Chapter Text
Epilogue – Summer + 2
The new boat was coming along nicely, watched closely by Nattie-Mari and May, who each had a personal concern as they were to travel on it to see the sea. Whether Sparkle’s brother Kaunear, or May’s sister June, quite grasped the idea was unclear, but both were happy enough to practice crawling on the grassy slope above the dock, and having brought the busy builders their lunches Fawn was pleased to sit for a while herself, keeping a weather eye, nibbling on some fine cheese Whit had brought from the South, and idly reflecting on the ways life changed, or didn’t.
Kaunear and June, with Little Omba’s brother Thadadus, named for Arkady’s father, were the biggest changes, of course, but while two children were more than twice as time-consuming as one, six didn’t seem a lot worse than three, and Sparkle was surprisingly good at keeping her own weather eye on all of them. Dag swore she was already using groundsense in some measure, and though Fawn had yet to see it through his eyes she had seen how dense Sparkle’s ground already was, with Little Omba’s not so far behind. They also had more help about the place in the shape of five Lakewalker apprentices, one each from Hickory Lake, Tripoint, Bonemarsh, Laurel Gap, and Pearl Riffle, who had a hard enough time coping with the way Dag and Arkady were stretching them that child-minding and even kitchen or laundry chores were sometimes welcome distractions, or excuses. It had meant extending the house to create an apprentice’s dormitory, and knocking through a wall or two to accommodate a bigger dining table, but if the disruption in the doing had been a considerable nuisance, the results were pleasing to everyone, and the satisfactions of teaching a real boon for Dag.
The campaign about half-bloods was also bearing fruit, with Calla’s and Indigo’s children at Tripoint, and far afield, South and North, which Fawn attributed mostly to Sparkle. The witnesses who’d come to Hickory Lake had spoken clearly to camp captains and councils about what they’d seen, and though more folk had come to peer at Sparkle than Fawn could quite be happy with, she couldn’t begrudge the results. Seeing was, after all, believing, and once the Lakewalker mind had grasped an idea properly it tended to take it to heart, especially when a deal of heartache and trouble could thereby be avoided. Oddly, perhaps, Northern outmarriage had actually dropped since it began to be allowed, but those that did happen no longer led to banishings, and in the South a positive reason for accepting that outmarriage needn’t divide kin had been widely accepted with sighs of relief. Circulars reporting more than a dozen half-blood children received back into camps and coming in with sufficient groundsense to patrol at least had powerfully underlined the point, and they were all waiting with interest for a pair from New Moon Cutoff who’d been promised an exchange to Tripoint and Pearl Riffle when they turned eighteen.
There had also been some more Farmer sharings, not in Clear Creek, for which Fawn was thankful, but up around Farmers’ Flats and in Tripoint — mostly older folk tired of living with loss and pain, and one or two untreatable injuries or illnesses. Personal knowledge of what blight bogles did and why they needed killing was still the key, and bones were less often willed, that being a step too far for most while success was yet chancy ; but still. And more general co-operation was truly beginning to flourish across Oleana and Raintree, driven on the Lakewalker side by Medicine Makers who hated refusing treatment to anyone suffering and had seized on unbeguilement, with patrol leaders who knew the value of Farmer goodwill, and among Farmers by a surprised but very real gratitude for such astonishing healing and unexpected offers of help with strayed livestock and the like. Most flatboats now actively sought Lakewalker pilots too, drawing from the retired and mothers with half-grown children, so boat losses and mishaps were sharply down while the coin earned was bringing very welcome ease to camps all along the Grace.
The profits Ma Burrell had already started passing on to Fawn were doing much the same, if more concentratedly. Twice a year, when the first round of spring crops came in and after harvest, a pair of heavily laden wagons rolled north to Hickory Lake and Leech Lake, mostly bearing a great variety of food and jars of ground tonic, but also Tripoint knives, crossbows, spear- and arrow-heads, and anything else useful Fawn thought of and Dag ruled sufficiently mobile — a lightweight handloom or two, with balls of good cotton yarn and wool, Farmer-woven shirts, shifts, and trousers, blankets, cookfire cauldrons and tripods, carefully packed glassware and pottery, paper and ink, any blank knives Dag made, and a balance in coin for the use of patrols that needed it. Mari had observed drily that she and Cattagus had never been so popular, and that plunkin tasted far better as only every other meal, especially with southern spices to liven it some, while by Dam’s laconic and funny account there was as much pure bemusement as happy gratitude at Leech Lake, with a distinct sense that Farmers might be of considerably more interest than anyone was used to supposing.
All in all, then, Fawn thought she had little to complain about, though life always had its sorrows. Cap’n No-Rats had passed peacefully in his sleep two winters back, and when Filly and Ginger had visited last fall, marvelling at Berry’s house and the busy household Fawn deftly ran, she’d had West Blue news that Reed and Rush had abandoned the ground they’d been trying to break, finding it too hard a job, and reportedly headed south to try river-work. Whit had heard nothing of them on the Grace or Gray, and been heard to mutter he wouldn’t trust either of them with a skiff, never mind a flatboat oar, but in the end neither he nor Fawn could muster much concern, however they recognised Tril’s worries. Stupid Sunny was still drinking a deal more than anyone should, and his Violet had locked him out to sleep rough more than once, but that was his lookout ; and half-a-dozen local boys and girls had ridden with Fairbolt’s patrols, who were finding many more Farmer barns and kitchens offering them wary welcomes. Closer to home, one of Pa Plowman’s boys had lost a finger to a scythe he’d been sharpening without minding its balance carefully enough, which was plain foolishness, as most everyone had told him.
