He made a purring noise into her hair, indicating the same satisfying realization, and she wriggled around to turn her face to his. His eyes gleamed from under his half-closed eyelids, and she sank into his sleepy smile as if it were a pillow. He kissed her temple and lips, and bent his head to nuzzle her neck. She let her hand begin to roam and stroke, giving and taking free pleasure from his warm skin for the first time since he’d been called out to Raintree. He pulled her closer still, seeming to revel in her softness pressing tight to him, skin to skin for the length of her body. This needed no words now, no instruction. No questions.
A hand slapped loudly three times against the leather of the tent flap, and a raspy female voice called, “Dag Redwing Hickory?”
Dag’s body stiffened, and he swore under his breath. He held Fawn’s face close to his chest as if to muffle her, and didn’t answer.
The slaps were repeated. “Dag Redwing Hickory! Come on, I know you’re in there.”
A frustrated hiss leaked between his teeth. All his stiffening, alas, slackened. “No one in here by that name,” he called back gruffly.
The voice outside grew exasperated. “Dag, don’t fool with me, I’m not in the mood. I dislike this as much as you do, I daresay.”
“Not possible,” he muttered, but sighed and sat up. He ran his hand through his sleep-bent hair, rolled over, and groped for his short trousers.
“What is it?” Fawn asked apprehensively.
“Dowie Grayheron. She’s the alternate for Two Bridge Island on camp council this season.”
“Is it the summons?”
“Likely.”
Fawn scrambled into her shift and trailed after Dag as he shoved through their tent flap and stood squinting in the bright sun.
An older woman, with streaked hair like Omba’s braided up around her head, stood drumming her fingers on her thigh. She eyed Dag’s bed-rumpled look in bemusement, Fawn more curiously. “The camp council hearing for you is at noon,” she announced.
Dag started. “Today? Short notice!”
“I came around twice yesterday, but you were out. And I know Fairbolt warned you, so don’t pretend this is a surprise. Here, let me get through this.” She spread her legs a trifle, pulled back her shoulders, and recited, “Dag Redwing Hickory, I summon you to hear and speak to grave complaints brought before the Hickory Lake Camp Summer Council by Dar Redwing Hickory, on behalf of Tent Redwing, noon today in Council Grove. Do you hear and understand?”
“Yes,” Dag growled.
“Thank you,” she said. “That’s done.”
“But I’m not Dag Redwing,” Dag put in. “That fellow no longer exists.”
“Save it for the grove. That’s where the argumentation belongs.” She hesitated, glancing briefly at Fawn and back to Dag. “I will point out, you’ve been summoned but your child-bride has not. There’s no place for a farmer in our councils.”
Dag’s jaw set. “Is she explicitly excluded? Because if she has been, we have a sticking point before we start.”
“No,” Dowie admitted reluctantly. “But take it from me, she won’t help your cause, Dag. Anyone who believed before that you’ve let your crotch do your thinking won’t be persuaded otherwise by seeing her.”
“Thank you,” said Dag in a voice of honeyed acid. “I think my wife is pretty, too.”
Dowie just shook her head. “I’m going to be so glad when this day is over.” Her sandals slapped against her heels as she turned and strode off.
“There’s a woman sure knows how to blight a mood,” Dag murmured, his jaw unclenching.
Fawn crept to Dag’s side; his arm went around her shoulders. She swallowed, and asked, “Is she any relation to Obio Grayheron?”
“He’d be her cousin by marriage. She’s head of Tent Grayheron on this island.”
“And she has a vote on the council? That’s…not too encouraging.”
“Actually, she’s one I count as friendly. I patrolled for a year or so with her back when I was a young man, before I left to exchange and she quit to start her family.”
If that was friendly, Fawn wondered what hostile was going to be like. Well, she’d soon find out. Was this all as sudden as it seemed? Maybe not. The camp council question had been a silence in the center of things that Dag had been skirting since they’d returned from Raintree, and she’d let him lead her in that circuit. True, he’d plainly been too ill to be troubled with it those first few days. But after?
He doesn’t know what he wants to do, she realized, cold knotting in her belly. Even now, he does not know. Because what he wanted was impossible, and always had been, and so was the alternative? What was a man supposed to do then?
They dressed, washed up, ate. Dag did not return to cracking nuts, nor Fawn to spinning. He did get up and walk restlessly around the campsite or into the walnut grove, wherever he might temporarily avoid the other residents moving about their own early chores. When the dock cleared out from the morning swimmers, he went down and sat on it for a time, knees bent under his chin, staring down into the water. Fawn wondered if he was playing at that old child’s amusement he’d showed her, of persuading the inedible little sunfish that clustered in the dock’s shade to rise up and swim about in simple patterns. The sun crept.
As the shadows narrowed, Dag came up under their awning and sat beside her on his log seat. He propped his right elbow on his knee, neck bent, staring down at his sandals. At length he looked up toward the lake, face far away—Fawn couldn’t tell if he was trying to memorize the view or not seeing it at all. She thought of their visits to the lily marsh. This place nourishes him. Would he starve in his spirit, exiled? A man might die without a mark on him, from having his ground ripped in half.
She took a breath, sat straight. Began, “Beloved.”
His face turned sideways to her in a fleeting smile. He looked tired.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” He seemed for an instant if he wanted to amend that bluntness in some reassuring fashion, but then just let it stand.
She angled her face away. “I wasn’t going to tell you this story, but now I think I will. When you were first gone to Raintree, I knitted up another pair of socks like those you’d been so pleased with, and took them to your mother for a present. A peace offering, like.”
“Didn’t work.” It wasn’t a guess, nor a chiding; more of a commiseration.
Fawn nodded. “She said—well, we said several things to each other that don’t matter now. But one thing she said sticks. She said, once a patroller sees a malice, he or she doesn’t ever put another thing—or person—ahead of patrolling.”
“I do wonder sometimes how she was betrayed, and who the patroller was. My father, I suspect.”
“Did sound like,” Fawn conceded. “But not with another woman, I don’t guess.”
“Me, either. Something Aunt Mari once let slip—Dar and I once may have had a sister who died as an infant in some tragic way. He says he doesn’t remember any such thing, so she would have had to be either before or within a few years after he was born. If so, she was buried in a deep, deep silence, because Father never mentioned her, either.”
“Huh.” Fawn considered this. “Could be…Well.” She bit her lip. “I’m no patroller, but I have seen a malice, and if there’s anything your mama was right about, it’s that. She said if you didn’t love me enough, you’d choose the patrol.” She held up a hand to stem his beginning protest. “And that if you loved me beyond all sense—you’d choose the patrol. Because you couldn’t protect me for real and true any other way.”
He subsided, silenced. She raised her face to meet his beautiful eyes square, and went on, “So I just want you to know, if you have to choose the patrol—I won’t die of it. Nor be worse off for having known and loved you for a space. I’ll still be richer going down the road than when you met me, by far, if only for the horse and the gear and the knowing. I never knew there was as much knowing as this to be had in the whole world. Maybe, looking back, I’ll remember this summer as a dream of wonders…even the nightmare parts. If I didn’t get to keep you for always, leastways I had you for a time. Which ought to be magic enough for any farmer girl.”