Beguilement (12 page)

She lay still against him for a long time, and he started to muster another explanation, or perhaps abandon the attempt as, well, stupid, but then she said,

“Milkweed.”

“Mm?” He gave her another encouraging hug, lest she mistake his query for objection.

“Milkweed. It’s a just a weed, we have to go around and tear it out of the garden and the crops, but I think the smell of its flowers is prettier than my aunt’s climbing roses that she works on and babies all the time. Sweeter than lilacs. Nobody else thinks the flower heads are pretty, but they are, if you look at them closely enough. Pink and complicated. Like wild carrot lace gone plump and shy, like a handful of bitty stars. And the smell, I could breathe it in…” She uncurled a little more, unlocking from her pain, pursuing the vision.

“In the fall it grows pods, all wrinkled and ugly, but if you tear them open, beautiful silk flies out. The milkweed bugs make houses and pantries of them.

Milkweed bugs, now, they aren’t pests. They don’t bite, they don’t eat anything else. Bright burnt-orange wings with black bands, and shiny black legs and feet... they just tickle, when they crawl on your hand. I kept some in a box for a while. Gathered them milkweed seeds, and let them drink out of a bit of wet cloth.” Her lips, which had softened, tightened again. “Till one of my brothers upset the box, and Mama made me throw them out. It was winter by then.”

“Mm.” Well, that had worked, till she’d reached the tailpiece. But nonetheless her body was relaxing, the lingering shudders tamping out.

Unexpectedly, she said, “Your turn.”

“Uh?”

She poked his chest with a suddenly determined finger. “I told you my useless thing, now you have to tell me one.”

“Well, that seems fair,” he had to allow. “But I can’t think of…” And then he did. Oh. He was silent for a little. “I haven’t thought of this in years.

There’s a place we went—still go—every summer and fall, a gathering camp, at a place called Hickory Lake, maybe a hundred and fifty miles northwest of here.

Hickory nuts, elderberries, and a kind of water lily root, which is a staple of ours—harvesting and planting in one operation. Lakewalkers farm too, in our way, Spark. A lot of wet work, but fun, if you’re a child who likes to swim. Maybe can show… anyway. I was, oh, maybe eight or nine, and I’d been sent out in a pole-boat to collect elderberries in the margins, around behind the islands.

Forget why I was by myself that day. Hickory Lake sits on clay soil and tends to be muddy and brown most of the time, but in the undisturbed back channels, the water is wonderfully clear.

“I could see right to the bottom, bright as Glassforge crystal. The water weeds wound down and around each other like waving green feathers. And floating on the top were these flat lily pads—not the ones whose roots we eat. Not planted, not useful, they just grew there, probably from before there ever were Lakewalkers.

Deep green, with red edges, and thin red lines running down the stems in the water. And their lily flowers had just opened up, floating there like sunbursts, white as… as nothing I had ever seen, these translucent petals veined like milky dragonfly wings, glowing in the light reflecting off the water. With luminous, powdery gold centers seeming flowers within flowers, spiraling in forever. I should have been gathering, but I just hung over the edge of the boat staring at them, must have been an hour. Watching the light and the water dance around them in celebration. I could not look away.” He gulped a suddenly difficult breath.

“Later, in some very dry places, the memory of that hour was enough to go on with.”

A hesitant hand reached up and touched his face in something like awe. One warm finger traced a cool smear of wet over his cheekbone. “Why are you crying?”

Responses ran though his mind: I’m not crying, or, I’m just picking up reverberations from your ground, or, I must be more tired than I thought. Two of which were somewhat true. Instead, his tongue found the truth entire. “Because I had forgotten water lilies.” He dropped his lips to the top of her head, letting the scent of her fill his nose, his mouth. “And you just made me remember.”

“Does it hurt?”

“In a way, Spark. But it’s a good way.”

She cuddled down thoughtfully, her ear pressed to his chest. “Hm.”

The smell of her hair reminded him of mown hay and new bread without being quite either, mingled now with the fragrance of her soft warm body. A faint mist of sweat shimmered on her upper lip in the afternoon’s heat. The notion of lapping it off, followed up with a lingering exploration of the taste of her mouth, flashed through his mind. He was suddenly keenly aware of how full his arm was of round young woman. And how the heat of the hour seemed to be collecting in his groin.

