Remo nodded. Dag leaned forward and extended his ghost hand again. He paused while Remo’s ground flickered in alarm, then steadied. He nodded and spun off the reinforcement toward Remo’s right forearm. This time, watching for it, the ground return was distinctly discernible. The faint Remo-ground-echo was converted so rapidly it seemed to disperse through Dag’s arm like a blown dandelion puff. Dag’s brows rose.
“I saw…” Remo began excitedly, then slowed. “I’m not just sure what I saw.”
“You saw your ground-echo. I felt it slide into me. It converted a lot faster than…um…a primary ground reinforcement.” The one Remo had placed in Dag’s foot was still there, comfortable but distinct. Dag’s return echo in Remo’s foot was almost fully absorbed already. Dag blew out his breath and turned to Fawn. She was watching him closely, clearly struggling to follow all this. He gave her a reassuring nod, but it only made her lift her brows wryly.
Dag centered himself, opened all his heart to her, reached out, and spun a reinforcement into her opposite elbow. The return echo came back to him like a kiss, and his lips softened in a smile.
“I saw that thing again!” said Remo. “I think…”
Dag sat back and rubbed his forehead. “I saw. Felt. Yes. The reason Fawn is not beguiled is that her ground is acting like a Lakewalker’s—at least—it did when I gave her the reinforcement. But it didn’t when you did. That’s…odd.”
“Is it because you’re married?” said Remo.
“I’m not sure.” Marriage—Lakewalker marriage—was certainly a ground-transforming act, as their binding strings testified. But Dag could hardly marry all his potential patients. A stumper, this.
They’d gone all the way around with each of them. The answer had to be here, hidden in the crisscross of ground flow—or its absence. Dag fell onto his back and glowered up at the nearly leafless willow branches, at the cool, blue sky brightening toward noon. Dag and Remo had exchanged ground with each other; Dag only had exchanged with Fawn. Neither had exchanged with poor Hod.
Or was that, neither had accepted an exchange with poor Hod…?
Oh ye gods. Can I do this? I don’t want bits of Hod in me!
So do you really want to be the farmers’ own medicine maker—old patroller? Because a real maker can’t pick and choose his patients. He has to take whoever and whatever comes, equally.
“It’s not true,” he said to the sky in sudden wonder. “It was never true.”
“What’s not true, Dag?” Fawn asked in that long-suffering voice that suggested she was about to snap. His lips curled up, which made her growl, which made them curl up more.
“It’s not true,” he said, “that Lakewalkers don’t beguile each other. We beguile each other all the time.”
“What?” said Remo, sounding startled.
Dag sat up, his smile twisting. He raised his left arm toward Hod. Spun off a neat reinforcement into the nearly healed knee. And held himself open: not sternly, not rigidly, but warmly and without reservation.
The backsplash this time was so blatant that Remo cried Whoa! There was, after all, a deal of accumulated ground-load for Hod to dump so suddenly.
Hod bent, blinked, and touched his forehead, then gripped his leg. His smile flickered very uncertainly. “Uh,” he said. “I felt…it went away…” And added piteously after a moment, “But…can I still be your friend?”
“Yes, Hod, you surely can,” said Dag. “You surely can.”
“Dag,” said Fawn dangerously, “do you want to explain that for the rest of us? Because if you haven’t just done something worse ’n that catfish, I’ll eat my hat.”
“I just un-beguiled Hod!” Dag exulted, choking back a thoroughly undignified chortle. “In a sense.”
“The first half of that sounds good,” allowed Fawn, and waited with understandable suspicion for him to explain the second.
“I think—I’m guessing—that the hunger a beguiled person has for repeated ground reinforcements isn’t only because they feel real good. It’s really an urgent attempt by their ground to rebalance itself. To complete the thwarted exchange. Except that it just gets worse with each addition if the Lakewalker doing the reinforcements still blocks—rejects—the return ground-gift.”
Dag went on in growing elation, “That also explains why beguilement’s so blighted erratic. It depends on how open—or not—the Lakewalker feels about farmers—or about that particular farmer, leastways. I’ve been open to Fawn since almost the beginning, so no imbalance has ever built up in her. Hod…not. Till just now. Ha!” He supposed he’d only frighten Hod and Remo if he jumped up and danced around them all whooping like a madman, but he really wanted to.
Remo looked less enthusiastic. “What do you mean, we beguile each other all the time? We don’t!”
“Beguile and un-beguile both. Ground exchange, in balance, not thwarted. I swear it starts with our mother’s milk, and goes on—not a Lakewalker child comes of age without having received dozens of little reinforcements from dozens of kinfolk or friends for this or that ailment or injury. Grown up and out on patrol, or in camp with our tent-kin, we’re always swapping around. We float in a lake of shared ground. I’d not be surprised to find it’s part of why, when a Lakewalker is cut off from others, we feel so odd and unhappy.”
Remo looked wholly interested but only half-convinced. “Dag, are you sure of this?”
“Nearly. You’d best believe I’ll be watching out for it from now on.”
Fawn asked, “Does this mean you really could teach other makers to heal farmers?”
“Spark, if I’m right, any medicine maker who knew this could treat a farmer without beguiling—if only the maker was willing to take in farmer ground.” He hesitated. That might be a bigger if only than it looked at first. Still, medicine making had never been for the squeamish.
Remo said slowly, “But what would happen to that lake of shared ground if a lot of Lakewalkers started taking in farmer ground? What would happen to the maker?”
Dag fell silent. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I came out here this morning determined to wring some answers to my questions—and we did! — but it seems I’ve just stirred up a pack of bigger questions. I’m not getting ahead, here.”
After a longer pause, Fawn clambered to her feet and motioned them all off the blanket so she could roll it up. The walk back to the Fetch was very subdued. Although at least Hod had stopped sniffling.
In the warmest part of the afternoon, Dag took Fawn down the island to, as they explained to Hawthorn, scout for squirrels. Hawthorn promptly begged to go along, brandishing a slingshot. Remo, bless him, understood the patrol code, and diverted the boy long enough for them to escape.
Finding a warm nook took a little searching, as the wind was freshening and showing signs of veering northwest, with horse-tail clouds spread in gauzy lines turning the light paler. But a low spot in some deadfall, once it was lined with the good supply of blankets they’d packed along, lent both privacy and comfort.
Over the next few delicious hours, Dag discovered that with his growing control of ground projection he could indeed lay reinforcements in select body parts that did not match his own, but, Fawn reported, it did nothing that his ghost hand didn’t already do better. They compared the techniques a couple of times, to be certain, during which Fawn’s solemnly helpful expression kept dissolving into giggles. Dag chortled in, he trusted, a more dignified fashion. Well, maybe not so dignified in that position…He was unable to test Barr’s assertion about making farmer girls suffer desire because he couldn’t force himself to stay closed to Fawn, and anyway, it would have been like pouring milk into milk and looking for a color change. But he hoped this new support around her hidden malice scars would help with the pain of her next monthly, coming up soon.