Passage

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “Dag, I found the best boat!” Fawn un-hugged him just enough to lift her face to his. Like a morning-glory blossom. “Berry says we can have passage in exchange for being her crew, if you think that’d work out—”

  “I already told him that part,” said Whit.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself—” began Dag.

  The blond girl arrived and folded her arms tightly across her chest, frowning. She said to Fawn, “This your Dag?”

  Fawn turned out of Dag’s one-armed embrace, but didn’t relinquish his hand. “Yes,” she said proudly.

  The frown became tinged with dismay. “But he’s a Lakewalker!”

  Though it seems there’s some question about that, today. Dag nodded politely at the boat boss. “Ma’am.”

  The frown deepened to a scowl. “Fawn, I know Lakewalkers. A Lakewalker wouldn’t no more marry a farmer girl than—than he’d marry my Daisy-goat over there. I don’t know if you’re trickin’ me or if he’s trickin’ you, but I do know I don’t want no trickster-man on my boat!”

  Fawn and Whit, in chorus, went into the usual explanation about the wedding braids and West Blue that was beginning to exhaust Dag. It wasn’t just Boss Berry, or the suspicious stares from the stirred-up flatties. It was all that atop the scene in the Pearl Riffle patrol headquarters. Dag felt suddenly like a swimmer caught in an eddy between two shores, unable to land on either. He braced himself: Nobody said this was going to be easy. But he hoped he wasn’t about to lose Fawn their boat-passage. Or her new friend.

  Berry touched Fawn’s wedding cord, held out in demonstration; her face grew, if not wholly convinced, less tense. Her gaze flicked over the hook. “They say you know boats,” she said to Dag at last, the first words she’d spoken to him directly.

  He repeated the polite nod. “I’ve never worked a flatboat or a keel. I’ve taken narrow boats, big and small, down both the Grace and the Gray, though never the whole length in one trip.”

  “I’ve never had no Lakewalker as boat crew, before. Never even seen one doing that, on any farmer boat.” But her voice was growing more doubtful than hostile.

  “I started out this trip to do a lot of things no one had done before.” Dag glanced at Fawn’s anxious, upturned face and bestirred himself. “I’ve been on high water and low, and I know a snag from a sawyer. And I could spot you the channel through the sand bars and shoals in water thick enough to plow, day or dark.”

  “Oh, your groundsense can do that?” said Fawn in delight. “Yes, of course it would!”

  “It’s true,” said Berry, “you don’t hardly ever see a narrow boat hung up. You Lakewalkers use your magic to pilot, do you?”

  “In a way.” If Berry decided to let Dag and his party aboard, he would have days ahead to explain the subtleties of groundsense. Dag tilted his head at the grazing Copperhead. “Do you have room for my horse?”

  “Your wife”—Berry’s mouth hesitated over the phrase, then went on—“Fawn mentioned the horse. Can he share the pen with Daisy?”

  “He could be persuaded, yes.”

  “Well, then.” The boat boss’s pale eyes were still flat with caution; Dag thought they would gleam more blue if she smiled. “I guess you’ll do.”

  Whit whooped in triumph; Fawn grinned. Dag was infected by their enthusiasm to the extent of a crooked smile. Even Berry’s lips twisted a bit as she made her way back across the narrow board and down onto her deck.

  The bleary man had been listening unmoved to the debate, his head canted; the boy had stopped milking the goat and hung over the bow, wide-eyed. “So, Bo,” said Berry to the bleary man, with a jerk of her head toward the three on the shore. “Looks like we got us a Lakewalker oarsman.”

  One bushy gray eyebrow cocked up; he spat over the side, but only drawled, “Well, that’s different.” He followed her as she ducked indoors.

  “How do we get Copper onto the boat?” asked Fawn suddenly, as if she’d only just noticed the problem. “He’s a lot bigger than Daisy-goat.”

  “More planks,” said Dag succinctly.

  “Oh.”

  “Fawn, I got my glass goods!” Whit began excitedly, staring after Berry. Dag could only think, Pull in your tongue, boy, before you step on it.

  Fawn’s brow wrinkled in worry; Dag guessed she was thinking much the same thing. She took Whit by the wrist and lowered her voice. “Come over here like we’re getting Copper.” Dag strolled after, till they were all out of earshot of the boat.

