Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [106]
Fawn’s lips pursed. She turned her head in the crook of his arm to dot kisses across his skin. “Can the maker get overwhelmed? Give away too much ground to live?”
Dag shook his head. “You’d pass out, first. It’s not like bleeding, that can go on without your will or awareness. Although the exhaustion can lay the maker open to sickness, too, same as anyone else.” He hesitated. “A reinforcement’s not to be confused with a medicine maker’s groundlock, mind you. If a maker’s gone down and in too deep, till matching grounds turns into mixing them, and his patient dies on him, the maker can die, too. The dying ground disrupting the other, see.”
She blinked. “Huh. I wonder if that’s how your ancestors first got the idea for sharing knives?”
Dag rocked back. “Huh! Could be, Spark! Could well be.” Bright farmer girl!
She nodded, brows drawing down. “One way or another, seems like it would be a good idea to keep your strength up.”
“Same as a patrol leader keeping his patrol in good shape, I reckon,” he allowed thoughtfully.
“And the other way around.”
He bent his head and nuzzled her hair. “That, too, Spark.”
The next morning Dag woke to gray skies and extra kisses. Fawn sat up on one elbow, and asked, “Do you know what day this is?”
“I’ve lost track,” he admitted. “Better ask Berry.”
“Guess I’d better.” She grinned and went off to start breakfast.
The clouds thickened but did not deliver rain; the Fetch stayed stuck. After lunch, Whit insisted on dragging Dag off to explore the back side of the island. A wedge of fallen trees and thatch across the channel made a temporary bridge to the mainland, and they picked their way precariously across despite Dag’s assurances that there was nothing over there of note for at least a mile in any direction. When they at last returned to the Fetch, Remo met them on shore with strict instructions from the cook to go catch some fish for dinner, specifically not catfish. This entailed another trip across to the back channel, from which they returned with heavy strings of walleye and three kinds of bass. Bo and Hod took the catch in charge to clean and gut. Then Whit suggested an archery lesson. Remo and Dag set up a target while Whit took the skiff out to the boat for their bows and arrows. In a while Hod and Hawthorn rowed to shore for a turn as well, and by the time they’d worn out everyone, especially the chief instructor, the leaden skies were darkening with early nightfall.
The air of the Fetch’s cabin, when Dag stepped inside, was warm and moist and smelled amazing. He walked into the kitchen area to find it crammed with busy people and festooned with bunches of autumn wildflowers and dried milkweed pods tied with colored yarn. Berry and Fawn were frying up a mountain of fish and potatoes and onions, and Whit and Bo were tapping a new keg of beer set up on a trestle, and where had that come from?
“What are we celebrating?” Dag inquired amiably.
Fawn set aside her pan, walked over, stood on tiptoe, snaked an arm around his neck to pull his face down to her level, and said, “You. Happy birthday, Dag!” And kissed him soundly, to the hoots and clapping of the whole crew congregated. He pulled back, once she released him, with his mouth gaping in astonishment.
“Yes!” Whit whooped. “We got him! We got him good!”
“How did you know this was my birthday?” Dag asked Fawn. It had been upwards of twenty years since he’d paid the least attention to it himself, and he certainly hadn’t mentioned it recently.
“Dag!” said Fawn in fond exasperation. “You gave it to the town clerk when we were married in West Blue! Of course I remembered!”
And Fawn’s was in about six more weeks, as he had learned at the same time and not forgotten—he’d thought they might be in Graymouth by then, and wondered what farmer birthday customs might please her, and been glad that Whit would be there to ask and maybe help keep her from feeling too alone in a strange