I did not intend to sleep that night. I did not want to wake finding I had sleepwalked into the forest. I sat up in my chair by the fire. As the night crawled past, I drank mug after mug of steaming black coffee. The summer evening outside was balmy, so I let my small cook fire slowly die. I watched the flames falter and shrink until they subsided as a ripple of light over the dwindling coals.
From time to time, I heard Olikea call to me. With every summons, temptation flamed up in me, but I was determined. Covering my ears did nothing to muffle her invitation. The magic conveyed her call to me rather than the utterance of her voice. Was she in league with the magic or only the unwitting tool of it? Perhaps it was only that she wanted to use the magic in me for her own ends.
The last cup of coffee from the pot was thick and bitter. I’d worked hard all day and my body ached for sleep. The night had reached its coolest point, and I felt chilled. I longed to wrap myself in a blanket but resisted. Too much comfort would make me more susceptible to sleep. Dawn would come soon. I rubbed my eyes, stood up, and paced around the room. I yawned hugely and sat down in my chair again.
“Nevare.”
“I’m not coming.” I leaned my head back on the hard top of my chair and stared into the shadowed corner of the room. I could picture how irritated she would be at my refusal. She’d be standing just inside the new forest, just beyond the spring where I filled my water bucket, naked to the night, heedless of the chill and the settling dew. I had noticed something the last time I was with her; even in the darkness, I could sense the dappling on her skin when I ran my hand down the smooth curves of her back. There was a very subtle difference in the texture from dark to light. My mother had used to favor a fabric that had that texture. What had she called it? I couldn’t remember, and that saddened me. Another little bit of my old life gone from me.
“Nevare.”
“Leave me alone, Olikea. You don’t love me. You don’t even know who I am or where I came from. You’re just the same as Amzil. She can’t see past my fat to discover who I am inside. You can’t see past my body either. But to you, it’s what makes me desirable. It’s probably the only thing that does.”
“Who is Amzil?” It was a sharp, suspicious query.
“Don’t worry about it. She is just another woman who doesn’t love me.”
“There are many women in this world who do not love you.” She puffed her lips at me disdainfully and lifted her chin. “Why should you care about one more?”
“There you are absolutely correct. There are multitudes of women in this world who don’t love me. In fact, if we were looking for women who did love me, I think we could quickly narrow it down to two. However, one loves me as a brother and one as a cousin. Neither is very satisfactory to a man.”
“Why not?” She stood just under the shadow of the trees. Her basket rested on one outthrust hip. I could smell the mushrooms, and the soft, heavy petals of a pale water blossom that tasted like sweet pepper. The necklace I had given her glittered around her throat. It was the only thing she wore. Her jutting breasts seemed to offer themselves to me, a warmer sort of fruit. For a moment, I could not think.
“A man wants more than kindly affection from a woman. He wants all of her.”
She puffed her lips at me again. “That is a stupid thing to want. Only a woman can have all of herself. You should be happy with what any woman offers you, rather than to want everything she is. Do you offer all you are to any one woman? I doubt it.”
That stung. “I would if a woman offered all of herself to me. It is hard for me to be with someone who holds herself back from me. My heart doesn’t love that way, Olikea. Maybe among your folk that is how you love. But among my people—”
“Your people and my people are the same people, Nevare. Over and over I tell you this. Cannot you learn it? The People are the only people you have now, Nevare. And we offer you everything. So why do not you love us with this ‘heart’ of yours? Why do not you come to us for every day and every hour, and use the magic of the People as it should be used?”
“To do what?” I asked her. We had moved closer together. The cool mud of the spring’s edge cradled my bare feet. The night did not seem so dark. There was light in the spring water that glinted up at us. The light in Olikea’s eyes was twin to it. I smelled the startling tang of crushed fruit. It was a berry in her hand. She reached up to my unsmiling mouth to push it gently between my lips. Her fingertips lingered a moment on my tongue and then drew back, painting my lips with the stinging sweetness of the fruit. My senses reeled with the flavor, the scent, and her touch.
“This is a new taste for you,” she whispered. “They grow only in our dream country. And only a Great One like you is allowed to eat it. I can taste it only when I taste it on your mouth.” With sticky fingers, she hooked my face, pulled it closer, and lapped her tongue lightly across my lips.
