“You use magic to repel mosquitoes!” she said, sounding as though she couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or offended. “We just have recipes for horrible stuff to rub on our skins. Once you know what’s in them, you’d almost rather be bit.”
He snickered, then sighed. “They say we are a fallen folk, and I for one believe it. The ancient lords built great cities, ships, and roads, transformed their bodies, sought longevity, and brought the whole world crashing down at the last.
Though I suspect it was a really good run for a while, till then. Me—I bounce mosquitoes. Oh, and I can summon and dismiss my horse, once I get him trained up to it. And help settle another’s hurting body, if I’m lucky. And see the world double, down to the ground. That’s about it for Dag magic, I’m afraid.”
Her eyes lifted to his face. “And kill malices,” she said slowly.
“Aye. That mainly.”
He reached for her, swallowing her next question with a kiss. It took the better part of a week for Dag’s boat anchor of a conscience to drag him out of the clouds and back onto the road. He wished he could just jettison the blighted deadweight. But one morning he turned back from shaving to find Fawn, half-dressed and with her bedroll open on the bed, frowning down at the sharing knife that lay there.
He came and wrapped her in his arms, her bare back to his bare torso.
“It’s time, I guess,” she said.
“I guess so, too.” He sighed. “Not that you couldn’t count my unused camp-time by years, but Mari gave me leave to solve the mystery of that thing, not to linger here in this brick-and-clapboard paradise. The hirelings have been giving me squinty looks for days.”
“They’ve been real nice to me,” she observed accurately.
“You’re good at finding friends.” In fact, everyone from the cooks, scullions, chambermaids, and horse boys up to the owner and his wife had grown downright defensive of Fawn, farmer heroine as she was. To the point where Dag suspected that if she demanded, Throw this lanky fellow into the street! he’d shortly find himself sitting in the dust clutching his saddlebags. The Glassforgers who worked here were used to patrollers and their odd ways with each other, but it was clear enough to Dag that they just barely tolerated this mismatch, and that only for the sake of Fawn’s obvious delight. Other patrons now drifting in, drovers and drivers and traveling families and boatmen up from the river to secure cargoes, looked askance at the odd pair, and even more askance after collecting whatever garbled gossip was circulating about them.
Dag wondered how askance he would be looked at in West Blue. Fawn had gradually grown reconciled to the planned stop at her home, partly from guilt at his word picture of her parents’ probable anxiety, and partly by his pledge not to abandon her there. It was the only promise she’d ever asked him to repeat.
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, letting his finger snake around and drift over the healing wounds on her left cheek. “Your bruises are fading now.
I figure if I bring you back to your family claiming to be your protector, it’ll be more convincing if you don’t look like you just lost a drunken brawl.”
Her lips twitched up as she caught his hand and kissed it, but then her fingers drifted to the malice marks on her neck. “Except for these.”
“Don’t pick.”
“They itch. Are they ever going to drop off? The other scabs did already.”
“Soon enough, I judge. It’ll leave these deep bitter-red dents underneath for a time, but they’ll fade almost like other scars. They’ll turn silvery when they’re old.”
“Oh—that long shiny groove on your leg that starts behind your knee and goes around up your thigh—was that a malice-clawing, then?” She had mapped every mark upon him as assiduously as a pattern-grid surveyor, these past days and nights, and demanded annotations for most of them, too.
“Just a touch. I got away, and my linker put his knife in a moment later.”
She turned to hug him around the waist. “I’m glad it didn’t grab any higher,”
she said seriously.
Dag choked a laugh. “Me too, Spark!” They were on the straight road north by noon. They rode slowly, in part for their dual disinclination for their destinations, but mostly because of the dog-breath humidity that had set in after the last rain. The horses plodded beneath a brassy sun. Their riders talked or fell silent with, it seemed to Dag, equal ease. They spent the next afternoon—rainy again—in the loft of the barn at the well-house where they’d first glimpsed each other, picnicking on farm fare and listening to the soothing sounds of the drops on the roof and the horses champing hay below, didn’t notice when the storm stopped, and lingered there overnight.
The next day was brighter and clearer, the hot white haze blown away east, and they reluctantly rode on. On the fifth night of the two-day ride they stopped a short leg from Lumpton Market to camp one last time. Fawn had figured an early start from Lumpton would bring them to West Blue before dark. It was hard for Dag to guess what would happen then, though her slowly unfolding tales of her family had at least given him a better sense of who he would encounter.
They found a campsite by a winding creek, out of view of the road, beneath a scattered stand of leatherpod trees. Later in the fall, the seed-pods would hang down beneath the big spade-shaped leaves like hundreds of leather straps, but now the trees were in full bloom. Spikes stood up from crowns of leaves with dozens of linen-white blossoms the size of egg cups clustered on them, breathing sweet perfume into the evening air. As the moonless night fell, fireflies rose up along the creek and from the meadow beyond it, twinkling in the mist.
Beneath the leatherpod tree, the shadows grew black.
“Wish I could see you better,” Fawn murmured, as they lay down across their combined blankets and commenced a desultory fiddling with each other’s buttons.
No one wanted a blanket atop, in this heat.
“Hm.” Dag sat up on one elbow and smiled in the dark. “Give me a minute, Spark, and I might be able to do something about that.”
“No, don’t put more wood on the fire. ‘S too hot now.”
“Wasn’t going to. Just wait and see. In fact, close your eyes.”
He extended his groundsense to its full range and found no menace for a mile, just the small nesting life of the grass: mice and shrews and rabbits and sleepy meadowlarks; above, a few fluttering bats, and the silent ghostly passage of an owl. He drew his net finer still, filling it with tinier life. Not a bounce, but a persuasion… yes. This still worked. The tree began to throng with his invited visitors, more and more. Beside him, Fawn’s face slowly emerged from the gloom as though rising from deep water.
“Can I open them yet?” she asked, her eyes dutifully scrunched up.
“Just a moment more… yes. Now.”
He kept his eyes on her face as she looked up, so as not to miss the best wonder of all. Her eyes opened, then shot wide; her lips parted in a gasp.
Above them, the leatherpod tree was filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of—in Dag’s wide-open perception, slightly bewildered—fireflies, so dense the lighter branches bent with their load. Many of them crawled inside the white blossoms, and when they lit, the clusters of petal cups glowed like pale lanterns. The cool, shadowless radiance bathed them both. Her breath drew in.
“Oh,” she said, rising on one elbow and staring upward. “Oh…”
“Wait. I can do more.” He concentrated, and drew down a lambent swirl of insects to spiral around and land in her dark hair, lighting it like a coronet of candles.
“Dag… !” She gave a wild laugh, half delight, half indignation, her hands rising to gently prod her curls. “You put bugs in my hair!”
“I happen to know you like bugs.”
“I do,” she admitted fairly. “Some kinds, anyhow. But how… ? Did you learn to do this up in the woods of Luthlia, too?”
“No, actually. I learned it in camp, back when my groundsense first came in—I was about twelve, I guess. The children learn it from each other; no adult ever teaches it, but I think most everyone knows how to catch fireflies this way.