Then Papa brought out the family book and laid it open on the table, and much the same exercise was repeated. Dag stared curiously over Fawn’s shoulder at the pages, and she thumbed back a bit through the entries of births, deaths, and marriages and land swaps, purchases, or inheritances to silently point out her own birth note and, several pages earlier, the note of her own parents’ wedding, with the names and countersigned marks of the witnesses—many long dead, a few still right here in this same room doing this same task.
Then Dag and Fawn, coached by Shep, said their promises. There had been a bit of a debate about them, yesterday. Dag had shied at the wording, all the farmer pledges to plow and plant and harvest in due season, since he said he wasn’t likely to be doing any of those things and for a wedding vow he ought to be speaking strict truth if ever he did. And as for guarding the land for his children, he’d been doing that all his life for everybody’s children. But Nattie had explained the declarations as a poetical way of talking about a couple taking care of each other and having babies and growing old together, and he’d calmed right down. The words did sound odd in his mouth, here in this hot, crowded parlor, but his deep, careful voice somehow gave them such weight it felt as if they might be used to anchor ships in a thunderstorm. They seemed to linger in the air, and all the married adults looked queerly introspective, as if hearing them resonating in their own memories. Fawn’s own voice seemed faint and gruff in her ears by comparison, as though she were a silly little girl playing at being a grown-up, convincing no one.
At this point in the usual ceremony it would be time to kiss each other and go eat, but now came the string-binding, about which most everyone had been warned in carefully casual terms. Something to please Fawn’s patroller, and in case that seemed too alarming, Nattie will be doing it for them. Papa brought out a chair and set it in the middle of the room, and Dag sat in it with a nod of thanks. Fawn rolled up Dag’s left sleeve; she wondered what was going through his head that he chose to so expose his arm harness to view. But the dark cord with the copper glints was revealed, circling his biceps, Fawn’s own cord having been out in plain sight all along.
Papa then escorted Nattie up, and she felt along and found everything, cords and arm and wrist. She pulled loose the bow knots and collected both cords in her hands, winding them about one another, murmuring half-voiced blessings of her own devising. She then rewrapped the combined cords in a figure eight around Dag’s arm and Fawn’s, and tied them with a single bow. She held her hand on it, and chanted:
“Side by side or far apart,
intertwined may these hearts
walk together.”
Which were the words Dag had given Nattie to say, and reminded Fawn disturbingly of the words on Kauneo’s thighbone-knife that Dag had carried for so long aimed at his own heart. Possibly the burned script had been meant to recall just such a wedding chant, or charm.
The words, the cords, and the two hearts willing: all had to be present to make a valid marriage in Lakewalker… not eyes, but groundsense, that subtle, invisible, powerful perceiving. Fawn wondered desperately how it was people made their assent work the strings’ grounds that way. Thinking really hard about it seemed, for her, about as effective as being a five-year-old wishing hard for a pony, eyes scrunched up in futile effort, because a child had no other power by which to move the world.
Doing has no need of wishing.
She would do her marriage then, hour by hour and day by day with the work of her hands, and let the wishing fall where it would.
Dag had his head cocked as though he were listening to something Fawn could not hear; his eyelids lowered in satisfaction, and he smiled. With some difficulty, he lifted his right arm and positioned the fingers of his hand about one end of the knot, gathering up the two gold beads from the two different cords; Fawn, at his nod, grasped the other pair. Together, they pulled the knot apart, and Fawn let the cords unwind from around each other. Fawn then tied her cord on Dag’s arm, and Dag, with Nattie’s help, or rather Nattie with Dag’s hindrance, tied his cord around Fawn’s wrist, this time with square knots. Dag glanced up under his lids at her with a muted expression, joy and terror and triumph compounded, with just a touch of wild unholy glee. It reminded Fawn of the loopy look on his face right after they’d slain the malice, actually. He leaned his forehead against Fawn’s and whispered, “It’s good. It’s done.”
Lakewalker ground magic of a most profound sort. Worked in front of twenty people. And not one of them had seen it. What have we done?
Still sitting, Dag snaked his left arm around her and snugged her in for a proper kiss, though it felt disorienting to be lowering her face toward his instead of raising it. With an effort, they both broke off before the kiss continued at improper length. She thought he just barely refrained from pulling her into his lap and ravishing her right there. She was way overdue for a good ravish. Later, his bright eyes promised.
And then it was time to go eat.
The boys had set up trestle tables in the west yard under the trees, so there would be room for everyone to sit down who wanted to. One whole table was devoted to the food and drink, which people circled and descended upon like stooping hawks, carrying loaded plates away to the other tables. Women banged in and out of the kitchen after things forgotten or belatedly wanted. With only the four families plus the Sowers present, it was literally a quiet wedding, with no music or dancing attempted, and as it chanced, there were no little ones present to fall down the well or out of trees or stable lofts and keep the parents alert, or crazed.
