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Whit, Bo, and Berry began vigorously explaining to Clerk Bakerbun all the reasons why his legal demand made no sense; the clerk’s shoulders stiffened, and his face set.

  Fawn slid back under Dag’s arm, and whispered up to him, “Dag, this is crazy! These Graymouth folks have got no right to Whit’s money, or even some part-fee. They didn’t work hard or bleed or risk their lives to earn it. Wedding papers shouldn’t cost that much! Do you think it’s a cheat? Does that fellow figure us for up-country folks just bleating to be skinned?”

  “How would I know?”

  She cast him up a significant look. Dag sighed and eased open his groundsense, despite the discomfort pressing on him from all the suddenly unhappy people sharing the room. Less the raccoon, who was now dozing on a chair.

  “His ground feels more stressed than sly,” he whispered back. “But if he’s setting up to angle for a bribe, I’m blighted if I’ll let my tent-brother pay it. Not for this.”

  Fishing for an illicit bribe would be easy enough to handle. Just troop downstairs in a body and loudly demand explanations from as many folks as possible. The truth would out, and then the clerk would be in hot water. Dag didn’t take the fellow for that sort of foolish. No…Dag guessed this mulishness as overblown conscientiousness, crossed with an underlying contempt for odd shabby people from Drowntown. Arguing with the man might merely make him climb up on his high horse, send Whit and Berry off on their journey unwed, and be happily confirmed in his low opinion of the morals of river folks. Dag’s annoyance increased.

  Irrelevant as all this paper ceremony seemed to Dag, it meant a lot to Whit and Berry, both so far from home; possibly even more to Whit than Berry, this being his first venture into the wide world, and anxious to do right by his hard-won river maiden. Blight it, the happy day that Fawn and Berry had worked and planned so hard to create should not tumble down into distraught confusion, not if Dag could help it. And I can.

  Quite quietly, from behind the clerk, he stretched out his left arm, and with his ghost hand—ground projection—shaped a reinforcement for persuasion. Such subtle work was invisible to all eyes here, but not to Barr’s or Remo’s inner senses; Remo’s eyebrows climbed. Barr’s jaw dropped, then his lips shaped outraged words, You dare…!

  Dag did not attempt too much detail, just a general trend of feeling. You like these hardworking young folks. You wish them well. You want to help them out. That far-off Clearcreek woodlot isn’t your responsibility. Let that lazy Clearcreek village clerk do some work for a change. These youngsters are going to go away up the river and you’ll never see them again. No problem for you. Such a cute couple. He let the reinforcement spin off his ghost fingers and into the back of the clerk’s head. As an added bonus, the clerk wouldn’t have a headache for the next several days…

  Necessarily, Dag accepted the little backwash from Clerk Bakerbun’s ground into his own, so as not to leave the man blatantly beguiled.

  The clerk rubbed his forehead and frowned. “You say you’re heading back upriver right away?”

  “Yes, pretty soon,” said Berry.

  “It’s irregular, but I suppose I could leave out mention of the disposition of the property…” He paused in an internal struggle. “If I put in a notation for the Clearcreek village clerk to add the information later. It’s his task, properly.”

  “Very sensible,” Dag rumbled. He followed up with a wave of approval. With no groundsense, the clerk would not be able to tell whether this happy feeling was coming from outside his head or inside. Fawn glanced appraisingly at the clerk, at Barr and Remo, at Dag, and pressed her lips together.

  The clerk rubbed his forehead again, then turned a brighter look upon Whit and Berry. “You seem like nice young folks. I guess I’m obliged to get you off to a good start…”

  After that, events followed a course more like what Dag had experienced in West Blue. The clerk had a set of standard promises written out, prepared to lead the couple in their spoken responses. He seemed surprised when both were able to read them off the paper for themselves, each adding a few variations stemming, Dag supposed, from Clearcreek and West Blue local custom. Whit and Berry bent and signed both books, the clerk signed and stamped, and the witnesses lined up to take their turns with the quill.

  The clerk seemed equally surprised when he was not called upon to countersign anyone’s X. Bo’s handwriting was labored but legible, as was Hod’s, but only because he’d been practicing along with Hawthorn. Fawn caught her tongue between her teeth and wrote her name square and plain. She hesitated over what to put for occupation, glanced up the page at Whit’s entry, and settled on boat cook.

