“Off he went and I thought no more of it, but next summer, about the same time of year, there came that tapping at my window again. We had a bit of a picnic on the back porch in the dark, and talked. He was glad to hear Tril had delivered you safe, Fawn. He gave me some little presents and I gave him some food and cloth. The next summer the same; I got to looking out for him.
“The next year he came back one more time, but not alone. He brought his new bride, just to show her off to me I think, he was that proud of her. He showed me their Lakewalker marriage-bracelets, string-bindings they called ‘em, knowin’
I had a maker’s interest in all things to do with the craft, thread and cords and braids as well as the weaving and knitting. They let me hold them in my hands and feel them. Gave me a turn, they did. They weren’t just fancy cord.
They were magical.”
“Yes,” said Dag cautiously, and at Fawn’s curious look expanded, “Each betrothed puts a tiny bit of their ground into their own cord. The string-binding ceremony tangles the two grounds, then they exchange, his for hers.”
“Really?” said Fawn, fascinated, trying to remember if she’d noticed such bracelets on the patrollers at Glassforge. Yes, for Mari’d had one, and so had a couple of other older patrollers. She had thought them merely decorative. “Do they do anything? Can you send messages?”
“No. Well, only that if one spouse dies, the other can feel it, for the ground drains out of their binding cord. They’re often put safe away to save wear, although they can be remade if they’re damaged. But if one spouse is out on patrol, the other back in camp usually wears theirs. Just… to know. To the one out on patrol, it comes as more of a shock, because you don’t expect… I’ve seen that happen twice. It’s not good. The patroller is dismissed at once to ride home if it’s at all possible. There’s a special terror to knowing what but not how, except that you are too late, and a thought that, you know, maybe the string just got burned up in a tent fire or some freak thing—enough hope for agony but not enough for ease. When I woke up in the medicine tent after…”
The room grew so quiet, Fawn thought she could hear the candles burning.
She lifted her face to his and said a little wryly, “You know, you’ve either got to finish those sorts of sentences or not start them.”
He sighed and nodded. “I think I can say this to you. If I can’t I’ve no business… anyway. I was about to say, when I woke up in the medicine tent after Wolf Ridge with my hand gone, so was Kauneo’s binding string, which I wore on that side. Lost on the ridge. I guess I made some difficulties trying to find it, being fairly mixed up in the head right about then. They hadn’t wanted to tell me she was gone till I was stronger, but they pretty much had to, and then I wouldn’t believe them. It was like, if I could just find that binding string, I could prove them wrong. I got over it in due course.”
He was looking away from her as he said this. Fawn drew her breath in and let it out gently between her teeth. He looked back down at her and smiled, sort of, and tried to move his hand to grasp hers in reassurance, wincing as the sling brought him up short in painful reminder. “It was a long time ago,” he murmured.
“Before I was born.”
“Indeed.” He added after a moment, “I don’t know why I find that an easing thought, but I do.”
Nattie had her head cocked to one side with the intensity of her listening; when he did not go on, she put in, “Now, I do know this, patroller. Without those binding strings, you aren’t married in Lakewalker eyes.”
He nodded cautiously, then remembered to say aloud, “Yes. That is to say, they are a visible proof of a valid marriage, like your village clerk’s record and writing your name in the family book with all the witnesses’ signatures below.
The string-binding is the heart and center of a wedding. The food and the music and the dancing and the arguments among the relatives are all extra.”
“Uh-huh,” said Nattie. “And there’s the problem, patroller. Because if Fawn and you stand up in the parlor before the family and all like you say you want, and sign your names and make your promises, seems to me she’d be getting married, but you wouldn’t. I said I had a question, and this is it. I want to know exactly what you are about, that you think this won’t twist around somehow and leave her cryin’.”
Fawn wondered for a moment why he was being held responsible for her future tears but not her for his. She supposed it was the, the blighted age thing again. It seemed unfairly unbalanced, somehow.
Dag was silent for several long breaths. He finally raised his chin, and said,
“When I first rode in here, I had no thought of a farmer wedding. But it didn’t take long to see how little her family valued Spark. Present company excepted,”
he added hastily. Nattie nodded grimly, not disagreeing. “Not that they don’t love her and try to look out for her, in a sort of backhanded, absentminded way.
But they don’t seem to see her, not as she is. Not as I see her. Of course, they don’t have groundsense, but still. Maybe the past fogs the present, maybe they just haven’t looked lately, maybe they never have looked, I don’t know. But marriage seems to raise a woman’s standing in a farmer family. I thought I could give her that, in an easy way. Well, it seemed easy at the time. Not so sure now.” He sighed. “I was real clear about the widowhood business, though.”
“Seems like a hollow gift, patroller.”
“Yes, but I can’t do a string-binding here. I can’t make the string, for one; it takes two hands and I’ve got none, and I’m not sure Fawn can make one at all, and we’ve no one to do the blessing and the tying. I was thinking that when we reached Hickory Lake I might try for a string-binding there, despite the difficulties.”
“Think your family will favor this idea?”
“No,” he said frankly. “I expect trouble about it. But I’ve outstubborned everything my life has thrown at me so far.”
“He’s got a point there, Aunt Nattie,” Fawn dared to say.
“Mm,” said Aunt Nattie. “So what happens if they pitch her out on her ear?
Which Lakewalkers have done to farmer suitors before, I do believe.”
Dag fell very quiet for a little, then said, “I’d walk with her.”
Nattie’s brows went up. “You’d break with your people? Can you?”
“Not by choice.” His shrug failed to conceal deep unease. “But if they chose to break with me, I couldn’t very well stop them.”
Fawn blinked, suddenly disquieted. She’d dreamed only of what joy they might bring to each other. But that keelboat seemed to be towing a whole string of barges she hadn’t yet peeked into. Dag had, it seemed.
“Huh-huh-hm,” said Nattie. She tapped her cane gently on the floorboards.
“I’m thinkin’ too, patroller. I got two hands. So does Fawn, actually.”
Dag seemed to freeze, staring at Nattie sharply. “I’m… not at all sure that would work.” He added after a longer moment, “I’m not at all sure it wouldn’t.
I have some know-how. Fawn knows this land, she can help gather the necessaries.
Hair from each of us, other things. Mine’s a bit short.”
“I have tricks for dealing with short fibers,” said Nattie equitably.
“You have more than that, I think. Spark…” He turned to her. “Give me a piece your aunt has made. I want to hold something of her making. Something especially fine, you know?”
“I think I know what he’s wanting. Look in that trunk at the foot of my bed, lovie,” said Nattie. “Fletch’s wedding shirt.”
Fawn hopped up, went around to the wooden trunk, and lifted the lid. The shirt was right on top. She picked it up by the shoulders, letting the white fabric fall open. It was almost finished, except for the cuffs. The smocking around the tops of the sleeves and across the yoke in back was soft under her touch, and the buttons, already sewn down the front placket, were carved of iridescent mussel shell, cool and smooth.