Against the wall in Sarri’s cabin stood a simple vertical loom loaded with work in progress, some tough-looking tight-woven fabric Fawn recognized from Lakewalker riding trousers. Fawn wondered at the thread; Sarri explained it was from the ever-useful plunkin, the stems of which, when retted, yielded up a long, strong, durable fiber, which accounted for the retting cradle in the lake. Fawn didn’t see a spinning wheel. Little furniture met her eye, apart from some trestle tables and the common upended-log seats. There were no bed frames inside at all; by the bundles of bedding stacked along a wall, it seemed Lakewalkers slept in bedrolls even at home, and Fawn realized why Dag had taken so happily to the floor of Aunt Nattie’s weaving room.
They went outside again to find that Dag and the cart had returned. Besides their saddles and bridles, a sword in a worn leather sheath, and a spear, it held only one trunk.
“Is this all you have?” Fawn asked him, as he set it all in a pile beside the tent for later stowage. The trunk hardly seemed large enough to contain, for example, surprise kitchen tackle. It barely seemed large enough for spare boots.
Dag stretched his back and grimaced. “My winter gear’s in storage at Bearsford.”
Fawn suspected it amounted to little more.
He added, “I also have my camp credit. You’ll see tomorrow how that works.”
And he was off again, dragging the emptied cart with his hook.
“What shall I do?” Fawn asked rather desperately after him.
“Take a rest!” he called unhelpfully over his shoulder, and turned onto the road.
Rest? She’d been resting, or at least, traveling, which while not restful was certainly not useful work. Her hand traced her wrist cord, and she looked up at the two Lakewalker women, looking down—dubiously? — at her. Sarri’s cord, she saw, was two cords wrapped around each other.
“I aim to be a good wife to Dag,” Fawn said resolutely, then her voice wavered. “But I don’t know what that means here. Mama trained me up. If this were a farm, I could run it. I could make soap and candles, but I have no tallow or anything to make lye in. I can cook and preserve, but there’s no jars and no storage cellars. If I had a cow, I could milk her, and make cheese and butter, if I had a churn. Aunt Nattie gave me spindles and knitting needles and scissors and needles and pins. Never saw a man more in need of socks than Dag, and I could make good ones, but I have no fiber. I can keep accounts, and make a fair ink, but there’s no paper nor anything to record.” Although those turkeys, she considered, could be forced to yield up quills. “I have knowing hands, but no tools. There must be more for me to do here than sit and eat plunkin!”
Mari smiled. “Let me tell you, farmer child, when you come back from weeks out on patrol, you’re right glad to sit and eat plunkin for a time. Even Dag is.” She added after a moment’s reflection, “For about three days, then he’s back badgering Fairbolt for a place in the next patrol going out. Fairbolt figures that the reason he has three times the malice kills of anyone else is that he spends twice the time looking for ’em.”
Sarri said curiously, “What accounts for the rest?”
“Fairbolt wishes he knew.” Mari scratched her head and regarded Fawn in bemusement. “Yeah, Dag said you’d get resty-testy if anyone tried to make you sit still. You two may have more in common than you look.”
Fawn said plaintively, “Can you show me how to go on? Please, I’ll do anything. I’ll even crack nuts.” One of her most hated tedious chores back home.
“We’re a bit between on that one,” said Sarri, with a lopsided smile. “The old falls are rotten and the new ones are too green. We leave ’em for the pigs to clean up, just this season. In a month, now, when the elderberries and the fruit trees come on, we’ll all be busy. Cattagus and his wine-making, and nuts in plenty. Rope and baskets, now, that’s for doing.”
“I know how to make baskets,” said Fawn eagerly, “if I had something to make them of.”
“When that next batch of retting’s done, I’ll be glad for help with the spinning,” said Sarri judiciously.
“Good! When?”
“Next week.”
Fawn sighed. Razi and Utau were just finishing digging a fire pit in front of their tent, and Tesy and her brother were being kept usefully busy hauling stones to line it. Maybe Fawn could at least go gather more deadfall for their future fire. While her back was turned, she noticed, a split-wood basket with three fresh plunkins in it had appeared under her awning.
“Go along, fire-eater,” said Mari, sounding amused. “Take a rest till Dag gets back from the medicine tent. Go for a swim.”
Fawn hesitated. “In that big lake?” Naked?
Mari and Sarri stared at each other. “Where else?” said Sarri. “It’s safe to dive off the end of the dock; the water’s well over your head there.”
This sounded the opposite of safe to Fawn.
Mari added, “Don’t dive off the sides, though, or we’ll have to pull your head out of the mud like a plunkin.”
“I, um…” Fawn swallowed, and continued in a much smaller voice, “don’t know how to swim.”
Mari’s brows shot up; Sarri pursed her lips. Both of them gazed at Fawn as though she were a freak of nature like a two-headed calf. That is, even more than most Lakewalkers looked at her that way. Fawn reddened.
“Does Dag know this?” demanded Sarri.
“I…I don’t know.” Would being so readily drownable disqualify one from being a Lakewalker’s spouse? When she’d said she wanted to be taught how to go on here, she hadn’t imagined swimming lessons being at the top of anyone’s list.
“Dag,” said Mari in a definite voice, “needs to know this.” And added, to Fawn’s increasing alarm, “Right away!”
The Two Bridge Island medicine tent was in fact three cabins with its own dock a few hundred paces past patroller headquarters. It seemed not very busy this morning, Dag saw as he neared after dropping the cart at Stores. Only a couple of horses were hitched to the rails out front. Good. No pestilence this week, no patrols dragging home too many smashed-up comrades.
As he mounted the porch to the main building, he met Saun coming out. Ah, one smashed-up comrade, then—if clearly on the path to recovery. The boy looked well, standing up straight and moving only a little stiffly, although he was looking down and touching his chest gingerly. Saun’s face lit with delight as he glanced up and saw Dag, which turned to the usual consternation as he took in the sling.
“Dag, man! They said you were missing, then there was a crazy rumor going around you’d come back with the little farmer girl—married, if you can believe! Some people!” His voice trailed off in an oh as he took in the cord wrapping Dag’s left arm, just visible below his rolled-up sleeve and above his arm-harness strap.
“We got back yesterday afternoon,” said Dag, letting the last remark pass. “And you? Last I saw, you were bundled up in a wagon heading south from Glassforge.”
“When I could ride again, one of the Log Hollow fellows brought me up to rendezvous with Mari’s patrol, and they brought me home. Medicine maker says I can go out again when the patrol does if I rest up good the next couple of weeks. I’m still a little ouchy, but nothing too bad.” His stare returned to Dag’s left arm. “How did you…I mean, Fawn was cute and all, and she sure cheered you up, but…all right, there was the malice, maybe she…Dag, is your family going to accept this?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Saun fell silent in dismay. “If…what…where will you go?”
“That’s to be seen. We’ve set up our tent at Mari’s place for the moment.”
“I suppose that makes sense. Mari’s bound to defend her own…um.” Saun shook his head, looking wary and confused. “I never heard tell of anything like this. Well, there was a fellow they told me about down at Log Hollow. He got into big trouble a few years back for secretly passing goods and coin along to his farmer lover and her half-blood child, or children—I guess it had been going on for some time when they caught up with him. He argued the goods were his, but the camp council maintained they were the camp’s, and it was theft. He wouldn’t back down, and they banished him.”