Every season must eventually give way to the next.
There were times, during that winter in Gettys, when I doubted the truth of this. It was the darkest, coldest time I’d ever passed in my life. Now that Spink had enlightened me as to the nature of the magic that seeped through Gettys’ streets like a fog and Hitch had confirmed it, I was more attuned to it. I could feel the ebb and flow of the bleakness that afflicted the town. I could sense, without entering the woods, the days on which terror and panic emanated from them, and the days in which weariness and discouragement lurked there. None of that, however, put me any closer to bettering my own state of mind, let alone to breaking the magic’s hold on me.
There were even times when I allowed myself to wonder if that was what I truly desired. As the days slowly lengthened and spring softened the snows by day, I had time to ponder Hitch’s warnings. I could see, now, the danger of using the magic I’d been given. I’d intended good for Amzil, and perhaps exposed her to danger. Had I cheated the man who had owned Clove? But there were times when I’d felt the magic’s tingle, and no evil had come of it that I had seen. Perhaps it was not as Hitch saw it, a dangerous balancing act between my will and that of the magic, but only the much older idea that the more power one has, the more carefully it must be wielded. If I was trapped in this fat body, and if the magic was to have a hold on me, might I not learn to use it wisely and perhaps even well? Such were my thoughts in the evenings, at least, when I lay alone in my bed. I will confess that, a time or two, I tried to summon the magic so that I could use it in small and harmless ways. Could I kindle a fire with it? Command water to freeze or turn a stone to bread as magicians did in the old Varnian tales of magic? Those were feats I attempted and failed at. Afterward, I laughed at myself for such foolish fancies. But late at night, I would again wonder if such magic was that different from commanding vegetables to grow, or waking a whore to true passion’s reward.
Summoning the magic, I decided at last, demanded not will or intellect, but emotion. I could not raise such emotions in myself simply by thinking of them, any more than a man can truly make himself laugh heartily when nothing has amused him. Recognizing that the magic raced in my blood only when strong emotion summoned it was a solid warning to me that it was unlikely to be something I could ever rationally control. Wisely, I decided to leave it be.
During the day, I did my best to keep myself busy. I missed books desperately, so much so that I often resorted to rereading my own journal entries and adding notes in the margin from my older and wiser perspective. I’d lost a strap from Clove’s harness somehow. It took me most of a day in town to get another one from supply. I saw Spink there, but we gave no sign of knowing one another. I came home feeling angry and depressed.
I cut and stacked the wood that I’d brought from the forest. When that log had been reduced, I forced myself to once more take Clove and reenter the woods. I chose a day when only fatigue threatened, and forced my way through the glum discouragement that tried to overwhelm me. My trophy was another section of the trunk from the dead snag. Resisting the urge to lie down even in the snow and take a rest demanded all my willpower. Even after I reached my cottage, weariness debilitated me, and there I did surrender to a long afternoon nap.
Having to battle magic just to have firewood awoke me to what the road workers had to endure daily. Hitch had said that my connection to the magic gave me a slight immunity. I wondered what Spink and Epiny battled each day.
When I was a boy, my father had kept me continuously occupied with lessons and chores. At the academy, the first-year schedule was deliberately designed to be both demanding and exhausting, the better to keep young men from finding mischief when they had free time. That winter was the first time in my life that I’d had dragging hours with nothing to fill them. There were dozens of ways I could have improved my cabin, of course, but the most I did was devise elaborate plans. The dull seep of magic from the forest drained my will.
As the snows melted and the sap ran in the trees, the tiny leaf buds swelled on their branches. The forest beckoned, with game trails to follow and hunting that could fill my dinner pot with meat, but the prospect of battling either terror or fatigue dimmed my enthusiasm and kept me close to home. Every morning, I’d stand by the spring with my water bucket and gaze up into the forest depths. Birds flitted there, and new green leaves bedecked both trees and bushes. I longed to enter, and knew it was a foolish wish. It was a relief when the thawing ground allowed me to resume my gravedigging. It gave me a physical task to occupy my body if not my mind.
One welcome aspect of spring was that the supply wagons began to once more make the long eastern journey to us. The dusty windows of the mercantile stores were uncluttered and wiped clean. Fresh wares were displayed in them: shining tin washtubs, woollen and cotton goods, a gleaming long gun with a curly maple stock that no man could pass by without ogling. Within the store, new casks of pickled herring from the far coast had arrived, along with fresh stocks of sweet fruit preserves and bright packets of garden seeds. All these and much more were bait for hearts and eyes jaded by all the oldness of winter. Yet I had come to the store that day not for anything so gleaming and grand but only in the hope of looking through some of the newspapers that had finally reached us. The articles in them might be weeks or months old, but they were a link to Old Thares and the cities of the west that gave us an inkling of the changes going on in the greater world.
Ostensibly, they were for sale, not casual perusing, but they were displayed in a rack on the wall, and I was not the only fellow standing and reading the front pages.
