unexpected guest.
Barr rubbed chapped red hands and moved gratefully toward the fire, reminding her of the very first time she’d ever met him. He was much less wet and cold and distraught this time, happily. He sniffed the air. “What are you cooking? ”
“Medicine.”
“Oh, whew! I thought it was dinner, and was worried.”
Fawn laughed, and pointed to the volume propped open on the kitchen table. “Remember that blank book Hawthorn ’n Hod gave me back on my nineteenth birthday in Graymouth? I used it to write down all the recipes for the remedies they were making up in the medicine tent at New Moon Cutoff, and drew pictures of the plants and made notes about the herb maker’s groundwork, too. It came with me in my saddlebags when we went north, you bet. Arkady was so surprised when I pulled it out. He hadn’t realized how much I had in there. ”
Barr eased out of his deerskin jacket and hung it over the back of a chair to dry. “Yeah, I ran into Sumac when I went to put my horse away in your barn. She looked downright cheerful. And, um, bulky. Floating around like those boats we saw down on the sea.” He made hand gestures to indicate a bellying sail.
“It’s the feather quilt I padded her coat with, when Arkady got to fretting about how much time she spends out with the horses in the cold. She’s less alarming out of it. It won’t be long till their baby comes, though.” She smiled. “It would make you laugh how much Arkady fusses for her, if you didn’t know his history. Instead it’s sort of sad and hopeful all at once. I must say, I suspect it’s no bad thing for a man to wait till he’s older to have his children. He seems to appreciate things more.”
Barr smiled briefly. Bleakly…? Fawn shook off the odd fancy and went on: “Fortunately, Sumac doesn’t much put up with his coddling. A lot like her mother Omba, I’d say. She’s pretty much taken over all our horses, and manages the barn the way Omba used to run Mare Island. Or still runs it, I guess. Did you see my Grace’s filly Dancer when you were out there? Isn’t she a sweetheart? ”
“Yep, Sumac made sure to show her off first thing.”
Fawn swung her pot back closer to the coals. “Are you out with a patrol?” The valley of the Clear Creek lay at the easternmost edge of Pearl Riffle Camp’s patrol territory. She wondered if she should offer the barn loft for bedrolls, except that Sumac would surely have beaten her to it. “Or are you courierin’? ”
“No, I’m on my own. A private visit. Came to see Dag. And you.”
“Leg troubling you? ”
“No, it’s-oh!” Starting to drag a chair noisily toward the hearth, he spotted the big basket tucked in the room’s corner and lifted instead, setting the legs down two by two with exaggerated care. In a whisper, he said, “Is that Nattie-Mari, then? Asleep-will my talking wake her up? ”
“Likely not, as long as you don’t yell or drop things. She just fed, so she’s for dreamland for a bit yet. It won’t matter if she does wake up- she sleeps better through the night if I don’t let her nap all day.” Fawn yawned. “And so do I. There’s so much to do, though, it’s tempting to let her sleep too much.”
She stepped up as Barr peered down into the basket in vague masculine alarm. She did lower her voice. “She’s still round-faced like a Bluefield, though I’m hoping for Dag’s cheekbones in time. Her head’s grown a lot this past month. And her hair, thankfully.” She bent and touched a finger to the black fuzz. “You can hold her, later on.”
“Um… thanks.” Barr backed carefully away from the basket and found his chair.
Fawn took up her wooden spoon and stirred her gray-green goop, which was thickening nicely. “Papa brought Mama all the way from West Blue, slogging through the mud-they got in just two days before Nattie-Mari was born. Stayed for three weeks, then Mama had to go back for Clover’s first. Mama says she doesn’t approve of men in birthing rooms, but Arkady won her right over. I think she was relieved, really-despite all the children she’s had, midwifery isn’t her best thing. Dag was pretty excited, but he kept his head real good, I thought. Better than I did, some stretches. It was the most pain I’d ever done, but I got a real fine baby out of the deal, so I figure it for a fair trade.” Barr stirred uncomfortably, and Fawn kindly decided to spare him all the terribly fascinating details. Other people’s babies, as she recalled, were much less interesting than one’s own. A little silence fell.