A man can only bear so much. My dreams of true love and the fulfilment of a life shared dissolved beneath a wave of simple lust. I caught her up and pulled her close. She let the basket of food fall. I tasted the skin of her neck, breathed in the scent of her hair.
She laughed softly. “Remember, I do not love you as your sister does, nor as your cousin does. I do not love you as a plain-skin woman would love her man. So this—” and she touched me teasingly “—is not enough for you. Is it? You don’t want this from me, do you?”
“I want it,” I told her fiercely, imprisoning her in my arms. “I want it, but I want more than just this. Can’t you understand that, Olikea? Are our peoples truly so different?”
“Our peoples? I tell you and tell you. You have only one people. There is only one people, the People. They are our people. All others are strangers. All others threaten our ways.”
“I don’t want to talk right now,” I decided. I stooped and picked her up in my arms. She gave a whoop of surprise and flung her arms around my neck. I liked the feeling that I could startle her, that I could move her with my strength. It fueled my lust.
I carried her deeper into the forest. Magic surged in me with the heat of desire. I made a gesture, and moss and fallen leaves gathered themselves into a couch for us. Another motion of my hand, and a tree branch drooped to become a support for a vine that suddenly draped itself into a bower around us. Fragrant flowers opened to perfume the night. I banished the small stinging insects that had come to investigate us, and invited instead the little glowing moths, that I might better see what I touched. I lavished magic with a free hand. It was as simple and natural as the way Olikea opened herself to me, and as mutually pleasing. This night I led and she followed in that most ancient dance. In our previous times together, she had always taken the role of aggressor, and I had been astonished to find how much pleasure I could take in that. This night, I think she was equally surprised to find that a male could command her pleasure so completely. Discovering that I could render her near-mindless with bliss bolstered my sense of myself as nothing else had in the previous year. It spurred me to greater efforts, and when at last she lay beside me, slack in my arms, I felt I had proven something to her, though I could not have said exactly what.
We dozed. After what seemed a very long time, she asked, “Are you hungry?”
I nearly laughed. “Of course I’m hungry. I’m always hungry.”
“Are you?” She sounded concerned. She set her hand on my side tenderly. “You should never be hungry. Not if you would allow me to care for you properly. Not if you allowed me to feed you as you should be fed. How can you do all that the magic wishes you to do if you do not eat as you should? You must pay attention when I call to you, and eat every night of the food I bring to you. You must stay close by me so that I can bring you to the peak of your powers.”
She stood up and stretched. “I’ll be right back.”
I lay where I was on the moss, trying to find thoughts that belonged to me. I hadn’t intended to come here. Yet here I was, enmeshed with Olikea again, and listening to her scold me for not letting the magic have its way with me. I knew it was a problem, but I couldn’t bring myself to care about it.
She returned and sat down in the angle of my body, her back against my belly. She leaned back on me a little and rummaged in her basket. Some of the fruit had been bruised in the fall. I could smell each separate one quite clearly. She offered me a lily leaf. “Eat this first. For your strength.”
I took it from her and ate a bite. “So. You anticipate I will need more strength tonight?”
I was surprised when she giggled. “You might. Just eat it.”
I obeyed and then asked, “Does each food you bring me have its own virtue?”
“Here, yes. On the other side, sometimes food is just food. To eat. Here each one is a piece of magic. What you eat here is far more potent than anything you eat on the other side. It is why it is so important that you come here every night.”
“What other side?”
“The other side of here,” she said impatiently. She took another lily leaf, put an orange section of root in its center, and rolled the fleshy leaf around it. “Like this. Eat it like this.”
I obeyed. The orange root was slightly sweet. Weariness fell away from me. I reached over and pulled her basket closer to me. “What is this one for?” I asked, taking a clump of pale yellow mushrooms.
“For walking the web more strongly.”
“I don’t understand.”
She puffed her lips at me, and then made a dismissive gesture with her fingers. “Just eat it. Trust me. I know these things.”
The mushrooms had an earthy flavor, rich and dark. She followed them with a double handful of berries so ripe and sweet that they burst in my hands before I could get them to my mouth. Each had a flat seed inside it, strongly piquant. As I chewed a mouthful, she said, “You should go now, so that you can come back to me on the other side before the light is too strong. You do not need to bring anything with you. Simply go and then come back to me.”
I didn’t understand, so I avoided the question. “The light doesn’t bother me.”
