“A ground reinforcement doesn’t actually heal a person,” he explained as they lay drowsily intertwined, bodies and investigations temporarily exhausted. “It just strengthens a body to heal itself quicker, or to fight infection better. If the damage is too great or the sickness spreads too fast, the maker’s work gets overwhelmed, too.”
Fawn’s lips pursed. She turned her head in the crook of his arm to dot kisses across his skin. “Can the maker get overwhelmed? Give away too much ground to live?”
Dag shook his head. “You’d pass out, first. It’s not like bleeding, that can go on without your will or awareness. Although the exhaustion can lay the maker open to sickness, too, same as anyone else.” He hesitated. “A reinforcement’s not to be confused with a medicine maker’s groundlock, mind you. If a maker’s gone down and in too deep, till matching grounds turns into mixing them, and his patient dies on him, the maker can die, too. The dying ground disrupting the other, see.”
She blinked. “Huh. I wonder if that’s how your ancestors first got the idea for sharing knives?”
Dag rocked back. “Huh! Could be, Spark! Could well be.” Bright farmer girl!
She nodded, brows drawing down. “One way or another, seems like it would be a good idea to keep your strength up.”
“Same as a patrol leader keeping his patrol in good shape, I reckon,” he allowed thoughtfully.
“And the other way around.”
He bent his head and nuzzled her hair. “That, too, Spark.”
The next morning Dag woke to gray skies and extra kisses. Fawn sat up on one elbow, and asked, “Do you know what day this is?”
“I’ve lost track,” he admitted. “Better ask Berry.”
“Guess I’d better.” She grinned and went off to start breakfast.
The clouds thickened but did not deliver rain; the Fetch stayed stuck. After lunch, Whit insisted on dragging Dag off to explore the back side of the island. A wedge of fallen trees and thatch across the channel made a temporary bridge to the mainland, and they picked their way precariously across despite Dag’s assurances that there was nothing over there of note for at least a mile in any direction. When they at last returned to the Fetch, Remo met them on shore with strict instructions from the cook to go catch some fish for dinner, specifically not catfish. This entailed another trip across to the back channel, from which they returned with heavy strings of walleye and three kinds of bass. Bo and Hod took the catch in charge to clean and gut. Then Whit suggested an archery lesson. Remo and Dag set up a target while Whit took the skiff out to the boat for their bows and arrows. In a while Hod and Hawthorn rowed to shore for a turn as well, and by the time they’d worn out everyone, especially the chief instructor, the leaden skies were darkening with early nightfall.
The air of the Fetch’s cabin, when Dag stepped inside, was warm and moist and smelled amazing. He walked into the kitchen area to find it crammed with busy people and festooned with bunches of autumn wildflowers and dried milkweed pods tied with colored yarn. Berry and Fawn were frying up a mountain of fish and potatoes and onions, and Whit and Bo were tapping a new keg of beer set up on a trestle, and where had that come from?
“What are we celebrating?” Dag inquired amiably.
Fawn set aside her pan, walked over, stood on tiptoe, snaked an arm around his neck to pull his face down to her level, and said, “You. Happy birthday, Dag!” And kissed him soundly, to the hoots and clapping of the whole crew congregated. He pulled back, once she released him, with his mouth gaping in astonishment.
“Yes!” Whit whooped. “We got him! We got him good!”
“How did you know this was my birthday?” Dag asked Fawn. It had been upwards of twenty years since he’d paid the least attention to it himself, and he certainly hadn’t mentioned it recently.
“Dag!” said Fawn in fond exasperation. “You gave it to the town clerk when we were married in West Blue! Of course I remembered!”
And Fawn’s was in about six more weeks, as he had learned at the same time and not forgotten—he’d thought they might be in Graymouth by then, and wondered what farmer birthday customs might please her, and been glad that Whit would be there to ask and maybe help keep her from feeling too alone in a strange place. She’ll be nineteen, gods. Dag wasn’t sure whether to feel old, or good, but as Remo pressed him into his seat and Bo thrust a tankard of beer into his hand, he decided on good.
Then came tender fish and melting potatoes and a tide of beer, and jokes and tales and laughter, and yes, friends, and his own real tent-kin. He was glad, too, for Remo at the table—whatever the exact interplay of ground and body, mind and heart, it seemed a wider world to have both farmers and Lakewalkers in it. Celebrating each other.
The beer, Dag learned, had been secretly laid in by Whit for precisely this purpose at that last stop where he’d sold his window glass. Its status as a present had apparently kept it from any premature depredations by Bo, a fact Bo himself pointed out with a certain pride. The Bluefield conspiracy had been going on for some days, it seemed, for when no one was able to force down another bite, Fawn brought out a package wrapped in cloth and tied with another jaunty yarn bow. Dag opened it to discover a new-sewn oiled cloth cape and hood, such as boatmen wore.
“Bo let me use his old one for a pattern,” Fawn explained in satisfaction. “I traded making new ones for him and Berry for the cloth to make some for you and Whit, but I haven’t got to the others yet.” Her second packet was a sweater sleeve, incomplete but promissory. “I expect to make some real good progress on it next week. Remo said Lakewalkers give new clothes and weapons on birthdays, and maybe when you start patrolling, a horse. You have a horse and a whole arsenal already, but at least I made you a few more arrows. Berry gave me the Tripoint steel heads, and Hawthorn had the eagle feathers.” She added a bundle of half a dozen new shafts to the stack, and Dag decided he would let his tongue be cut out before explaining that such gifting customs were mainly meant for youngsters.
Outside in the dark, the wind blew a spatter of rain against the walls and windows, and Berry looked up intently. But as the wind and water didn’t yet shift the boat, she settled back and sipped at her tankard. Dag would have been quite content to just take a seat near the fire with a warm wife in his lap for the rest of the night, but Fawn extracted herself from his embrace and flitted off again.
“More?” said Dag.
“Remo said Lakewalkers don’t make birthday cakes, exactly, but if you’re going to be a real Bluefield, you need to have one,” Whit explained as Fawn came tottering back with a huge cake on a platter. “With candles. It’s the farmer thing to do, or at least it always was at our house.”
“I love the candles best. One for every year,” Fawn expanded upon this, thumping the platter down in front of Dag. Which explained the size of the cake, bristling with a small forest of thin beeswax sticks. “I made this cake with ginger and pear, and honey-butter frosting. Because I was getting right tired of everything apple, even if we still have barrels of them.”
“Where did you find all the candles?” Dag asked, fascinated and a bit taken aback. “Same goods-shed where Whit got the beer?”
Fawn shook her head, dark eyes and curls all sprightly. “Nope, the ones they had were all too big. I made these myself, this afternoon, with some wax Berry gave me from her stores and some string I plaited a while back.”
Dag plucked one up and rolled it between his fingers, smelling the faint honey scent. “They’re a good making, Spark.”
She smiled in pleasure at his praise.
“The deal is,” Whit advised, “you’re supposed to light them, then make a wish. If you blow them all out in one breath, you get your wish.”
Dag could not picture the groundwork that would effect such a thing, so decided it must be a farmer superstition, if a pleasant one. “It sounds right difficult.”