The papers were expensive, and I could spare money only for one. After I’d read it, I might be able to trade it to some fellow reader for his purchase, but I wished to make the wisest choice. At length I chose one with a front-page story concerning a vote in the Council of Lords about taxation. A side column was an editorial on the number of noble sons who had been shifted into roles other than that prescribed by birth order following the previous winter’s plague deaths. Evidently, some cousins who had hoped to inherit titles were seeking legal redress against “heirs who were not truly heir sons.” I took the paper from the rack and then waited, holding a few packets of vegetable seeds and gripping a fistful of coins, for the clerk to deign to notice me. He was the same supercilious youth who always scorned to wait on me. Today he took my money and passed over the journal with the comment, “Are you sure this is what you want? You can’t eat it, you know. And we’ve a stock of plain paper for wrapping things.”
“Just sell me the seeds and the newspaper, please. I’d like to read it,” I replied quietly.
“Ah, he reads! Will wonders never cease? There you go.”
I ignored his mockery, took my paper and my garden seeds, and turned to leave. As I did so, two women entered the shop. One was a woman of middle years whom I’d frequently seen around Gettys. I was puzzled to notice that she now wore a large brass whistle on a fine chain around her neck. But a greater shock to me was to recognize the finely dressed young lady who accompanied her. My erstwhile fiancée looked lovely. Carsina Grenalter was wearing the latest style from Old Thares, I was sure. Her green bonnet could not contain the flaxen curls that bounced about her shoulders. The cut of her forest-green dress flattered her buxom figure. Little gold earrings gleamed in her earlobes. The fresh air of spring had pinked her cheeks and the tip of her nose. She glanced about the mercantile and gave a strangled laugh. “Oh, my dear Clara! This is dreadful! Is this what they deem a dry goods store in Gettys? My dear, I’m afraid we shall have to send away for the proper buttons and lace if we are to retrim your dresses in the new styles!”
By the time Carsina had finished speaking, her companion was flushed a bright pink. I did not know if it were shame for Gettys’ poor quality of stores, or Carsina’s forthright announcement that Clara would be retrimming her dresses rather than purchasing new frocks. It didn’t matter. I looked at Carsina, and delightful as she appeared, I wondered how I had ever believed I could be happily partnered with such a thoughtless woman.
If I had thought to take vengeance on her, I got it without making any effort at all. Carsina’s eyes had found me; it would have been difficult to miss a man of my size in any setting, let alone amid the crowded shelves of the mercantile. There I stood, unlovely and immense in my well-worn “uniform,” looking back at her. Our eyes met. She recognized me. I knew that from how her eyes widened and her silent gasp. She instantly turned away from me and fled toward the door, exclaiming, “Come, Clara, there must be other stores in Gettys. Let us see what they have to offer us.”
“But—but, Carsina, I’ve told you, this store is the best of them. Carsina!”
The door shut behind her. I hadn’t moved. “Can’t blame her for taking fright,” the youth behind the counter smirked. “And what can I do for you today, Mistress Gorling?”
Clara Gorling was a lady. I’ll give her that. She cast me an apologetic glance before telling the lad, “Well, I thought we were going to look at buttons and lace, but my husband’s cousin seems to have fled. I do beg your pardon. She’s only newly arrived in Gettys. It’s been arranged for her to meet Captain Thayer. Their families are discussing a betrothal. My cousin spent the best part of the winter in Old Thares. You can imagine the shock she feels, coming straight to Gettys from the society and culture of the capital. Well. As I’m here, Yandy, would you please put up two pounds of herring for me, and two measures of corn meal? At least I’ll get the day’s shopping out of the way.”
She glanced out of the window as she spoke, and I followed her gaze. Carsina lingered outside the mercantile with her back to the store. Did she think I would pursue her? Why would she imagine I would want to, after she had treated me so badly and tried to turn my own sister against me? Yet that random thought of Yaril suddenly made me realize why I had to speak to Carsina. I hurried out of the store.
The streets were muddy and rutted from the rains of spring. Carsina lingered on a cobbled walk, trying to hold her skirts away from the mud without flashing her ankles into view. The spring wind from the mountains tugged at the scarf that she held close to her throat with her free hand. There was no one near to overhear me. I walked softly up to her and spoke in a low voice. “Such a surprise to see you in Gettys, Carsina. I understand you’re here to meet your new fiancé. Congratulations. I’m sure he’ll be as charmed as I once was.”
I had intended my words as a compliment, to calm her and make her regard me with gratitude before I asked my favor of her. Instead, she seemed to regard them as either insult or threat. She turned her head to look at me, eyes flashing, and then jerked her gaze away. “Leave me alone, sirrah. We have not been introduced, and I’m not accustomed to conversing with common strangers.” She took several hasty steps away from me and then paused, staring anxiously at the mercantile door. I knew that as soon as Clara came out, she would flee. I only had a moment to convey my need to her. A soldier who was riding past stared at us curiously.
