Fawn choked on her cider. He probably should have glanced aside first to see she wasn’t trying to swallow anything. His fork-spoon hand was no good for patting her on the back, but she recovered her breath m a moment. “Sorry,” she wheezed.
“Down the wrong pipe.” She looked up sideways at him in muffled, possibly, alarm. Or dismay. He hoped it wasn’t horror.
“Papa,” she muttered, “is fifty-three.”
All right, a little horror. They would deal with it.
Tril was staring. “You look forty, if that.”
Dag lowered his eyelids in nonargument.
“Fawn,” Papa Bluefield announced grimly, “is eighteen.”
Beside him, Fawn’s breath drew in, sharply aggravated.
Dag tried, almost successfully, to keep his lips from curling up. It was hard, when she was clearly boiling so much inside she was ready to pop. “Really?”
He eyed her blandly. “She told me she was twenty. Although from my vantage, it scarcely makes a difference.”
She hunched her shoulders sheepishly. But their eyes connected, and then she had trouble not laughing too, and all was well.
Papa Bluefield said in an aggravated tone, “Fawn had an old bad habit of telling tall tales. I tried to beat it out of her. I should have beat her more, maybe.”
Or less, Dag did not say aloud.
“As it happens, I come from a very long-lived kin,” Dag said, by way of attempted repair. “My grandfather I told you of was still spry till his death at well over a hundred.” One hundred twenty-six, but there was more than enough mental arithmetic going on around the table right now. The brothers, particularly, seemed to be floundering, staring at him in renewed wariness.
“It all works out,” Dag went on into the too-long pause. “If, for example, Fawn and I were to marry, we would actually arrive at old age tolerably close together. Barring accidents.”
All right, he’d said the magic word, marry. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t done something like this before, long ago. Well, all right, it had been nothing at all like this. Kauneo’s kin had been overpowering in an entirely different manner. The terror rippling through him felt the same, though. Papa Bluefield growled, “Lakewalkers don’t marry farmer girls.”
He couldn’t grip Fawn’s hand below the table for reassurance; all he could do was dig his fork into her thigh, with unpredictable but probably unhelpful results at the moment. He did glance down at her. Was he about to jump off this cliff alone or with her? Her eyes were wide. And lovely. And terrified. And…
thrilled. He drew a long breath.
“I would. I will. I wish to. Marry Fawn. Please?”
Seven stunned Bluefields created the loudest silence Dag had ever heard.
Chapter 15
In the airless moment while everyone else around the table was still inhaling, Fawn said quickly, “I’d like that fine, Dag. I would and will and wish, too.
Yes. Thank you kindly.” Then she drew breath.
And then the storm broke, of course.
As the babble rose, Fawn thought Dag should have tackled her family one at a time instead of all together like this. But then she noticed that neither Mama nor Aunt Nattie was adding to the rain of objections, and truly, whenever Papa turned to Mama for support he received instead a solemn silent stare that seemed to unnerve him. Aunt Nattie said nothing at all, but she was smiling dryly.
So maybe Dag had been doing more than just thinking, all this day.
Fletch, possibly in imitation of Papa’s earlier and successful attempt to embarrass Dag about his age, came up with, “We don’t take kindly to cradle robbing around these parts, Lakewalker.”
Whit, his tone mock-thoughtful but his eyes bright with the excitement of battle, put in, “Actually, I’m not sure if he’s robbing cradles, or she’s robbing graves!”
Which made Dag wince, but also offer a wry headshake and a low murmur of,
“Good one, Whit.”
It also made Fawn so furious that she threatened to serve Whit’s pie on his head instead of his plate, or better still his head on his plate instead of his pie, which drew Mama into the side fray to chide Fawn, so Whit won twice, and smirked fit to make Fawn explode. She hated how easily they all could make her feel and act twelve, then treat her so and feel justified about it; if they kept this up much longer, she was afraid they’d succeed in dropping her back to age two and screaming tantrums right on the floor. Which would do just about nothing for her cause. She caught her breath and sat again, simmering.
“I hear Lakewalker men are landless, and do no work ‘cept maybe hunting,”
said Fletch, determinedly returning to the attack. “If it’s Fawn’s portion you’re after, let me tell you, she gets no land.”