  She then looked up, suddenly awkward. “Dag, what’s our place of residence?”

  “Uh…just put Oleana. For now.”

  “Really?” She gave him an odd look that even his groundsense could not help him interpret, bent, and scribbled.

  Dag’s turn came next, and he also found himself unexpectedly flummoxed by the empty, inviting occupation space. Patroller? Not anymore. Medicine maker, knife maker? Not for sure. Vagrant? Mage? His own unsettled ground gave him no clue. In some desperation, he chose boat hand, too. It wasn’t a lie, even if it wasn’t going to be true for much longer.

  Remo, after his name, signed Pearl Riffle Camp, Oleana, and patroller, adding after a check up the page at the general trend of things, and boat hand. Barr copied him. Berry and Whit made sure Hawthorn had his turn in the new Bluefield-Clearcreek family book, Whit hovering with a handkerchief ready to mop any accidental blots. None occurred. And it was done, apparently. Or at least Whit and Berry blew out their breaths, looked at each other a bit wildly, and fell into a heartfelt hug and kiss—part joy, but mainly relief.

  The clerk dutifully shook hands all around and offered congratulations. Dag made sure the company did not linger. He didn’t know how fast his persuasion would wear off, though he hoped it would last for some days, by which time the events would be well blurred in Clerk Bakerbun’s mind by the press of his other work, and he would be in no mood to reexamine the dodgy fix-up.

  No more than I.

  2

  Descending the steps to Drowntown, Berry shot a wide grin over her shoulder at Fawn; Fawn grinned back in equal delight. They’d switched places, Whit and Berry holding hands hard, Fawn clutching Dag’s hand scarcely less tightly. Barr and Remo followed. But when they came to a landing where the stairs doubled back, Barr’s grip fell on Dag’s shoulder.

  “Hold up, Dag,” he growled. Dag came to a halt, staring blandly out over the riverside.

  Fawn turned, surprised by Barr’s tone. Remo, after a glance at the two tense faces, waved Whit and the rest of the party on. Whit raised his brows, but thumped on down the boards after the rest of his new Clearcreek in-laws.

  Barr’s strong teeth set. Through them, he said, “You planted a persuasion on that clerk fellow.”

  Dag’s eyelids fell, rose, in that peculiar Daggish I-am-not-arguing look he got sometimes. It could be very aggravating, Fawn knew, to the person on the wrong side of the non-argument. She touched her lips in dismay. I thought that might have been what happened back there. Though she could not perceive groundwork directly, Barr and Remo evidently had. Remo didn’t look angry like Barr, but he looked plenty worried in his own way. More so than usual, that is.

  “You tore the blighted hide off me for trying to plant a persuasion in Boss Berry that time, and I didn’t even make it work!” said Barr.

  Dag blinked again, and waited patiently and unencouragingly. He didn’t deny this, either, Fawn noted.

  “So how come you get to persuade farmers, and I don’t?”

  Remo offered uneasily, “It settled the fellow down. You wouldn’t have wanted to let all his nonsense about land and wills and due-shares wreck the wedding, would you?”

  “No, but—but that’s not the point! Or maybe it is the point. Persuasion’s allowed if it’s a good deed? Mine was a good deed! I was just trying to get Remo to come back to Pearl Riffle with m
e, which is what I was sent after him to do—that wasn’t just a good deed, it was my duty! If you’re gonna make up rules for me and then go break them yourself, how can I trust anything you say?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” said Dag dryly.

  Before Barr could get out some heated response, Fawn cut in. “Dag, you didn’t leave that fellow beguiled, did you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So you took in a little of his ground.”

  “I’ll just have to add it to the collection, Spark.”

  Fawn’s mind ran down all the bits and pieces of strange grounds that Dag had absorbed into his own during these past weeks, either through the trick of unbeguiling all the folks he’d done his healing work on, or the odd experiments with food and animals, or the darker deed of ground-ripping the renegade Crane. “It’s getting to be a pretty queer collection.”

  “Yeah, well…yeah.”

  Barr started to renew his protest, but was stopped by his partner’s grip on his arm. Remo gave him a headshake; Fawn wasn’t sure what else passed between the pair, except that something did. Remo said, “We can take this up later. Let’s catch up with the others. It’s Fawn’s birthday, too, remember.”