“It troubles me. And you need to be with me, so that I can show you the way to the deeper place. We think that one of the old ones will fall tomorrow. The magic will waken with great fury then. It would be better for us to be sheltered from that wrath.”
“I cannot go with you tomorrow, Olikea. I promised my friend that I would come to visit him in Gettys. I have to keep that promise.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Tomorrow death sweeps through that place. It will only make you sad to see it. Come away with me.”
Every word she spoke jabbed me like a small pin, awakening me to my other life and the dangers that threatened it. While I loitered here with her in satiation and contentment, my friends were in danger. The closeness I had felt to her was thinning like darkness before the dawn. “Were you there?” I asked her. “When your people danced the Dust Dance in Gettys, were you there, spreading disease with the dust?”
“Of course I was,” she answered promptly. There was no shame in her voice, no regret at all. “You saw me leave by the gate. I thought you would come with me, but then I saw that you had her with you. So I left you.”
I lifted her hand that rested against my ribs and looked at it. “With this hand, you threw the dust that will make all of them sicken with the plague?”
She twisted her hand from my grip, and then held it palm-up and fingers loose. She shook it like that. “It is the winnowing. The dust flies and blows and settles where it will. Some will walk the path of the winnowing and some will not. Of those who walk the path, some will cross the bridge and others will not. Some will serve the magic: they will cross, but come back to us, briefly, as messengers from that far place. Among our people, we honor those ones as worthy of a tree. They send down roots to one world and reach up branches to another. They stay among us then and grow, and wisdom grows with them. You, you bury your dead to rot, as if you care nothing for the wisdom of that world. The messengers who come back to you, you ignore and bury beneath the earth. We have tried to help you be wiser. We have tried to give some of your people trees so that they could grow in wisdom, but never does it work. The tree does not thrive, or one like you comes to tear them free from the tree and throw them back into a hole in the ground where they rot like bad seed.”
I sat very still. She took another lily leaf from the basket, rolled it around an orange root, and passed it to me. I took it from her absently. I could almost understand what she was telling me. The little I comprehended frightened me.
Olikea took pleasure in her musing. “A few, a very few like you,” and she patted me fondly, “pass through the winnowing a different way. No one knows what makes the dust change you. Perhaps it is not that the dust changes you, but that you have already changed in a way the dust cannot alter. Great Ones can cross the bridge more than once and return to stay among us as members of the People.” She shrugged. “Perhaps it is because the magic knows its own. It is a thing to think on, sometimes, when one does not feel too much like sleeping. But it is not a thing to be troubled about, because it does not matter if we ever understand it or not. It is for the magic to know. We can be content with that.” She spoke softly, contentedly, as if this was a philosophy of life. To me, it was her justification for the slaughter of innocents. I felt sudden disgust with myself that I had whiled away these hours in animalistic pleasure while in Gettys men, women, and children were beginning to burn with the sickness she had sown.
“You can, perhaps, be content with that. I cannot.” I rolled to my belly, pushing her away from me in the process. She made an annoyed sound. I got my knees under me and then stood up. “I am leaving, Olikea. I will never come back to you. I cannot be with you again. I cannot accept what you have done to my people in Gettys.”
“What I have done? You make this my doing? It is the doing of the magic. And perhaps it is more your doing than mine. Perhaps, oh plain-skin Great One, if you had followed the magic’s calling more willingly, it would not have had to be!” She sprang to her feet to confront me “If you had done the task the magic set you, the intruders would be gone by now, banished back to their own lands. You were the one who was to drive the plain-skins back to their own lands. Jodoli saw that clearly. We all saw that. For that task, the magic marked you. And we have waited, we have all waited, and I have tried to nurture you to your power, but always you run away and deny it and refuse it. Jodoli humbled himself to show you the danger that threatened the ancestor trees. He has explained it to you in every way it can be explained. All thought that when your own eyes beheld the danger to the ancestor trees, you would waken to your task. But now they teeter and sway, and tomorrow one of them will fall and be no more! They are the oldest memories of our people, and tomorrow we lose them. Because of the intruders. Because they wish to make a path for their horses and wagons to go where they have never needed to go before. They say it will be a good thing for us, but how can they know what is good for us when they have begun by destroying our greatest good thing? We have let them feel our sorrow. We have let them feel our fears. Still, they are too stupid to go away. So they must be driven away with harsher means. How can anyone doubt that? But you, oh, you look at those intruders who live little short lives known only to themselves, you look at those treeless people and you say, ‘Oh, let them stay, let them cut the ancestors from their roots, do not make them endure the winnowing, let them be.’ And why? Because they are wise or kind or great of heart? No. Only because they look like you!”
