Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [160]
“It’s too soon, Whit. I don’t think she could stand having her hurts touched yet.”
“But I’m afraid that soon it’ll be too late!”
Fawn considered this. “Dag once told me that Lakewalkers wear their hair knotted for a year for their losses, and it’s not too long a time. She’s just been hit with a lot of losses. Her papa, Buckthorn—Alder, too. Alder’s the worst of all, because she’s lost and found and lost him twice.”
“She don’t cry at all.”
“Maybe she’s like Hawthorn, and goes off in the woods to cry private. You do wonder…what sort of life a girl must have had to spurn comfort even in the worst pain, as if needing help was a weakness. Maybe she figured if only she was strong enough, she could save everything. But it doesn’t work that way.” She frowned and went on, “After the Glassforge malice, Dag comforted me, but he had some pretty deep experience to draw on, I reckon.”
“I ain’t got no deep experience,” Whit said, a little desperately.
“I’d say you’re getting some now. Pay attention.”
He rubbed the back of his wrist across his nose. “Fawn…I grant that malice roughed you up and scared you silly, but it wasn’t as complicated as this.”
She took two long breaths, and finally said: “Whit…when it caught me, the Glassforge malice ground-ripped the ten-weeks child I was carryin’ in my womb. When I miscarried of it, I almost bled to death. Dag saved my life that night, taking care of me. Nothing could save my baby by then.”
Hit on the head with a fence post about summed up the look on Whit’s face. Well, she’d certainly got his attention. “Huh…?” he breathed. “You never said…”
“Why did you think I ran away from home?” she asked impatiently.
“But who was the—wait, no, not Dag, couldn’t have been—”
Fawn tossed her head. “No, the papa was a West Blue boy, and it doesn’t matter now who, except that he made it real plain he wanted no parts of his doin’. So I walked on down that road by myself.” She drew air through her nose, and went on, “Where I met Dag, so it came out all right in the end, but it wasn’t—ever—simple.”
“You never said,” he repeated faintly.
“Silence doesn’t mean you’re not grieving. I didn’t want my hurts rummaged in, either. Or to have to listen to a lot of stupid jokes about it. Or otherwise be plagued to death by my family.”
“I wouldn’t have made…” He hesitated.
“For Berry, you just be there, Whit. Be the one person in the wide green world she doesn’t have to explain it to, because you were there and saw it all for yourself. Hand her a clean cloth if she cries or bleeds, and some warm thing for the pain that doubles her over. The time to hold her will come. This day isn’t over yet.”
“Oh,” said Whit. Quietly, he followed her up the riverbank to rejoin Saddler and Berry.
22
Flanked by Remo, Dag exited the cave and dragged his hand over his numb face. The groundwork on the Silver Shoals fellow’s cut neck was holding, and Chicory had opened his eyes a while ago, swallowed a mouthful of water, complained that his head hurt like fire, and pissed in a pot—all good signs—then fallen back into something more resembling sleep than blackout. In the meanwhile, however, one of the flatboat men—not the papa or his son, thankfully—had died unexpectedly when a deep knife cut his friends had thought was stanched had opened again beneath his bandages and blood had filled his lungs.
If I had been here, I might have saved him. But if Dag had been here, he wouldn’t have been at the Fetch, and others would surely have perished. If I were ten thousand men, everywhere at once, I could save the world all by myself, yeah. Dag shook his aching head, grateful to Fawn for sneaking him those extra hours of sleep, because that last blow, atop his fatigue, might well have shattered him else. He had an old, deep aversion to losing those who followed him in trust. They weren’t following you. They were following Wain and Chicory. Dag considered the argument dubiously, for who had aimed Wain and Chicory, after all? But it was bandage enough on his brain for now.
It