Three people jerked away from the Sowers’ front window and pretended to have been walking up the street when Dag, Fawn, and her parents made their way out the front door. Across the street, a couple of young women clutched each other and bent their heads together, giggling. A group of young men loitering in front of the alehouse undraped themselves from the wall and went back inside, two of them hastily.

“Wasn’t that Sunny Sawman just went into Millerson’s?” Sorrel said, squinting.

“Wasn’t that Reed with him?” said Fawn, in a more curious tone.

“So that’s where Reed got off to this morning!” said Tril indignantly. “I’ll skin that boy.”

“Sawman’s place is the second farm south of the village,” Fawn informed Dag in an undervoice.

He nodded understanding. It would make the West Blue alehouse a convenient haunt, not that it wasn’t a gathering place for the whole community, by the descriptions Dag had garnered. Sunny must realize that his secrets had been kept, or his standing with the Bluefield twins would be very different by now; if not grateful, the relief might at least render him circumspect. So, were any of those loiterers the friends Sunny had threatened to persuade to help slander Fawn? Or had that been an empty threat, and Fawn had merely fallen for the lie? No telling now. The boys were unlikely to cast slurs on her in her brother’s presence, surely.

They all climbed back into the cart, and Sorrel, clucking, backed his horse and turned the vehicle around. He slapped the reins against the horse’s rump, and it obligingly broke into a trot. West Blue fell behind.

Three days. There was no particular reason that simple phrase should make his stomach feel as though it wanted to flip over, Dag thought, but…three days.

After the noon dinner, Dag dismissed the obscurities of farmer customs from his mind for a time in favor of his own. He and Fawn went out together on a gathering trip around the farm.

“What are we looking for, really?” she asked him, as he led off first toward the old barn below the house.

“There’s no set recipe. Spinnable things with some personal meaning to help catch our grounds upon. A person’s own hair is always good, but mine’s not long enough to use pure, and a few more hooks never hurt. The horsehair will give length and strength, I figure. It’s often used, and not just for wedding cords.”