  Fawn pretended to be fussing with her saddlebags. “Whit, you went chasing off before I had a chance to tell you something. Berry isn’t just taking the Fetch downstream for a trading boat. Her papa took a boat down last fall, and never came back. No word. She means to go look for him.”

  “Oh, we can help—” Whit began.

  Fawn overrode this: “Her papa, her big brother, and her betrothed. All gone missing.”

  Whit’s face was suddenly wiped clean of expression. After a moment he said, “She’s betrothed?”

  “Yes, or maybe bereaved. Even she don’t know which right now. So try for a little, a little…I don’t know. Just try not to be a blighted fool, all right?”

  Whit blinked. “Um. Yeah. Well…” He gulped valiantly. “Well, we still need a boat. And she still needs a crew, right?”

  “Right,” said Fawn, watching him carefully.

  “Girl like that, in a fix like that, she deserves all the help she can get. A good pair of hands. Three pairs. Well, two and a half.” His grin was awkward, unfelt.

  “And if you make one more of your stupid hook-jokes,” Fawn added levelly, “I swear I’ll clout you on the ear.”

  “Um. Right.”

  Dag started unloading saddlebags, thinking, We need some rain. Soon.

  They all settled in quicker than Fawn would have guessed. Berry’s uncle Bo accepted Dag’s presence without comment, though her little brother Hawthorn, who was rising twelve but not yet come to his growth spurt, gaped round-eyed and mute, and tended to skitter away when Dag loomed too close. But Fawn and Berry joined forces on cooking dinner, Berry mainly showing Fawn where and how things aboard were cleverly kept, and after eating it Bo and Hawthorn both smiled at Fawn a lot.

  Thinking she had better start as she meant to go on, Fawn made sure the washing-up fell mainly to Whit and Hawthorn. As the night chilled and the river mist rose, everyone gathered around the remains of the cook fire in the little hearth, augmented by the light of a rock-oil lantern, and were encouraged to drink up as much of the foaming cider as they could hold.

  Whit wandered to peer out the back hatch, then came and settled himself again on his stool with a sigh. “Think it’ll rain soon?” he asked. Of the air generally, as near as Fawn could tell, and with no expectation of a reply.

  Bo held out one battered boot and wriggled it. “My weather toe says no rain tonight.”

  Whit looked skeptical. “You have a toe that can tell the weather?”

  “Yep. Ever since it got busted, that time.”

  Berry grinned over the rim of her tankard. “Hey, don’t you go questioning Uncle Bo’s bad toe. It’s as good as a coin toss any day.”

  “The weather in the Grace Valley can change sudden, this time o’ year,” Bo advised Whit amiably. “Rain, snow, wind—fog. Why, one time when I was workin’ a keel up from Silver Shoals, the fog came down so solid you couldn’t hardly see your hand in front of your face. It was so thick it held the boat back, it did, and finally the boss said to put down our poles, ’cause he was anchoring for the night. Next morning, we woke up to all this mooing, and found we’d run right up over that fog for a good half-mile onto shore, and the keel was stuck in some farmer’s cow-pasture.”

  Whit sat up, snorting cider out his nose. He rubbed it on his sleeve, and said, “Go on, you did not!”

  Hawthorn, looking equally skeptical, said, “So how’d they get the keelboat back in the river?”

  “Rollers,” said Bo blandly.

  Hawthorn’s lips
twisted in doubt at this logical-sounding reply.

  Bo’s head went back in mock-offense, those hairy gray eyebrows seeming to jig. “No, it’s as true as I speak! Twisters, now, those are good for a tale or two as well.”

  “Twisters?” said Fawn uneasily. “You get twisters on the river?”

  “Now and then,” said Berry.

  “You ever been in one?” asked Whit.

  Berry shook her head, but then Dag’s deep voice sounded for nearly the first time that evening. “I was, once, on the upper Gray.”

  Everyone looked around as surprised as if one of the chairs had suddenly spoken. In the gloom almost beyond the fire circle, legs stretched out, Dag raised his tankard in return and drank. Only Fawn saw his indrawn breath, sensed that he was about to make an effort that did not come easily to him.