Fawn’s reflecting had grown a little sleepy in the warmth, which wouldn’t do, so she heaved herself up and was preparing to gather up children when Arkady, who’d been called to the Clear Creek store to deal with a badly broken arm, came down from the house with Thadadus on his hip and an air Fawn identified after a moment as suppressed excitement. Sparkle sensed it too, and mother and daughter gave him very similar enquiring looks, drawing a return smile.
“We have some visitors waiting, and some more due.”
“Oh?” Fawn waited, then scowled. “And who might they be, Arkady?”
“Wait and see. But everyone should come on up to the house, and I doubt there’ll be much more work done today.”
Dag, though still deeply fascinated by the way boat-building changed the wood’s ground and the effects his ghost hands had on it, had caught Arkady’s excitement and was intrigued. Whit and Berry were more reluctant to lose a dry afternoon’s work, but bowed to Arkady’s urging, while Uncle Bo and Hod were willing enough. Children were distributed and hoisted, and fifty yards short of the house Dag frowned and gave Arkady a long look.
“Two veiled patrollers, sitting with the apprentices?”
Arkady nodded, eyebrows rising. “Yes. I still don’t know how you do that. But you can’t tell who? You know them well.”
Dag frowned some more. “No. It’s tight veiling. It’s just there’s a … space maybe, in the house’s ground, that shouldn’t be there. You ask them to veil?”
“I did. Surprises should be pristine.”
“Fair enough.” Dag consulted Sparkle. “Nothing wrong with wondering a little, is there?”
Fawn was wondering too, though Kaunear was more interested in dozing against her shoulder, but none of her guesses came near the truth, for the tall figures who rose as they entered the kitchen were a smiling Ham and Dam. Dag also stopped short, Sparkle giving her own little grunt of surprise, and hope suddenly surged in Fawn’s heart, but there were proper greetings and embraces before Dag cocked his head.
“Well? I’m guessing it worked, or your faces’d be a lot longer.”
Both nodded, and Ham spoke.
“It did, Dag, and all Lakewalkers are rejoicing. But Sumac has gone to fetch the donors’ kin, so we will hold the tale a while, if we may.”
That made sense, and there were Kaunear and June to introduce as well as much else for tent kin to talk about, while Arkady quietly fetched out a bottle of his best and extra glasses and Fawn, with some help from Sparkle, hastily whipped up a batch of biscuits. She had just taken them out of the stove and set them to cool when Sumac returned, a breathless Ma Burrell, Ma Cropper, and Redbird in tow. More introductions were made, Arkady poured drinks, and with everyone seated round the extended table Ham solemnly set a small cloth bundle before Ma Burrell and Ma Cropper. Ma Burrell slowly unrolled it to reveal a cluster of nine shards.
“We come to tell you that the sharing knife Dag made of Samran’s bone, that Pa Cropper primed, was used on a new-hatched sessile malice a little more than a month back, and worked well.”
Ma Burrell looked at the shards, eyes teary, and Dam leaned forward.
“Very well, truly. Has Dag told you we thought the sharing knife seemed eager to be used?”
Both women and Redbird nodded, and Ma Burrell wiped her eyes before replying.
“He did, Damarod Lakewalker, and I know from Bearfoot Lakewalker and my Samran’s own hand how much he wanted to strike back at bogles for what they did to him, and us all.”
“It was all the hope my Fenton had, after his accident.”
“Their hopes were true. It was my hand on the knife, comin’ behind the malice while Ham and others held its attention, and it leaped to its work.” Dam’s long finger pointed to the shards. “Often there will be only two or three pieces, for all that is needed is for the bone to crack, but that knife all but sprang apart, and the malice had no time to scream before the shared death swept it into dust and nothing. I know Dag and Fawn passed on our thanks for the gift your Samran and your Fenton gave us, but I add now the thanks of all at Leech Lake, and all we have met travellin’ south who asked for our news. Their names will be remembered with honour.”
Ma Burrell was holding one of Ma Cropper’s hands, and Redbird the other.
“Well, now, that’s something all right. Some good come of it all despite everything, Poll.”
“A great good, and a great change, in truth.” Ham spread his hands. “Not only a malice dead, and the world once again saved, but a new and most unexpected resource against all malices. The ballad-makers are at work even now, and this tale will be sung for many a long year.”
“Will it just?” Ma Burrell’s watery smile became fiercer. “Well, you tell those ballad-makers to make sure Dag Lakewalker’s in it too, and Fawn, for without them it wouldn’t none of it have come right.”
“This we know. The tale of Tent Bluefield is already widely sung, but it will be sung some more.” Fawn flapped a hand and Dam grinned. “But we should drink to the courage and memory of our dead, mindin’ our sorrow with joy in their fulfilment.”
They did, Arkady’s potent spirits bringing different tears to several eyes, and after a while the gathering moved out to the porch to share tales of hope, Berry’s fiddle winding slow but joyful tunes through the summer air.