Lois Bujold - The Sharing Knife - Beguilement

Dag said, “I’m willing to try for the binding strings if you are, Aunt Nattie.

It sure would change the argument, up home. If it doesn’t work, we’re no worse off than we were, except for the disappointment, and if it does… we’re that much farther along.”

“Farther along to where?” asked Nattie.

Dag gave a wry snort. “We’ll all find out when we arrive, I expect.”

“That’s a fair saying,” allowed Nattie amiably. “All right, patroller. You got yourself a bargain.”

“You mean you’ll speak for us to Mama and Papa?” Fawn wanted to jump up and squeal. She stopped it down to a more demure squeak, and leaped to the bed to give Nattie a hug and a kiss.

Nattie fought her off, unconvincingly. “Now, now, lovie, don’t carry on so.

You’ll be giving me the heebie-jeebies.” She sat up straight and turned her face once more toward the man across from her. “One other thing… Dag. If you’d be willing to hear me out.”

His brows twitched up at the unaccustomed use of his name. “I’m a good listener.”

“Yeah, I noticed that about you.” But then Nattie fell silent. She shifted a little, as if embarrassed, or… or shy? Surely not… “Before that young Lakewalker fellow left, he gave me one last present. Because I said I was sorry to part never having seen his face. Well, actually, his lady gave it me, I suppose.

She was something of a hand at Lakewalker healings, it seemed, of the sort he did for my poor ankle when first we met.”

“Matching grounds,” Dag interpreted this. “Yes? It’s a bit intimate.

Actually, it’s a lot intimate.”

Nattie’s voice fell to almost a whisper, as if confiding dark secrets. “It was like she lent me her eyes for a spell. Now, he wasn’t too different from what I’d pictured, sort of homely-handsome. Hadn’t expected the red hair and the shiny suntan, though, on a fellow who’d been sleeping all day and running around all night. Touch of a shock, that.” She went quiet for a long stretch. “I’ve never seen Fawn’s face, you know.” The offhand tone of her voice would have fooled no one present, Fawn thought, even without the little quaver at the end.

Dag sat back, blinking.

In the silence, Nattie said uncertainly, “Maybe you’re too tired. Maybe it’s…

too hard. Too much.”

“Um…” Dag swallowed, then cleared his throat. “I am mightily tired this night, I admit. But I’m willing to try for you. Not sure it’ll work, is all. Wouldn’t want to disappoint.”

“If it don’t work, we’re no worse off than we were. As you say.”

“I did,” he agreed. He shot a bleak smile at Fawn. “Change places with me, Spark?”

She scrambled off Nattie’s bed and took his spot on her own, as he sat down beside Nattie. He hitched his shoulders and slipped his arm out of his sling.

“You be careful with that arm,” warned Fawn anxiously.

“I think I can lift it from the shoulder all right now, if I don’t try to wriggle my fingers too much or put any pressure on it. Nattie, I’m going to try to touch your temples, here. I can use my fingers for the right side, but I’m afraid I’ll have to touch you with the backside of my hook on the left, if only for the balance. Don’t jump around, eh?”

“Whatever you say, patroller.” Nattie sat bolt upright, very still. She nervously wet her lips. Her pearl eyes were wide, staring hard into space.

Dag eased up close to her, lifting his hands to either side of her head. Except for a somewhat inward expression on his face, there was nothing whatsoever to see.

Fawn caught the moment only because Nattie blinked and gasped, shifting her eyes sideways to Dag. “Oh.” And then, more impatiently, “No, don’t look at that dumpy old woman. I don’t want to see her anyhow, and besides, it isn’t true. Look over there.”

Obligingly, Dag turned his head, parallel with Nattie’s if rather above it.

He smiled at Fawn. She grinned back, her breath coming faster with the thrill shivering about the room.

“My word,” breathed Nattie. “My word.” The timeless moment stretched. Then she said, “Come on, patroller. There isn’t hardly nothing human in the wide green world could be as pretty as that.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Dag. “You’re seeing her ground as well as her face, you know. Seeing her as I do.” “Do you, now,” whispered Nattie. “Do you. That explains a lot.” Her eyes locked hungrily on Fawn, as if seeking to memorize the sightless vision. Her lids welled with water, which glimmered in the candlelight.

“Nattie,” said Dag, his voice a mix of strain and amusement and regret, “I can’t keep this up much longer. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, patroller. It’s enough. Well, not that. But you know.”

“Yes.” Dag sighed and sat back, slumping. Awkwardly, he slipped his splinted arm back in its sling, then bent over, staring at the floor.

“Are you sick again?” asked Fawn, wondering if she should dash for a basin.

“No. Bit of a headache, though. There are things floating in my vision.

There, they’re fading now.” He blinked rapidly and straightened again. “Ow. You people do take it out of me. I feel as though I’d just come off walking patterns for ten days straight. In the worst weather. Over crags.”

Nattie sat up, her tears smearing in tracks like water trickling down a cliff face. She scrubbed at her cheeks and glared around the room that she could no longer see. “My word, this is a grubby hole we’ve been stuffed in all this time, Fawn, lovie. Why didn’t you ever say? I’m going to make the boys whitewash the walls, I am.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” said Fawn. “But I won’t be here.”

“No, but I will.” Nattie sniffed resolutely.

After a few more minutes to recover her stability, Nattie planted her cane and hoisted herself up. “Well, come on, you two. Let’s get this started.”

Fawn and Dag followed her out past the weaving room; once through the door to the kitchen, Fawn cuddled in close to Dag’s left side, and he let his arm drift around behind her back and anchor her there, and maybe himself as well. The whole family was seated around the lamplit table, Papa and Mama and Fletch on the near end, Reed and Rush and Whit beyond. They looked up warily. Whatever conference they were having, they’d kept their voices remarkably low; or else they hadn’t been daring to talk to one another at all.

“Are they all there?” muttered Nattie.

“Yes, Aunt Nattie.”

Nattie stepped up to the center of the kitchen and thumped the floor with her cane, drawing herself up in full Pronouncement Mode such as Fawn had very seldom seen, not since the time Nattie had so-finally settled the argument for damages with the irate Bowyers over the twins’ and Whit’s cow-racing episode, years ago.

Nattie drew a long breath; everyone else held theirs.

“I’m satisfied,” Nattie announced loudly. “Fawn shall have her patroller. Dag shall have his Spark. See to it, Tril and Sorrel. The rest of you lot”—she glared to remarkable effect, when she put her mind to it, the focused blankness making her eyes seem quite uncanny—“behave yourselves, for once!”

And she turned and walked, very briskly, back into her weaving room. Just in case anyone was foolish enough to try to challenge that last word, she gave her cane a jaunty twirl and knocked the door closed behind her.

Dag woke late from a sodden sleep to find that his next duty in this dance was to ride with Fawn and her parents to West Blue to register their intentions with the village clerk, and to beg his official attendance on the wedding. Fawn was fussed and nervous getting Dag shaved, washed up, and dressed, which confused him at first, because she’d had the help down to a fairly straightforward routine, and despite his fatigue he wasn’t being gracelessly cranky this morning. He finally realized that at last they would be seeing people outside of her family—ones she’d known all her life. And vice versa. It would be the first view most of West Blue would have of Dag the Lakewalker, that lanky fellow Fawn Bluefield dragged home or however he was now known to local gossip.