Passage - Lois McMaster Bujold [177]
There she discovered Whit had undermined her dinner menu by bringing in a fish the size and shape of a platter, which he said was fresh from the sea and which he’d bought off a sailboat a ways down the row.
Fawn stared at it in horror as he proudly held it out. “Whit, that fish has two eyes!”
“All fish do.”
“Not on the same side! Whit, those fellows spotted you for an upcountry boy and foisted off some defective fish on you.”
“No, this kind is supposed to look like that”—he studied it in some doubt himself—“they said. But the important thing is, I got us a ride down to the shore tomorrow morning in their boat. They go out every day the weather allows to do their fishing, see. They’ll drop us off on the beach in the morning and pick us up again on their way back. We can take a picnic!”
A picnic, in the heart of winter? Well, why not? In West Blue, a foot of snow would have fallen by now. Here, it was merely cloudy and chilly.
Bo vouched for the two-eyed fish, which didn’t exactly reassure Fawn, especially after his tale about the rolling hoop snakes used for cart wheels, but so did Berry, so she cooked it up as best she could. Dag ate it without hesitation, but, well, patrollers. Fawn, conscious of his crinkling eyes on her, eventually broke down and nibbled. It was alarmingly delicious.
So it was she found herself packing a big basket with food and another with blankets by lantern-light the next morning, as the laggard sun would not be up for another hour. Berry and Whit undertook to bring Hawthorn; Fawn supposed she and Dag would trail Remo and Barr behind them in a not-dissimilar fashion.
Hod elected to stay with the still-convalescing Bo, and not just due to the tales about the people-eating sea fish with giant teeth and the things with tentacles sporting suckers that popped blood from your skin. The two—parentless Hod and childless Bo—seemed in a fair way to adopting each other. They’d all come a long way from Oleana, Fawn thought, but Hod especially. He’d become a competent boat hand, and more. He was not so skinny, not so shy, and was a good two inches taller, partly from her cooking but mostly from not carrying himself so S-shaped. They’d be in Graymouth some weeks yet; when Bo felt better, she would make sure Hod found his chance to visit the shore.
Fawn had never ridden in a sailboat before. The creaking of its lines and tilting of its deck as the patched and discolored sails caught the faint dawn breeze made her nervous, but Dag was watching her closely, so she raised her chin and tried to sit bravely. The four fellows who ran the boat—two brothers and a couple of their half-grown sons—did appear to know what they were doing, and were glad to show the curious Whit, too. After a bit, even Barr and Remo unbent and horned in on the deal. Dag seemed content to lean back with his arm around Fawn.
Dawn over the marshes was gold and gray, a severe winter beauty all its own. Birds swarmed up to greet the light, though their cries seemed strange and sad in the misty air. From time to time along the channel Fawn could spot the decaying remains of flatboats amongst the other wrack, wrecked and washed down in a flood, or else simply abandoned and allowed to drift out to sea. Half in fear and half in hope, Fawn made out every drowned log to be a lurking swamp lizard, but Dag said not, though he promised to find her one later, an offer for which she thanked him politely but unencouragingly.
“One good thing about this time of year,” Whit called, slapping his neck. “Hardly any mosquitoes.”
“True enough,” Dag agreed amiably. “Come high summer, these southern mosquitoes carry off small children to feed to their young.”
“They do not!” Hawthorn cried indignantly, which made the fishermen grin. “You shouldn’t ought to