If you’ve a brain left in your head, old patroller, let her go. Now. This was not the time or the place. Or the partner. He had let his groundsense grow far too open to her ground, very dangerous. In fact, to list everything wrong with the impulse he would have to sit here wrapped around her for another hour, which would be a mistake. Grievous, grievous mistake. He took a deep breath and reluctantly unwound his arm from her shoulders. His arm protested its cooling emptiness. She emitted a disappointed mew and sat up, blinking sleepily.

“It’s getting hotter,” he said. “Best I’d see to those dogs.” Her hand trailed over his shirt, falling back as he creaked to his feet. “You’ll be all right, resting here a while? No, don’t get up…” “Bring me that mending basket, then. And your shirt and sleeve off that fence, if they’re dry enough. I’m not used to sitting around doing nothing with my hands.”

“It’s not your mending.”

“It’s not my house, food, water, or bedding, either.” She raked her curls out of her eyes.

“They owe you for the malice, Spark. This farm and everything in it.”

She wriggled her fingers and looked stern at him, and he melted.

“All right. Basket. But no bouncing around while my back is turned, you hear?”

“The bleeding’s really slowed,” she offered. “Maybe, after that first rush, it’ll tail off quick, same way.”

“Hope so.” He gave her an encouraging nod and went inside to retrieve the basket. Fawn watched Dag trudge off around the barn, then bent to his ripped-up shirt.

After that, she sorted through the mending basket for other simple tasks that she could not spoil. It was hazardous to mess with another woman’s system, but the more worn and tattered garments seemed safe to attempt. This stained child’s dress, for example. She wondered how many people had lived here and where they had got off to. It was unsettling to think that she might be mending clothes for someone no longer alive.

In about an hour, Dag reappeared. He stopped by the well to strip off his ill-fitting scavenged shirt and wash again with the slice of brown soap, by which she concluded that the burial must have been a hot, ugly, and smelly job.

She could not picture how he had managed a shovel one-handed, except slowly, apparently. He was pretty smooth at getting the bucket cranked up from the well and poured out into the trough, though. He ended by sticking his whole head in the bucket, then shaking his hair out like a dog. He had no linens to dry himself with, but likely the wetness beading on his skin felt cooling and welcome. She imagined herself drying his back, fingers tracing down those long muscles. Speaking of keeping one’s hands busy. He hadn’t seemed to mind her washing his hand last night, but that had been by way of medical preparation.

She’d liked the shape of his hand, long-fingered, blunt-nailed, and strong.

He sat on the edge of the porch, accepted his own shirt from her with a smile of thanks, rolled up the sleeves, and pulled it back on once more. The sun was angling toward the treetops, west where the lane vanished into the woods. He stretched. “Hungry, Spark? You should eat.”

“A little.” She set the mending aside. “So should you.” Maybe she could sit at the kitchen table and at least help fix the dinner, this time.

He sat up straight suddenly, staring down the lane. After a minute, the horse at the far end of the pasture raised its head too, ears pricking.

In another minute, a motley parade appeared from the trees. Four men, one riding a plow horse and the others afoot; some cows in a reluctant string; half a dozen bleating sheep held in a bunch by desultory threats from a tall boy with a stick.

“Think someone’s made it home,” said Dag. His eyes narrowed, but no more figures came out of the woods. “No patrollers, though. Blight it.”

Wordlessly, still eyeing the men and animals in the distance, he rolled down his left sleeve and let it hang over his stump. But not the right sleeve, Fawn noticed with a pinch of breath. All the lively amusement faded out of his bony face, leaving it closed and watchful once more.

The farm folk spotted the pair on the porch about the time they exited the lane, Fawn guessed by the way they paused and stared, taking stock. The stringy old man on the horse stayed back. Under his eye, the boy made himself busy taking down some rails and urging the sheep and cows into the pasture. Once the first few animals spread out in a lumbering burst of bawled complaint, quickly converted to hungry grazing, the rest followed willingly. The three adult men advanced cautiously toward the house, gripping tools like weapons: a pitchfork, a mattock, a big skinning knife.

