s not like we haven’t done this before.”
Dag shook his head. “Watch for the things we don’t usually notice. Especially watch for the things we think we know that might not really be so. Watch for the differences between Hod and Fawn. Is it the receiver that makes the difference, or is it the way the ground is gifted? I hope it’s not all in the receiver, because that would mean I couldn’t fix it—I could only heal some sick or hurt farmers but not others, and how would I tell which was which, in advance? How could I say to someone in mortal trouble, no, you go away, I can’t—” Dag broke off. Swallowed. Said, “You start, Remo. Give a small reinforcement to Hod.”
Remo’s lips twisted in doubt. “In his knee again?”
“How about his nose?” Fawn suggested. “I think he’s getting the sniffles from being in that cold water yesterday. And it wouldn’t be mixed up with the old groundwork there.”