I approached her again. “Carsina, please. There is just one thing I need from you, a small and simple favor. Won’t you help me out, please, for old time’s sake? For Yaril?”
Her face had gone white and she stood stiff as a stick. She looked all around us, as if fearing someone would see me speaking to her. “Sir, I do not know you!” she said quite loudly. “If you don’t stop bothering me, I shall scream for assistance.” Two ladies had just turned the corner near Gettys’ only teashop. They halted at the sight of us, staring.
“Don’t do that!” I whispered hoarsely. “You don’t need to do that. Carsina, it’s about Yaril, not me. Once you were the very best of friends. Please, for her sake, help me. She thinks I am dead. I don’t have any way to—”
“Leave me alone!” She all but shrieked the words as she took several more tottering steps away from me.
“Excuse me, ma’am. Is he bothering you?” The voice came from behind me, and I turned, dread in my heart. Sergeant Hoster, puffed up with hostility, looked absolutely gratified to have an excuse to humiliate me. He didn’t wait for Carsina to speak before he barked at me, “Step away from the lady, Gutbag! I seen you whispering at her. She warned you off twice. Now get on your way and leave her alone. Better yet, get back to the cemetery where you belong.”
Carsina stood with her back to me, trembling as if with terror, her handkerchief clutched to her mouth. I knew what she feared, and it wasn’t that I’d harm her. It was that somehow the folk of Gettys would connect her with me.
I spoke deliberately to her back. “I meant no harm, ma’am. Obviously, I mistook you for someone else.” A vengeful demon inside me wanted to call her by name, wanted to announce to every fool on the street who had stopped to gawk that I had once been engaged to her. Coldly I clamped down on the impulse. I must not antagonize her. She was my best hope of getting a letter through to my sister. If I could catch her alone, I could if necessary threaten her with exposure to get her to write to Yaril. But that ruse would have to wait. For now, I lowered my head and stepped back apologetically.
Clara Gorling had emerged from the shop at last. She gave an exclamation of dismay at Carsina’s distress and hurried to her side. I turned and walked quickly away. Behind me, I heard Sergeant Hoster apologizing to her for “the lady’s bad experience. No woman should walk the streets of Gettys alone, more’s the pity. Some of the enlisted men have no more manners than savages. She’s not harmed, ma’am, merely shaken. A walk home and a hot cup of tea will likely put her right.” He turned and shook his fist at me. “I’d give you the thrashing you deserve, if it weren’t for all these ladies watching. Count yourself lucky!”
Clara Gorling was no shrinking violet. She called out loudly after me, “You should be ashamed of yourself, trooper! Ashamed! Animals like you are why the ladies of this town must carry whistles and walk in pairs just to be safe in broad daylight! I’ll be speaking to Colonel Haren about you! Don’t think I shan’t! You’re a hard man to mistake! My husband will see that you get what you have coming to you!”
And all I could do was hunch my shoulders to her words and slink away like a chicken-killing dog. I almost expected the onlookers to stoop and fling stones after me to make me run. For a terrifying moment, I wished death on all of them. Yet the moment I felt my blood begin to seethe with magic, a horror seized me and I quenched the emotion and the evil thought it had spurred. I felt physically ill and more of a monster than even the gawking folk believed I was. As quickly as I could, I turned down an alley and escaped from their sight. I had not intended to take Sergeant Hoster’s suggestion that I hurry back to the cemetery, but that was what I did. For the rest of the afternoon, my mind seethed, not just with plans of how I could persuade Carsina to help me clandestinely contact my sister, but also with genuine fear of the emotions she had stirred in me. Eventually I took out my dearly bought newspaper and tried to absorb myself in the news from Old Thares and the civilized world.
But the news that had been of such pressing interest to me but a few hours earlier now seemed irrelevant to me. I tried to care about the old nobles and the new nobles and questions of birth order and life roles and could not. None of it, I told myself, would ever touch me again. I was no longer a new noble’s soldier son, but only an enlisted man who wasn’t even truly a cavalla trooper, but only a cemetery soldier, a guardian of graves. The storekeeper had been right, I told myself in disgust. Just because I could read the newspaper did not mean that any of it applied to me.
No. I was a creature of this border world now, a man infected with magic. A monstrous power slept inside me, and unless I could rid myself of it, I would have to live in fear of my honest emotions. I had to find a way to rid myself of the magic. I had starved my body of sustenance to no avail. I had thought that if I could regain my former body, I could take back my former life. Now I saw that I had been starting at the wrong end of the problem. If I wanted to take back my old life or any semblance of it, the first thing I had to do was be rid of the magic that lurked inside me. It was the true change that had befallen me, not the layer of fat that covered me. My fat was only an outward sign of the real transformation.
