“Yes,” said Berry. “This here’s my uncle Bo, and that’s my little brother Hawthorn.” Both rose and nodded, Hawthorn tightly clutching his raccoon, which made a noise of indolent protest.

Whit added, “Yeah, and this is my sister Fawn and her husband, Dag Bluefield.” His gesture taking in Dag made the clerk blink.

“I’m sorry, I thought you were a Lakewalker,” said the clerk to Dag. He looked up into Dag’s gold-tinged eyes. “Wait, you are a Lakewalker!”

Whit raised his voice to override the inevitable spate of questions: “And these here are Hod, Remo, and Barr, all friends and boat hands from the Fetch, which is Berry’s flatboat out of Clearcreek, Oleana, see. They’ll sign as witnesses, too. She goes by Boss Berry down on the river, by the way.” He smiled proudly at his betrothed. Berry usually had a generous grin beneath wide cheekbones that made her face look like a friendly ferret’s; now her smile was stretched thin with nerves.

The clerk looked at Hawthorn, who grinned back more in the usual Clearcreek family style. “Ah, um… this youngster looks to be well under twenty years of age. He can’t be a legal witness, not in Graymouth.”

“But Berry said I could sign. I been practicin’!” protested Hawthorn.

He undid one arm from under the fat and sleepy raccoon and held up ink-stained fingers in proof. “And now that Buckthorn and Papa was killed last fall, I’m her only brother!”

“I did promise he could,” said Berry. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Hawthorn.”

Bo added gruffly, “Oh, come on, let the little feller sign. It won’t do no harm, and it’ll mean the world to him. To both of ’em.”

“Well…” The clerk looked nonplussed. “I don’t think I can. It might compromise the validity of the document should it be challenged.”

Dag’s brows drew down. Farmer customs could be so baffling. All that paper and ink and fuss over property and witnesses. He considered his own wedding cord wound around his upper arm, concealed beneath his jacket sleeve, braided by Fawn’s own hands and containing a thread of her live ground, proof of their union to anyone with groundsense.