No more than I.

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 me, 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.