  “There were six of us, paddling a big narrow boat full of furs down from Luthlia for the river trade. The storm came up sudden, and the sky turned dark green. We pulled in hard to the western bank and tied everything to the trees, which was not so reassuring when the trees started to rip out of the ground and tumble away like weeds. Strangest sight I ever saw, then—the wind had picked up a horse, this white horse, out of a pasture somewhere to the west, and it passed us by straight overhead, its legs churning away like it was galloping. Galloping across the sky.”

  A little silence followed this; Bo’s gray eyebrows climbed. Then Hawthorn said, “So, what happened to the horse? Did you see it come down?”

  “We were all too busy gripping the ground and being terrified, right about then,” said Dag. “The poor thing was killed, likely.”

  Hawthorn’s face scrunched up in dismay; Dag glanced from it to Fawn, and swiftly offered, “Or it might have spun down and landed in a pond. Swum out, shook its dizzy head, and started eating grass.”

  Hawthorn brightened slightly. So did Whit, Fawn noticed, and bit her lip.

  “That was a tall tale, right?” said Whit, in a tone of some misgiving.

  Dag let his eyes widen innocently. “Was it supposed to be?”

  “Yes, that’s how the contest goes, in farmer,” Whit explained earnestly. “You’re supposed to top the tall tale with another tall tale.”

  “Oh, sorry,” said Dag, ducking his head. “You’re not allowed to tell true tales, then? I can see I’m going to be at a disadvantage.”

  “I…” Whit paused and looked confused. “Uh…”

  Berry scrubbed her lips. Bo’s face was unreadable, but he did raise his tankard at Dag in a delicately conceding gesture.

  Berry, after a glance comparing the length of Dag to the length of her bunks, offered a place for Fawn and Dag’s dual bedroll amongst the forward cargo. It was dank and dark and smelled of the stack of hides that cushioned their blankets, but Berry also donated a length of coarse cloth, which she and Fawn tacked up to the low beams and around for privacy. During this wordless concession to Fawn’s recently married state, Berry looked a trifle pensive, but she bade the pair good-night without comment.

  So, it seemed the Dag-deprivation that Fawn had feared on this crowded leg of the journey was not to be. A stack of hides had no betraying rope nets to creak in time with any movement in the bodies so supported. Dag had only to muffle her giggles with a lot of kisses, which he seemed quite willing to do, as they undertook the pleasant task of finding each other in the pitchy shadows. She was reminded that his groundsense worked just the same in the dark as in the day. She missed the sight of him, bliss to her eyes, but a careless candle was like to set the curtains on fire anyhow, defeating the aim of all this smothered discretion.

  After, lying up under his arm in her favorite position with her ear to his heart, she whispered, “Was that story about the flying horse really true?”

  “Yep.” He added, “I’ll amend it next time. I can see I need to add in that pond.” His chest rumbled in an unvoiced laugh.

  “Depends on your audience, I expect. Some boys’d likely want to hear all about how the critter burst when it hit the ground.”

  “It probably did,” he said ruefully.

  “I like Hawthorn,” Fawn decided upon reflection. “He seems kindhearted, for a boy. But not shy or scared with it.” Which said good things about Berry, who’d had the raising of him. “Children and animals, you can usually tell how they’ve been treated. I mean…think of poor Hod.”

  “I’d rather not,” sighed Dag.

  They curled tightly into each other, and even the unrhythmic blend of snores from the bunks aft, so few paces away, could not keep her awake in this cozy harbor.

  Dag woke in a vastly better mood. He occupied the morning letting Hawthorn and Daisy show him and Copperhead to the patch of meadow just up Possum Run, where the boatmen grazed their animals. They had the place nearly to themselves. Dag spent a peaceful couple of hours stretched out under a tree dozing while Copperhead munched grass, which also allowed him to avoid Whit and his energetic scheme for the day of transferring his cargo, crate by crate, from the goods-shed to the Fetch. After failing to recruit Dag, Whit had tried to rope in Fawn, but she cannily claimed to be too busy with stocking the flatboat’s larder in support of her more lavish style of cooking, a task no one would let him impede.