“If those fellows are from here, they’ve just had some very bad days, by all the signs,” Dag said, whether in a tone of warning or mere observation Fawn was not certain. “Stay calm and quiet, till they’re sure I’m no threat.”

“How could they think that?” said Fawn indignantly. She straightened her spine against the house wall, twitching the white folds of her overabundant gown tighter about her, and frowned.

“Well, there’s a bit of history, there. Some bandits have claimed to be patrollers, in the past. Usually we leave bandits to their farmer-brethren, but those we string up good, if we catch ‘em at it. Farmers can’t always tell. I expect these’ll be all right, once they get over being jumpy.”

Dag stayed seated on the porch edge as the men neared, though he too sat up straighter. He raised his right hand to his temple in what might have been a salute of greeting or just scratching his head, but in either case conveyed no threat. “Evenin’,” he rasped.

The men sidled forward, looking ready either to pounce or bolt at the slightest provocation. The oldest, a thickset fellow with a bit of gray in his hair and the pitchfork in his grip, stepped in front. His glance at Fawn was bewildered.

She smiled back and waved her fingers.

Provisionally polite, the thickset man returned a “How de’.” He grounded the butt of his pitchfork and continued more sternly, “And who might you be, and what are you doing here?”

Dag gave a nod. “I’m from Mari Redwing’s Lakewalker patrol. We were called down from the north a couple of days ago to help deal with your blight bogle. This here’s Miss Sawfield. She was kidnapped off the road yesterday by the bogle I was hunting, and injured. I’d hoped to find folks here to help her, but you were all gone. Not willingly, by the signs.”

He’d left out an awful lot of important complications, Fawn thought. Only one was hers alone to speak to: “Bluefield,” she corrected. “M’ name’s Fawn Bluefield.”

Dag glanced over his shoulder, eyebrows rising. “Ah, right.”

Fawn tried to lighten the frowns of the farmers by saying brightly, “This your place?”

“Ayup,” said the man.

“Glad you made it back. Is everyone all right?”

A look of thankfulness in the midst of adversity came over the faces of all the men. “Ayup,” the spokesman said again, in a huff of blown-out breath. “Praise be, we didn’t suffer no one getting killed by those, those… things.”

“It was a near chance,” muttered a brown-haired fellow, who looked to be a brother or cousin of the thickset man.

A younger man with bright chestnut hair and freckles slid around to Dag’s left, staring at his empty shirt cuff. Dag feigned not to notice the stare, but Fawn thought she detected a slight stiffening of his shoulders. The man burst out,

“Hey—you wouldn’t be that fellow Dag all those other patrollers are looking for, would you? They said you couldn’t hardly be mistook—tall drink of water with his hair cropped short, bright goldy eyes, and missing his left hand.” He nodded in certainty, taking inventory of the man on the porch.

Dag’s voice was suddenly unguarded and eager. “You’ve seen my patrol? Where are they? Are they all right? I’d expected them to find me before now.”

The red-haired fellow made a wry face, and said, “Spread out between Glassforge and that big hole back in the hills those crazy fellows were trying to make us dig, I guess. Looking for you. When you hadn’t turned up in Glassforge by this morning, that scary old lady carried on like she was afraid you were dead in a ditch somewheres. I had four different patrollers buttonhole me with your particulars before we got out of town.”

Dag’s lips lifted at that apt description of what Fawn guessed must be his patrol leader, Mari. The boy and the skinny graybeard on the horse, once the fence rails were replaced, drifted up to the edge of the group watch and listen.

The thickset man gripped his pitchfork haft tighter again, although not in threat. “Them other patrollers all said you must have killed the bogle. They said that had to be what made all them monsters, mud-men they calls ‘em, run off like that yesterday night.”

“More or less,” said Dag. A twitch of his hand dismissed—or concealed—the details. “You’re right to travel cautious. There might still be a few bandits abroad—that’ll be for the Glassforge folks to deal with. Any mud-men who escaped my patrol or Chato’s will be running mindless through the woods for a while, till they die off. I put down two yesterday, but at least four I know of got away into the brush. They won’t attack you now, but they’re still dangerous to surprise or corner, like any sick wild animal. The malice’s—bogle’s—lair was up in the hills not eight miles due east of here. You all were lucky to escape its attentions before this.”