Mama nodded to Fawn’s cousins. “You girls give us a minute.”
Nattie rose to her feet, endorsing this. “Come along, chickies, give the bride a breather with her mama.” She shepherded Fawn’s helpers out to her weaving room and closed the door quietly behind them.
Mama said, “In a few minutes, you’ll be a married woman.” Her voice was stretched somewhere between anxious and bewildered. “Sooner than I expected.
Well, I never expected anything like this. We always meant to do right by you, for your wedding. This is all so quick. We’ve done more preparing for Fletch.”
She frowned at this felt injustice.
“I’m glad it’s no more. This is making me nervous enough.”
“You sure about this, Fawn?”
“Today, no. All my tomorrows, yes.”
“Nattie’s kept your confidences. But, you know, if you want to change your mind, we can stop this right now. Whatever trouble you think you’re in, we could manage it somehow.”
“Mama, we’ve had this conversation. Twice. I’m not pregnant. Really and truly.” “There are other kinds of troubles.”
“For girls, that’s the only one folks seem to care about.” She sighed. “So how many out there are saying I must be, for you to let this go forward?”
“A few,” Mama admitted.
A bunch, I’ll bet. Fawn growled. “Well, time’ll prove ‘em wrong, and I hope you’ll make them eat their words when it does, ’cause I won’t be here to.”
Mama went around behind her and fussed with her hair, which needed nothing.
“I admit Dag seems a fine fellow, no, I’ll go farther, a good man, but what about his kin? Even he doesn’t vouch for your welcome where you’re going. What if they treat you bad?”
I’ll feel right at home. Fawn bit down on that one before it escaped. “I’ll deal. I dealt with bandits and mud-men and blight bogles. I can deal with relatives.” As long as they’re not my relatives.
“Is this sensible?”
“If folks were sensible, would anyone ever get married?”
Mama snorted. “I suppose not.” She added in a lower voice, “But if you start down a road you can’t see the end of, there’s a chance you’ll find some dark things along it.”
About to defend her choice for the hundredth time, Fawn paused, and said simply,
“That’s true.” She stood up. “But it’s my road. Our road. I can’t stand still and keep breathin’. I’m ready.” She kissed her mama on the cheek. “Let’s go.”
Mama got in one last, inarguable maternal sigh, but followed Fawn out. They collected Nattie and Ginger and Filly along the way. Mama made a quick circuit of the kitchen, finally set aside her towel, straightened her dress, and led the way into the parlor.
The parlor was jammed, the crowd spilling over into the hall. Papa’s brother Uncle Hawk Bluefield and Aunt Rose and their son still at home; Uncle and Aunt Roper and their two youngest boys, including the successful water-lily finder; Shep Sower and his cheery wife, always up for a free feed; Fletch and Clover and Clover’s folks and sisters and the twins, inexplicably well behaved, and Whit and Papa.
And Dag, a head above everyone but still looking very surrounded. The white shirt fit him well. There hadn’t been time for smocking or embroidery, but Nattie and Aunt Roper had come up with some dark green piping to set off the collar and cuffs and button placket. The sleeves were made generous enough to fit over his splints, and over his arm harness on the other side, with second buttons set over to tighten the cuffs later. There had been just enough of the shell buttons left to do the job. Fawn had whisked his sling away from him yesterday long enough to wash and iron it, so it didn’t look so grubby even though it was growing a bit tattered. He was wearing the tan trousers with fewer old stains and mends, also forcibly washed yesterday. His worn knife sheath, riding on his left hip, looked so much a part of him as to be almost unnoticeable despite its wicked size.
A bit of spontaneous applause broke out when Fawn appeared, which made her blush. And then Dag wasn’t looking at anything else but her, and it all made sense again. She went and stood beside him. His right arm twitched in its sling, as though he desperately wanted to hold her hand but could not. Fawn settled for sliding her foot and hip over, so that they touched along the side, a reassuring pressure. The sense of strain in the room, of everyone trying to pretend this was all right and be nice for Fawn’s sake, almost made her want them all to revert back to their normal relaxed horribleness, but not quite.
Shep Sower stepped forth, smiled, cleared his throat, and called them all to attention with a few brief, practiced words. To Fawn’s relief, he glanced at Dag and skipped over his usual dire wedding jokes, which everyone else here had likely heard often enough to recite themselves anyhow. He then read out the marriage contract; the older generation listened with attention, nodding judiciously or raising eyebrows and exchanging glances now and then. Dag, Fawn, her parents, the three adult couples, and Fletch and Clover all signed it, Nattie made her mark, and Shep signed and sealed it all.
Then Papa brought out the family book and laid it open on the table, and much the same exercise was repeated. Dag stared curiously over Fawn’s shoulder at the pages, and she thumbed back a bit through the entries of births, deaths, and marriages and land swaps, purchases, or inheritances to silently point out her own birth note and, several pages earlier, the note of her own parents’
wedding, with the names and countersigned marks of the witnesses—many long dead, a few still right here in this same room doing this same task.
Then Dag and Fawn, coached by Shep, said their promises. There had been a bit of a debate about them, yesterday. Dag had shied at the wording, all the farmer pledges to plow and plant and harvest in due season, since he said he wasn’t likely to be doing any of those things and for a wedding vow he ought to be speaking strict truth if ever he did. And as for guarding the land for his children, he’d been doing that all his life for everybody’s children. But Nattie had explained the declarations as a poetical way of talking about a couple taking care of each other and having babies and growing old together, and he’d calmed right down. The words did sound odd in his mouth, here in this hot, crowded parlor, but his deep, careful voice somehow gave them such weight it felt as if they might be used to anchor ships in a thunderstorm. They seemed to linger in the air, and all the married adults looked queerly introspective, as if hearing them resonating in their own memories. Fawn’s own voice seemed faint and gruff in her ears by comparison, as though she were a silly little girl playing at being a grown-up, convincing no one.
At this point in the usual ceremony it would be time to kiss each other and go eat, but now came the string-binding, about which most everyone had been warned in carefully casual terms. Something to please Fawn’s patroller, and in case that seemed too alarming, Nattie will be doing it for them. Papa brought out a chair and set it in the middle of the room, and Dag sat in it with a nod of thanks. Fawn rolled up Dag’s left sleeve; she wondered what was going through his head that he chose to so expose his arm harness to view. But the dark cord with the copper glints was revealed, circling his biceps, Fawn’s own cord having been out in plain sight all along.
Papa then escorted Nattie up, and she felt along and found everything, cords and arm and wrist. She pulled loose the bow knots and collected both cords in her hands, winding them about one another, murmuring half-voiced blessings of her own devising. She then rewrapped the combined cords in a figure eight around Dag’s arm and Fawn’s, and tied them with a single bow. She held her hand on it, and chanted: “Side by side or far apart, intertwined may these hearts walk together.” Which were the words Dag had given Nattie to say, and reminded Fawn disturbingly of the words on Kauneo’s thighbone-knife that Dag had carried for so long aimed at his own heart. Possibly the burned script had been meant to recall just such a wedding chant, or charm.