“Olikea, they are my people. They are as dear to me as your people are to you. Why can you not understand this?”
She puffed her cheeks in a display of utter disbelief. “Understand what? They are not the People, Nevare. They will never be the People of this place. They must all go away, go back to their own place, and then all will be as it should be again. Except, of course, that with their tools ‘your people’ will have cut a hole in the sky of leaves and stolen from us the oldest of our elders. But for this, you care not at all! Will you say what all of ‘your people’ say? ‘It is only a tree!’ Say that, Nevare. Say it so I can hate you as you deserve.”
I stared at her in shock. Tears were running down her cheeks. They were tears of fury, true, but up to that moment I had not thought anything I said or did would wring such impassioned words from her. I was a fool. I tried to reason with her.
“The Gernians will never leave here, Olikea. I know my people. Once they have come to a place, they do not leave it. They stay, they trade, and their towns grow. Your lives will change, but the changes will not be all bad. You could learn to accept it. Think of your own people. From us they get tools and cloth and jewelry. And sweets! Remember how much you liked the sweets? The Speck people like these things, and we value the furs that they—”
“Be silent!” She shrieked the words at me. “Do not tell me in soft words that our dying will not hurt! Do not tell me of trinkets to wear and tools to use and sweet things to eat.” She tore the simple bead necklace I had given her from her throat and the bright little glass beads went scattering, littering the moss like tiny seeds of Gernia.
I looked at them, glistening orbs of red and blue and yellow resting on top of the moss like a dew of gems, and for an instant I saw the future. A hundred years from now, those shiny bits of glass trodden into the ground would still remain intact, but the forest near the cemetery would be gone. I felt a sudden sorrow that it would be so, but I also recognized the truth. “Olikea, it is inevitable.”
Her hands rose as claws and she screamed wordlessly at me. I lifted my hands to defend my face from her nails. “Stop!” I told her, and to my horror, the magic obeyed me. She halted, straining against it, longing to rake me bloody, but unable to push past the boundary I had put there. For a moment she scrabbled against it wordlessly, a savage animal caged behind glass. Then she stopped. Breasts heaving, eyes streaming tears, she let her hands drop to her sides.
She took a ragged breath. When she spoke, I could hear how she forced the words past the lump in her throat. “You think you can do this! You think you can swell up big with the magic of the People and use it against us. You cannot. You will come to do what the magic says you must. This I know. Of this, I say to you, ‘It is inevitable!’ And you shake your head and make your eyes sad and do not believe me. I do not care. The magic will convince you. It will send you a messenger you cannot ignore, and then you will know. You will see.” She crossed her arms in front of her and stood tall and straight, reclaiming her dignity. “I did not think you were so stupid, Nevare. I thought that if I fed you, you would see the path of wisdom and tread it.” She fluttered her fingers dismissively. “You did not. But it does not matter. You will do what the magic had destined for you. You will turn your people back to their own lands. We all know this. Soon, you will know it, too.”
She turned her back on me and walked away. Her stride was arrogant and free once more, not that of a woman scorned but rather that of a woman who had won and no longer cared whether I recognized that or not. As I watched her go, the dawn’s light broke through the canopy overhead. In that sudden brightness, I could not see. I blinked frantically, but she seemed to be disappearing even as I stared after her.
I shut my eyes and knuckled them.
When I opened them, fingers of strong daylight had reached through the cracks in my window shutters to fall across my face. My back was stiff and my neck ached from sleeping with my head thrown back against my chair. I sat up, flinching as my neck bones crackled. Despite all my efforts, I’d fallen asleep. And I’d dreamed…something. The first thought that came to me filled me with dread. I’d promised to go and see Epiny today.
I groaned and rubbed the back of my neck, and then scrubbed my stiff face with my hands. When I lowered them I was stunned at what I saw. My fingers and hands were sticky and stained red from the fruit I had shared with Olikea. My mind wobbled as it tried to integrate the idea of dreaming myself into a world that left physical evidence of itself. The other side, Olikea had called it. And now I was back on this side. The strength of the sunlight filtering through my shutters told me that I had slept far past my usual rising time. I rose and opened the window to the day. It was sunny and fine, and the sun already stood high in the sky. I rubbed my face again, and then grunted in annoyance.