  “Yeah, I need to get back to the Fetch and finish cooking dinner,” Fawn put in anxiously.

  Barr let his breath blow out; he shot one last glower at his fellow Lakewalkers, but produced a smile for Fawn’s sake. “You’re right. It’s not the time or the place to settle this.” He added in a mutter, “It’s going to take more time. And a bigger space.”

  Remo gave a satisfied nod; Dag said nothing, though his lips twisted. They all started down the stairs once more. Fawn could only think: I’m in Barr’s camp on this one.

  The combined wedding-and-birthday-supper chores didn’t fall too heavily on Fawn, as everyone pitched in to help, dodging around the little hearth in the kitchen-and-bunk area at the rear of the Fetch’s cabin. She served up the inevitable ham, potatoes, and onions, but also fresh fish from the sea, golden yams, the bright oranges and chewy sweet dried persimmon, and molasses to go along with the last of the salt butter for the biscuits. Bo’s gift was a new keg of beer, and if it was darker in color and stronger in taste than the paler brews Fawn had encountered up along the Grace Valley, well, maybe it wasn’t made that way just to hide the murkiness of Graymouth water, because it did a fine job of washing everything down.

  The birthday-wedding cake was mostly apple flavored. There had been a debate over candles, as, properly, a birthday cake should have them but a wedding cake was decorated with flowers. Hawthorn had begged for candles mainly for the fascination of making Dag light them, so Fawn put thin beeswax sticks on top and flowers around the edge. Hawthorn happily had his eyebrows nearly singed off as Dag waved his hook, and, Fawn presumed, ghost hand across the top, and nineteen little flames sprang up behind with a satisfying foomp.

  Confronted with the bright warmth, reflected in Dag’s flickering smile, Fawn realized she’d been too busy fixing up the party to think of a wish. Watching Whit and Berry grin at each other, she considered wishing them well, but really, that’s what this whole day was about for everyone. The birthday-wishing-candles part was all Fawn’s own.

  With a sudden catch of her breath, she thought, I wish to go home.

  It wasn’t homesickness, exactly, because the last thing in the world she wanted was to go back to her parents’ farm in West Blue. She’d been fascinated by life on a flatboat, but the Fetch had been a very cramped shack floating down a very wide river, and not always bow first, either, and anyhow it had come to the end of its travels. Fawn wanted a real house, planted in solid ground, all her own, hers and Dag’s. With an iron cookstove. I want my future. She wanted these people in it—she glanced up at them all, Dag, Whit and Berry, Remo and Barr, Hawthorn and Bo and even Hod, waiting to applaud her when she blew out the flames. And, with an ache so abrupt it hurt her heart, she wanted the new ones in it, the shadowy children she and Dag had not yet made together. I want us all home safe. Wherever our real home turns out to be. She took a deep, deep breath, shut her eyes, and blew until the lights no longer glowed red against her eyelids. When the clapping started she dared to open them again, and smile.

  After cake came the presents, birthday and wedding both. Normally, wedding presents were practical items to outfit the young couple’s new house or farm, or tent if they were Lakewalkers—the same aim, Fawn understood, if different in detail. But Whit and Berry still had a long way to travel to get back to the debatable house in Clearcreek. So any presents had to be small, light, and packable. Barr had somehow come up with new shoes made of red-brown alligator hide for both Berry and Fawn, which actually fit, and not by chance; he’d slyly sneaked off old shoes to compare. Hawthorn and Hod proudly presented Fawn with a bound blank book, found at the same place Whit had bought his, but smaller to fit in her saddlebags, and likely in their budget.

  Fawn gave two new pairs of cotton drawers each to Whit and Berry, because she’d found good cotton cloth ready-made in the market here cheaper than raw cotton fiber back in Oleana, and it was all too splendid to pass up. The straight seams and simple drawstrings had kept her fingers flying the past few days, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t made drawers for Whit before, underclothes being one of the first things her aunt Nattie had ever taught Fawn to sew. For good measure, she’d made up a pair for orphaned Hod, who wiped thrilled tears on his shirtsleeve when she surprised him with them, then disappeared into the dark recesses of the forward cabin to put them on right away. Too shy to parade them for the company, he did make Whit come look before he put his trousers on again, which Whit agreeably did. Whit had a funny look on his face when he came back, and fingered his own pairs thoughtfully before folding them away with rather more care than he’d ever shown to Fawn’s taken-for-granted work before.

