Fawn glanced at Dag. Despite the unhealed damage to his ground-sense, at this range he would surely know if Clover were pregnant already. He gave Fawn a wry smile and a short headshake. Fawn touched the malice scars on her neck, darkening now to carmine, and thought, Leave it be.

Mama asked, in a more cautious tone, “So…how did things go with your new people at Hickory Lake, Fawn? With your new family?”

Dag’s family. After a perhaps too-revealing hesitation, Fawn chose, “Mixed.”

Dag glanced down at her and swallowed, not only to clear his mouth of his last bite, but said plainly enough: “Truth to tell, not well, ma’am. But that’s not why we’re on this road.”

Nattie said anxiously, “Those Lakewalker wedding cords we made up—didn’t they work?”

“They worked just fine, Aunt Nattie,” Dag assured her. He glanced up and down the table. “I should likely explain to the rest of you something that only Nattie knew when Fawn and I were wed here. Our binding strings”—he touched the dark braid above his left elbow and nodded to Fawn’s, wrapping her left wrist—“aren’t just fancy cords. Lakewalkers weave our grounds into them.”

Five blank stares greeted this statement, and Fawn wondered how he was going to explain ground and groundsense in a way that would make them all understand when they hadn’t seen what she’d seen. When he also had to overcome a lifetime of deep reserve and the habit—no, imperative—of secrecy. It seemed by his long intake of breath that he was about to try.

“Only you farmers use the term magic. Lakewalkers just call it groundwork.