By the time I’d wiped the stickiness of the dream fruit from my face and hands, I had another distraction. The sounds of a horse and cart reached me through the open window. I wondered if someone was returning Clove to me, but a glance out the window showed me that was not so. A man with his face muffled in a scarf perched on the seat of wagon pulled by a swaybacked black nag. It took me a moment to recognize Ebrooks. Three coffins jutted from the open back of the cart. My heart sank. It had begun.
I went out to meet him. He waved me back. “Speck plague!” he shouted at me “Going though the town like a prairie fire. Here. Put this on before you come any closer.” He tossed me first a small glass bottle and then a folded cloth. The liquid in the bottle proved to be vinegar. “Wet the cloth with that and tie it over your nose and mouth.”
“Will it keep away the plague?” I asked him as I obeyed him.
He shrugged. “It’s mostly for the smell. But if it keeps you from catching plague, well, you haven’t lost anything.”
As I tightened the knot in the kerchief over my face, I heard a terrible sound. It was like a distant scream, breathlessly and hideously prolonged. It ended with a monumental crash that shook the earth under my feet. I staggered a step or two from the impact and then stood unsteadily, dizzied from the experience. “What was that?” I demanded of Ebrooks.
He gave me a puzzled look. “I told you. Just vinegar. But some folk say it wards off the plague. Can’t hurt is what I say.”
“No, not that. That noise in the distance. The scream. That explosion.”
He looked puzzled. “I didn’t hear anything. There was some talk in town that the high mucky-mucks from Old Thares were saying that we were wasting time trying to fell those big trees with saws and hatchets. One fellow suggested drilling a hole and packing a black powder charge into the trunk and then touching it off with a long fuse. Don’t know that they decided to do it, though. And I’m not sure you could hear if from here even if they did.”
“Oh, I think I’d hear it,” I said faintly. The world still seemed to shimmer at the edges. I knew what I’d heard. The ancestor tree had fallen. That piece of the past had been destroyed. I had a sense of a gaping tear in time, and a cold wind blowing through it. What had been known was unknown now. Names recalled, deeds of old, all gone, as if in an instant a great library had collapsed into ash. Gone.
“You all right, Nevare? You coming down with the fever?”
“No. No, I don’t have the plague. I’m just—forget it. Forget it, Ebrooks.” All would be forgotten. “Three bodies. It seems so sudden.”
“Yes, well, the plague is always sudden. There will be more before the day is out. The colonel himself has it; they say every officer that was on the reviewing stand is down with it, and a good portion of the troops. The infirmary filled up last night. Now they’re telling people to stay home and put a yellow flag out in front of their houses if they have sickness and need help. Town looks like a field of daffodils.”
“But you’re all right?”
“So far. But I’ve had it twice, and lived both times. Makes it less likely I’ll get it again. Come on. No time for talking. We’ve got to get these ones planted before the next load arrives. Kesey was waiting on coffins when I left. Luckily, they had a batch of planks all sawn, just the right size.”
“Yes. Lucky.” I didn’t say that was due to my foresight. What had seemed eminently practical when I had suggested it now seemed grisly and foreboding. I felt as if I’d been the croaker bird waiting for the dead to die. As if my thought had summoned them, I heard a hoarse cawing. I turned to see three of the carrion eaters sail in from the seemingly empty blue skies and alight in the branches of my newly planted trees, which bent beneath the weight of their heavy bodies. One of the croakers spread his wide black wings in alarm and cawed again. I felt cold. Ebrooks didn’t even notice them.
“All those empty graves you dug will come in handy now. Time to show the colonel what you’re made of.”
“Is he very ill?” I asked him. I walked beside the wagon as he drove it slowly to the opened and waiting earth.
“The colonel? I reckon. He’s never had it before. First year he was here, it went through the ranks like a batch of salts. Killed the commanding officer; that was when Colonel Haren got jumped up to commander. Well, the day he did, he all but went into hiding. You’ve seen how he is. Hardly ever leaves his rooms if he can help it. I hear he’s got them all fixed up like a little palace in there. Comfy as a bug in a rug. Winter and summer, he keeps a fire going in there; I know that rumor is true, because I see the smoke all the time. Someone told him that fire fights off fever; burns it right out of the air before it can get to a man. Seemed to work for him, anyway. But maybe this was just his time for it. He come down bad, I hear, and none of those visiting officers are likely to go home. Well, actually, they will, but in boxes. Too good to be buried out here in the wild east with us common soldiers. They’ll go home to their fancy stone tombs. Well, here we are. Last stop, folks.”