  Whit and Remo then tiptoed out mysteriously, leaving Fawn and Berry smiling at each other while everyone else took care of the cleaning up. Of all the gifts this day had brought, gaining a sister ranked the highest in Fawn’s heart. Berry, too, had grown up sisterless—and had become, not long after Hawthorn had been born, motherless—without even the older female company afforded Fawn by her mother and her aunt Nattie. When Berry was smaller the house in Clearcreek had been run, she’d told Fawn, by a succession of older female cousins. But one year no such woman could be found when it was time to launch the flatboat and catch the rise, so Papa Clearcreek had simply packed all three of his children along on his six-months-long round-trip. To the amazement of all their kin, no young Clearcreeks gratified their dire predictions by falling overboard and drowning, so he’d taken them every year thereafter. It seemed a colorful life to Fawn’s eyes, but flatboats and keelboats both were thin of female companionship. She suspected Berry thought Fawn was Whit’s best present to her, too.

  Loud clumping from the front deck brought the whole company out to find Whit holding the reins of a small piebald mare, and Remo muffling the smirk of a successful conspirator. Dag’s chestnut gelding Copperhead, sharing the pen with Daisy-goat, pinned his ears back in jealousy, but Dag promptly settled him down. To Fawn’s utter shock, Whit handed the reins to her.

  “Here you go,” he said. “To make up for me making you leave your mare in West Blue. Berry bought you the saddle and bridle, and Remo came up with the saddlebags.” The gear was secondhand, but looked to be in good condition; someone had cleaned it up. “Though if I’d known what horses go for in Graymouth, I’d have brought Warp and Weft along to sell here!”

  “Whit! Remo! Oh—!”

  “It’s all right—my window glass went for a jaw-droppin’ price, too,” Whit allowed, shrugging off her hug in smiling embarrassment. “Berry was right to make me hang on to most of it till we got down here.” He tossed a salute at his new wife and old boat boss, who accepted it with a contented nod.

  “Wait,” said Fawn to Remo, “isn’t that one of the horses those Lakewalkers from New Moon Cutoff were selling in
the square yesterday?”

  “Yep. I took Whit back, later,” Remo said smugly. “Don’t worry; this mare’s sound. Lively little thing, rising four, I think. They were only culling her because she’s too small to be a patrol horse.”

  Truly, the mare looked as if she’d have to take two steps to leggy Copperhead’s one, but she also looked as if she wouldn’t mind. Fawn fell to petting her with delight; Berry, less horse-savvy, stroked her mane more cautiously.

  “And I found out those girls’ tent names, too.” By Remo standards, he sounded almost cheerful.

  “What girls?” asked Barr.

  “Oh…just…some girls. They’re gone now.”

  “Huh?” Barr regarded him with some suspicion, but then was drawn into the general admiration of the new mare. After Fawn took a first short ride up and down the muddy riverbank, Dag watching closely, she let Hawthorn and Hod try her gift horse’s paces, too. They settled the mare back aboard tied to the rail opposite Copperhead, with an armload of hay all around. At length Fawn went back inside, trying to think of a name. The first black-and-white thing that came to her mind was Skunk, which seemed both unkind and ungrateful. She would have to think harder.

  After testing the level of beer left in the keg, they all settled around the hearth with their tankards. Fawn was just sighing in contentment and considering asking Berry to get out her fiddle and give them all some tunes, as a birthday present Fawn wouldn’t have to pack, when Whit said suddenly, “Hey, Dag! What did you get Fawn for her birthday?”

  “Ah,” said Dag. He looked down into his tankard in discomfort. “I was trying to make her a surprise, but it didn’t work out.” He took a sip, and added, “Yet, anyway.”

  “Oh, what?” asked Fawn in eager curiosity. Given that he only had the one hand, Dag hardly ever attempted carving or any sort of complicated craft work. It came to her almost at once; he’d meant making, Lakewalker groundwork. Magic, to farmer eyes, although Fawn had nearly trained herself out of using that word. But it seemed his attempt had failed, whatever it was, and he was feeling the failure. Especially after Whit’s grand present of the mare. She added, “Sometimes you have to give up on the surprise part. Remember your birthday, when I gave you one sweater sleeve?”