innocent affection and her girlish fantasies about the wonderful life we would have were suddenly worn thin. What, I abruptly wondered, did she actually know of me at all? What would she think of me if I failed my history exam and condemned my entire patrol to Academy expulsion? Would she still find me as attractive if I were facing the prospect of enlisting as a common soldier? Would her father? Or did her parents, like my aunt, have ambitions and plans, and consider their daughter merely a valuable item to be bartered for alliance and advantage?
I tried to shake myself free of my dismal thoughts and forced myself to read to the end of her letter. There was, I realized, nothing new in it. She had sewn a sampler and baked two loaves of pumpkin bread from a new recipe. Did I like pumpkin bread? She so looked forward to cooking for me and our darling children as they came along. She had already begun to fill her hope chest. She enclosed a drawing she had done of our initials intertwining. It was what she was embroidering on the corners of the good linen pillowcases her grandmother had given to her for her future home. She hoped I liked it. She closed with the wish that I would think of her, and that I would send her some blue lace like I’d sent my sister if I had the opportunity to get to town.
It suddenly struck me that what I knew of Carsina was that she was pretty and well mannered, laughed easily, danced well, and got along excellently with my sister. In the short time I’d spent with my cousin, I’d gotten to know Epiny better than I knew Carsina. I suddenly wondered if Carsina might be as eccentric and strong-willed as Epiny, but more adept at covering it up. I wondered if Carsina would ever want to hold a seance or spend half the morning wandering about the house in her nightgown. I felt very unsettled as I folded up her letter. It was all Epiny’s fault. Before I had met her, I had assumed that women were rather like dogs or horses. If one came of good bloodlines and had been properly trained, one had only to let her know what was expected of her, and she would cheerfully carry it out. I don’t mean that I thought women were dumb animals; quite the contrary, I had believed them wonderfully sensitive and loving creatures. I simply did not understand why any woman would wish to change her station or do otherwise than her husband’s or father’s wishes. What could she stand to gain by it? If a true woman dreamed of a home and family and a respectable husband, did she not betray that dream and undermine it when she defied the natural authority of her father or husband? So it had always seemed to me. Now Epiny had shown me that women could be sly, self-indulgent, deceptive, and rebellious. She made me doubt the virtue of every woman. Did even my sisters conceal such wiles behind their bland gazes?
The sudden uncertainty I felt about my wife-to-be, coupled with my anxiety about the upcoming exams, put me in a foul temper. I said little at our noon meal and could scarcely bear to watch Natred and Kort exchanging comments about their most recent missives from their sweethearts. It did not help my mood to see how longingly Spink followed their conversation. He looked a wreck. His uniform, never well fitted to him, hung on his thin frame, unbrushed and rather spotted with mud about the cuffs. His eyes were red, his hair unruly, and his skin gone sallow from too many sleepless nights. The rumor of his probation had spread throughout the Academy, though not the reason for it. It made him an object of curiosity and speculation, and if he had had the spirit to pay attention to the stares that followed him, I’m sure he would have been annoyed.
The night before exams, Spink was sick to his stomach. I couldn’t tell if it was nervousness or if the prolonged lack of sleep had made him genuinely ill. Halfway through our final cramming session, he simply gave up. He closed his books and without a word, only a doleful glance around at us, went off to bed. Our mood, not bright to begin with, sank into the depths. Gord was the next to surrender. “Guess I’m either ready for them or not. I’ve done the best I can,” he observed. He heaved himself to his feet and began to stack up his books.
“Done as much as you can for now, and will do as much as you should tomorrow,” Trist observed. He made it a statement, not a question. His meaning was clear to all of us. Gord didn’t rise to it.
“I’ll do all I can to pass every one of my exams well and keep our patrol safe from culling. More than that, none of us can do.”
“One of us could do more, if he had the balls to do it. If he really cared about the rest of the patrol.” Trist raised his voice on the last sentence, to be certain Gord had heard it. The closing of the bedroom door was his only response. Trist uttered an obscenity and sagged back in his chair. “That fat bastard is going to do us all in with his phony honor. He’s probably hoping we’ll all be culled. Then he can go home to his trough, say it wasn’t his fault, and forget about being a soldier. I’m going to bed.”