Spink had offered to help me. I suddenly longed to be able to seek him and Epiny out and have someone I trusted on my side in this battle. Perhaps I could find a way to contact Spink, and I tempted myself with the thought of revealing myself to Epiny. I banished the hope by recalling how the folk in town had looked at me today. Did I want to bring that kind of disgust and shame to Spink’s doorstep? Did I want tales of whores and insults to women on the street to attach themselves to my real name, as they surely must if Epiny acknowledged me as her cousin? I imagined such gossip reaching my father’s ears, and Yaril’s, and I cringed. No. Isolation was better than shame. I would continue on my own. This was my fight and no one else’s.
I stayed away from town for over a week. I was well settled in my cabin now. I dug myself a garden patch, well away from the grave sites, and planted a small vegetable garden. I tended the graves of the folk I had buried over the winter; the frozen earth I had tossed down on their coffins had settled unevenly. I leveled it now, and whenever I noticed wild flowers sprouting near my path, I dug them up and moved them to the new graves.
Rabbits and birds were attracted to the spring grass on the open hillside of the graveyard, and I began employing my sling to obtain fresh meat for myself. I began to wonder how independently I could live. Eventually I must return to town for fresh supplies and to fulfill my duties, but each time I thought of going, I found an excuse to stay home.
I was hoeing in my little garden one morning when I heard hoofbeats. I hurried around the front of my cabin and then stood and watched as a lone horseman followed by a mule and cart came up the rough road to the cemetery. It took some time before I recognized Ebrooks and Kesey. Even then, I was reluctant to go and meet them. I stood silently until they pulled in their animals. Ebrooks dismounted and Kesey clambered down from his cart. The cart held a coffin.
“No mourners?” I asked as I approached them.
Kesey shrugged. “New recruit. He managed to get himself killed the first day he was here. The corporal that did it is locked up now. I expect that before the week is out, you’ll be burying him, too.”
I shook my head at the sad tidings. “You could have just sent a messenger out here. Clove and I would have come for him.”
“Yeah, well, it’s that time of year. You’ll be seeing me and Ebrooks regular now. Colonel doesn’t like the grass to get more than ankle-deep here. We’ll be cutting some each day; it’s the only way to keep it down.”
It was strange to have company. They helped me lower the coffin into the waiting grave, and then watched me fill it in. It annoyed me that neither one appreciated that a dug grave was already waiting, nor did they help to fill it. At least they bowed their heads with me as I said a simple prayer over the grave.
“Used to be every soldier from our outfit had a real funeral,” Kesey observed. “But I guess funerals are like birthdays. Once you reach a certain number of them, they don’t seem so special anymore.”
“As long as I’m here, I’ll do my best to see every man buried with dignity,” I replied.
“Suit yourself,” Kesey said. “But Ebrooks and I won’t always have time to help you, you know.”
His callousness angered me. I took a petty revenge. I professed ignorance as to how to put an edge on a scythe. I watched them do all the tool sharpening, and then feigned that I did not know how to use one and spent the rest of the day “learning” by watching them. I discovered they were actually very competent at their tasks. We began at the oldest section of the cemetery, and worked row by row to take down the grass that had grown too tall. As we raked it into piles and collected it, they complained that once simply putting a couple of sheep out to graze had accomplished this task. It had been stopped not out of exaggerated respect for the dead, but because three times in a row, the sheep had been stolen. When I expressed surprise, they laughed at me. Had I forgotten that most of the population of the town around the fort were criminals?
As the afternoon shadows lengthened, we returned to my cabin. To my surprise, they’d thought to bring food with them, and we made a meal together. They were not companions I would have chosen for myself, yet it was still good to eat and talk and laugh without regard to anything else.
After our meal, they headed back to town. They invited me to come with them and join them in a beer, but I’d spent my money on the Old Thares newspaper, and told them so politely. And so they departed, with the promise or warning that they’d return to work again tomorrow. As they waved at me, they laughed, and told me to keep good watch tonight, lest the Specks come to steal my latest resident. I waved them off and went back into my cabin.
I’d worked longer hours than I had in some days, and I went to bed early, actually anticipating the morrow with some pleasure. After all my days alone, it would be good to have company each day. I tried not to wonder if I would soon weary of the twosome. I slept well and deeply.
Dawn woke me, and I rose and followed my routine. When I went to fetch water, I received again the strong impression that someone was watching me from the forest. I steeled myself to the magic’s insidious creeping and shook my fist at the forest before I carried my bucket of water home. While I waited for the icy spring water to boil for tea and porridge, I took my sling and went out across the grave sites looking for rabbits or birds. I’d resolved to make a nice meat soup for all of us for supper, and suspected that the scent of newly shorn grass might have lured in a few fat spring rabbits, or perhaps some birds come in quest of gravel or worms.