  After a lunch that testified to the truth of Fawn’s excuses, Dag retired to the rear deck. He settled down on a crate with his back to the cabin wall, out of sight of the neighbors. As he’d passed over the plank to and from shore earlier, he’d collected the usual quota of curious stares from the boat folks on the two flats moored to either side of them, cushioned, he thought, by his grudging acceptance by the boss and little crew of the Fetch. Berry, it seemed, was held in some respect by this floating community. He eyed her empty trot lines, hanging limply over the stern, and wondered if he ought to undertake to catch some fish by his own methods for everyone’s dinner, to show the value of an ex-patroller boatman. Cleaning fish was clearly a two-handed chore, however; it would have to fall to Whit. Dag grinned.

  Now, if only this hazy blue autumn day would turn cloudy and rain…

  Voices from the bow indicated Whit was back with his borrowed barrow and another crate, but then his swift footsteps pounded through the cabin. Whit stuck his head through the rear hatch and said uneasily, “Dag? I think you’d better come out here.”

  Now what? Reluctantly, Dag sat up. “Where? Why?”

  “Up to the bow. It’s…sort of hard to explain.”

  Whit ducked back in. Dag stretched himself up and strode across the roof instead, the better to spare his head from the low beams inside. He came to the edge to find Boss Berry sitting with her legs dangling, bemusedly regarding the scene below.

  Clutching Dag’s stick, Hod perched on a barrel in the bow next to the goat’s pen, his long face worried and white around the mouth. Fawn fussed around him. Whit popped out the front hatch and gestured anxiously up at Dag.

  “I ran into him up at the goods-shed,” Whit explained. “He said he was hunting for you.”

  Looking at Hod in some bewilderment, Dag eased over the roof edge and thumped to the deck. He was not best pleased to realize they’d acquired an audience. Two flatties from the boat moored closest to them leaned on their own side-rail and gawked with all the interest of men being entertained by a storyteller.

  “Lakewalker!” said Hod, glancing up at him with a fleeting smile that faded to uncertainty.

  “Hello, Hod.” Dag gave him a nod. “What brings you here?” Surely Tanner and Mape had planned to leave at dawn on their two-day rattle back to Glassforge. “Is anything the matter?”

  Hod, his throat bobbing, said abruptly, “I brought your stick back!” He held out Dag’s hickory staff as if in evidence.

  “Well…” Dag scratched his head in confusion. “That’s right thoughtful of you, Hod, but it wasn’t necessary. I can cut another in the woods. It’s certainly not something you should have walked all this way on your bad leg to bring me!”

  Hod ducked his head and gulped some more. �
�No, well, yes. My knee. It still hurts.”

  “I’m not surprised. What is it, a mile down to the Bend?” Dag sucked his lip. To say That wasn’t too bright to Hod seemed a pretty pointless remark.

  “I want—I wondered—if you’d do that thing you do again. What you called it. The Lakewalker magic.”

  “A ground reinforcement?” Dag hazarded.

  Hod nodded vigorously. “Yeah, that thing. The thing that makes me not hurt.”

  “What would make your knee not hurt would be to stay off it the way you were told,” said Dag sternly.

  “Please…” said Hod, rocking on the barrel. His hand went out toward Dag, dropped back to his knee. His face scrunched up; his eyes, Dag was startled to note, were damp with held-back tears. “Please. No one didn’t ever make it stop hurting like that before. Please?”

  Fawn patted him somewhat helplessly on the shoulder and looked at Dag in consternation. Dag sighed and knelt down before the feckless boy, laying his right hand over the knee. “Well, let’s see what’s happening in there.”

  Gingerly, he extended his groundsense. His ground-glue was holding, certainly, the flesh healing well, but the joint was indeed newly inflamed from the imprudent exercise. He frowned.

  “Now, Hod,” said Fawn, watching Dag in worry, “you know Dag can’t just do those medicine maker tricks anytime. They’re very tiring for him. He has to have time to recover, between.”

  Hod swallowed. “I’ll wait.” Gazing earnestly at Dag, he sat up straight on his barrel as if prepared to take a post there for the rest of the day, or maybe the week.

  Dag rocked back on his heels and eyed the boy. “You can’t wait that long. Didn’t Mape and Tanner want to leave early?” If they’d been delayed by this foolish side trip of Hod’s, they were going to be irate, Dag thought.

  “They did.”

  “What?” said Whit, startled. “They didn’t just ditch you here, did they?”