“It’s easier when you’re six than when you’re fifty-six,” Whit conceded.
“Indeed. Well, all right. I’ll try.” Certain Lakewalker makers produced groundworked candles that made the task a snap; this would call for a greater effort on his part, Dag suspected. But these wax lights were sound work, and of Fawn’s own hands. Just like their marriage cords. He set the candle back in its hole in the frosting, centered himself, aligned his ground, called up his hottest persuasion, and swept his ghost hand back and forth across the bristling top of the cake. To his pure delight, all fifty-six little golden flames sprang up in its wake with a faint foomp! foomp! sound.
He looked up in satisfaction to find Fawn and Berry both standing at his sides with lit spills in their hands and their mouths open. A silence stretched around the crowded table. Hod was blinking. Hawthorn’s eyes were wide. Bo seemed to have bitten his tongue. “Was that…not right?” Dag asked hesitantly.
Whit said, in a rather hollow voice, “And I’d have been impressed if he’d blown them out all at once!”
Remo laughed out loud. Actually, Remo cackled, Dag decided. Dag might have been more annoyed, particularly as Remo didn’t stop for quite a while—choking himself off, eventually, into his sleeve—except that it was the first time ever he’d heard the boy laugh.
“That was just fine, Dag,” Fawn assured him valiantly. “You can light all our birthday cakes from now on.” She blew out her spill and handed him a knife.
Dag waited a while for Fawn to enjoy the glow—or conflagration—while he enjoyed the play of the warm light on her face, like a summer sunset here on the edge of winter. He didn’t cheat much, blowing out the candles again. Fawn extracted the wax stumps for reuse, sharing the task of licking off the frosting with Hawthorn, an eager volunteer. The pocked cake was divided into generous slabs, with half still left for breakfast. After, Dag was made to sit by the fire with Fawn just as he’d pictured, while Whit and the crew took charge of the cleanup. The rain drummed on the roof as Hod and Hawthorn pestered Remo to show them how Lakewalkers cheated in games of chance, Remo protesting that he didn’t know how to either play or cheat.
And then, with a faint groan and a definite jerk, the Fetch lifted from the sand bar. Berry whooped, and everyone dropped all other tasks to turn out and get the boat away from the bar and down the island to a safe landing, to be tied properly for the night. Both of the Lakewalkers, with their ability to move surely in the dark, were pressed into this task, but when they all came trooping wetly back inside Fawn had hot tea waiting and prewarmed towels stacked by the hearth. Sodden clothes were stripped off and hung up—except for Dag’s, adequately protected by his new boatman’s rain gear—dry clothes were donned, and those with room snagged more cake and beer. The patter of rain gusted into a rattle of hail, but the guide ropes held the boat in its new mooring as they all settled around the hearth once more.
Then Berry pulled out her fiddle and gave them three tunes, two lively, one slow and plaintive. There wasn’t enough room to dance, but while Berry shook out her fingers and rested up the Clearcreeks debated teaching boatmen’s songs to the Bluefields. Hawthorn claimed he knew all the rude words.
“Yeah, but you don’t understand ’em,” drawled Bo.
“I do too!”
“Maybe it’s time for a lullaby,” Berry suggested.
“No, not yet!” Hawthorn protested. Hod looked torn. Whit looked wistful.
Remo was sitting on the floor near the fire, the overfed raccoon kit asleep in his lap; his head came up, turning.
“What?” Dag said quietly.
“There’s a Lakewalker out on the river in a narrow boat.”
“In this weather?” Bo snorted. “Fool should be on shore with the boat turned upside down and him under it. Tied down at both ends, too, if he’d a lick of sense.”
Dag silently agreed, but stretched his groundsense outward. A Lakewalker indeed, and just as miserable as you’d expect. Their grounds bumped, and the narrow boat changed course, fighting through the wind waves.
Remo’s eyes widened. He set down the kit and scrambled to his feet. “It’s Barr!”
A clunk and a thump were followed by the muffled pounding of a fist on the side of the hull.
“Remo, you fool!” Barr’s voice called hoarsely. “Blight you! I know you’re in there! Come give me a hand before I freeze in this blighted rain!”
16
Fawn watched in alarm as Remo took up the lantern and made his way with Dag and Whit out into the wind and rain of the back deck. Hod hovered uncertainly till Bo, staying planted in his chair beyond the hearth, told him sharply to go in or out but stop blocking the doorway like a fool cat, and Hod drew back. Hawthorn bounced impatiently behind Hod; the raccoon kit skittered off and hid in the stores. Berry put her fiddle away in its leather bag and slid it back under her curtained bunk.
Voices outside rose in debate, Dag’s deep tones overriding: “Just tie it to the rail. We can deal with it in the morning. Shipping more water’s not going to make much difference—it’s already half-swamped.”
More thumps, grunts, and muffled curses. Whit shoved the door open and handed in a bedroll, a pack, an unstrung bow and quiver coming unwrapped from a trailing blanket, and a couple of lumpy cloth bags, all equally sodden. Hod dropped them in a heap. Whit came back in, followed by Dag and a very wet Lakewalker who Fawn didn’t know. Remo trailed with the lantern, which he put back on the kitchen table, then leaned his shoulders against the door and crossed his arms, face set.
The fellow stood dripping before the hearth, breathing heavily, strained with exhaustion and cold. His lank hair, plastered to his forehead and hanging in a sorry rattail down his back, might be tawny blond when dry. He shrugged broad shoulders out of a soaked deerskin jacket, then just stood holding it in his hands as if confused where to put it, or just confused altogether. He scowled faintly at the Fetch’s crew, who were staring at him with expressions ranging from dumbfounded to dubious, but he eyed the bright fire with understandable longing.
Barr, presumably. Fawn tried not to take an instant dislike to him simply on the basis of Remo’s tale about the pretty farmer sister; such a seduction, if it had occurred as described or even at all, could well have been a two-way enterprise. And he’d been brave to help rescue those coal flatties from drowning in the Riffle. Or maybe he just liked excitement, although at the moment he seemed more distraught.
Apparently continuing an exchange started outside, he looked to Remo and said, “I was afraid I wasn’t going to catch up with you for another hundred miles!”
“Why are you trying to catch up with me at all?” said Remo, in a voice devoid of encouragement.
“What do you mean, why? I’m your partner!”
“Not anymore. I left.”
“Yes, without a word to anyone! Amma and Issi turned me on the grill for a blighted hour about that alone—like I should have known. How? By magic? You owe me for that, as well as for paddling three hundred miles in three days after you.”
“If you came from Pearl Riffle, that would be ’bout two hundred miles, unless you took a detour,” Berry observed, her hands on her hips. Hers was one of the more dubious looks.
Barr waved this away. “It was too blighted many miles, anyway. But that’s done now.” He stretched his shoulders, which cracked a bit, shook out the jacket and laid it on the hearthstones, and edged his backside closer to the fire, spreading his hands briefly on his knees. Big, strong hands, Fawn noted, although at the moment cramped from his paddle and chapped with cold. “I admit, I was glad not to find you floating facedown anywhere between there and here. We can start back in the morning.”
“Back where?” said Remo, still dour.
“Pearl Riffle, snag-brain. If you come back with me now, Amma says she’ll let us both back on patrol.” Barr straightened up with a look of, if not triumph, at least accomplishment.