What I found instead shocked and horrified me. Somehow, the tales of body-snatching had seemed only that: tales to frighten a man new to his task as a cemetery guard. To see the gaping grave and the plundered coffin crookedly perched upon the heaped soil raised the hair on the back of my neck and sent a shiver down my spine. I approached it cautiously, as if it were somehow dangerous to me. It was empty. Only a smudge of caked blood from the dead man’s wound remained to show that a body had been in there. In the loose soil beside the grave, I found two sets of barefoot prints. I lifted my eyes to the forest that crouched on the hillside above the cemetery.
The Specks had come and taken the body into those woods. Somewhere in there, I’d find him. All I had to do was muster the courage to go and look for the corpse.
Ebrooks and Kesey found me gathering what I thought I’d need. I’d found a piece of old canvas in the tool shed, possibly left over from crude shroud-making for plague victims. I had the canvas and a good length of rope. I’d slung those onto the back of Clove’s saddle. My long gun was in the scabbard. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, and not just because I didn’t want to face a difficult situation. I had no faith in the battered weapon. I had expected them to share my horror at the body snatching. Instead, simpletons that they were, they roared with laughter at my predicament and wished me “good hunting” but declined to make any effort to help me. Kesey offered me the only helpful bit of information. “Sometimes they puts them right at the end of the road, where the workers would find them. I think they do it to frighten them. But other times, well, there’s just no saying. That feller could be anywhere in the woods, from here to the other side of the Barrier Mountains.”
“Why do they do it?” I demanded furiously, not expecting an answer.
“Most likely because it bothers us so much. For a while there, Rheims, the fellow who dug graves before you, he kept a list of the ones that were stolen, and which ones he brought back and buried and which ones he never found. Colonel Haren got angry about that.”
“That he never found some of the bodies? I don’t blame him! That’s awful. Think of the families.”
“No, not that. He got mad that Rheims kept a list. Sergeant Hoster told us a new rule for it, after Rheim disappeared. You got to go look for the body at least three times. If you don’t find it after that, you can just fill in the grave and keep your mouth shut about it. Now, Ebrooks and me, we asked him, ‘What do you mean?’ Do we only have to go looking for the corpse three times all told, or that we got to try to find it three times each time it gets stole, no matter what?”
The horror I felt was only getting deeper. “What did Hoster say?” I asked faintly.
Ebrooks laughed sourly. “Not much. He just shoved Kesey down and called him an old fool and then stomped off. And over his shoulder he shouts at us, ‘Work it out for yourselves.’ So we did. And we decided three times was the maximum we’d go into the woods for any body. And that’s how we’ve been doing it.”
I felt queasy. “And how many bodies have been lost that way?”
They exchanged a look. It was an agreement to lie. “Oh, not many,” Ebrooks said airily. “But we don’t really know the count, because Colonel Haren forbade keeping track of it. And neither of us are much good at writing anyway.”
“I see.”
They went off to their grass-cutting after that, and I took Clove and my corpse-packaging materials and went back to the empty grave. I resolved that I would start there and see if I couldn’t discover any sort of trail. I also decided that I would approach Colonel Haren about acquiring a dog, to both help me guard the cemetery and to help track down stolen bodies when the occasion demanded it. This time, however, I knew I was on my own.
From the tracks in the disturbed soil around the grave, I decided there had been two intruders, one smaller than the other. They had walked through the uncut grass burdened with a corpse. I mounted Clove to enjoy a better vantage point. There had been a heavy dew the night before. As I had hoped, the passage of the grave robbers had disturbed enough of the moisture on the tall grass that I could see where they had gone. Even better, it indicated they had left after most of the dew had formed. I kicked Clove, and we followed their trail through the grave markers. It made straight for the woods.
The forest looked beautiful in the morning light. The new leaves were at their brightest, and the contrast between the shades of green shown by the different kinds of trees made a springtime palette. The sky was a pale blue, with wispy clouds. In the near distance, the mountains shouldered up above the hills, still mantled with snow. It looked as if clouds had snagged on their rugged tops and flew there like banners. The woods should have looked welcoming, but the closer I got to them, the more they breathed dullness and fatigue and deep dark despair.
At the edge of the meadow, I dismounted. From here, I’d have to walk if I was to keep my eyes open for sign. And walking would force me to stay awake. Already sleepiness buzzed in my ears and my eyelids were heavy. I rubbed my eyes, scratched my head briskly to try to rouse myself, and entered the woods. Clove came behind me.
The packed litter of the forest floor looked deep and undisturbed. I tried to imagine myself as two men, burdened with a corpse. Where would I choose to walk, what would I avoid? I picked my way up the hillside, avoiding the denser thickets of underbrush. I struck a deer trail, and was rewarded by a fresh scuff mark on the bark of a tree beside it. I yawned prodigiously, shook my head, and forced myself to go on. The forest smelled lovely, both lush and rotting in the rising warmth of the spring day. It reminded me of something…no, of someone. Of her. Tree Woman. It was the smell of her breath and body. In a sort of daze, I drifted into a walking dream of lying beside her, in warmth and ease. My discouragement turned to a shameful longing for a past that I didn’t even remember.
