Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

Everyone froze in equal horror. Whit opened his lips, looked around, and then closed them flat.

Sorrel recovered his voice first, hoarse and low. “Whit, don’t move. You got no shoes on.”

Tril cried, “Reed! Rush! How could you!” And began sobbing into her sewing.

Their mother’s anger might have rolled right off the pair, Dag thought, but the genuine heartbreak in her voice seemed to cut them off at the knees. They both began incoherent apologies.

“Sorry does no mending!” she cried, tossing the scrap of cloth aside. It was flecked with blood where she had inadvertently driven her needle into her palm in the shock of the crash. “I’ve had it with the whole pack of you—!”

The Bluefield uproar was so painful in Dag’s ground, which he tried to close but could not for the strength of his link to Fawn, that he found himself dropping to his knees. He stared at the pieces of glass on the floor in front of him as the angry and anguished voices continued overhead. He could not shut them out, but he could redirect his attention; it was an old, old method of dealing with the unbearable.

He slipped his splinted right arm from its sling, and with it and his hook he clumsily pushed the large pieces of the bowl as close together as he could.

Those splinters, now—most of those glass splinters were no bigger than mosquitoes. If he could bounce a mosquito, he could move one splinter, and if he could move one, he could move two and four and more… He remembered the sweet song of this bowl’s ground as it had rested in the sunset light of their refuge in Glassforge, gifting rainbows, and he began a low humming, searching up and down for the right note, just… there.

The glass splinters began to wink, then shift, then rise and flow over the boards of the parlor floor. He shifted them not with his hand, but with the ground of his hand. The ground of his left hand, the hand that was not there, and the very thought was so terrifying he shied from it.

But even that terror did not break his concentration. The splinters flew up, circling and swirling like fireflies around the bowl to find their places once more. The bowl glowed golden along all the spider-lines of its fractures, like kiln fire, like star fire, like nothing earthly Dag had ever seen. It scintillated, reflecting off his draining, chilling skin. He held the pure note faintly through his rounded lips. The lines of light seemed to melt into rivulets, streams, rivers of pale gold running all through the glass, then spread out like a still lake under a winter sunrise.

The light faded. And was gone.

Dag came back to himself bent over on his knees, his hair hanging around his face like a curtaining fringe, mouth slack, staring down at the intact glass bowl. His skin felt as cold and clammy as lard on a winter morning, and he was shivering, shuddering so hard his stomach hurt. He pressed his teeth together so that they would not chatter.

The only sounds in the room were of eight people breathing: some heavily, some rapidly, some choked with tears, some wheezing with shock. He thought he could pick out each one’s pattern with his ears alone. He could not force himself to look up.

Someone—Fawn—thumped down on her knees before him. “Dag… ?” she said uncertainly. Her small hand reached out to touch his chin, to tilt his face upward to meet her wide, wide eyes.

He pushed the bowl forward with his left arm. It was hot to the touch but not dangerously so. It did not melt or disappear or explode or fall apart again into a thousand pieces. It just sang slightly as it scraped across the floor, the ordinary song of ordinary glass that had never been slain or resurrected. He found his voice, or at least a close imitation of his voice; it sounded utterly unfamiliar in his own ears, as though it was coming from underwater or underground. “Give that back to your mama.”

He pressed his wrist cuff to her shoulder and levered himself upright. The room wavered around him, and he was suddenly afraid he was going to vomit, making a mess right there on the middle of the parlor floor in front of everyone. Fawn clutched the bowl to her breast and rose after him, her eyes never leaving his face.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He gave her a short headshake, wet his cold lips, and stumbled for the parlor door to the central hall. He hoped he could make it out onto the front porch before his stomach heaved. Tril, on her feet, was hovering nearby, and she stepped back as he passed. Fawn followed, pausing only long enough to thrust the bowl into her mother’s hands.

Dag heard Fawn’s voice behind him, low and fierce: “He does that for hearts, too, you know.”

And she marched forthrightly after him.

Fawn followed Dag onto the front porch and watched in worry as he sat heavily on the step, his left elbow on his knee and his head down. In the west behind the house, the sky was draining of sunset colors; to the east, above the river valley, the first stars were pricking through the darkening turquoise vault.

The air grew soft as the day’s heat eased. Fawn settled down to Dag’s right and raised her hand uncertainly to his face. His skin was icy, and she could feel the shudders coursing through his body.

“You’ve gone all cold.”

He shook his head, swallowing. “Give me a little…” In a few moments he straightened up, taking a deep breath. “Thought I was going to spew my nice dinner on my feet, but now I think not.”

“Is that usual? For after doing things like that?”

“No—I don’t know. I’m not a maker. We’d determined that by the time I was sixteen. Hadn’t the concentration for it. I needed to be moving all the time.

I am not a maker, but that…”

“Was?” she prompted when he stayed stopped.

“That was a making. Absent gods.” He raised his left arm and rubbed his forehead on his sleeve.

She tucked her arm around him, trying to share warmth; she wasn’t sure how much good it did, but he smiled shakily for the attempt. His body was chilled all down his side. “We should go into the kitchen by the hearth. I could fix you a hot drink.”

“When I can stand up.” He added, “Maybe go around the outside of the house.”

Where they would not have to hazard her family. She nodded understanding.

“Groundwork,” he began, and trailed off. “You have to understand. Lakewalker groundwork—magic, you might say—involves taking something and making it more so, more itself, through reinforcing its ground. There’s a woman at Hickory Lake who works with leather, makes it repel rain. She has a sister who can make leather that turns arrows. She can make maybe two coats a month. I had one once.”

“Did it work?”

“Never had occasion to find out while I had it. I saw another turn a mud-man’s spear, though. Iron tip left nothing but a scratch in the hide. Of the coat, not of the patroller,” he clarified.

“Had? What happened to it?”

“Lent it to my oldest nephew when he began patrolling. He handed it on to his sister when she started. Last I knew my brother’s youngest took it with him when he went out of the hinterland. I’m not sure the coats are all that useful, for they’re like to make you careless, and they don’t protect the face and legs.

But, you know… you worry for the youngsters.” His shudders were easing, but his expression remained strained and distant. “That bowl just now, though… I pushed its ground back to purest bowl-ness, and the glass just followed. I felt it so clear. Except that, except that…” He leaned his forehead down against hers, and whispered fearfully, “I pushed with the ground of my left hand, and I have no left hand and it has no ground. Whatever was there, for that minute, is gone again now. I’ve never heard of anything like that. But the best makers don’t speak of their craft much except to their own. So I don’t know. Don’t… know.”