There followed eating, drinking, eating, talking, and eating. When Fawn hauled Dag and his plate to the food trestle for the third time, he bent and whispered fearfully, “How much more of this do I have to get down so as not to offend any of those formidable women I’m now related to?”
“Well, there’s Aunt Roper’s cream-and-honey pie,” said Fawn judiciously, “and Aunt Bluefield’s butter-walnut cake, and Mama’s maple-hickory nut bars, and my apple pies.”
“All of them?”
“Ideally. Or you could just pick one and let the rest be offended.”
Dag appeared to cogitate for a moment, then said gravely, “Slap on a big chunk of that apple pie, then.”
“I do like a man who thinks on his feet,” said Fawn, scooping up a generous portion.
“Yeah, while I can still see them.”
She smirked.
He added plaintively, “That dimple’s going to be the death of me, you know?”
“Never,” she said firmly, and led him back to their seats.
She slipped away soon after to her bedroom to change into her riding trousers and shoes and the sturdier shirt that went with them. She left the lilies in her hair, though. When she came back out to Nattie’s weaving room, Dag stood up from his neatly packed saddlebags.
“You say when, Spark.”
“Now,” she replied fervently, “while they’re still working through the desserts. They’ll be less inclined to follow along.”
“Not being able to move? I begin to see your clever plan.” He grinned and went to get Whit and Fletch to help him with the horses.
She met them in the lane to the south of the house, where Dag was watching with keen attention as his new brothers-in-law tied on the assorted gear. “I don’t think they’ll try any tricks on you,” she whispered up to him.
“If they were Lakewalkers,” he murmured back, “there would be no end of tricks at this point. Patroller humor. Sometimes, people are allowed to live, after.”
Fawn made a wry face. Then added thoughtfully, “Do you miss it?”
“Not that part,” he said, shaking his head.
Despite the cooks’ best efforts, the relatives did drag themselves from the trestle tables to see them off. Clover, with a glance at the addition rising on this side of the house, bade Fawn the very best of luck. Mama hugged her and cried, Papa hugged her and looked grim, and Nattie just hugged her. Filly and Ginger flung rose
petals at them, most of which missed; Copperhead seemed briefly inclined to spook at this, just to stay in practice evidently, but Dag gave him an evil eye, and he desisted and stood quietly.
“I hate to see you going out on the road with nothing,” Mama sniffled.
Fawn glanced at her bulging saddlebags and all the extra bundles, mostly stuffed with packed-up food, tied about patient Grace; Fawn had barely been able to fight off the pressing offer of a hamper to be tied atop. Dag, citing Copperhead’s tricksiness, had been more successful at resisting the last-minute provisions and gifts. After a brief struggle with her tongue, she said only, “We’ll manage somehow, Mama.”
And then Papa boosted her aboard Grace, and Dag, wrapping his reins around his hook, got himself up on tall Copperhead in one smooth lunge despite his sling.
“Take care of her, patroller,” Papa said gruffly.
Dag nodded. “I intend to, sir.”
Nattie gripped Fawn’s knee, and whispered, “You take care o’ him, too, lovie. The way that fellow sheds pieces, it may be the thornier task.”
Fawn bent down toward Nattie’s ear. “I intend to.”
And then they were off, to a rain of good-byes but no other sort; the afternoon was warm and fair, and only half-spent. They would be well away from West Blue by time to camp tonight. The farmstead fell behind as they wended down the lane, and was soon obscured by the trees.
“We did it,” Fawn said in relief. “We got away again. For a while I never thought I would.”
“I did say I wouldn’t abandon you,” Dag observed, his eyes a brighter gold in this light than the beads on the ends of her marriage cord.
Fawn turned back in her saddle for one last look up the hill. “You didn’t have to do it this way.”
“No. I didn’t.” The eyes crinkled. “Think about it, Spark.”
Attempting to exchange a kiss from the backs of two variously tall and differently paced horses resulted in a sort of promissory sideswipe, but it was fully satisfactory in intent. They turned their mounts onto the river road.
It was all a perfect opposite to her first flight from home. Then she had gone in secret, in the dark, alone, afraid, angry, afoot, all her meager possessions in a thin blanket rolled on her back. Even the direction was reversed: south, instead of north as now.
In only one aspect were the journeys the same. Each felt like a leap into the utterly unknown.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
One of the most respected writers in the field of speculative fiction, Lois McMaster Bujold burst on to the scene in 1986 with Shards of Honor, the first of her tremendously popular Vorkosigan Saga novels. She has received numerous accolades and prizes, including two Nebula Awards for Best Novel (Falling Free and Paladin of Souls), four Hugo Awards for Best Novel (Paladin of Souls, The Vor Game, Barrayar, and Mirror Dance), as well as the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novella The Mountains of Mourning—she has, in fact, won more Hugo Awards for Best Novel than any other author with the exception of Robert A. Heinlein. The mother of two, Bujold lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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