Can a man fall asleep walking? I’m not sure, but it is possible to waken by jolting into a tree. I shook my head, and for a moment I could not remember where I was or what I was doing there. Then Clove nudged me from behind, and I recalled my task. We had not strayed far from the deer trail. I went back to it, and trudged on. I used every trick I knew to keep myself alert. I bit my lip. I scratched the back of my neck. I forced myself to walk with my eyes open very wide. Such antics kept me awake and moving, but it was devilishly hard to focus on trying to find marks of a trail. I saw nothing for a long time, and cursed my luck, wondering if in my sleepiness I’d missed some key clue. Then I saw the unmistakable mark of three muddy fingers on a tree trunk. Someone had paused there and steadied himself. I tottered on, yawning. That hand mark meant something more than the fact they had passed this way. My mind chewed the thought slowly. I decided it meant they were getting tired.
The nature of the forest was changing. The woods right above the cemetery were of fairly young trees interspersed with large charred stumps and fire-scarred giants. Clove and I came now to the edge of that old burn, and in a dozen paces the open, airy forest of deciduous trees abruptly gave way to something darker and more ancient. The underbrush dwindled and gave way. The crowded trees that competed for space and survival had no place in this cathedral of giants. The forest floor became a deep carpet of moss. A few broad-leaved plants and ferns broke the floor, and occasionally the long, crookedly sprawling and fiercely thorned canes of demon’s club sprouted like strange forest cacti.
Previously, Clove had had to shoulder his way along the narrow path. Now we were dwarfed. The trunks of the trees were columns that held up a distant sky. The giants were widely spaced, and I could not reach the lowest branch on any of them. Their leafy limbs began far overhead and reached out to mingle in a canopy that, when their leaves were fully developed, would completely block the light. I had never walked in such a forest, and the magic’s sleepy spell was abruptly dispersed by a jolt of genuine and deeply felt fear. I’d recognized these giants of trees. They were the same as those at the end of the road. I halted where I stood and stared all around me. The vista of thick columnar trunks extended in all directions. I had no name for the trees; I’d never seen them anywhere else. The upper reaches of their trunks were mottled in color, from green to reddish-brown. But down here, at my height, the surface of their bark was ropy, as if the trunks were braided tendrils rather than a single stem. The roots that radiated out from the trees raised hummocks in the forest floor. Their fallen leaves from last autumn made deep leafy beds of humus among the tangling roots. The rich smell of healthy rot filled my nostrils.
The silence in that place was a pressure I felt in my ears, and between one heartbeat and the next, I suddenly acknowledged a thing I had always known but never fully realized. Trees were alive. The colossi that surrounded me were not the work of man or the earth’s bones of stone. They were living creatures, each one begun from a tiny seed, and older, far older than anything I could imagine. The thought sent a sudden shiver up my spine, and suddenly I needed to see the sky and feel moving air on my face. But the trees hemmed me round and closed me in. I glimpsed an area that seemed more light and open and made directly for it, heedless of leaving the deer trail that was now only a winding indentation through the mossy earth.
My area of light marked where one of the giants had half fallen. It leaned at an angle, its roots torn from the earth, and its bare branches pushing half a dozen fellow trees aside. Its falling had opened a window to the sky; spring sunlight reached the mossy forest floor. In that irregular patch of light, several young trees had sprung up. I would have said they were large, old trees if I had seen them growing in Old Thares. Among these giants, they seemed like saplings. And fastened to one of the saplings I found the corpse I had been pursuing.
I had seen only his coffin when we buried him. It was a shock to find him such a young man, little more than a boy, really. He sat with his back to the tree, his head fallen forward on his chest and his face covered by a sheaf of yellow hair. But for the discoloration of his skin, he might have simply fallen asleep there. His hands, darkened by death, lay in his lap. He looked at peace.
I stared at him, and wondered what I had feared I would find. The Specks had not stripped his body. They had not cut his limbs away or in any way dishonored him that I could see. They had simply carried him all this way, only to set him down against a tree.
The shafts of spring sunlight falling from far above illuminated him as if he were god-touched. Tiny insects danced above him in a flickering cloud of gossamer wings. Behind me, Clove snorted impatiently. I glanced back at my horse, and at the roll of soiled canvas and old rope he carried. Suddenly it seemed that I would be the one disturbing the rest of the dead. A man spoke beside me. “Please, sir. Don’t bother him. He is peaceful now.”
I leapt sideways and landed in a defensive posture. Clove turned his big head to look at me curiously. The Speck man did not flinch or move. He didn’t shift his eyes toward me, but stood with his hands clasped loosely below his belly and his head bent as if praying. For a long instant, we were frozen in that tableau. The Speck was a man of middle years, naked as the sky. His long streaked hair was held back with a tie of bark twine. He carried no weapons; his body was unadorned by jewelry of any kind. As natural as an animal, he stood in submission before me. I felt foolish in my wrestler’s crouch, with my fists held up before me. I calmed my breath and warily straightened.
