Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

The Lakewalker woman must have written this directive some time before she died, Fawn realized. Fawn imagined her sitting in a Lakewalker tent, tall and graceful like the other patroller women she’d glimpsed; writing tablet balanced on the very thigh that she must have known would come to bear the words, if things went ill. Had she pictured this knife, made from her marrow? Pictured Dag using it someday to drink his own heart’s blood in turn? But she could not ever, Fawn thought, have pictured a feckless young farmer girl fumbling it into this strange confusion, a lifetime—at any rate, Fawn’s lifetime—later.

Brow furrowed, Fawn slipped the sharing knife out of sight again in its sheath.

To Dag’s approval, Fawn dozed off again after lunch. Good, let her sleep and make up her blood loss. He’d had enough practice to translate the gore on the dressings to a guess as to the amount. When he mentally doubled the volume to make up for the fact that she was about half the size of most men he’d nursed, he was very thankful that the bleeding had plainly slowed.

He came in from checking on the bay mare, now idling about in the front pasture he’d repaired by pulling rails from the fence opposite, to find Fawn awake and sitting up against the back kitchen wall. Her face was drawn and quiet, and she pulled bored fingers through her curls, which were abundant, if tangled.

She peered up at him. “Do you own a comb?”

He ran his hand through his hair. “Does it look that bad?”

Her smile was too ghostly for his taste, though the quip was worth no more.

“Not for you. For me. I usually keep my hair tied up, or it gets in an awful mess.

Like now.”

“I have one in my saddlebag,” he offered wryly. “I think. It sifts to the bottom. Haven’t seen it in about a month.”

“That, I do believe.” Her eyes crinkled just a little, then sobered again.

“Why don’t you wear your hair fancy like the other patrollers?”

He shrugged. “There are a lot of things I can do one-handed. Braiding hair isn’t one of them.”

“Couldn’t someone do it for you?”

He twitched. “Doesn’t work if no one’s there. Besides, I need enough other favors.”

She looked puzzled. “Is the supply so limited?”

He blinked at the thought. Was it? Shrewd question. He wondered if his passion for proving himself capable and without need of aid, so earnestly undertaken after his maiming, was something a man might outgrow. Old habits die hard.

“Maybe not. I’ll look around upstairs, see what I can find.” He added over his shoulder, “Lie flat, you.” She slid back down obediently, though she made a face.

He returned with a wooden comb found behind an upended chest. It was gap-toothed as an old man, but it served, he found by experiment. She was sitting up again, the cloth-wrapped hot stone laid aside, another promising sign.

“Here, Spark; catch.” He tossed the comb to her, and studied her as she jerked up her hand in surprise and had it bounce off her fingers.

She looked up at him in sudden curiosity. “Why did you call Watch! when you threw the knife pouch at me?”

Quick, she is. “Old patroller training trick. For the girls—and some others—who come in claiming they can’t catch things. It’s usually because they’re trying too hard. The hand follows the eye if the mind doesn’t trip it. If I yell at them to catch the ball, or whatever, they fumble, because that’s the picture they have in their heads. If I yell at them to count the spins, it goes right to their hand while they’re not attending. And they think I’m a marvel.” He grinned, and she smiled shyly back. “I didn’t know if you had played throwing games with those brothers of yours or not, so I took the safe bet. In case it was the only one we got.”

Her smile became a grimace. “Just the throwing game where they tossed me into the pond. Which wasn’t so funny in winter.” She eyed the comb curiously, then started in on the end of one tangle.

Her hair was springy and silky and the color of midnight, and Dag couldn’t help thinking how soft it would feel to his touch. Another reason to wish for two hands. The smell of it, so close last night, returned to his memory. And perhaps he had better go check on that horse again. In the late afternoon, Fawn complained for the first time of being hot, which Dag seemed to take as a good sign. He claimed he was sweltering, set up a padded seat out on the shaded porch floor, and permitted her up just long enough to walk out to it. She settled down with her back against the house wall, staring out into the bright summer light. The green fields, and the darker greens of the woods, seemed deceptively peaceful; the horse grazed at the far end of the pasture, The burned outbuilding had stopped smoldering. Clothing, hers and his from yesterday, lay damply over the fence rail in the sun, and Fawn wondered when Dag had laundered it. Dag lowered himself to her left, stretched out his legs, leaned his head back, and sighed as the faint breeze caressed them.

“I don’t know what’s keeping my patrol,” he remarked after a time, opening his eyes again to stare down the lane. “It’s not like Mari to get lost in the woods.

If they don’t show soon, I’ll have to try and bury those poor dogs myself.

They’re getting pretty ripe.”

“Dogs?”

He made an apologetic gesture. “The farm dogs. Found ‘em out behind the barn yesterday. The only animals that weren’t carried off, seemingly. I think they died defending their people. Figured they ought to be buried nice, maybe up in the woods where it’s shady. Dogs ought to like that.”

Fawn bit her lip, wondering why this made her suddenly want to burst into tears when she had not cried for her own child.

He glanced down at her, his expression growing diffident. “Among Lakewalker women, a loss like yours would be a private grief, but she would not be so alone. She’d maybe have her man, closest friends, or kin around her. Instead, you’re stuck with me. If you”—he ducked his head nervously—“need to weep, be sure that I wouldn’t mistake it for any lack of strength or courage on your part.”

Fawn shook her head, lips tight and miserable. “Should I weep?”

“Don’t know. I don’t know farmer women.”

“It’s not about being a farmer.” She held out her hand, which clenched. “It’s about being stupid.”

After a moment, he said in a very neutral tone, “You use that word a lot.

Makes me wonder who used to whip you with it.”

“Lots of people. Because I was.” She lowered her gaze to her lap, where her hands now twisted the loose fabric of her gown. “It’s funny I can tell you this.

I suppose it’s because I never saw you before, or will again.” The man was carrying out her revolting blood clots, after all. Before yesterday, the very thought would have slain her with embarrassment. She remembered the fight in the cave, the bear-man… the deathly breath of the malice. What was a mere stupid story, compared to that?

His silence this time took on an easy, listening quality. Unhurried. She felt she might fill it in her own good time. Out in the fields, a few early-summer insects sang in the weeds.

In a lower voice she said, “I didn’t mean to have a child. I wanted, wanted, something else. And then I was so scared and mad.”

Seeming to feel his way as cautiously as a hunter in the woods, he said,

“Farmer customs aren’t like ours. We hear pretty lurid songs and tales about them.

Your family—did they cast you out?” He scowled; Fawn was not sure why.

She shook her head harder. “No. They’d have taken care of me and the child, if they’d been put to it. I didn’t tell them. I ran away.”