Lois Bujold: Passage

Fawn joined them as the Fetch swung past the point and the Gray River could at last be seen. She shaded her eyes with her hand, her lips parted in an unimpaired world-wonder that eased Dag’s heart. The waters of the two great streams did not at once mingle, but ran along side by side for some miles, clear-brown and opaque.

“The Gray really is gray!” said Fawn.

“Yep,” said Dag. “It drains the whole of the Western Levels. It’s well-wooded along here, but about a hundred miles due west, depending, the trees fail and the blight gradually starts. It’s said that after the first great malice war, the blight reached the river here, and the whole Gray was dead from the poison, but it’s long since come alive again. I find that a pretty encouraging tale, myself.”

The westering sun was playing hide-and-seek behind cold blue-gray clouds with glowing edges that filled the sky from horizon to horizon. “I think that’s the widest sky I ever did see,” Fawn said. “Is it because the land’s so level out here?”

“Uh-huh,” said Berry.

“And I thought Raintree was flat!” Whit marveled.

“It’s beautiful. In a severe sort of way. Never seen a sky like that at home.” Fawn turned completely around, drinking in all that her eyes could hold. “That’s a thing to come see, all right.”

In a maternal spirit, she dragged Hod outside to share the sight; he gaped gratifyingly, but, rubbing his red nose, soon went back inside to hug the hearth. Despite the chilly wind, Fawn sat at Dag’s feet for the next half-hour, watching for when the two streams would at last become indistinguishable. During the stretches when they had merely to ship their oars and float on, Whit and Berry doubled up boat cloaks, guarding each other from the blustery discomfort.

Dag found himself thinking, I’m so glad we brought Whit. He wished the boy all good speed and fortune in his courtship, because he thought Fawn must warmly welcome such a tent-sister. And my tent-sister too, how unexpected! The most important thing about quests, he decided, was not in finding what you went looking for, but in finding what you never could have imagined before you ventured forth.

Keep that in mind, old patroller.

As the year slid toward its darkest turning, the late dawns and early sunsets squeezed the daylight hours down to less than a double handful. After encountering a spurt of snow flurries the morning before they’d passed the Confluence, Boss Berry took advantage of having three Lakewalker pilots aboard and reversed her ban on night running—also because she no longer needed the daylight, Fawn figured, to watch for wrecks that might be the Briar Rose. For five nights straight they floated down the wide channel far into the evenings, until nearly half the winding river miles between the Confluence and the Graymouth were behind them, and the cold breath of winter eased into something, if still damp, much less penetrating.

Then one afternoon the wind swung around to the south, the clouds broke up, and the air grew downright warm. Berry relented enough to tie up the Fetch during a spectacular sunset in the immense western sky and declare an evening of rest. After a string of nights handing out hasty meals to the off-watch crew to eat while crowding around the hearth, Fawn celebrated by fixing a bang-up sit-down supper, with everyone squeezed together around the table for once, even Bo, though she made sure his food was soft.

The meal was eaten with appetite enough, but in uncharacteristic and rather weary silence. After a glance around at the long faces, Fawn swallowed her last bite of fried potato and declared, “Well, this is no good. You’re all looking as glum as a chorus of frogs with no pond. We should do something after the dishes to ginger folks up. How about archery lessons? Everybody liked those. We still have plenty of lanterns in stock. And there’s hardly any wind tonight.”

Hawthorn and Hod looked interested, but Whit scrubbed his hand over his face and said, “Naw. I don’t think that would be so much fun anymore.”

Dag’s eyelids had been drooping in a combination of fatigue and food-induced mellowness; at this, they flicked open. He watched Whit, but did not at once speak.

Fawn glanced at Dag, then badgered, “Why not?”

Whit shrugged, made a face, and seemed about to fall into hunched silence, but then got out, “It feels funny to be making a game out of it, after I shot a man.”

“Big Drum?” said Berry. “Whit, we’re right glad you shot Big Drum.”

“No, not him.” Whit made a frustrated waving-away gesture. “Besides, I didn’t kill Big Drum; that fellow who cut off his head later did that. It was the other one. The first one.”

“What first one?” Fawn asked carefully.

“It was the night before, at the cave. Some fellows ran out trying to get away, which was exactly why Dag put us bowmen where he did, I guess. I was so scared and excited, I couldn’t hardly see what I was doing, but…my first shot, my very first shot ever, went right through this bandit’s eye. Killed him outright.”

Fawn winced and murmured Eew. Hawthorn, unhelpfully, made a very impressed Ooh.

Whit waved again. “It wasn’t the eye thing that bothered me. Well, it did, but that wasn’t…” He drew air through his nostrils, and tried, “It was too easy.”

Bo rubbed his rough chin in some sympathy, but rumbled, “Whit, some men need killin’.”

Berry put in perhaps more shrewdly, “It doesn’t need to be catching.”

“It’s not that, exactly,” said Whit, his brows drawing in.

Dag spoke for the first time, so unexpectedly that Fawn gave a little jump. “No, but you’re not the same person, after. It changes you in your ground, and that’s a fact. Whit, Barr, and Remo all crossed that line for the first time that night at the cave, and there’s no stepping back over it. You have to go on from where you are.”

“I suppose you did the same, once,” said Remo diffidently. “So long ago you don’t remember, likely.”

“Oh, I remember,” said Dag.

Nods all around the table at this received wisdom.

Dag set his tankard down so hard his drink slopped out. “Absent gods, do you people have to swallow down every blighted thing I say? Don’t you ever choke?”

Fawn’s eyes widened, and hers were not the only ones; surprised heads turned toward Dag all around the table. Hod flinched.

“What the blight’s bit you?” said Barr. Saving Fawn the trouble of composing a more tactful question to the same effect.

Dag drummed his fingers, grimaced, blurted: “I killed Crane by ground-ripping a thin little slice out of his spinal cord. That’s how I dropped him on the deck. From twenty feet away, mind you. Remember that mosquito back in Lumpton Market, Whit? Just like that. But inside his body, same as I do healing groundwork.”

“Oh,” said Whit, his eyes growing big. “I, um, didn’t realize you could do that.”

“I realized. Even back then.” Dag’s glance darted around the table.

“It was too easy.”

Fawn recalled, then, where she’d heard that exact phrase before, if in a different tone of voice, and it wasn’t just now from Whit: Crane’s confession. But Whit hadn’t been there for that. His echo of the renegade’s words was accidental. Dag’s isn’t, she thought. Did Barr and Remo catch the twisted meanings, too? Do I?

“That was what you did to Crane? Ground-ripped him?” said Barr blankly.

“I didn’t know any person could do that,” said Remo, more warily. “I thought only malices…?”

“It’s a very weak version of the same thing, yes. I have reason to believe it’s an advanced maker’s skill as well, or some variant, but since it’s come out—come back—in me I haven’t had a chance to find a maker skilled enough to ask. You can easily defend against it by closing your grounds, which is why I had to wait for a moment when Crane opened his. It only worked because I took him by surprise.”