Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [135]
He’d almost forgotten the blinding charm of her dimple when she smirked. She kept paddling.
They rounded Walnut Island, pausing for a glimpse of some of the stallions prancing elegantly in pasture, then glided up through the elderberry channels. Several boats were out gathering there today; Dag and Fawn mainly received startled stares in return for their waves, except from Razi and Utau, working again on Cattagus’s behalf and indirectly their own. Cattagus fermented his wines in large stone crocks buried in the cool soil of the island’s woods, which he had inherited from another man before him, and him from another; Dag had no idea how far back the tradition went, but he bet it matched plunkins. They stopped to chat briefly with the pair. A certain hilarity about Dag’s hat only made him pull it on more firmly, and Fawn paddle onward, tossing her head but still dimpling.
At length, to no surprise but a deal of pleasure on Dag’s part, they slipped into the clear sheltered waters of the lily marsh. He then had the amusement, carefully concealed under his useful hat fringe, of watching Fawn paddle around realizing that her planning had missed an element, namely, where to spread blankets when all the thick grassy hillocks like tiny private islands turned out to be growing from at least two inches of standing water. He listened to as much of her foiled muttering as he thought he would get away with, then surrendered to his better self and pointed out how they might have a nice picnic on board the boat, wedged for stability up into a willow-shaded wrack of old logs. Fawn took aim and, with only a slightly alarming scraping noise, brought them upright into this makeshift dock.
She sat in the bottom of the boat facing him, their legs interlaced, and shared food and wine till she’d succeeded in fulfilling several of Hoharie’s recommendations at once by driving him into a dozy nap. He woke at length more overheated than even farmer hats and the flickering yellow-green willow shade could contend with, and hoisted himself up to strip off his shirt and arm harness.
Fawn opened one eye from her own replete slump, then sat up in some alarm as he lifted his hips to slip off his trousers. “I don’t think we can do that in a narrow boat!”
“Actually, you can,” he assured her absently, “but I’m not attempting it now. I’m going into the water to cool off.”
“Aren’t you supposed to get cramps if you swim too soon after a heavy meal?”
“I’m not going swimming. I’m going floating. I may not move any muscles at all.”
He selected a dry log about three feet long from the top of the wrack, wriggled it loose, and slipped into the water after it. The surface of the water was as warm as a bath, but his legs found the chill they sought farther down, flowing over his skin like silk. He hung his arms over his makeshift float, propped his chin in the middle, kicked up some billowing coolness, and relaxed utterly.
In a little while, to his—alas, still purely aesthetic—pleasure, Fawn yanked her shift over her flushed face, unwedged a log of her own, and splashed in after him. He floated on blissfully while she ottered around him with more youthful vigor, daring to wet her hair, then her face, then duck under altogether.
“Hey!” she said in a tone of discovery, partway through this proceeding. “I can’t sink!”
“Now you know,” he crooned.
She splashed him, got no rise, then eventually settled down beside him. He opened his eyes just far enough to enjoy the sight of her pale bare body, seemingly made liquid by the water-waver, caressed by the long, fringed water weeds as she idly kicked and turned. He looked down meditatively at the yellow willow leaves floating past his nose, harbinger of more soon to come. “The light is changing. And the sounds in the air. I always notice it, when the summer passes its peak and starts down, and the cicadas come on. Makes me…not sad, exactly. There should be a word.” As though time was sliding