“Do you think I could carry farm fields away in my saddlebags, Fletch?” said Dag mildly.
“You could stuff in a couple o’ chickens, maybe,” Whit put in so helpfully.
Dag’s eyes crinkled. “Be a bit noisy, don’t you think? Copperhead would take such offense. And picture the mess of eggs breaking in my gear.”
Which made Whit snicker unwillingly in turn. Whit, Fawn decided, didn’t care which side he argued for, as long as he could stir the pot and keep it boiling.
And he preened when folks laughed at his jokes. Dag had him half-wrapped around his thumb already.
“So what do you want, eh?” asked Reed aggressively, frowning.
Dag leaned back, face growing serious; and somehow, she was not sure how, commanding attention all around the table. It was as if he suddenly grew taller just sitting there. “Fletch brings up some very real concerns,” Dag said, with a nod of approval at Fawn’s eldest brother that puffed him up a bit despite himself. “As I understand it, if Fawn married a local lad, she would be due clothing, some furniture, animals, seed, tools, and a deal of labor to help set up her new house. Except for her personal gear, it’s not Lakewalker custom or expectation that I should have any of that. Nor could I use it. But neither should I like to see her deprived of her rights and due-share. I have an alternate plan for the puzzle.”
Papa and Mama were both listening seriously too, as if they were all three speaking the same language of a sudden. “And what would that be, patroller?”
said Papa, brows now pinched more in thought than in antagonism and not nearly as red in the face as he’d been at first.
Dag tilted his head as if in thanks, incidentally emphasizing his permission to speak without interruptions from juniors. “I of course undertake to care for and protect Fawn for as long as I live. But it’s a plain fact that I don’t lead a safe life.” A slight, emphatic tick of his wrist cuff on the table edge was no accident, Fawn thought. “For now, I would have her leave her marriage portion here, intact, but defined—written out square in the family book and in the clerk’s record, witnessed just as is right. No man knows the hour of his shari—of his end. But if ever Fawn has to come back here, I would have it be as a real widow, not a grass one.” He tilted his head just enough toward Fawn that only she saw his slight wink, and she was as cheered by the wink as chilled by the words, so that her heart seemed to spin unanchored. “She—and her children, if any—would then have something to fall back on wholly separate from my fate.”
Mama, face scrunched up in concentration, nodded thoughtfully at this.
“In the hope that such a day would be long from now or never, it would have to be attested by Fletch and Clover as well. Can’t help thinking that Clover would be just as glad to put off paying out that due-share, with all the work she’ll have here starting up.”
Fletch, opening his mouth, shut it abruptly, as it finally dawned that not only would he not be required to disgorge any family resources right away, but also that Fawn would be out of the house when he brought his new bride home. And only by the slightest brightening of Dag’s eyes did Fawn realize that Dag had hit Fletch precisely where he was aiming, and knew it.
A blessed silence fell just long enough to finish consuming pie. Fawn was reattaching Dag’s hook before Whit wiped his lips, and said in brotherly bewilderment, “But why ever would you want to marry Fawn in the first place?”
The tone of his voice alone threw Fawn back into a pit of unwelcome memories of youthful mockery. As if she were the most unlikely candidate for courtship in the whole of West Blue and for a hundred miles beyond in any direction, as if she were a cross between a village idiot and a freak of nature. What was that stupid phrase that had worked so well, repeatedly, to rile her up? Hey, Runt!
You must have been drinking ugly juice this morning! And how those words had made her feel like it.
“Need I say?” asked Dag calmly.
“Yes!” said Fletch, in his stern I-am-so-paternal voice that made Fawn long to kick him even more than she longed to kick Whit, and even made Papa cock a bemused eyebrow at him.
“Yeah, old man,” said Rush, scowling. Of all at the table but Nattie, the twins had said the least so far, but none of it had been favorable. “Give us three good reasons!”
Dag’s eyelids lowered briefly in a cool yet strangely dangerous assent; but his side glance at Fawn felt like a caress after a beating. “Only that? Very well.”