His forced good cheer was already beginning to grate on me, but I didn’t ask him to stop. I suspected that whatever feelings he hid behind that mask would be harder for me to look at. We worked quickly and efficiently to set each coffin in an open grave. The names were marked on each coffin. Elje Soot. Jace Montey. Peer Miche. The waiting graves were ones I had dug last autumn. Grass and weeds had sprouted on the soil mounded next to each hole. “I’ll go get some shovels,” I said when the heavy coffins were in place.”
“Sorry, friend. I won’t be staying to help you dig today. My orders were to come right back for the next load. Oh. Wait.” He took a folded paper from his pocket. “Here are the names. Better note down who went in each hole if you want to make markers for them later.” He watched me closely as I took the paper.
“Oh. Yes. Thank you, I’ll do that.” I took the list, scarcely seeing the names. “I’ll see you later, then.”
“I’m afraid you will, and often.” He paused. “You didn’t know none of them, did you?” he asked curiously.
“No. I don’t think I did. And it’s too late now.”
“Humph. Well, I admit I thought you might flinch a bit when you saw those names. But either you’re cold as ice or you never knew them at all. These fellows aren’t dead from plague, Nevare. These are the ones they found dead around your wagon in the stable. Doctor still don’t know what killed them. He wanted to keep them a bit longer, figure it out, but with all the folks sick and needing the beds, he told me, ‘Just get them in the ground. We’ll sort it all out later.’ You didn’t know nothing about them, huh?”
A chill went up my back. Ebrooks had been testing me with that list. I tried to speak slowly as if jolted by his news. “Someone found my wagon? And my horse? I got jumped a couple days ago. Hit on the head. When I woke up, I’d been robbed. My horse and wagon were gone. I managed to walk back here and didn’t do much for the next day or so. You think they were the ones who jumped me?”
“Well. I known them a little. Never figured them for thieves. Not that they were gentlemen, either. Mean as a mad dog, that was Elje. And Peer just liked to see blood. Everyone knew that about him. None of the whores ever wanted his money. Still, I hate to see any of us go like that. They were all twisted up like poisoned cats. That’s no death for a soldier.”
A terrible tingling ran over me. In a fit of anger, I’d killed these men. It had been vengeance for what they had done to me, and yet it still bothered me. Horribly. Ebrooks was right. Execution by unseen magic was not a fitting death for any soldier. I felt as if I was made of wood as I lifted a numbed hand to wave a farewell to Ebrooks. He waved back at me and slapped the reins on the horse’s back.
I fetched my spade and began moving earth down onto the coffins. The first few shovelfuls woke an empty thumping from the coffin below, but soon I was shoveling earth onto earth. I’d finished the first grave and was carefully packing the mounded earth into a smooth heap before it occurred to me how commonplace this had become to me. I hadn’t even breathed a prayer over them.
Neither had Ebrooks. He’d behaved as if he’d dropped off a load of grain sacks. All my life, I’d always heard of our glorious military tradition of respect for the dead. After battles, our soldiers were always buried with pomp, ceremony, and reverence. The military cemeteries in the west were well tended, planted with flowers and trees and solemnized with ornamental statues. Not here. Here we planted our dead like potatoes.
Speck plague had made death mundane. Dealing with it had become something we did efficiently. Mourning would come later, when danger had passed and we had time for reflection. It saddened me, but on a deep level of familiarity, I understood it. It was no different from how I had been forced to bury my mother, sister, and brother.
I put my foot on the shovel and pushed it deep into the grassed-over heap of soil. The first shovelful of earth and gravel rattled down onto the coffin’s wooden lid. It was the only music that would be played to memorialize this passing.
The day was warm, and sweat had long since soaked my shirt to my back. I toiled doggedly on. My head throbbed. My brief sleep of the night before had not rested me. On the contrary, whenever I allowed my mind to stray to that “dream,” I felt even more drained of energy and purpose. I did not think that Olikea would make a threat she could not fulfill. The only way I could distract myself from that anxiety was to worry about Spink and Epiny and Amzil and the children. Had the plague descended on their house as well? If it had not, if her mind was free to dwell on such things, would Epiny forgive me for not coming to visit as I’d said I would? I hoped she would consider my profession and understand. I lifted yet another shovelful of soil.