“Dag and Arkady should be back soon,” she offered. “They were called out for some fellow who’d hurt himself down at the landing, and meant to stop on the way back and look in on a neighbor woman with lung fever. I don’t ride out much just now on account of Nattie-Mari, but I am Dag’s other hand when folks stop in here. I do try to go along when I can, or Dag will get all wound up in the interesting parts and forget to ask for money. I swear Arkady’s rubbing off on him. And the other way around-Arkady’s getting quite used to having dirty ground these days.” Arkady hadn’t actually said, On me, it looks good, but Fawn thought it was implied.
“So… your medicine-making-for-farmers scheme is going well? ”
Fawn wasn’t sure if Barr was trying to draw her out, or avoid talking himself; in either case, she rattled obligingly on. “It was slow to start. Having Berry as a wedge to get us in did the trick. I can’t imagine how it would have gone if we’d just plunked down in a place like this as strangers. But Dag and Arkady did a few things for her kin and friends, and Bo and Hawthorn and even Hod talked us up all over town. The first night someone we barely knew knocked on the door for help was a big step, you’d best believe.” Her brows drew down in consideration. “But the most important thing, I think-this is going to sound strange to you, I know-the most important thing that happened this winter was losing some patients. Because makers must, you know-over enough time, it has to happen. Not the fellow who’d been dead for two days when they brought him to the door on a plank, no one blamed Dag for that one, though he did have words. Never saw him look so harassed.” Her lips twisted at the memory, which would be funny in a black way except for the distress of the dead fellow’s friends. “But people we’d got to know a bit.” The old man with the broken hip, the child with the strange raging fever, the woman who’d miscarried and bled dry almost before Dag had arrived, though he’d raced Copperhead to flying foam. “Dag tries his hardest, my word, he about turns himself inside out with the trying… but sometimes, it just isn’t enough. The sensible folks have seen that clear, though, and straightened out the couple of less sensible ones. It’s a tricky dance, but we all seem to be learning the steps, us and the folks around here both.”
“Huh.” Barr tilted his head. “I always knew you had to learn to be a medicine maker, but I never thought you had to learn how to be a patient.”
“Lakewalkers in camps teach those tricks, and that trust, to each other as offhandedly as how to swim, and as young. We have the ways of farmer midwives and bonesetters to follow up, but no one knew exactly what to expect of us at first. Not even us, so we’ve all had to learn together.”
Barr stretched, scratched his chin, looked around. “Did Berry and Whit get their fall flatboat built and launched after all? I didn’t spot them anywhere when I rode in.”
“Oh, they left months back-took Bo and Hod and Hawthorn for crew, though Bo claims this’ll be his last trip. It’s not quite time to be looking out for them, but soon. They weren’t sure if they’d be coming home by the river or the Trace. I hope it’s the river, and I hope Whit brings me an iron cookstove. Which I wouldn’t expect him to carry in a packsaddle, although with Whit you never know.”
“Whatever he brings, I imagine it’ll turn a profit. I don’t know how he does it.”
“Nobody in our family would have guessed that talent of his back home. Neither one of us had much chance to shine there, I reckon.” The town of Clearcreek was only about twice the size of the village of West Blue; Fawn wasn’t sure how it managed to seem worlds larger.
Barr cleared his throat. “You, ah… ever hear anything more from Calla and Indigo? And Sage,” he added in afterthought.
“Oh, yes! Calla sent letters twice. I’ll let you read them, later. We get mail up and down the river fairly regular.”
“How are they getting on? ”
“Well, Sage got work in a foundry, and he’s learning lots of new things, just as he’d hoped. Calla says he still wants his own place in due time. Indigo found a job driving a delivery wagon, and his boss thinks the world of his way with the horses, though Indigo doesn’t much care for town life-too crowded. He says it makes him feel funny and tense. We wrote back that he’d be welcome in Clearcreek, but he hasn’t taken us up yet. But here’s the best thing-Calla got so interested in medicine making in her time with Arkady, she went and apprenticed herself to this midwife in Tripoint. Her bit o’ groundsense gave her such an edge, she finally ’fessed up to her half blood. And instead of throwing her out on her ear, the woman took her to someone who knew one of the local Lakewalkers, and now Calla goes and trains one week in the month with the medicine makers at the Tripoint camp-same place Fairbolt was born, if you can believe it!”
