Dag sat for a moment with his head bent, eyes closed. His mind picked at the uncomfortable memory of the left-handed groundwork he’d done on the bowl two nights ago. The break in his right arm did weaken his very dominant ground on that side; maybe the left now tried to compensate for the right as the right had long done for the maimed left. This time, he concentrated hard on trying to snag Fawn’s ground from her left hand. He stroked the back of her hand with his hook, pinched with ghostly fingers that were not there, just…there! He had something fastened in, fragile and fine, and it wasn’t him this time. “Go.”

Again, her hands began flying. They were a dozen turns into the braid when he felt the delicate link snap. “Stop.” He sighed. “It’s gone again.”

“Ngh!” Fawn cried in frustration.

“Sh, now. We almost had something, there.”

She unknotted, and hitched her shoulders, and rubbed the back of her head against his chest; he could almost feel her scowl, although from this angle of view he could only see her hair and nose. And then he could feel it when her scowl turned thoughtful.

“What?” he said.

“You said. You said, people put their hair in the cords because it was once part of their ground, and so it was easy to pick up again, to hitch on to. Because it was once part of their body, right? Your living body makes its ground.”

“Right…”

“You also once said, one night when I was asking you all about ground, that people’s blood stays alive for a little while even after it leaves their bodies, right?”

“What are you,” he began uneasily, but was cut off when she abruptly seized his hook hand and drew it around close in front of her. He felt pressure and a jerk, then another, through his arm harness. “Wait, stop, Spark, what are you—” He leaned forward and saw to his horror that she’d gouged open the pads of both of her index fingers on the not especially sharp point of the hook. She squeezed each hand with the other in turn to make the blood drip, and took up the strands again.

“Try again,” she said in an utterly determined little growl. “Come on, quick, before the bleeding stops. Try.”

He could not spurn a demand so astonishing. With a fierceness that almost matched hers, he ran his hands, real and ghostly, down her arms once more. This time, her ground fairly leaped out into the blood-smeared string, anchoring firmly. “Go,” he whispered. And her hands began to twist and flip and pull.

“You are scaring the piss out of me, Spark, but it’s working. Don’t stop.”