He glanced at its mate lying beside her. “Why isn’t it braided up all neat around the rim like the other?”
“Silly, that’s a girl’s hat. This is a boy’s hat. So’s you can tell the difference.”
“Not to question your people, but that’s not how I tell the difference between boys and girls.”
This won a giggle, as he’d hoped. “It just is, for straw hats, all right? So now I can go out in the sun without my nose coming all over freckles.”
“I think your nose looks cute with freckles.” Or without…
“Well, I don’t.” She gave a decisive nod.
He leaned back, his eyes half-closing. His bone-deep exhaustion was creeping up on him, again. Maybe Hoharie had been right about that appalling recovery time after all….
“That’s it.” Fawn jumped to her feet.
He opened his eyes to find her frowning down at him.
“We’re going on a picnic,” she declared roundly.
“What?”
“Just you wait and see. No, don’t get up. It’s a surprise, so don’t look.”
He watched anyway, as she bustled about putting a great deal of food and two stone jugs into a basket, bundled up a couple of blankets, then vanished around behind Cattagus and Mari’s tent to emerge toting a paddle for the narrow boat. Bemused, he found himself herded down to the dock and instructed to get in and have a nice lie-down, padded and propped in the bottom of the boat facing her.
“You know how to steer this craft?” he inquired mildly, settling.
“Er…” She hesitated. “It looked pretty easy when you did it.” And then, after a moment, “You’ll tell me, won’t you?”
“It’s a deal, Spark.”
The lesson took maybe ten minutes, once they’d pushed off from the dock. Their somewhat-wandering path evened out as she settled into her stroke, and then all he had to do was coax her to slow down and find the rhythm that would last. She found her way to that, too. He pushed back his boy’s hat and smiled from under the fringe at her. Her face was made luminous even beneath the shadow of her own neat brim by the light reflecting off the water, all framed against the deep blue sky.
He felt amazingly content not to move. “If your folks could see us now,” he remarked, “they really would believe all those tales about the idleness of Lakewalker men.”
He’d almost forgotten the blinding charm of her dimple when she smirked. She kept paddling.
They rounded Walnut Island, pausing for a glimpse of some of the stallions prancing elegantly in pasture, then glided up through the elderberry channels. Several boats were out gathering there today; Dag and Fawn mainly received startled stares in return for their waves, except from Razi and Utau, working again on Cattagus’s behalf and indirectly their own. Cattagus fermented his wines in large stone crocks buried in the cool soil of the island’s woods, which he had inherited from another man before him, and him from another; Dag had no idea how far back the tradition went, but he bet it matched plunkins. They stopped to chat briefly with the pair. A certain hilarity about Dag’s hat only made him pull it on more firmly, and Fawn paddle onward, tossing her head but still dimpling.
At length, to no surprise but a deal of pleasure on Dag’s part, they slipped into the clear sheltered waters of the lily marsh. He then had the amusement, carefully concealed under his useful hat fringe, of watching Fawn paddle around realizing that her planning had missed an element, namely, where to spread blankets when all the thick grassy hillocks like tiny private islands turned out to be growing from at least two inches of standing water. He listened to as much of her foiled muttering as he thought he would get away with, then surrendered to his better self and pointed out how they might have a nice picnic on board the boat, wedged for stability up into a willow-shaded wrack of old logs. Fawn took aim and, with only a slightly alarming scraping noise, brought them upright into this makeshift dock.
She sat in the bottom of the boat facing him, their legs interlaced, and shared food and wine till she’d succeeded in fulfilling several of Hoharie’s recommendations at once by driving him into a dozy nap. He woke at length more overheated than even farmer hats and the flickering yellow-green willow shade could contend with, and hoisted himself up to strip off his shirt and arm harness.
Fawn opened one eye from her own replete slump, then sat up in some alarm as he lifted his hips to slip off his trousers. “I don’t think we can do that in a narrow boat!”
“Actually, you can,” he assured her absently, “but I’m not attempting it now. I’m going into the water to cool off.”
“Aren’t you supposed to get cramps if you swim too soon after a heavy meal?”
“I’m not going swimming. I’m going floating. I may not move any muscles at all.”
He selected a dry log about three feet long from the top of the wrack, wriggled it loose, and slipped into the water after it. The surface of the water was as warm as a bath, but his legs found the chill they sought farther down, flowing over his skin like silk. He hung his arms over his makeshift float, propped his chin in the middle, kicked up some billowing coolness, and relaxed utterly.
In a little while, to his—alas, still purely aesthetic—pleasure, Fawn yanked her shift over her flushed face, unwedged a log of her own, and splashed in after him. He floated on blissfully while she ottered around him with more youthful vigor, daring to wet her hair, then her face, then duck under altogether.
“Hey!” she said in a tone of discovery, partway through this proceeding. “I can’t sink!”
“Now you know,” he crooned.
She splashed him, got no rise, then eventually settled down beside him. He opened his eyes just far enough to enjoy the sight of her pale bare body, seemingly made liquid by the water-waver, caressed by the long, fringed water weeds as she idly kicked and turned. He looked down meditatively at the yellow willow leaves floating past his nose, harbinger of more soon to come. “The light is changing. And the sounds in the air. I always notice it, when the summer passes its peak and starts down, and the cicadas come on. Makes me…not sad, exactly. There should be a word.” As though time was sliding away, and not even his ghost hand could catch it.
“Noisy things, cicadas,” Fawn murmured, chinned on her own log. “I heard ’em just starting up when I was riding to Raintree.”
They were both quiet for a very long time, listening to the chaining counterpoint of bug songs. The brown wedge of a muskrat’s head trailed a widening vee across the limpid water, then vanished with a plop as the shy animal sensed their regard. The blue heron floated in, but then just stood folded as though sleeping on one leg. The green-headed ducks, drowsing in the shade across the marsh, didn’t move either. The clear light lay breathing like a live thing.
“This place is like the opposite of blight,” murmured Fawn after a while. “Thick, dense…if you opened up, would its ground just flow in and replenish you?”
“I opened up two hours ago. And yes, I think it may,” he sighed.
“That explains something about places like this, then,” she muttered in satisfaction.
A much longer time later, they regretfully pulled their wrinkled selves up onto the wrack and back into the boat, dressed, and pushed back to start for home. The sun was sliding behind the western trees as they crossed the wide part of the lake, and had turned into an orange glint by the time they climbed the bank to Tent Bluefield. Dag slept that night better than he had for weeks.
18
F awn woke late the next morning, she judged by the bright lines of light leaking around the edges of their easterly tent flaps. The air inside was still cool from the night, but would grow hot and stuffy soon. Wrapped around her, Dag sighed and stirred, then hugged her in tighter. Something firm nudged the back of her thigh, and she realized with a slow smirk that it wasn’t his hand. I thought that picnic would be good for him.