“Which you left on all of us,” Fletch put in unhelpfully.

“And wouldn’t Lumpton Market have been a lot closer?” said Whit in a tone of judicious critique.

“Do you know how much trouble you caused, girl?” said Papa Bluefield. “Yeah,” said Reed, or maybe Rush—no, Rush, ash-headed, check—“when you didn’t show for dinner market-day night, we figured you were out dawdling and daydreaming in the woods as usual, but when you didn’t show by bedtime, Papa made us all go out with torches and look and call. The barn, the privy, the woods, down by the river—it would have saved a deal of stumbling around in the dark and yelling if Mama had counted your clothes a day sooner!”

Fawn’s lip had given an odd twitch at something in this, which Dag determined to ask about later. “I am sorry you were troubled,” she said, in a carefully formal tone. “I should have written a note, so’s you needn’t have worried I’d met with an accident.”

“How would that have helped for worrying, fool girl!” Fawn’s mother wept a bit more. “Thoughtless, selfish…”

“Papa made me ride all the way to Aunt Wren’s, in the idea you might have gone there, and he made Rush ride to Lumpton asking after you,” Reed said.

A spate more of complaint and venting from all parties followed this. Fawn endured without argument, and Dag held his tongue. The ill words were not ill meant, and Fawn, apparently a native speaker of this strange family dialect, seemed to take them in their spirit and let the barbs roll off, mostly. Her eyes flashed resentment only once, when the plump girl beside Fletch chimed in with some support of one of his more snappish comments. But Fawn said only, “Hello, Clover. Nice to see you, too,” which reduced the girl to nonplussed silence.

Notably missing was any word about Sunny Sawman. So Fawn’s judgment on that score was proven shrewd. Too early to guess at the consequences…

Dag was not sure how long the uproar would have continued in this vein, except that Aunt Nattie levered herself up, grasped a walking stick, and stumped around the table to Fawn’s side. “Let me see you, girl,” she said quietly, and Fawn hugged her—the first hug Dag had seen going the other way—and let the blind woman run her hands over her face. “Huh,” said Aunt Nattie. “Huh. Now introduce me to your patroller friend. It’s been a long time since I’ve met a Lakewalker.”

“Dag,” said Fawn, reverting to her breathless, anxious formality, “This is my aunt Nattie that I’ve told you about. She’d like to touch you, if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” said Dag.

The little woman stumped nearer, reached up, and bounced her fingers uncertainly off his collarbone. “Goodness, boy, where are you?”

“Say something,” Fawn whispered urgently.