“Why have you done this?” I asked him severely.
He lifted his eyes to look at me. I was startled to see that his eyes matched the streaking pigment on his face. A brown eye looked at me from the dark blotch on the left side of his face, and a green eye peered from the tan area around his right eye. His gaze was mild. “I do not understand your words, Great One.”
Clove and my scabbarded long gun were several steps away. I edged toward them as I tried to think of a different way to phrase my question. “Yesterday I buried this man in a coffin. Why have you disturbed his rest by stealing his body and bringing him here?”
He puffed his cheeks at me lightly, a gesture I would later learn indicated a sort of denial. “Oh, Great One, I cannot understand what you say.”
“Speak the language, can’t you?” The woman who suddenly stepped out from the shelter of a tree snapped these words with asperity. She had been leaning against the mottled trunk in a way that had allowed her to blend with it. Now that she stood clear of it, I wondered how I had not seen her before, and wondered, too, why Clove showed no sign of alarm. He paid these Specks no more mind than if they were jaybirds hopping near him in his pasture. When, I wondered, had he become so accustomed to them? A paranoid fear that there were actually unseen Specks all around me suddenly seized me. I glanced about and then put my back to Clove’s barrel body. My long gun was on the other side of my horse. I started to edge around him.
As I took that precaution, the woman walked toward me. She was as naked as the man, and completely comfortable in her bare skin. She reminded me of a large, heavy-bodied cat as she stalked me. She was lithe, but there was nothing slight about her. As she drew closer, I halted my flight. Her modest breasts hugged her body; muscle moved in her powerful thighs. I tried not to stare at her nakedness, but it was just as difficult to meet her eyes. They were the deepest green I had ever seen. A sooty streak ran down the center of her face, dividing her eyes and darkening her nose. She had more specks and larger ones than the man did; at some points, the dashes on her body almost became stripes. Her streaky hair fell in a mane down her back, and in color it reminded me of varnished oak.
If I felt uncouth staring at her body, she was not so inhibited about perusing mine. Her eyes ran over me familiarly, and she said to the man, “Look at him. He’s huge. He could make two of you even now, and yet it is plain that no one cares for him. Think what such a man could look like with the proper care.” She was only an arm’s length away from me, and she lifted both her hands as if she would measure my girth with them.
“Keep your distance!” I warned her, unnerved by her casual attitude toward me.
“Speak the language, I said! Are you rude, or stupid?”
“Olikea! It is dangerous to speak so to a Great One!” The man offered his warning in a humble tone, as if he must defer to her. It made me wonder what her status was; I tried to gauge her age and decided she must be close to twenty. Her nakedness, I suddenly realized, confused me. I was accustomed to dress defining both a woman’s status and her age.
She laughed, a clear peal that shattered the quiet of the woods. The sound woke a memory in me. I’d heard that laugh before. “There is no danger, Father. If he is so stupid that he cannot speak the language, then he will not be offended by what I said. And if he is so rude as to speak his own tongue to us when he can understand the language, well, then I have only returned that rudeness to him. Is it not so, Great One?”
“My name is not Great One,” I replied testily. And then my tongue halted of its own accord. I had spoken Gernian to her, until I came to the words for Great One. That phrase I had returned to her in her own language. I knew then that I could speak the Speck language, and recalled when I had learned it and from whom. They were speaking Speck and I’d been replying in Gernian. I took a breath and tried again. “Please. Keep your distance from me.”
“There!” she exclaimed to her father. “I knew it. He was just being rude. Because he thinks he can.” She turned back to me. “Keep my distance. That I shall. This is my distance, Great One.” She stepped closer to me and set both her hands on my chest. Shock paralyzed my body and my tongue. She ran one hand down my side, and slapped me firmly on the hip as if she were checking a horse or dog for soundness. Her other hand simultaneously traveled up my chest and up the side of my neck and stopped on my cheek. She ran her thumb lightly over my lips. Her bold gaze held my own. She leaned in closer until her breasts brushed my chest. Then the hand that had lingered on my hip suddenly groped my groin. Startled, I sprang back from her, but Clove’s huge body blocked my escape. She squeezed me playfully and then stepped back, grinning broadly. She spoke over her shoulder to her father, who stood, his eyes cast down, as if he wished to avoid seeing her outrageous behavior. “Oh, you see, he regrets being rude already.” She cocked her head at me and wet her lips. “Would you like to apologize to me?”