I promised myself that as soon as I finished the third grave, I would take a rest. I’d make a trip to the spring for cool, fresh water. I was thinking of that longingly as I used the back of the shovel to smooth the mounded soil over the last grave when I heard an ominous sound. It was the rattling of heavy wagons. On the first, driving it slowly, sat Kesey, his face swathed against the plague. The wagon rode heavy; there were six coffins stacked in it.
A soldier I didn’t know drove the other wagon, equally large. Three other soldiers rode in the back, perched on top of a load of lumber. The second wagon halted near my shed. The men jumped down and began unloading their cargo. Kesey drove the other wagon slowly toward me. He hadn’t even reached me before I saw Ebrooks drive up his horse and wagon, similarly laden. Kesey pulled his team in. “Give me a hand unloading,” he requested gruffly.
“What are those men doing?” I asked, gesturing at the fellows unloading lumber.
He shook his head sadly. “The bodies are piling up at the infirmary. I can only haul six coffins at a time. But if the supplies to make coffins or the coffins themselves are already out here, then I can just bring the bodies. We can crate them up here before we drop them in the holes.” He spoke with deliberate callousness. He climbed into the back of his wagon while I stood at the rear of it and shoved one of the top coffins toward me. I caught an end of it, surprised by how little it weighed. Kesey saw the look. “She was just a girl,” he said. “Martil Tane.”
“You have a list of names, then?”
“I do.”
We lowered the first coffin and went on to the others, taking each one in its turn. The names were roughly chalked on the coffin lids. I put the list of the dead in my pocket with the first one. By the time we were finished with Kesey’s load, Ebrooks was ready to deliver his. We went by the order of his list. I borrowed a pencil stub from Ebrooks to number the lists to match the graves.
Nine coffins awaited burial. I was relieved when Ebrooks and Kesey both went for shovels. Even with three of us working, it was heavy work. At one point, they walked to the shade of my fledgling hedge while I went to the spring for a bucket of water. We drank, put fresh vinegar on our masks, and cooled our heads.
“How bad is it going to get?” I wondered aloud.
Kesey lifted his mask and spat to one side. “The first few days are always heavy. The weak ones go down fast. After that, it’s just steady for a while. Then, just when you think it has to be over, there will be another flurry of deaths. I think the people that have been taking care of everyone just get too tired and let go. Then it trickles off until it’s only one or two a day until it finally stops. And then winter comes.”
I wanted to ask him how many plague seasons he had seen, but could not bring myself to form the words. I looked at the freshly mounded graves, then toward my shed, where the ringing of hammers against nails had been a constant since the men and lumber arrived. A glance in that direction showed me a tidy stack of new coffins. As I watched, two men stood up and moved another one into place. There was something so implacable about the process that my heart turned over in my chest. It was almost like an odd sort of peace.
This was the Gettys I had not been able to see before now. This parade of coffins, this methodical burial of the dead, this was what had separated me from the veterans of my regiment, far more than my body had. This was the war they had fought without weapons every summer since they had been stationed here. They lived the year around knowing that when the hot, dry days of summer returned, disease would pick them off as remorselessly as any enemy marksman. Like any battle-hardened regiment, they looked askance at the newcomer, wondering how long he would last and if, when the battle were joined, he would fight or break. I had been green and I had not known it until then. We were at war with the Specks, and today marked my first skirmish. How had I ever doubted it? I had lived in the midst of this graveyard and never truly seen what it meant until then.
“Let’s finish it,” I said quietly, and picked up my shovel. With a grunt, Ebrooks stooped to take up his and Kesey followed.
I was smoothing the last mound with the back of my shovel when I heard the creak and clatter of another wagon coming. I looked up in dismay. The sky had begun to turn pink in the west; the light would soon be gone. Over an hour ago, the coffin-builders had left their yield and departed for town. Only the three of us remained.
I didn’t recognize the driver until Kesey grunted and said, “More joy to come. It’s Sergeant Hoster.” Ebrooks uttered a muffled obscenity. I said nothing at all, but my heart filled with dread. Yet when they picked up their shovels and went to meet the wagon, I forced myself to trail along after them.
