horsetails. Mountain wildflowers abounded. But despite their decided lack of hurry, when they strolled back to the quiet camp Arkady and Sumac were still not there.
The mountain ridge they’d just crossed blocked the sun early, casting the woods into cool shadow under a still-luminous sky. Those shadows were thickening when Dag at last spotted Arkady and Sumac emerging from the fringe of the trees. He rather thought the pair supplied their own glow, leaking through their half-closed grounds. They stopped and unlinked hands, then Arkady turned to arrange Sumac’s loose, drying hair, falling like night’s shadow to her hips, combing it through his fingers.
Fortunate fingers… It took Dag another moment to realize what was different about Arkady-besides the obvious. His silver-gilt hair was no longer in its mourning knot, but braided down the back of his head and then set in a loose queue to his shoulders. A northern style-Sumac’s handiwork?
Nevertheless, and quite maddeningly, neither made any interesting announcements, but slipped back into the reduced camp’s dinner routine almost separately. The Basswoods kept to themselves, but Fawn, Calla, and Berry teamed up to grill the trout Remo and Barr had collected from the nearby rushing river. Neeta watched Arkady in concern, but either had the sense not to badger him, or was too caught up in the evening camp chores and horse care to get the chance.
Dag, wondering if he ought to ask Arkady his intentions, decided that was the wrong end of the stick. As the stars came out, he cornered Sumac.
“Pleasant afternoon? ” he inquired genially.
“Very. You? ”
“Likewise. I suspect. Not to pry.”
He could feel her smirk in the shadows of the tall blooming tulip tree they’d ducked behind. “You’re dying to pry.”
“Well. I do feel a certain responsibility for my partner.”
Sumac tilted her head back and remarked as if to no one in particular, “I do like a man with clean hands. Who knows what to do with them.”
“Should I ask you if your intentions are honorable? ”
“Intentions are like wishes. You don’t always get them.”
“Arkady… is a right sensitive man. If strong in his own way. You could-if you-” Dag strove for neutral wording. “He could be hurt.”
“I am aware.” Her eyes, glinting in the shadows, grew serious at last.
“We talked.”
“Talked.” Dag tried to imagine Arkady talking. It was an effort.
“What about? ”
“A lot of things. What we had in common, for one.”
“Like what? ” said Dag. They were not an obviously matched pair, for all that he suspected subtler compatibilities.
That dark smile, again. “I don’t think I’ll tell you. But you were right-the man’s insight is unholy.”
Dag cleared his throat. “Did he, um… tell you anything about his first marriage? ”
“With Bryna? Oh, days ago.”
“Oh.” Dag stumbled on: “A week’s not very long to make up your mind, after fifteen years of avoiding… whatever you’ve been avoiding.”
“Yes, I’m off to a late start. And he’s worried it could be his and Bryna’s sorrows all over again. He does feel it might be better not to get string-bound till we’re sure things will work out. So’s I wouldn’t quit the patrol and turn my life upside down for nothing. We’d both be glad of your blessing, though.”
Not seeing why his blessing was worth a pig’s whistle, it took Dag a moment to decode this. He imagined it: Why, yes, Arkady, by all means, impregnate my niece! The family will be ecstatic! Except that they likely would be, by now.
“It’s time, you see,” said Sumac simply. “After fifteen years, I’ve had so much practice at sorting out what I don’t want, it doesn’t take that long to see what I do. Even if I’ve never seen the like before. How long did it take you and Fawn to decide on each other? ”
“Er… several weeks.” Honesty compelled: “Well, two days. Several weeks to get up the courage.”
A flickering fox-grin. “Well, then.” She drew breath. “When I was twenty, I knew everything about my future. Now, I know nothing. But I do know your partner will go north when I do. So you can say, Thank you, Sumac.”
“Thank you, Sumac,” Dag echoed dutifully. And added more gently, “All the joy in the wide green world to you two.”
Her lips eased in quite the softest smile he’d ever seen on her toughgirl face. She nodded gravely.
–-
Sumac proved right about Arkady’s sense of direction.
Neeta, however, did not give up and turn around, in part because Remo had been argued into a tizzy of indecision by Barr. Tavia said little. But the upshot was that when the reunited company at last took the Trace north again, it was swollen to twenty-three people and an entire drove of horses and mules. Leastways, Dag reflected, it made them a more daunting target for bandits.
The Trace here ran for three days travel up a slot flanked by running ridges, vast green sky-blocking humps. It was a thinly peopled country.
A few hamlets, carved out of what little flat land the valley offered, supplemented their meager livings by supplying the needs of travelers.
Grouse, recovering from his ague attack enough to take the reins on his wagon box, eyed the land hungrily, but any vale with a creek bottom worth having was clearly already taken.
Inevitably, Whit saw and recognized the birthday walnut around his sister’s neck. Rather than having to talk his tent-brother into being his next target, Dag found him to be an eager volunteer. Dag was at first inclined to seek some private spot for the trial, then recalled the show he’d put on with Crane and his first sharing-knife bonding. The memory was disturbing, and he disliked doing complex and chancy groundwork with an audience, but this crowd was captive and mostly friendly. His own words came uncomfortably back to him: Never miss a chance to befriend and teach.
Around the campfire that night, Dag took on his next major making.
The first few minutes were spent sorting out whose hair Whit was to borrow to supplement his own too-short curls, his sister’s or his wife’s.
They settled on Berry’s. She made a face as Fawn did the snipping, filching a generous blond hank. Whit’s thicker fingers proved considerably less deft at cord braiding than Fawn’s, especially when his added blood made the mixed hair slippery. Everyone gathered around, the Lakewalkers watching more wide-eyed than the farmers when Dag straddled a log behind Whit and helped him draw his ground out into the growing length of braid.
“So that’s how they did those wedding cords!” murmured Tavia.
Indigo scowled in fascination, his fingers rubbing one another as if in troubled memory.
The little sack of black walnuts had ridden with Dag all the way from Hickory Lake, sifted to the bottom of his saddlebags and forgotten on the river journey. Taking up one now, he rolled it between his fingers, feeling an unexpected shiver at this reminder of home. He glanced up at Sumac, watching over Arkady’s shoulder, and managed a smile. Any hard-shelled nut would likely do to anchor this involution, but Dag was glad of these.
Arkady knelt at their side, watching closely as Dag, hook harness removed, held his long arms around Whit, his chin resting on the boy’s shoulder. His fleshly fingers worked with Whit’s to slip the nut into the net of hair, while his ghost fingers shaped the involution out of their own substance, catching up and winding in Whit’s ground.
“Suggest you ease down, Dag,” muttered Arkady in his ear. “You’ll turn yourself inside out going that deep.”
Indeed, Maker Vayve, too, had accused Dag of overbuilding his groundwork; Dag eased down. He and Whit together lifted the hair necklace over Whit’s head, and the walnut pendant fell to touch his skin, framed by the open collar of his shirt. Dag opened his ghost hand and let his involution go, setting his jaw against the tearing pain.
His belly shuddered, and his feet went cold. Arkady breathed sharply through his teeth; Sumac’s lips parted in
