But their shields had closed down so tightly under the impact of the malice’s attempt to do so that their grounds were actually partially withdrawn from their bodies, drained from their extremities into quivering, defensive balls.
Dag huffed in astonishment and fascination, and reached to grasp Berry’s walnut pendant and pull it over her head. She whimpered in protest.
“No, it’s all right. It’s done its work.” Not only done, but nearly drained. The thinning groundwork was close to failure. In a few more hours, it would likely have fallen apart, freeing her ground from its shell, leaving her exhausted but alive. As he coaxed its cord from her hair, the deep connection pulled reluctantly apart in sheets like maple syrup just turning to sugar, and her ground flooded back out into its normal form, congruent with her skin.
Berry took a ragged breath, raising her hands to clutch her head.
“Oh.” She struggled to sit up. “What was that? Oh, Dag, what a night we’ve had! Whit-” She turned urgently to her unconscious young husband.
“Just a moment.” Dag half crawled around them. He stole a moment to study the effect of the other walnut shield. It, too, had held against the malice’s attempt at ground-ripping, but was clamped even more tightly. And was very close to failure. Whit wasn’t going to be his friskiest after it released, but his abused ground would recover in a few days.
I trust. Dag drew Whit’s braided cord over his head in turn, and felt the link shear apart.
Whit groaned, and mumbled, “I feel awful. Bo, what did I drink? ”
His gluey eyes peeled open to stare without comprehension up at Dag.
Blinked. Came abruptly to awareness. “Dag! You’re here! The malice- Fawn-she carved up your knife, put feathers on it-”
“We got the malice, Whit!” Berry told him.
“Did we…? Yes, I remember. Its wings blew off, wildest thing- Dag, your shields! They must have worked!” Whit felt all down his body as if surprised to find it still attached to his head.
“Yes, though it seems they still need some refinin’. You just rest, patroller boy. You’ve done your job.”
Whit settled back, pleased. “Hey, I did, didn’t I? Heh. Wait’ll Barr and Remo hear about this!”
And a great many others besides. Two dozen people had witnessed Fawn’s farmer patrol shoot down the terrifying malice. Dag suspected that this was one tale he wouldn’t have to labor to get across to folks. It would fly on wings.
Whit’s and Berry’s voices tumbled over each other to tell him the story of the past rough night, of all they’d done from the time they’d been driven away from the mind-captured company till their dawn ambush of the bat- malice. Dag barely listened, his groundsense straining toward the grave. If Fawn’s shield failed before she was unearthed, releasing her ground back into a body buried alive… That certainly would have happened, Dag thought, sometime before tomorrow morning.
Absent gods, and he’d almost let Arkady talk him into spending the night on the mountain. Don’t scream, don’t scream.
At the mound, the boys had stopped digging with the shovel and were leaning in, reaching down with their arms. Working something stiff and small up out of the soil. Dag found his stick and pushed to his feet again, turning hastily away from Whit’s urging that he go look for the fallen wings, and Berry’s woozy, belated query of, Hey, where’s Fawn?
Dag fell to his knees beside the opened pit in time to receive his wife in his arms, Ash’s face looming in sympathetic sorrow. She was every bit as stiff and cool as a real corpse, he had to allow the farmer boys that much. Her powerful shield had drawn her ground in deeply, centered on head, spine, chest, and especially belly. There’d been no shroud to wrap her in-she’d been buried in her shirt and shoes and riding trousers-but absent gods be thanked, someone had donated an old handkerchief to spread across her face. It lay dimpled and moist across her mouth and nostrils, which at least were not packed and blocked with dirt. He pulled the cloth away. Her face was set, her lips much too pale, but not the drained lavender yellow of a corpse’s. Her closed eyes were undamaged, the lids traced with the pale violet lines of her veins beneath the delicate skin, her black lashes lying in a curving fan above her cheekbones.