Hoster pulled in his team alongside the row of empty coffins and sat waiting for us to approach. His vinegar-soaked mask was crusted brown with road dust. “Got a few more deaders for you. The docs don’t want them lying around the infirmary.”
“Couldn’t they have waited until morning? Night’s coming on fast,” Kesey objected.
“You don’t have to bury them tonight. Just get me unloaded so I can head back to town. There’s a double Gettys tonic waiting for me, and one of Sarla’s whores, on the house.” He scratched the back of his neck and then pretended to notice me for the first time. “Well, well. I thought you’d run off and joined the Specks by now. You would have if you were smart, Burv. But then you probably think you are smart. So smart that you think you covered all your tracks and no one can prove what you done. But I can, Tubs. And you won’t get away with it. This outbreak of plague may give you a bit of a reprieve, long enough to dig more graves. But when it’s all over, we’ll still find time to deal with you. I promise you, in the end you’ll be filling a grave up here. Justice will be done.”
“I haven’t done anything,” I retorted, but even as I said the words, I knew them for a lie and could almost taste the untruth in my mouth. I’d killed those three men and now I’d just lied about it. Hoster laughed skeptically. “Keep saying that. See how much good it does you. Bet you’re wishing you could bury me, aren’t you, Fats? Shove me under a shitpile like you did that poor whore. I’ll admit one thing. I’d love to know how you done those men.”
“I don’t think he had anything to do with it,” Ebrooks defended me suddenly. “He didn’t even know their names. He said he got jumped and someone stole his wagon.”
“You don’t have to know a man’s name to kill him, stupid. Now shut up and unload this wagon.”
He had the stripes. We did as he told us. There were three bodies, loosely shrouded in sheets. The first was a woman. We set her in her coffin, and while Kesey put a lid on top, Ebrooks and I went back for the next body. The cloth came free of his face and I was shocked to recognize the barber who had shaved me when I first came to Gettys. I hadn’t know him well, but having the plague take an acquaintance was a sharp reminder that it could strike much closer to me. No one I cared about was safe. I was setting the lid in place on his coffin when I heard Kesey exclaim, “Damn! Buel Hitch. I never figured him to die from plague.”
Sergeant Hoster laughed. “I always thought a jealous husband would do him in. Or that Speck whore I heard he had.” He lifted his mask and spat over the side of the wagon. “Get him out of there. I want to go home.”
He drove off as soon as the body was clear of the wagon. I stood, stunned and numb, and let Kesey and Ebrooks carry the scout to his coffin. As they set him in, Kesey said quietly, “He must have gone down fast. He’s still wearing his uniform.” With unlikely tenderness, he reached down and tugged Hitch’s collar straight.
“Or as much of the uniform as he ever wore.” Ebrooks gave a small, fond laugh. “Damn the luck. That’s a shame. That man had the spirit of the old regiment in him. Not many of us left like him. It’s too bad to see him go like that.”
I had picked up another coffin lid. As I approached the coffin, I wondered if I wanted to look at Hitch’s face one last time or not. The choice was taken from me. Kesey had reached in and covered him over, and I found I couldn’t bring myself to touch the cloth. I set the wooden-planked lid in place.
Ebrooks spoke quietly. “You keep good watch over him tonight, Nevare. Don’t let no Specks come and steal him. He may have walked the line, and yes, we all know he crossed over it more than once. But he was ours, he was cavalla, and he ought to be buried here, not stuck to some tree somewhere.”
“He had a Speck woman, I heard,” Kesey added sagely. “She or her kin might come for him. You keep good watch, Nevare.”
“You aren’t going to help me bury them tonight?” I was dismayed at the thought of letting the corpses lie unburied all night.
“Tomorrow’s soon enough,” Kesey said, glancing at the sky. “Light’s going. I don’t fancy filling in graves in the dark. Ebrooks and me, we got a long drive back to town. We don’t leave now, it’ll be too dark to see before we get there. But we’ll be back tomorrow. Probably with more bodies, may the good god save us.” He shook his head at my shocked expression. “Nevare, you’ll get used to it and more’s the shame. When they really start dropping, there’s no keeping up with it. You done your best to get ready for this, but before the week is over, you’ll be digging a trench and covering them any way you can. And no one will think the less of you for it.”
I could think of no response. I watched them mount the wagon. Kesey slapped the reins on the horse’s back and they drove away. I was left standing beside three coffins in the gathering dark.