Fawn’s companions were looking impatiently at the shifting sun and their dwindling stocks of medicines and customers when a light cart drove up to the shelter, drawn by a rather winded mare. As she dropped her head to crop the scant grass, a young man jumped down and fetched out some slat crates. He glanced around, then carried them up to the medicine table and went back for two more. Fawn peeked over to see they were jammed with a jumble of glass jars and bottles packed in clean straw.
Almost as winded as his horse, the fellow set down the last boxes and said, “I’m not too late? Good! I don’t have much coin, but figure what these are worth to you.”
Cerie and Nola actually looked pleased by the offered barter-good glass containers were always in demand in the medicine tent-and circled the table to kneel down and inventory the boxes. The young man’s stare lit on Fawn, and he looked taken aback. “Well, hello there! You’re no Lakewalker!”
“No, sir.” The sir was a trifle flattering, but there was no harm in it.
She recited her well-worn speech, repeated to nearly every buyer they’d had today: “But I’m married to one. My husband is a Lakewalker from Oleana learning medicine making here.”
“Go on! You don’t look old enough to be married to anyone!”
Fawn tried not to glower at a paying customer. She supposed she’d know herself a woman grown when that remark began to be gratifying and not just annoying. “I’m nineteen. People just think I’m younger on account as I’m so short.” She sat up straight, so he could see she was much too curvy to be a child.
“Nineteen!” he repeated. “Oh.” He looked about nineteen himself, fresh-faced, with brown hair and bright blue eyes. He had a wiry build like Whit, but was, of course, taller. “I guess your, um… husband must be pretty important, to get you into the camp. They don’t usually let farmers past their gates here, you know.”
Fawn shrugged. “New Moon hasn’t taken us on as members or anything. We’re just visiting. Dag found me a job here when I ran out of stuff to spin and got to pining for home. He used to be a patroller up Oleana way, but now he feels a calling to be a medicine maker. To farmers,” she added proudly. “No one’s done that before.”
His mouth opened in surprise. “But that’s not possible! Farmers are supposed to go crazy if Lakewalkers use their sorcery on ’em.”
A surprisingly accurate comment, but maybe he was a near neighbor and so less ill-informed than most.
“Dag thinks he’s cracked beguilement, figured out how to make that not happen.” She added honestly, “He’s still working out whether or not it’ll do something bad to the Lakewalker. He’s just a beginner as far as medicine making goes. But he figures, if he can make it work… His notion is that Oleana farmers need to learn a lot more about Lakewalkers, on account as we have so many more malice-blight bogle- outbreaks up our way, and it’s dangerous for folks to remain so ignorant. He figures healing would give him a straight road to teaching people.”
“Are there really-are the bogles really bad, up that way? ”
“No, because the Oleana patrol keeps ’em down, but their job could stand to be made easier.”
The young man rubbed his mouth. “A couple of my friends keep talking about walking the Trace, maybe moving up to Oleana. Is it true there’s free land there, just for the taking? ”
“Well, you got to register your claim with whatever village clerk is closest, and then clear the trees and rocks and pull the stumps. There’s land for the back-busting working of it, yes. Two of my brothers are homesteading that way, right up on the edge of the great woods the Lakewalkers still hold. My oldest brother’ll get our papa’s farm, of course.”
“Yeah, mine, too,” sighed the young man. He added after a moment, “My name’s Finch Bridger, by the way. My parents’ place is about ten miles that way.” He pointed roughly southeast.
“I’m Fawn Bluefield,” returned Fawn.
“How de’!” He stuck out a friendly, work-hardened hand; Fawn shook it and smiled back. He added after a moment, “Aren’t the winters tough in Oleana? ”
“Nothing like so bad as north of the Dead Lake, Dag says. You prepare for it. Lay in your food and fodder and firewood, make warm clothes.”
“Is there snow? ”
“Of course.”
“I’ve never seen snow here but once, and it was gone by noon. In these parts, we mostly just have cold rain, instead.”
“We have some nice quiet times in winter. And it’s fun to have the sleigh out. Papa puts bells on the harnesses.” An unexpected spasm of homesickness shot through Fawn at the recollection.
“Huh,” Finch said, evidently trying to picture this. “That sounds nice.”
Nola and Cerie finished their count and came back around the table, and Finch dug in his pockets to lay out a few supplemental coins. “Let me know how far this goes… I need this, and this… and I can’t leave without this, or I’ll be skinned.”
He took up all their remaining stock of anti-nausea medicine. Fawn raised her eyebrows. “You don’t look old enough to be married, either.”
“Huh? Oh.” He blushed. “That’s for my sister-in-law. She’s increasing, again, and she’s so sick she can barely hold her head up. That’s why I was let off chores to drive over here today.”
“Well, that nice syrup’s bound to help her keep her food down and get her strength back. It doesn’t even taste bad, for medicine.” Fawn sure wished she’d had some, back when. She banished the bleak memory.
Her own child had been lost to her before becoming much more than a sick stomach and a social disaster; she had no call to picture her as a bright-eyed little girl the size of that Lakewalker woman’s half-blood child.
The Bridger boy packed his medicines carefully on his cart, then made two trips to a table on the other side of the shelter, lugging half a dozen bulging sacks like overstuffed pillowcases. Fawn didn’t see what he’d acquired in return, but he circled back to her table with a similar sack, scantly filled. He thrust it at her. “Here. You can have this.”
Fawn peeked in to find several pounds of washed cotton. “What else do you need? I don’t know how to value this.” She glanced to Nola for help.
“Nothing. It’s a present.”
“For me? ” said Fawn, surprised.
He nodded jerkily.
“I can’t take this off you!”
“It was leftover. No point in hauling it back home again.”
“Well… thanks!”
He nodded again. “Well. Um. It was nice talking to you, Fawn Bluefield. I sure hope everything works out for you. When are you starting back north? ”
“I don’t hardly know, yet. It all depends on Dag.”
“Um. Oh. Sure.” He hovered uncertainly, as if wanting to say more, but then glanced at the sun, smiled at her again, and tore himself away.
At the end of another half hour, the last farmer bought the last item left on their table, a jar of purple ointment meant for cuts on horses’ knees, and rode off. All three girls helped the remaining Lakewalkers take down the trestles and roll up the awnings. Cerie and Nola were cheerful at having a good haul of coin to show for the day, as well as the valued glass. They trundled the handcart, reloaded with all their barter, back up the rutted road. Fawn glanced back over her shoulder at the tidied clearing, thinking, This place isn’t quite what it looked at first glance.
Was anywhere? She remembered the little river below the West Blue farm in winter. All hard, rigid ice, seeming utterly still-but with water running underneath secretly eroding its strength until, one day, it all cracked and washed away in ragged lumps. How close were these southern Lakewalker camps to cracking apart like that? It was an unsettling notion.