The Trace here ran for three days travel up a slot flanked by running ridges, vast green sky-blocking humps. It was a thinly peopled country.
A few hamlets, carved out of what little flat land the valley offered, supplemented their meager livings by supplying the needs of travelers.
Grouse, recovering from his ague attack enough to take the reins on his wagon box, eyed the land hungrily, but any vale with a creek bottom worth having was clearly already taken.
Inevitably, Whit saw and recognized the birthday walnut around his sister’s neck. Rather than having to talk his tent-brother into being his next target, Dag found him to be an eager volunteer. Dag was at first inclined to seek some private spot for the trial, then recalled the show he’d put on with Crane and his first sharing-knife bonding. The memory was disturbing, and he disliked doing complex and chancy groundwork with an audience, but this crowd was captive and mostly friendly. His own words came uncomfortably back to him: Never miss a chance to befriend and teach.
Around the campfire that night, Dag took on his next major making.
The first few minutes were spent sorting out whose hair Whit was to borrow to supplement his own too-short curls, his sister’s or his wife’s.
They settled on Berry’s. She made a face as Fawn did the snipping, filching a generous blond hank. Whit’s thicker fingers proved considerably less deft at cord braiding than Fawn’s, especially when his added blood made the mixed hair slippery. Everyone gathered around, the Lakewalkers watching more wide-eyed than the farmers when Dag straddled a log behind Whit and helped him draw his ground out into the growing length of braid.
“So that’s how they did those wedding cords!” murmured Tavia.
Indigo scowled in fascination, his fingers rubbing one another as if in troubled memory.
The little sack of black walnuts had ridden with Dag all the way from Hickory Lake, sifted to the bottom of his saddlebags and forgotten on the river journey. Taking up one now, he rolled it between his fingers, feeling an unexpected shiver at this reminder of home. He glanced up at Sumac, watching over Arkady’s shoulder, and managed a smile. Any hard-shelled nut would likely do to anchor this involution, but Dag was glad of these.
Arkady knelt at their side, watching closely as Dag, hook harness removed, held his long arms around Whit, his chin resting on the boy’s shoulder. His fleshly fingers worked with Whit’s to slip the nut into the net of hair, while his ghost fingers shaped the involution out of their own substance, catching up and winding in Whit’s ground.
“Suggest you ease down, Dag,” muttered Arkady in his ear. “You’ll turn yourself inside out going that deep.”
Indeed, Maker Vayve, too, had accused Dag of overbuilding his groundwork; Dag eased down. He and Whit together lifted the hair necklace over Whit’s head, and the walnut pendant fell to touch his skin, framed by the open collar of his shirt. Dag opened his ghost hand and let his involution go, setting his jaw against the tearing pain.
His belly shuddered, and his feet went cold. Arkady breathed sharply through his teeth; Sumac’s lips parted in a wince. Remo whispered, Ow. And smoothly, like a spreading stain, the shimmering ground shield spread out through Whit’s skin all over his body. Top to toe. Yes.
“Well, now what? ” asked Whit, fingering the walnut.
“Didn’t you feel that? ” asked Sumac.
“Not especially.” Whit looked up and blinked. “What? Are we done already? ”
“Yep.” Dag eased upright and stretched and clenched his fingers, grimacing as the tension unwound in his back. Whit leaped up and capered around the fire, demanding that Barr and Remo describe what they saw with their groundsenses.
Grouse Basswood, apparently still waiting for the human-sacrificeand- cannibalism part to start, blinked and said in a disappointed voice, “Is that it? He didn’t do nothing!”
“Now do Berry!” said Whit in a burst of enthusiasm. “And Hawthorn.”
Hawthorn crowed assent; Bo thumped him on the side of the head.
Hod hovered, grinning hesitantly. “And me? ”
Berry clutched her hair and laughed uneasily. “I’ll be snatched bald!”
Arkady eyed Dag’s slump on the log, and said, “May I try the next one? ”
Dag’s head jerked up, and he squinted in surprise; Arkady cast him a nod. Sumac’s encouraging grip on Arkady’s shoulder pushed him forward. Barr gave Dag a hand up; Dag staggered and stood a moment with his hands on his knees till his light-headedness passed.
Arkady swallowed, taking Dag’s place on the log. Fawn repeated the operation on Berry’s hair with her sewing scissors and a lot of female consultation about just where to cut to best conceal the growing back.
“You Lakewalkers have to give me some of your ground reinforcements later on these here finger cuts,” Berry said sternly as she seated herself with the hair strands laid out in front of her, “so’s I can play my fiddle.”
At the chorus of volunteers, she nodded in satisfaction, and began.
Berry’s bloodstained hair braiding was considerably neater than Whit’s, and swifter.
Arkady caught up her ground on his second try-Dag was impressed- and wound it into his involution with seeming ease. Arkady did complex and delicate involutions in his work from time to time; any sharing-knife maker or senior medicine maker, Dag thought, ought to be nearly as practiced and adept. His hopes rose. If more makers than Dag and the admittedly extraordinary Arkady could be taught this technique, it became far more than a stunt. It might even be a solution. Although even Arkady gasped when he let his shaped involution go, his face draining;
Sumac caught his arm and held him upright till his breathing steadied.
“Best stop for tonight,” said Dag. “That gives us three different samples to study.” The groundwork on each was slightly different, and Dag wasn’t sure which would be best. When he had perfected the skill, he decided, he would go back and redo Fawn’s. Although he didn’t think her shield overbuilt; if anything, he wanted to make it twice as strong, for her and for the child-he rather thought by now it was going to be their daughter, though the shield made it hard to be sure-growing so swiftly within her.
“That didn’t look so bad,” said Vio, watching Berry.
“This is just what they let us see,” Grouse grumbled.
Berry and Barr then flummoxed each other when he attempted a ground reinforcement on her pricked fingers and had it slide off. Arkady was called over to consult.
“Well, the shield repels groundwork, all right,” said Arkady, stroking Berry’s hand and frowning. “It doesn’t seem to care if the intent of the groundwork is good or not. You can break the shield by removing the necklace, but I’d rather you didn’t, just yet.”
Berry studied his slightly haggard face and nodded understanding.
“My word, yes, it would be like sinking the boat you’d just launched. I’ll just wash my fingers good and tie strips on them for the night. They’re only little cuts. They’ll be fine in the morning.”
Dag caught Arkady’s glance. “See why it won’t be finished till I figure out how to make the shield something the farmer can take on and off?”
“Something to think about, to be sure.” Arkady’s shoulders were as bowed with fatigue as after emergency medicine work, but his coppery eyes gleamed with excitement.
“What I don’t understand,” said Grouse, “is why you Lakewalkers would want to do something that stops you from doing things.”
“Really, this seems pointless,” murmured Neeta.
“It’s not Lakewalkers I want to protect farmers from,” said Dag-not entirely, leastways-“though I expect that might have some interestin’ consequences. It’s malices. Blight bogles.”
Grouse’s face screwed up. Another farmer who didn’t quite believe in a menace he’d never seen and barely heard of-or he wouldn’t be so anxious to move north, Dag reckoned. Vio looked more wary.