Trist slammed his book shut disdainfully, as if there were no use in further studying, as if all hinged on Gord and Spink and none of us could do anything to change our fates.
Rory closed his books more quietly. “I’m done in,” he said with resignation. “My head is as stuffed as it can get. I’m going to bed and dream about Dark Evening. Our scores won’t be posted until after the break. So I’m going to go out and enjoy myself in Old Thares. Might be the only opportunity I ever have. Night, fellows.”
“He’s got a point,” Caleb declared. “I, for one, am going to give myself a night such as I’ll never forget. I’ve heard the whores will be free that night, but just in case, I’ve saved two months’ allowance. I’ll leave them limping, I will.”
“You’ll be the one limping, after you come down with the dick scald. You hear what happened to Corporal Hawley from Shinter House? Dick scald so bad he couldn’t even piss without screaming. Don’t take a chance on the whores, friend.” This from Rory, over his shoulder as he left.
“Ha! Hawley was too cheap to go to a good house. Took alley girls, is what I heard. Not my idea of fun, standing up and thrusting while some poor girl knocks the back of her head against a brick wall.”
“I’m for bed.” Kort’s voice betrayed his amused disgust with them both. “Good luck, everyone.” As he stood, Natred did, too. I began stacking my books, as did every other man at the table.
Tomorrow, I knew, would determine my entire future. It burned in my heart that even if I scored perfectly on every test tomorrow, one of my fellows could bring me low. I looked round at them, and for a moment I knew hatred for Colonel Stiet and the Academy and even my fellow cadets.
Later, as I lay in bed, I closed my eyes and tried to grope my way toward sleep, but could not reach it. Eyes closed, body relaxed, my mind hovered in the place between wakefulness and rest. I felt I dangled, helpless, over an abyss and that I had no power to save myself from falling. The feeling was doubtless responsible for my nightmares about the tree woman.
Yet my dream began not with terror, but with comfort. I was in my beloved forest, at peace. Sunlight broke through the canopy overhead and dappled my skin, and I smiled as I looked at it on my bared arms and legs. The rich smells of humus rose around me. I picked up a handful and considered it. It was a layer from yesterday’s leaf down to the black loam that had been a leaf five years ago. Busy little insects toiled in it. A tiny worm coiled and uncoiled desperately on my palm. I laughed at his fears and restored all to the forest soil. All was well. I said as much to my mentor. “The world lives and dies as it should today.”
The tree woman nodded to me, making shadows shift over my flesh. “I am proud of you, that you come to understand that the dying is a part of the living. For too long you clung to the notion that each life was significant and too important to perish for the whole. But now you see it, don’t you?”
“I do. And it comforts me.” And it did. At least it comforted the part of me that sat on the forest floor at the feet of the great tree, his back to its rough bark. That part of me saw no woman, but felt her and heard her speaking to me.
Yet the part of me that stood in the shadowy space between dreams and waking was horrified at my behavior. I consorted with the enemy. There was no other way to look at it. My worst fears were confirmed when I heard her say, “It is good that you have come to the understanding. It will make it easier for you.”
“Did you ever have doubts, when the magic first claimed you?” I asked her.
I felt her wistful sigh in the gentle rustling of the leaves above me. “Of course I did. I had plans for my life, and dreams. Then came a time of drought. I thought we would all die. I made a spirit journey, just as you did. A choice was offered to me just as it was offered to you. I chose the magic and the magic chose me. The magic used me, and my people survived.”
Unbreathing in the shadow, I heard my traitor self ask her, “The magic will use me also?”
“Yes. It will use you as you use it. It will give to you, and in the process, it will take from you. You may mourn what is taken. But the loss will make you stronger and truer to your task.”
My dream self made a gesture with his hands. It could have expressed either release or offering. I sensed it signified acceptance. I felt impotent fury that this other self would passively accede to such a fate. And in my fury, I was somehow separate from him, and could observe him. He filled me with contempt. He leaned back, naked and smiling in the gentle balm of the sun. His skin was evenly browned, as if he had never known a scrap of clothing. He had dirt under his fingernails, and his bare feet and ankles were permanently grimed. He was a man turned into a beast of the forest. Yet he was pleased with himself, content in whatever life this was he lived. I hated him, hated
