“Nevare!”

I woke with a shudder and sat up in my bunk, panting silently through my open mouth. A tall pale wraith stood over me. I gave a muted yelp before I recognized Trist. “You were whimpering in your sleep,” Trist told me. I compulsively brushed at my thighs, and then lifted my hands close to my face. In the dim moonlight through the window, they were clean of blood.

“It was only a dream,” Trist assured me.

“Sorry,” I muttered, ashamed. “Sorry I was noisy.”

“It’s not like you’re the only one to have nightmares.” The thin cadet sat down on the foot of my bed. Once he had been whiplash-lean and limber.

Now he was skeletal and moved like a stiff old man. He coughed twice and then caught his breath. “Know what I dream?” He didn’t wait for my reply. “I dream I died of Speck plague. Because I did, you know. I was one of the ones who died, and then revived. But I dream that instead of holding my body in the infirmary, Dr. Amicas let them put me out with the corpses. In my dream, they toss me in the pit grave, and they throw the quicklime down on me. I dream I wake up down there, under all those bodies that stink of piss and vomit, with the lime burning into me. I try to climb out, but they just keep throwing more bodies down on top of me.

I’m clawing and pushing my way past them, trying to get out of the pit through all that rotting flesh and bones. And then I realize that the body I’m climbing over is Nate. He’s all dead and decaying, but he opens his eyes and he asks, ‘Why me, Trist? Why me and not you?’” Trist gave a sudden shudder and huddled his shoulders.

“They’re only dreams, Trist,” I whispered. All around us, the other first-years who had survived the plague slumbered on. Someone coughed in his sleep. Someone else muttered, yipped like a puppy, and then grew still. Trist was right. Few of us slept well anymore. “They’re only bad dreams. It’s all over. The plague passed us by. We survived.”

“Easy for you to say. You recovered. You’re fit and hearty.” He stood up.

His nightshirt hung on his lanky frame. In the dim dormitory, his eyes were dark holes. “Maybe I survived, but the plague didn’t pass me by. I’ll live with what it did to me to the end of my days. You think I’ll ever lead a charge, Nevare? I can barely manage to keep standing through morning assembly. I’m done as a soldier. Done before I started. I’ll never live the life I expected to lead.” Trist stood up. He shuffled away from my bed and back to his. He was breathing noisily by the time he sat down on his bunk.

Slowly I lay back down. I heard Trist cough again, wheeze, and then lie down. It was no comfort to me that he, too, was tormented with nightmares. I thought of Tree Woman and shuddered again. She is dead, I assured myself. She can no longer reach into my life. I killed her. I killed her and I took back into myself the part of my spirit that she’d stolen and seduced. She can’t control me anymore. It was only a dream. I took a deeper, steadying breath, turned my pillow to the cool side, and burrowed into it. I dared not close my eyes lest I fall back into that nightmare. I deliberately focused my mind on the present, and pushed my night terror away from me.