“Already?” said Dag. “That was quick.”

Fawn tracked their gazes to a large handcart set at the side of one cabin, piled high with what appeared to be old hides, with a stack of long poles sticking out the back.

“They said, bring back their cart soon as you get it empty.”

“That I can do. Where do Mari and Sarri want me to set up?”

“Better go ask ’em.” Cattagus gestured toward the shore.

Fawn followed Dag to peek over the bank. To the left of the dock, at which two narrow boats were tied, a sort of wooden cradle lay in the water, perhaps ten feet long and six feet wide. A woman wearing long black hair to her hips and nothing else, and a black-haired girl-child, were tromping vigorously up and down in it. Marching with them, Razi, equally nude, was clapping his hands and calling to the little girl, who looked to be about four, “Jump, Tesy! Jump!” She squealed with laughter and hopped like a frog, splashing the woman, who ducked and grinned. The cradle was apparently for retting some sort of long-stemmed plant, and the treaders were engaged in kicking off the rotting matter to clean the fibers. Beyond them, Utau, standing in water to his waist, was supporting the clutching fists of a small boy of perhaps two, whose fat little legs kicked up a fountain of foam. Mari, dressed in only a simple sleeveless shift hemmed at the calf and sandals like her husband’s, stood on the dock with her hands on her hips watching them, smiling. She seemed to be halfway through either loading or unloading a couple dozen coils of rough-looking rope from one of the boats, much like the rope netting Fawn had seen on the plunkin panniers.

Dag called down over the bank, “Hey, Mari! We’re back.”

Indicating that he’d been here once already this morning, likely to arrange this. Fawn wondered if this had been his first idea, or his third, and just how he had gone about explaining his needs. His ability to persuade had not entirely deserted him, it seemed.

Mari waved back. “Be right with you!”

Steps laid from flat stones made a stairway down the steep bank to the dock. In a few moments, Fawn was treated to the somewhat startling sight of a whole family of nude, wet Lakewalkers climbing up from the shore. They seemed quite unconscious of their undress. Fawn, who had never done more than wade in the shallows of the river with her skirts rolled up, supposed it made sense, given that these people were likely in and out of the water a dozen times a day for various purposes. She was nonetheless relieved when they streamed past her with only the briefest greetings and emerged a few minutes later from the cabin on the north of the clearing dressed, if simply: Razi and Utau in truncated trousers like Cattagus’s, and Sarri and her daughter in shifts. The little boy, escaping, streaked past still in his skin in a beeline for the water, only to be scooped up and tickled into distraction from his purpose by Utau.

Mari followed up the steps and stopped by Dag. “Morning, Fawn.” Her expression today was ironic but not unsympathetic. “Dag, Sarri thought you could set up under the apple tree over there. There’s a bit of rising ground there, though you can hardly see it. It’ll be the driest spot.”

Utau, with the boy now riding atop his shoulders, small hands pulling his hair from its knot, came up with the long-haired woman. To Fawn’s eyes, she looked to be about thirty; Fawn added the accustomed fifteen years to her guess. “Hello, Fawn,” Utau greeted her, without surprise. Clearly, he’d been given the whole tale by now. “This is our wife, Sarri Otter.” A nod at Razi, who had been inspecting the cart and now strode over to join them, confirmed the other part of that our.

Fawn had twigged that they were on Sarri’s territory, and maybe Mari’s; she gave her knee-dip, and said to the women, “Thank you for having us here.”

Sarri folded her arms and nodded shortly, face not unfriendly, eyes curious. “Dag…well, Dag,” she said, as if that explained something.

Dag, Razi, Utau, and Mari, with Cattagus following along and supplying wheezing commentary, then turned their attention to the alleged tent. The men hauled the cart to the orchard and swiftly unloaded it. The bewildering mess of poles and ropes was transformed with startling speed into a square frame with hides over its arching top and hanging down for walls, neatly staked to the earth. It had a sort of miniature porch, more hides raised up on poles, for an awning in front, which they arranged facing the lakeshore, canted so that the rising sun would not shine in directly. They rolled up and tied the front walls beneath the awning, leaving the little room open to the air much like the more solid structures.

“There!” said Dag in a satisfied voice, standing back and regarding the results. “Tent Bluefield!”

Fawn thought it looked more like Pup-Tent Bluefield; it made the other cabins seem positively palatial. She ventured near and peered in dubiously. It’s all right, I’m just temporary, the tent seemed to say of itself. But temporary on the way to what?

Dag followed, looking down at her a shade anxiously. “Many’s the young couple who starts with no more,” he said.

Likely, but you aren’t young. “Mm,” said Fawn, and nodded to show willing. There was space inside for a double bedroll and a few possessions, but little else. At least the stubby apple tree was not likely to drop lethal branches atop.

“Don’t lay anything out in it yet—let the ground dry a while more,” said Dag. “We’ll get reeds for bedding, rocks for a fire pit, maybe do something for flooring.” He strode back to the clearing and collected a pair of short logs, hooking up the smaller and rolling the larger along with his foot, and set them upright beneath the awning for seats. “There.”

Excited by this novelty, the little girl Tesy went inside and pranced and danced about, singing to herself. Truly, the tent seemed more playhouse-sized than Dag-sized, though the curved roof would allow him to stand upright, barely. Sarri made to call her daughter back out, but Fawn said, “No—let her. It’s a sort of house blessing, I guess,” which earned her a grateful and suddenly shrewd look from Sarri.

“If I might borrow your husbands once more,” said Dag to Sarri, “I thought we’d go get my things before I take the cart back.”

“Sure thing, Dag.”

“Mari”—his gaze seemed to test his patrol-leader-and-relative’s willingness—“maybe you could show Fawn around while we’re gone?”

Implying, among other things, that Fawn was not invited on this expedition. But Mari nodded readily enough. It seemed Fawn was to be accepted by this branch of Dag’s family, at least. If temporarily, like the tent. The three men went off with the cart, not altogether unloaded, as both children immediately scrambled atop for the ride. Or rather, Tesy scrambled up, and her little brother wailed in dismay till Razi popped him aboard with her.

“It’s normally a bit livelier than this,” Mari told Fawn, who was gazing around the clearing. “But as soon as I got back from patrol and could take charge of Cattagus, my daughter took her family across to Heron Island to visit with her husband’s folks. They’re building a new boat for her.” A wave of her hand indicated the third cabin as belonging to this absent family. Was the daughter Mari’s name-heiress? What else did Lakewalkers inherit, if they did not own land? Besides their fair share of malices. Was this site apportioned out like tents and horses from some camp pool?

Mari, with Sarri trailing in silent curiosity, took Fawn out back and showed her where the privy was hidden among the trees: not a shed but a slit trench with a hide blind, very tentlike. Water was drawn from the lake, and kettles kept permanently on the hob to boil that intended for drinking. Inside Mari’s cabin, Fawn saw that the fireplace had a real oven, which she eyed enviously. Lakewalker women were not limited to pan bread cooked over an open fire, evidently. Though it seemed futile to ask to borrow the oven when Fawn owned no flour, baking pans, lard, butter, eggs, milk, or yeast.