Challa showed Dag her tent’s record-keeping methods, more pleased than was quite flattering to learn that the shabby northerner could read and write. They were interrupted once by a woman whose toddler’s oozing sore throat had not responded to home ground reinforcements, and a second time by a boy, frog-marched in by his father, in need of having his bloodied head stitched after a fight with his brother. A rock seemed to have been involved, presented as evidence, or possibly a souvenir, by the irate and dizzy loser.
As she worked, Challa kept up a gentle and seemingly habitual flow of instruction and commentary that Dag drank in-with the growing sense that he was just the latest in a long line of apprentices to pass through her tent. Dag was painfully aware that he was of no help in stitching up the flap of scalp, but at least his hook provided a useful diversion while the sewing was going on. The boy ingenuously demanded the tale-severely abridged by Dag-of how the missing hand had been bitten off by a mud-wolf, then set his quaking lip and endured his own little ordeal under Challa’s curved needle with fresh determination.
Challa suppressed a smile and complimented his courage.
Barr popped in then with the news that the lunch basket and Arkady had both arrived back at the house. Dag paced silently beside him up the road, his head awhirl with his morning’s tutorials. The range of things he didn’t know seemed to be expanding at an alarming rate.
–-
This lunch basket yielded ham sandwiches and plunkin, swiftly consumed.
While Fawn, Remo, and Barr cleared away the plates and crumbs from the round table, Arkady arose and went to one of his shelves. He returned with a piece of paper and sat again across from Dag. Instead of presenting it to read, he turned it over and tore it in half.
“Now,” he said, “let’s just see what it is you’re doing that’s giving you trouble. Watch. Ah-with your groundsense, please.”
What is he about? Dag opened himself and attended, summoning the concentration of the morning against a drift toward a postlunch nap.
Arkady eased the two pieces back in line, held them down on the table, and ran his thumb down the tear. Behind the barely perceptible ground projection, the paper hissed back together. He held it up and snapped it, then turned it and tore it in half again. Fawn and the boys abandoned the sink and slid hastily back into their chairs to watch.
It had been so swift, Dag was barely certain what he’d sensed, but he dutifully positioned the halves on the table in front of him, edged them together as best he could, extended his ghost hand, closed his eyes, and found that strange level of perception, down and in, that he had first discovered while healing Hod. Paper, it seemed, was much like felted cloth, a mass of tiny threads all matted together-torn away from one another, now. He was put in mind of how Fawn had spun the threads for their wedding cords, making the fibers twirl around and catch hold.
So freshly separated, these fibers’ grounds still held the echo of their former friction. This will be easy. He smiled and drew his hook down the edges, his ghost thumb persuading them back together.
And opened his eyes in consternation as the paper burst into flame along the line of his repair. He beat it out in hasty embarrassment.
Barr ducked the flying char and said, “It’s not anybody’s birthday, Dag! Take it easy!”
Dag brushed futilely at the scorch marks on Arkady’s table. “Sorry. Sorry! I’m not sure what happened just there.”
“Mm-huh,” said Arkady, leaning back with narrowed eyes and not sounding the least surprised. “As I thought. You’re expending far more strength than the task warrants, and exhausting yourself prematurely. The waste you shed becomes, in this case, heat.”
“But Hod’s knee didn’t burst into flames!” Fawn objected. Adding after a reflective moment, “Luckily.”
“That was a much greater task, and living beings absorb ground on levels mere objects don’t possess. The cure for the unpleasant aftereffects you experienced, the chill and the nausea, isn’t some special trick. It’s the result of a general habit of efficiency in one’s work. Don’t do with groundsetting anything that can be done physically, or even by another medicine maker; pace yourself, because you never know how soon another patient will turn up; and never use more strength than is truly needed. It’s not merely less wasteful; it’s more elegant.” Arkady rolled the last word off his tongue quite lovingly.
Dag scratched his head in doubt.
Barr sniggered. “I don’t know as Dag does elegant.”
Fawn bristled, opening her mouth to begin some hot defense. Dag interrupted smoothly, “Ground-veiling drills. When was the last time you and Barr did your ground-veiling drills, Remo? Back before Whit and Berry’s wedding, wasn’t it? ”
Remo shot an acid look at his partner. “Yes, sir.” He did not add, You were there, Dag!; some former patrol leader had evidently cured him of any leaning to risky backtalk.
“Now, half an hour. Down on the lakeshore will be a good place. No one will interrupt your concentration there.”
Remo loyally arose, glowered at Barr, and jerked his chin. Barr grumbled up and followed him out, casting a last look of frustrated curiosity over his shoulder. Peace of a sort descended.
Beyond an upward twitch of his silvery brows, Arkady made no comment. Instead, he drained his mug of tea, set it sideways to the table, and with a sharp crack broke off its handle.
“Oh!” said Fawn, startled, then closed her lips tight. She glanced at the door through which the boys had left and folded her hands primly in her lap in a superfluous effort to appear small.
Arkady pushed the two pieces across to Dag. “Try again. Don’t try to contain the whole cup, or even the whole handle, although hold awareness of their essential ground in mind. Think surfaces. Again, let your muscles do as much as possible. Hold the parts together tightly-”
He broke off; a tinge of color heated his cheeks. “Er…”
“Fawn, lend me your hands over here,” said Dag.
She nodded understanding, rose, licked her finger to pick up a couple of tiny fragments still left across the table, deposited them again in front of Dag, and gripped the cup and handle, fitting them back together. “Just like the bowl, huh?” Her dimple flashed at him, as if to say, You can do it.
“Uh-huh.” Dag shot Arkady a challenging glance, but the maker made no comment. Surfaces, eh? Dag closed his eyes, reached out till his hook clinked, and dropped down and in, finding the ground of the bowl, of the handle. Of the two interfaces. This fired clay had a rougher voice than the high chime of the glass bowl, a mumbling little growl.
The recent break still vibrated with the rupture, though the clay was far more inert than the ends of broken blood vessels that Dag had several times worked back together. But they still had a good catch. The two flakes rose through the air, seeking their slots. Catch. Catch. Finer and finer, catchcatchcatchcatch… And finer still…
“Good,” said Arkady. “Stop.”
Dag gulped and opened his eyes.
Gingerly, Fawn released the handle, which remained in place.
Even more gingerly, she grasped the handle and released the cup. The mending held. “It’s warm,” she reported, “but not near so hot as that bowl was, Dag. You could barely touch that bowl, even after it stopped glowing.” She peered more closely. “I can just see a line in the glaze.”
The two crumbs of stray clay were also back in place, faintly outlined.
“How do you feel?” Arkady asked Dag. His voice and gaze were both level.
“Not… bad,” said Dag, a little surprised. “Something’s taken out of me, sure, but I don’t feel dizzy or cold. And my lunch is staying put.”
This mending lacked the soaring exaltation and violent collapse of his prior ones, of the glass bowl or Hod’s knee or Chicory’s head; it was more like… interest and ease. Less exciting, to be sure. But less wearing, I do admit.
Arkady rose and returned with another wrinkled note. He sat, tore it in half, and shoved the pieces across to Dag once more. “Try again. Less hard.”