His hand shaking so much he could hardly get a grip, Dag found the walnut and drew it over her head. Its cord caught in her dark curling hair, thick with dirt clumps, and he had to stop a moment lest he tear away strands of her hair, too, in his terror. Gently, gently… the bond sheeted apart the way Whit’s and Berry’s had, and he flung the walnut from him with enough force to make it bounce halfway across the clearing.
Her rigidity changed under his hand to a shuddering stretch. He bent his head and kissed her forehead, cheekbones, all over her face, but not her mouth, for she needed that to take a sudden breath, then another, and another, long gulps of air. Color flooded back into her face, and his world. The lashes fluttered faintly…
–-
There had been voices in the darkness, distant, as though heard from the other side of time.
The poor little thing!
Oh, the pity of it…
It’s almost a blessing, that he’s gone first.
Yeah, he wouldn’t of took this well…
She’d wondered, in muzzy indignation before the voices faded out of hearing, where were her congratulations?
Pressure then, stealing her breath, and pain from the pressure, and panic from the loss. Air seemed absorbed through her skin, not her slow gaping mouth, seeping into her lungs and hot busy belly. Where had Dag gone off to now? She needed him, she was sure of it. Something was very wrong…
Time leaked away in the black. Hours? Years?
At last, mumbling sounds returned to her clogged ears, breaking up the worrying too-much-silence that had made her fear she’d been struck deaf. She felt suddenly heavy and dizzy, and only then realized how nothing she’d felt before. Almost, almost… there! Air!
Her eyelids fought apart onto the most welcome of sights: Dag. His eyes were turned their tea color in the graying shadows and flickering firelight, but a few gold flecks still glinted. From their crow-foot corners shimmering lines traced around his cheekbones, like inlaid silver wire beaten into a copper vessel. His cheeks were stubbly, face bruised and haggard, and his dirty iron-black hair stuck up every which way.
For once, he actually looked his age. Still looks good to me…
Her hand struggled upward to touch the silvery wetness as she at last caught her breath. Despite his wild eyes, his grin nearly split his face.
Her fingers traced the rough beard, his stretched lips, bumped over his slightly crooked teeth with the dear familiar chip out of a front one. His kisses found her knuckles, imprinting each one. Her hand slid across his jaw, around his neck, found a grip on his collar, and oh my what had he done to his good cotton shirt she’d made for him? More rips than cloth, she swore.
Kisses renewed, on her forehead, cheekbones, chin, mouth at last.
This is better. She was still stiff and hurting under her collarbone and in the track of the gouges across her shoulder blade from the mud-bat’s claws, but beneath her shirt, Calla’s plasters seemed to be holding, tugging on her tender skin when she moved. She had still been able to carve… they had… wait, what…?
“Dag! There was this huge bat-malice-it flew-but we got it!” She paused, worked her throat to clear the croak. “Whit got it, would you ever believe? And your shields, they must’ve worked! All those poor mice didn’t die in vain…” Her free hand searched her neck for her hair-and-walnut necklace. Best birthday present ever.
“Yes, yes, and yes, Spark.” A fierce hug with this last, which she didn’t quite like as much as usual, because the weight of it brought back her stifling nightmare-had she been asleep? Knocked unconscious?
“I knew you couldn’t be dead-you looked too mad to die, when those awful flying mud-bats were carryin’ you off upside down and backwards.” At her wriggle, his grip finally loosened enough for her to sit up. “Hey, is this evening? It was morning-did I sleep all day? I don’t feel so good. Was I out cold? Why am I all over dirt? My hair…” Her fingers, feeling among the dirt clumps, encountered a long, sticky, cool object that she withdrew from her curls with difficulty. An earthworm, big ol’ nightcrawler. She flung it from her with a heartfelt Eew! “Did Whit put worms in my hair while I was asleep? I’ll get him…” Her fingers searched her scalp in renewed alarm.
Bo’s voice, broken and maundering as if he’d been drinking again-“Sorry, I’m so sorry…” Amazed murmurs
