Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [107]
Then came tender fish and melting potatoes and a tide of beer, and jokes and tales and laughter, and yes, friends, and his own real tent-kin. He was glad, too, for Remo at the table—whatever the exact interplay of ground and body, mind and heart, it seemed a wider world to have both farmers and Lakewalkers in it. Celebrating each other.
The beer, Dag learned, had been secretly laid in by Whit for precisely this purpose at that last stop where he’d sold his window glass. Its status as a present had apparently kept it from any premature depredations by Bo, a fact Bo himself pointed out with a certain pride. The Bluefield conspiracy had been going on for some days, it seemed, for when no one was able to force down another bite, Fawn brought out a package wrapped in cloth and tied with another jaunty yarn bow. Dag opened it to discover a new-sewn oiled cloth cape and hood, such as boatmen wore.
“Bo let me use his old one for a pattern,” Fawn explained in satisfaction. “I traded making new ones for him and Berry for the cloth to make some for you and Whit, but I haven’t got to the others yet.” Her second packet was a sweater sleeve, incomplete but promissory. “I expect to make some real good progress on it next week. Remo said Lakewalkers give new clothes and weapons on birthdays, and maybe when you start patrolling, a horse. You have a horse and a whole arsenal already, but at least I made you a few more arrows. Berry gave me the Tripoint steel heads, and Hawthorn had the eagle feathers.” She added a bundle of half a dozen new shafts to the stack, and Dag decided he would let his tongue be cut out before explaining that such gifting customs were mainly meant for youngsters.
Outside in the dark, the wind blew a spatter of rain against the walls and windows, and Berry looked up intently. But as the wind and water didn’t yet shift the boat, she settled back and sipped at her tankard. Dag would have been quite content to just take a seat near the fire with a warm wife in his lap for the rest of the night, but Fawn extracted herself from his embrace and flitted off again.
“More?” said Dag.
“Remo said Lakewalkers don’t make birthday cakes, exactly, but if you’re going to be a real Bluefield, you need to have one,” Whit explained as Fawn came tottering back with a huge cake on a platter. “With candles. It’s the farmer thing to do, or at least it always was at our house.”
“I love the candles best. One for every year,” Fawn expanded upon this, thumping the platter down in front of Dag. Which explained the size of the cake, bristling with a small forest of thin beeswax sticks. “I made this cake with ginger and pear, and honey-butter frosting. Because I was getting right tired of everything apple, even if we still have barrels of them.”
“Where did you find all the candles?” Dag asked, fascinated and a bit taken aback. “Same goods-shed where Whit got the beer?”
Fawn shook her head, dark eyes and curls all sprightly. “Nope, the ones they had were all too big. I made these myself, this afternoon, with some wax Berry gave me from her stores and some string I plaited a while back.”
Dag plucked one up and rolled it between his fingers, smelling the faint honey scent. “They’re a good making, Spark.”
She smiled in pleasure at his praise.
“The deal is,” Whit advised, “you’re supposed to light them, then make a wish. If you blow them all out in one breath, you get your wish.”
Dag could not picture the groundwork that would effect such a thing, so decided it must be a farmer superstition, if a pleasant one. “It sounds right difficult.”
“It’s easier when you’re six than when you’re fifty-six,” Whit conceded.
“Indeed. Well, all right. I’ll try.” Certain Lakewalker makers produced groundworked candles that made the task a snap; this would call for a greater effort on his part, Dag suspected. But these wax lights were sound work, and of Fawn’s own hands.