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?”

Dag smiled a little and touched the finished garment, which he was wearing now against the damp chill seeping back into the boat as the bustle of dinner wore off. “Indeed, Spark. Thing is, you already knew you could finish that promise. You didn’t have to stop and invent knitting, first.”

“All right, now you have to say,” said Whit, leaning back. “You can’t trail that sort of bait across the water and then just haul in your line.”

“Aye, give us the tale, Dag,” said Bo, a bit sleepily. “A tale is as good as a coin, some places.”

“Well…” Reluctantly, Dag shoved his hand down into his pocket, leaned over, and deposited a black walnut, still in its shell, on the hearthstone.

The farmers around the fire all looked blankly at it, and at Dag, but Barr and Remo both sat up, which made Fawn prick her ears, too.

“Dag, what in the world did you do to that poor walnut?” asked Remo. “Its ground is all… shiny.”

Dag touched the hard ridges with a finger, rolling the green-black sphere around on the stone, then sat back and stared glumly at it. “A shell protects and shields life. It seemed a good natural essence to try to anchor an involution on. The way a knife maker anchors an involution into the bone of a sharing knife, although that cup is made to hold a death, and this… was going to hold something else.”

Dag had made his first sharing knife bare weeks back, in the aftermath of the horrors of the bandit cave. Barr and Remo had been wildly impressed; having met Dag’s knife-maker brother Dar, Fawn had been less surprised.

“I’ve been trying and trying to think,” Dag went on, “what might protect farmers the way ground veiling protects patrollers.”

“Absent gods, Dag, how could farmers veil?” said Remo. “It’s like turning your whole ground sideways to the world. It gave me conniption fits, when I was first trying to learn. Not even all Lakewakers can catch the trick of it.”

Dag nodded, not disagreeing. “But see… Fawn can’t feel me in her marriage cord the way I can feel her in mine, the way any married Lakewalker does, but last summer I was able to do a shaped reinforcement in her arm that let her feel something like it, leastways for a while until her ground absorbed it again. It wasn’t the same thing, but it accomplished the same end.”

Fawn nodded vigorously. “It was better, actually. Old Cattagus said you can’t tell direction with regular cords, just if your spouse is alive or not. But I could tell which way you were from me. Roughly, anyhow.”

Barr’s brows rose. “From how far away?”

“Over a hundred miles, part of the time.” Fawn added scrupulously, “I don’t know if it would have faded at bigger distances.”

Remo’s brows climbed, too.

“See, the thing is,” Dag went on, “nobody’s trying to do groundwork on farmers. Except to sneak some healing now and then out of pity, which as like as not leaves an accidental beguilement, or the occasional”-he cleared his throat-“illicit persuasion. The strongest makers don’t much get outside their camps, and patrollers don’t do complex or clever making.”

“If you show clear talent for making,” said Barr, “they don’t send you for patroller. So how did you ever get let out on the trail, Dag?”

“I… was a difficult youngster.” Dag scratched his head ruefully, but did not expand, although eight people perked up in hope of the story. “I don’t know what’s not done because it’s impossible, or what’s not done because it’s never been tried. Or tried and kept secret, or discovered and then lost again.”