Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold [29]
It was crunchy, not as sweet as an apple, not as starchy as a raw potato…“A bit parsnippy. Actually, quite a bit nicer than parsnip. Huh.” It seemed the problem was not in the quality, but in the quantity.
For simplicity, and because she really didn’t feel comfortable cooking over Dar’s fireplace, used for who knew what sorcerous processes, they ate it raw in slices. Although Fawn did draw the line at Dag’s attempt simply to stab his portion with his hook and gnaw around the edges; she peeled his piece and made him get out his fork-spoon. The plunkin was surprisingly satisfying. Hungry as they both were, they only disposed of half a head, or root, or whatever it was.
“Why don’t farmers have this?” Fawn wondered. “Food gets around. Flowers, too. Animals, too, really. We could grow it in ponds.”
Dag gestured with his slice, stuck on his fork-spoon. All right, so the official eating tool hadn’t made that much difference; it still made it all seem more like a real meal. “The ears need a little tickle in their grounds to germinate. If farmers planted them, they’d just go down in the mud and rot. It’s a trick most every Lakewalker here learns. I hated raft duty when I was young, thought it was the dullest thing possible. Now I understand why the old patrollers didn’t mind taking their turns, and laughed at me. Soothing, y’know.”
Fawn crunched valiantly and tried to picture a young, impatient Dag sitting out on a raft, mostly undressed, coppery skin gleaming in the sun, grouchily tickling plunkin ears, one after another after another. She had to smile. With two hands, scarless and unmarred. Her smile faded.
“They say the old high lords of the lake league made wonderful magical plants, and animals too,” Dag said thoughtfully. “Not many seemed to have survived the disasters. Plunkins have tricky growing conditions. Not too deep, not too shallow, mud bottoms. They won’t take in those deep, clear, rocky-bottomed lakes east or north. Makes them a regional, er, delicacy. And, of course, they need Lakewalkers, year after year after year. Makes me wonder how far back this camp goes, really.”
Fawn considered the continuity of plunkins. When all their world was falling apart around them, some Lakewalker ancestors must have kept the crop going. For hope? For habit? For sheer stubbornness? Eyeing Dag, she was inclined to bet on stubbornness.
They burned the rinds on the fire, and Fawn set the spare half aside for breakfast. Outside, the green dark of the storm had given way to the blue dark of night, and the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle. Dag hooked their bedrolls closer together.
Fawn felt her knife sheath shift between her breasts as she crawled across to sit again on her blanket, and reached up to touch it. “Do you think Dar was telling the truth about the knife?”
Dag leaned back against his saddlebags, damp bare feet to the fire, and frowned thoughtfully. “I think everything Dar said was truth. As far as it went.”
“So…what does that mean? Do you think he was holding something back?”
“Not sure. It’s not that…I’d say, the knife is a problem he wants to have go away, not explore.”
“If he’s as good a knife maker as you say, I’d think he’d be more curious.”
Dag shrugged. “Folks are at first. Like Saun the Sheep, or me at Saun’s age—it’s all new and exciting. But then it becomes the same task over and over, and the new becomes rare. Whether you then find novelty to be exciting or something to resent…Thing, is, Dar has spent thirty and more years, all day most every day, making weapons for his relatives and best friends to go kill themselves with. Whatever Dar is doing that lets him go on, I’m not inclined to fool with it.”
“Maybe we should ask after a younger knife maker, then.” Fawn shoved her own saddlebags around, trying for a more comfortable prop, and lay down next to Dag. “So