It was very hard to think. The sudden idea that I had succumbed to the spell of the forest and fallen into a deep sleep came to me. If this was a dream, I could do whatever I wanted, without repercussions. No. I recalled the last time I had lain with a Speck woman in a dream, and all that had followed. I made fists, digging my nails into the palms of my hands. I lifted my hands and scrubbed roughly at my face. Either the dream was a very strong one, or this was real. Either choice was frightening. I took a breath and spoke firmly to the man. It was hard to summon an authoritative voice when the woman still hemmed me in against my horse. “I have come to take the body back to our graveyard. Stand clear of me and let me do what I must.”
The man lifted his eyes to mine. “I think he prefers to be where he is, Great One. Go to him. Speak to him. See if it is not so.”
He spoke with such confidence that I looked toward the corpse. Was it possible that by some horrible error the man still clung to life? No. He was dead. Flies were walking on him. I could smell him. I decided to put my decision into words the savage could comprehend. “No. He wishes to be back in his coffin, buried in the ground. That is what I must do for him.” As casually as I could, I turned back to Clove. I took my roll of canvas and length of line from his saddle and slung them over my shoulder. The woman had not moved. I had to edge past her to walk toward the corpse. She followed me.
The man clasped himself and rocked from side to side as I approached the body. “Great One, I fear you are wrong. Listen to him. He wishes to stay. He will make a fine tree. When the trees of your people fill our forest, the cutting will have to stop. Your own trees will stop you.”
I understood each word that he said, but I could not take his meaning. “I will ask him what he wishes,” I told the old man as I dropped the canvas next to the body. I knelt briefly by the body and pretended to listen. “Yes. He wishes to go back to the cemetery,” I told them.
I pulled the rope free of the canvas and unrolled the cloth. I bent to seize the corpse by the shoulders. Insects buzzed over my head, and the distinctive smell of death surrounded me. I held my breath. Resolved to get it over with quickly, I seized him by his shoulders, intending to pull him over onto the canvas and then quickly roll him up in it.
The corpse didn’t budge. I tugged at him several times, and then had to step away to take a deep breath of untainted air. The stench of death clung to my hands, and it took all my will to keep from retching.
All this while, the Specks had watched me, the man solemnly and the woman with amusement. Their presence bothered me; if I must do such a distasteful task, I would rather have done it without an audience. Obviously, they had fastened him to the tree somehow. I stood up straight, unsheathed my knife, took a deep breath of air, and once more approached the corpse. I could not see any binding. When I could hold my breath no longer, I took another gasp of air through the sleeve of my jacket. Then I tried to slide my hand down behind his back, between him and the tree. Immediately, I encountered a number of tiny rootlets projecting from the tree and into the corpse, thrusting right through the fabric of his jacket and shirt and into his flesh.
I could scarcely credit it. I knew that the man’s body had not been here more than a few hours. That a tree could send greedy, questing roots into him so quickly was macabre. I tried the blade of my knife against those I could reach; it was a hopeless task. They were pencil thick and as hard as oak knots.
I do not like to recall the next half hour. The stench was stronger because the rootlets had pierced his dead flesh in so many places. Every atom of my nature rebelled against the idea of manhandling the dead. Yet, in the end, that was what it came down to. I jerked him loose. The rootlets that had entered his body so quickly had fanned out inside him as a network of tendrils. By the time I pried the body loose, it was leaking foul fluids from dozens of gaping wounds. It smelled far worse than it should have; I suspected something in the roots was hastening the breakdown of the corpse. Pulling the body free of the roots left the tangled root masses dangling from the tree and dripping gore. Liquids and particles of flesh and gut smeared my hands and arms before I finally managed to lay him out on the canvas. I flung an end of it over him and then dropped to my knees to roll him up in the coarse shroud. I bound the parcel with my rope.
I was tying the final knot when the Speck man spoke again. “I do not believe he wished to go. But in this I will defer to your wisdom, Great One.” He sounded ineffably sad.
The woman spoke with more scorn. “You did not even try to listen to him.” She puffed her cheeks at me several times, making her lips flutter. When I made no response, she said, “I will come to see you again. This time not as a dreamwalker, but in the flesh.” She cocked her head and eyed me appraisingly before she added, “And I will bring you proper food.”
I could think of no response. It was difficult to lift the swathed corpse to my shoulder and even harder to rise with it, but I would have died before I would have asked either of them for help. I lugged the dead trooper over to Clove, who snorted his distaste, but accepted the nasty burden. I could almost feel the Specks’ eyes boring into me as I secured the body to my saddle. Both ends of my parcel stuck out awkwardly. The journey home would be a complicated one once we reached the narrow path through the younger forest. I spoke over my shoulder to the watching Specks as I tightened the rope that lashed the corpse to my saddle.
“The way of my people is to bury our dead. It is my duty to protect their graves. I do not wish to have problems with you or your people. You must leave our dead alone. You must never again do what you did last night. I do not want to bring harm down on either of you. But if you again take a corpse from our graveyard, I must. Do you understand?” I tugged the last knot tight and turned to look at them.
I was alone.