He held their attention while he appeared to think, deliberately clearing a silence in which to speak. “For the courage of her heart, which I saw face down the greatest horrors I know without breaking. For the high and hungry intelligence of her mind, which never stops asking questions, nor thinking about the answers. For the spark of her spirit, which could teach bonfires how to burn. That’s three. Enough for going on with.”
He rose from the table, his hook hand briefly touching her shoulder. “All this is set beside me, and you ask me instead if I want dirt? I do not understand farmers.” He excused himself with a polite nod all around, and a murmured,
“Evening, Aunt Nattie,” and strode out.
Fawn wasn’t sure if she was more thrilled with his words or with his timing.
He had indeed figured out the only way to get in the last word in a bunch of Bluefields—shoot it into the target and run.
And whatever comment, mockery, or insult might have risen in his wake was undercut to shamed silence by the sound of Mama, weeping quietly into the apron clutched up to her face. The debate didn’t end there, naturally. It mostly broke up into smaller parts, as they took on family members in ones or twos, although Fawn gave Dag credit for trying for efficiency, that first night. The twins cornered her the next afternoon in the old barn, where she had gone to give Grace and Copperhead some treats and a good brushing.
Rush leaned on the stall partition and spoke in a voice of disgust. “Fawn, that fellow is way too old for you. He’s older than Papa, and Papa’s older than rocks. And he’s all so banged up. If you were married, you’d have to look at that stump he hides, I bet. Or touch it, ew.”
“I’ve seen it,” she said shortly, brushing bay hairs into the air in a cloud.
“I help him with his arm harness, now his other arm’s broke.” And a great deal of other assistance that she was not inclined to bring to the twins’ attention.
“You should see his poor gnarly feet if you want to see banged up.”
Reed sat on a barrel of oats across the aisle with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them, rocking uneasily. He said in a thin tone, “He’s a Lakewalker. He’s evil.”
This brought Fawn’s irritated and vigorous brushing to an abrupt halt; Grace twitched her ears in protest. Fawn turned to stare. “No, he’s not. What are you going on about?”
“They say Lakewalkers eat their own dead to make their sorcery. What if he makes you have to eat corpses? Or worse? What does he really want you for?”
“His wife, Reed,” said Fawn with grim patience. “Is that so very hard to believe?”
Reed’s voice hushed. “What if it’s to make magic?”
He already does that would likely not be a useful answer. “What, are you afraid I’ll be made a human sacrifice? How sweet of you, Reed. Sort of.”
Reed unfolded indignantly. “Don’t you laugh. It’s true. I saw a Lakewalker once who’d stopped to eat in the alehouse in West Blue. Sunny Sawman dared me to peek in her saddlebags. She had bones in them—human bones!”
“Tell me, was she wearing her hair in a knot at the nape of her neck?”
Reed stared. “How’d you know?”
“You’re lucky you weren’t caught.”
“I was. She took me and shook me and told me I’d be cursed if I ever touched anything of a Lakewalker’s again. She scowled so—she told me she’d catch and eat me!”
Fawn’s brows drew down. “How old were you, again?”
“Ten.”
“Reed, for pity’s sake!” said Fawn in utter exasperation. “What would you tell a little boy you caught rifling your bags so as to scare him enough never to do it again? You’re just lucky you didn’t run into Dag’s aunt Mari—I bet she could have come up with a tall tale that would have made you pee yourself into the next week.” She was suddenly glad the sharing knife was stored with her own things, and wondered it she ought to warn Dag to watch his saddlebags.
Reed looked a bit taken aback, as if this point had never before occurred to him, but he went on anyhow. “Fawn, those bones were real. They were fresh.”
Fawn had no doubt of it. She also had no desire to start down some slippery slope of explanation with the twins, who would only ask her how she knew and badger her endlessly when her answers didn’t fit their notions. She finished brushing Grace’s flanks and turned her attention to her mane and forelock.
Rush was still mired in the age difference. “It’s sickening to think of a fellow that old pawing you. What if he got you pregnant?”
She was definitely not ready for that again so soon, but it was hardly a prospect that filled her with horror. Perhaps her and Dag’s future children, if any, wouldn’t be saddled with being so blasted short—now, there was a heartening thought. She smiled softly to herself as Grace nudged her velvety nose into her hand and whuffled.