When Dag moved, his speed was shocking. She caught only a glimpse of him swerving half-around Sunny, his leg coming up hard behind Sunny’s knees, and his left arm whipping around with a wicked whir and glint of his hook. Suddenly Sunny was flailing forward, mouth agape, lifted by Dag’s hook through the seat of his trousers. His feet churned but barely touched the floor; he looked like someone tumbling on ice. Three long Dag-strides, a loud ripping noise, and Sunny was sailing through the air in truth, headfirst all the way over the porch boards to land beyond the steps in an awkward heap, haunches up, face scraping the dirt.
It was partly terrorized relief that Dag hadn’t just torn Sunny’s throat out with his hook as calmly as he’d slain that mud-man, but Fawn burst into a shriek of laughter. She clapped her hand across her mouth and stared at the ridiculously cheering sight of Sunny’s drawers flapping through the new vent in his britches.
Sunny twisted around and glared up, his face flushing a dull, mottled red, then scrambled to his feet, fists clenching. Between the dirt and the curses filling his mouth his spluttering was nearly incoherent, but the general sense of I’ll get you, Lakewalker! I’ll get you both! came through clearly enough, and Fawn’s breath caught in new alarm.
“Best bring a few friends,” Dag recommended dryly. “If you have any.” Aside from the flaring of his nostrils, he seemed barely winded.
Sunny took two steps up onto the porch, but then veered back uncertainly as that hook came quietly to the fore. Fawn darted for the frying pan. As Sunny hovered in doubt, his head jerked up at a thumping and shuffling sounding from the weaving room—blind Aunt Nattie with her cane. She had risen from her nap at last. Sunny stared wildly around, tripped backward down the steps, turned, and fled around the side of the house.
“You’re right, Spark,” Dag said, closing the screen door again. “He doesn’t much care for witnesses. You can sort of see why.”
Nattie wandered into the kitchen. “Hello, Fawn, lovie. Hello, Dag. My, that apple butter smells good.” Her face turned, following the retreating footsteps rounding the house and fading. “Young fool,” she added reflectively. “Sunny always thinks if I can’t see him, I can’t hear him. You have to wonder, really you do.”
Fawn gulped, dropped the pan on the table, and flew into Dag’s embrace. He wrapped his left arm around her in a reassuring hug. Aunt Nattie’s head tilted toward them, a smile touching her lips. “Thank you kindly for that bit o’
housecleaning, patroller.”
“My pleasure, Aunt Nattie. Here, now.” Dag folded Fawn closer. “For what it’s worth, Spark, he was more afraid of you than you were of him.” He added reflectively, “Sort of like a snake, that way.”
She gave a shaken giggle, and his grip eased. “I was about to hit him with the frying pan, just before you came in.”
“Thought something like that might be up. I was having a few daydreams along that line myself.”
“Too bad you couldn’t really have cut his tongue out…” She paused. “Was that a joke or not? I’m not too sure sometimes about patroller humor.”
“Eh,” he said, sounding faintly wistful. “Not, in any case, currently practical.
Though I suppose I’m right glad to see Sunny doesn’t believe any of those ugly rumors about Lakewalkers being black sorcerers.”
Her trembling diminished, but her brows pinched as she thought back. “I’m so glad you were there. Though I wish your arm wasn’t broken. Is it all right?”
She touched the sling in worry.
“That wasn’t especially good for it, but I haven’t unset it. We’re lucky for your aunt Nattie and Sunny’s, ah, sudden shyness.”
She drew back to stare up at his serious face, her eyes questioning, and he went on, “See, despite whatever hog butchering he’s done, Sunny’s never been in a lethal fight. I’ve been in no other kind since I was younger than him. He’s used to puppy scraps, the sort you have with brothers or cousins or friends or, in any case, folks you’re going to have to go on living with. Age, weight, youth, muscle, would all count against me in that sort of scuffle, even without a broken arm. If you truly want him dead, I’m your man; if you want less, it’s trickier.”
She sighed and leaned her head against his chest. “I don’t want him dead. I just want him behind me. Miles and years. I suppose I just have to wait for the years. I still think of him every day, and I don’t want to. Dead would be even worse, for that.”
“Wise Spark,” he murmured.
Her nose wrinkled in doubt. How seriously had he meant that lethal offer, to be so relieved that she hadn’t taken him up on it? Remembering, she fetched him his drink, which he accepted with a smile of thanks.
Nattie had drifted to the hearth to stir the apple butter which, by the smell, was on the verge of scorching. Now she tapped the wooden spoon on the pot rim to shake off the excess, set it aside, turned back, and said, “You’re a smart man, patroller.”
“Oh, Nattie,” said Fawn dolefully. “How much of that awfulness did you hear?”
“Pretty much all, lovie.” She sighed. “Is Sunny gone yet?”
That funny look Dag got when consulting his groundsense flitted over his face.
“Long gone, Aunt Nattie.”
Fawn breathed relief.
“Dag, you’re a good fellow, but I need to talk with my niece. Why don’t you take a walk?”
He looked down to Fawn, who nodded reluctantly. He said, “I expect I could stand to go check on Copperhead, make sure he hasn’t bitten anybody yet.”
“I ’spect so,” Nattie agreed.
He gave Fawn a last hug, bent down to touch his cider-scented lips to hers, smiled in encouragement, and left. She heard his steps wend through the house to the front door, and out.
Fawn wanted to put her head down in Nattie’s lap and bawl; instead, she busied herself raking the coals under the oven for the pies. Nattie sat on a kitchen chair and rested her hands on her cane. Haltingly at first, then less so, the story came out, from Fawn’s foolish tumble at the spring wedding to her growing realization and fear of the consequences to the initial horrid talk with Sunny.
“Teh.” Nattie sighed in regret. “I knew you were troubled, lovie. I tried to get you to talk to me, but you wouldn’t.”
“I know. I don’t know if I’m sorry now or not. I figured it was a problem I’d bought all on my own, so it was a problem to pay for all on my own. And then I thought my nerve would fail if I didn’t plunge in.”
For Nattie today, Fawn resolved to leave out nothing of her journey except the uncanny accident with Dag’s sharing knife—partly because she was daunted by the complicated explanations that would have to go with, partly because it made no difference to the fate of her pregnancy, but mostly because Lakewalker secrets were so clearly not hers to give away. No, not just Lakewalker secrets—Dag’s privacy. She grasped, now, what an intimate and personal possession his dead wife’s bone had been. It was the only confidence he’d asked her to keep.
Taking a breath, Fawn plunged in anew. She described her lonely trudge to Glassforge, her terrifying encounter with the young bandit and the strange mud-man. Her first flying view of the startled Dag, even more frightening, but in retrospect almost funny. The Horsefords’ eerie abandoned farm, the second abduction. The whole new measure for terror she’d learned at the malice’s hands.
Dag at the cave, Dag that night at the farm.
She did end up with her head in Nattie’s lap then, though she managed to keep her tears down to a choked sniffling. Nattie petted her hair in the old way she hadn’t done since Fawn had been small and weeping in pain for some minor hurt to her body, or in fury for some greater wound to her spirit. “Sh. Sh, lovie.”
Fawn inhaled, wiped her eyes and nose on her apron, and sat up again on the floor next to Nattie’s chair. “Please don’t tell Mama and Papa any of this.
They’re going to have to go on living with the Sawmans. There’s no point in making bad blood between the families now.”