Lois Bujold: Passage

Fawn looked at him in surprise. “I never knew that.”

“I never talked about it.”

“Hm,” said Aunt Nattie.

Papa sat back and looked at Dag. “Your people aren’t exactly forthcomin’ about these things, you know. In Raintree or Oleana.”

“I know.” Dag ducked his head. “Back when there were few farmers north of the Grace, it scarcely mattered. To the Lakewalkers in the hinterlands north of the Dead Lake—I’ve walked up that way, twice—there’s still no need to do anything differently, because there are no farmers there. Where it matters is in the border country, where things are changing out from under us—like Greenspring. And like West Blue.” He glanced around the table. The food on his plate had all gone cold, Fawn noticed.

Fletch said, “I never got the sense Lakewalkers wanted farmer help.”

“They don’t, mostly,” Dag admitted. “No farmer can fight a malice directly. You can’t close your grounds in defense, for one, you can’t make…certain tools.” He blinked, frowned, seemed to take aim like a rider trying to clear a fence on a balky horse, and blurted out, “Sharing knives. You can’t make sharing knives to kill malices.” Swallowing, he went on, “But even if you can’t be fighters, you might find better ways to avoid being fodder. Everyone alive should be taught how to recognize blight-sign, for one—as routinely as how to identify poison ivy or rattlesnakes or, or how not to stand on the wrong side of the tree you’re felling.”

“How would you go about teaching everyone alive, patroller?” asked Aunt Nattie, in a curious voice.

“I don’t know,” sighed Dag. “Laid out like that, it sounds pretty crazy. We came upon the Glassforge malice early, this past spring, only because of the chance of Chato’s patrol stopping there and gossiping with the local folks about their bandit problem enough for Chato to realize there was something strange going on. If I could only show folks, somehow…I wouldn’t have to talk.” Dag smiled wanly. “I never was much of a talkin’ man.”

“Eat, Dag,” Fawn put in, and pointed to his plate. Everyone else’s was empty. He took an obedient bite.

“Folks could show off that patch of blight you say is by Glassforge,” Whit suggested. “Then they’d all know what it looks like.”

Clover eyed him. “Why would anybody want to go look at a thing like that? It just sounds ugly.”

Whit sat back and rubbed his nose, then brightened. “Then you should charge ’em money.”

Dag stopped chewing and stared. “What?”

“Sure!” Whit sat up. “If they had to pay, they’d think it was something special. You could get up wagon excursions from Glassforge. Charge five copper crays for the ride, and ten for the box lunch. And the lecture for free. It would get folks talking when they got home, too—What did you see in Glassforge, dear? It could be a nice little business, driving the wagon, making the lunches—it would sure beat pulling stumps, anyways. If I had the cash I’d buy that blight, I would. It’d be better ’n a forty-acre field.”

Fawn didn’t think she’d ever seen Dag look so flummoxed. It was all she could do not to giggle, though she mainly wanted to hit Whit.

“Well, you don’t have any cash,” Fletch pointed out dauntingly.

“Thank the stars,” added Clover, fanning herself with her hand.

“You’d likely throw it down a well.”

“Quit your fooling, Whit,” said Papa impatiently. “Nobody thinks it’s amusin’.”

Whit shrugged, kicked back his chair, and rose to carry off his plate to the sink. Dag, slowly, started chewing again. His eyes, following Whit, had an odd look in them—not angry, though, which surprised Fawn, knowing how seriously Dag took all this. With afternoon chores looming, lunch broke up.

Later, putting their things away in the twins’ old bedroom upstairs, Dag folded Fawn to him and sighed.

“Well, I sure made a hash of that. Absent gods. If I can’t talk to my own tent-family and make them understand, how am I ever going to talk to strangers?”

“I didn’t think you did so badly. It was a lot for them to get around, all at once like that.”

“It was all out of order, I never explained sharing knives, they didn’t half believe me—or else half of ’em didn’t believe me, I wasn’t sure which—it was all—oh, Spark, I don’t know what I’m doing on this road. I’m just an old patroller. I’m surely not the man for this.”

“It was your first try. Who gets everything right the first try?”

“Anyone who wants to live for a second try.”

“That’s for things that’ll kill you if you miss, like…like slaying malices, I suppose. People don’t die of stumbling over a few words.”

“I thought I was going to strangle on my tongue.”

About to hug him around the waist, she pushed off and looked up instead. She said shrewdly, “This isn’t just hard because it’s complicated, or new, is it? Lakewalkers aren’t supposed to talk about these secrets to farmers—are they?”

“Indeed, we are not.”

“How much trouble would you be in with your own folks, if they knew?”

He shrugged. “Hard to say.”

That wasn’t too helpful. Fawn narrowed her eyes in worry, but then just gave up and hugged him tight, because he’d never looked like he needed it more. The breath of his laugh stirred her curls as he dropped a kiss atop her head.

In the pressure of a short-handed harvest and a run of dry weather, Fawn and Dag lost their sitting-guest status almost immediately. Dag didn’t seem to mind, showing both willing and a keen and practical interest in the farm and all its doings. It was all as strange and new to him, Fawn realized, as the very different rhythms of a Lakewalker camp had been to her. She wondered if he was homesick yet.

As usual, the Bluefields combined forces for the ingathering with the Ropers, Aunt Roper being Papa’s sister. The Ropers’ place lay just northwest of their own. Two of their sons and Fawn’s closest cousin, Ginger, were still at home to help out, and amongst them all, they cleared Uncle Roper’s big cornfield in three days. Next was the Bluefield late wheat. Dag proved unexpectedly adept with the long scythe. His arm harness held a wooden wrist-cap over his stump, and besides the hook he possessed an array of clever tools on bolts that he swapped in and out of it, including his specially adapted bow. The tool he usually used for clasping the paddle of a narrow boat on the lake also served to aid his grip on the scythe, and after a little experimentation he seemed to find his way into the swing of the task quite contentedly, so Papa left him to it.

Gleaning had been one of the first chores little hands had been put to, back when Fawn and Ginger and Whit had been only hip-high. They were all bigger now, but the gleaning still had to be done. Fawn crouched and shuffled her way across the bright gold stubble, and thought Clover and Fletch could well stand to be prompt in producing the next generation of shorter harvesters. Along the split-rail fence of the pasture, the farm’s horses lined up in mild-eyed curiosity to watch the strange behavior of their people.

At the end of her row, Fawn stood up to stretch her back and check on Dag, working at the far end of the field with Papa, Uncle Roper and his boys, and Fletch to scythe and bundle sheaves and load them into a waiting cart. Dag looked very tall beside the others, though the sleeves of his homespun shirt were rolled up over a coppery suntan not that much deeper than the men’s, and the hat shading his head, woven of lake reeds, was fringed around the rim just like their straw ones. Whit rose beside her, adjusted the strap of the cloth bag across his shoulder, and followed her gaze.