Then came tender fish and melting potatoes and a tide of beer, and jokes and tales and laughter, and yes, friends, and his own real tent-kin. He was glad, too, for Remo at the table—whatever the exact interplay of ground and body, mind and heart, it seemed a wider world to have both farmers and Lakewalkers in it. Celebrating each other.

The beer, Dag learned, had been secretly laid in by Whit for precisely this purpose at that last stop where he’d sold his window glass. Its status as a present had apparently kept it from any premature depredations by Bo, a fact Bo himself pointed out with a certain pride. The Bluefield conspiracy had been going on for some days, it seemed, for when no one was able to force down another bite, Fawn brought out a package wrapped in cloth and tied with another jaunty yarn bow. Dag opened it to discover a new-sewn oiled cloth cape and hood, such as boatmen wore.

“Bo let me use his old one for a pattern,” Fawn explained in satisfaction. “I traded making new ones for him and Berry for the cloth to make some for you and Whit, but I haven’t got to the others yet.” Her second packet was a sweater sleeve, incomplete but promissory. “I expect to make some real good progress on it next week. Remo said Lakewalkers give new clothes and weapons on birthdays, and maybe when you start patrolling, a horse. You have a horse and a whole arsenal already, but at least I made you a few more arrows. Berry gave me the Tripoint steel heads, and Hawthorn had the eagle feathers.” She added a bundle of half a dozen new shafts to the stack, and Dag decided he would let his tongue be cut out before explaining that such gifting customs were mainly meant for youngsters.

Outside in the dark, the wind blew a spatter of rain against the walls and windows, and Berry looked up intently. But as the wind and water didn’t yet shift the boat, she settled back and sipped at her tankard. Dag would have been quite content to just take a seat near the fire with a warm wife in his lap for the rest of the night, but Fawn extracted herself from his embrace and flitted off again.

“More?” said Dag.

“Remo said Lakewalkers don’t make birthday cakes, exactly, but if you’re going to be a real Bluefield, you need to have one,” Whit explained as Fawn came tottering back with a huge cake on a platter. “With candles. It’s the farmer thing to do, or at least it always was at our house.”

“I love the candles best. One for every year,” Fawn expanded upon this, thumping the platter down in front of Dag. Which explained the size of the cake, bristling with a small forest of thin beeswax sticks. “I made this cake with ginger and pear, and honey-butter frosting. Because I was getting right tired of everything apple, even if we still have barrels of them.”

“Where did you find all the candles?” Dag asked, fascinated and a bit taken aback. “Same goods-shed where Whit got the beer?”

Fawn shook her head, dark eyes and curls all sprightly. “Nope, the ones they had were all too big. I made these myself, this afternoon, with some wax Berry gave me from her stores and some string I plaited a while back.”

Dag plucked one up and rolled it between his fingers, smelling the faint honey scent. “They’re a good making, Spark.”

She smiled in pleasure at his praise.

“The deal is,” Whit advised, “you’re supposed to light them, then make a wish. If you blow them all out in one breath, you get your wish.”

Dag could not picture the groundwork that would effect such a thing, so decided it must be a farmer superstition, if a pleasant one. “It sounds right difficult.”

“It’s easier when you’re six than when you’re fifty-six,” Whit conceded.

“Indeed. Well, all right. I’ll try.” Certain Lakewalker makers produced groundworked candles that made the task a snap; this would call for a greater effort on his part, Dag suspected. But these wax lights were sound work, and of Fawn’s own hands. Just like their marriage cords. He set the candle back in its hole in the frosting, centered himself, aligned his ground, called up his hottest persuasion, and swept his ghost hand back and forth across the bristling top of the cake. To his pure delight, all fifty-six little golden flames sprang up in its wake with a faint foomp! foomp! sound.

He looked up in satisfaction to find Fawn and Berry both standing at his sides with lit spills in their hands and their mouths open. A silence stretched around the crowded table. Hod was blinking. Hawthorn’s eyes were wide. Bo seemed to have bitten his tongue. “Was that…not right?” Dag asked hesitantly.

Whit said, in a rather hollow voice, “And I’d have been impressed if he’d blown them out all at once!”

Remo laughed out loud. Actually, Remo cackled, Dag decided. Dag might have been more annoyed, particularly as Remo didn’t stop for quite a while—choking himself off, eventually, into his sleeve—except that it was the first time ever he’d heard the boy laugh.

“That was just fine, Dag,” Fawn assured him valiantly. “You can light all our birthday cakes from now on.” She blew out her spill and handed him a knife.

Dag waited a while for Fawn to enjoy the glow—or conflagration—while he enjoyed the play of the warm light on her face, like a summer sunset here on the edge of winter. He didn’t cheat much, blowing out the candles again. Fawn extracted the wax stumps for reuse, sharing the task of licking off the frosting with Hawthorn, an eager volunteer. The pocked cake was divided into generous slabs, with half still left for breakfast. After, Dag was made to sit by the fire with Fawn just as he’d pictured, while Whit and the crew took charge of the cleanup. The rain drummed on the roof as Hod and Hawthorn pestered Remo to show them how Lakewalkers cheated in games of chance, Remo protesting that he didn’t know how to either play or cheat.

And then, with a faint groan and a definite jerk, the Fetch lifted from the sand bar. Berry whooped, and everyone dropped all other tasks to turn out and get the boat away from the bar and down the island to a safe landing, to be tied properly for the night. Both of the Lakewalkers, with their ability to move surely in the dark, were pressed into this task, but when they all came trooping wetly back inside Fawn had hot tea waiting and prewarmed towels stacked by the hearth. Sodden clothes were stripped off and hung up—except for Dag’s, adequately protected by his new boatman’s rain gear—dry clothes were donned, and those with room snagged more cake and beer. The patter of rain gusted into a rattle of hail, but the guide ropes held the boat in its new mooring as they all settled around the hearth once more.

Then Berry pulled out her fiddle and gave them three tunes, two lively, one slow and plaintive. There wasn’t enough room to dance, but while Berry shook out her fingers and rested up the Clearcreeks debated teaching boatmen’s songs to the Bluefields. Hawthorn claimed he knew all the rude words.

“Yeah, but you don’t understand ’em,” drawled Bo.

“I do too!”

“Maybe it’s time for a lullaby,” Berry suggested.

“No, not yet!” Hawthorn protested. Hod looked torn. Whit looked wistful.

Remo was sitting on the floor near the fire, the overfed raccoon kit asleep in his lap; his head came up, turning.

“What?” Dag said quietly.

“There’s a Lakewalker out on the river in a narrow boat.”

“In this weather?” Bo snorted. “Fool should be on shore with the boat turned upside down and him under it. Tied down at both ends, too, if he’d a lick of sense.”

Dag silently agreed, but stretched his groundsense outward. A Lakewalker indeed, and just as miserable as you’d expect. Their grounds bumped, and the narrow boat changed course, fighting through the wind waves.

Remo’s eyes widened. He set down the kit and scrambled to his feet. “It’s Barr!”

A clunk and a thump were followed by the muffled pounding of a fist on the side of the hull.