Lois Bujold - Legacy

“He’d be her cousin by marriage. She’s head of Tent Grayheron on this island.”

“And she has a vote on the council? That’s…not too encouraging.”

“Actually, she’s one I count as friendly. I patrolled for a year or so with her back when I was a young man, before I left to exchange and she quit to start her family.”

If that was friendly, Fawn wondered what hostile was going to be like. Well, she’d soon find out. Was this all as sudden as it seemed? Maybe not. The camp council question had been a silence in the center of things that Dag had been skirting since they’d returned from Raintree, and she’d let him lead her in that circuit. True, he’d plainly been too ill to be troubled with it those first few days. But after?

He doesn’t know what he wants to do, she realized, cold knotting in her belly. Even now, he does not know. Because what he wanted was impossible, and always had been, and so was the alternative? What was a man supposed to do then?

They dressed, washed up, ate. Dag did not return to cracking nuts, nor Fawn to spinning. He did get up and walk restlessly around the campsite or into the walnut grove, wherever he might temporarily avoid the other residents moving about their own early chores. When the dock cleared out from the morning swimmers, he went down and sat on it for a time, knees bent under his chin, staring down into the water. Fawn wondered if he was playing at that old child’s amusement he’d showed her, of persuading the inedible little sunfish that clustered in the dock’s shade to rise up and swim about in simple patterns. The sun crept.

As the shadows narrowed, Dag came up under their awning and sat beside her on his log seat. He propped his right elbow on his knee, neck bent, staring down at his sandals. At length he looked up toward the lake, face far away—Fawn couldn’t tell if he was trying to memorize the view or not seeing it at all. She thought of their visits to the lily marsh. This place nourishes him. Would he starve in his spirit, exiled? A man might die without a mark on him, from having his ground ripped in half.

She took a breath, sat straight. Began, “Beloved.”

His face turned sideways to her in a fleeting smile. He looked tired.

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He seemed for an instant if he wanted to amend that bluntness in some reassuring fashion, but then just let it stand.

She angled her face away. “I wasn’t going to tell you this story, but now I think I will. When you were first gone to Raintree, I knitted up another pair of socks like those you’d been so pleased with, and took them to your mother for a present. A peace offering, like.”

“Didn’t work.” It wasn’t a guess, nor a chiding; more of a commiseration.

Fawn nodded. “She said—well, we said several things to each other that don’t matter now. But one thing she said sticks. She said, once a patroller sees a malice, he or she doesn’t ever put another thing—or person—ahead of patrolling.”

“I do wonder sometimes how she was betrayed, and who the patroller was. My father, I suspect.”

“Did sound like,” Fawn conceded. “But not with another woman, I don’t guess.”

“Me, either. Something Aunt Mari once let slip—Dar and I once may have had a sister who died as an infant in some tragic way. He says he doesn’t remember any such thing, so she would have had to be either before or within a few years after he was born. If so, she was buried in a deep, deep silence, because Father never mentioned her, either.”

“Huh.” Fawn considered this. “Could be…Well.” She bit her lip. “I’m no patroller, but I have seen a malice, and if there’s anything your mama was right about, it’s that. She said if you didn’t love me enough, you’d choose the patrol.” She held up a hand to stem his beginning protest. “And that if you loved me beyond all sense—you’d choose the patrol. Because you couldn’t protect me for real and true any other way.”

He subsided, silenced. She raised her face to meet his beautiful eyes square, and went on, “So I just want you to know, if you have to choose the patrol—I won’t die of it. Nor be worse off for having known and loved you for a space. I’ll still be richer going down the road than when you met me, by far, if only for the horse and the gear and the knowing. I never knew there was as much knowing as this to be had in the whole world. Maybe, looking back, I’ll remember this summer as a dream of wonders…even the nightmare parts. If I didn’t get to keep you for always, leastways I had you for a time. Which ought to be magic enough for any farmer girl.”

He listened gravely, not attempting, after his first protest, to interrupt. Trying to sort it out, maybe, for he said, “Are you saying you’re too tired to keep up this struggle anymore?”

She eyed him. “No, that’s you, I think.”

He gave a little self-derisive snort. “Could be.”

“Keep it straight. I love you, and I’ll walk with you down any path you choose, but…this one isn’t my choice to make. It’s yours.”

“True. And wise.” He sighed. “I thought we both chose in that scary little parlor back in West Blue. And yet your choice will be honored or betrayed by mine in turn. They don’t come separately.”

“No. They don’t. But they do come in order. And West Blue, well—that was before either you or I saw Greenspring. That town could’ve been West Blue, those people me and mine. I watched your lips move, counting down that line of dead…To keep you, there’s a lot of things I’d fight tooth and toenail. Your kin, my kin, another woman, sickness, farmer stupidity, you name it. Can’t fight Greenspring. Won’t.”

He blinked rapidly, and for a moment the gold in his eyes looked molten. He swiped the shiny water tracks from his cheekbones with the back of his hand, leaned forward, and kissed her on the forehead, that terrifying kiss of blessing again. “Thank you,” he whispered. “You have no idea how that helps.”

She nodded shortly, swallowing down the hot lump in her own throat.

They went into their tent to change, him out of his short trousers and sandals, her out of her somewhat grubby shift. When, on her knees sorting through his trunk, she tried to hand him up his cleanest shirt, he surprised her by saying, “No—my best shirt. The good one your Aunt Nattie wove.”

He hadn’t worn his wedding shirt since their wedding. Wondering, she shook it out, its folds wrapped in other clothes to keep it from creasing—her green cotton dress, as it happened.

“Oh, yes, wear that one,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “It’s so pretty on you.”

“I don’t know, Dag. It’s awfully farmer-girl. Shouldn’t I dress more Lakewalker for this?”

He smiled crookedly down at her. “No.”

It was disquieting, in this context, to be all gussied up in their wedding-day clothes again. She adjusted the hang of the cord on her left wrist, and the gold beads knocked cool against her skin. Were they to be unmarried in this new noon hour, as if tracing back over some exact path after they had gotten lost? Maybe they had gone astray, somewhere along the way. But fingering the links of events back one by one in her memory, she couldn’t see where.

Dag had picked up his hickory stick, so she guessed they were in for a longish walk to this grove, since he’d stopped using it around the campsite a few days back. She brushed her skirts straight, slipped her shoes on, and followed him out of the tent.

Dag realized he’d walked for a mile without seeing a single thing that had passed his eyes, and it wasn’t because the route was so familiar. His mind seemed to have come to some still place, but he wasn’t sure if it was poised or simply numb. They were passing patroller headquarters when Fawn, uncharacteristically silent till then, asked her first question: “Where is this council grove, anyhow?”