My days of travel had taught me a great deal about my new body. Limiting my food intake did not dwindle me, but I did become more lethargic, and in extreme cases very irritable. I had continued my habit of savoring food, and I fancied that I better understood now how my body had changed.

Almost all that I took in as sustenance, my body retained. I produced very little waste, a fact that had been rather disconcerting to me at first. When I could not find as much food as I wished, I began to crave quantities of water, which, thankfully, had been plentiful through most of my journey.

My hunger was a constant. I had come to accept it as a companion to my life, just as some men had to deal with poor eyesight or deafness. The cramp in my gut was always there, but I had learned to master it. There were still moments when my hunger could seize my attention, as it had near the bakery that morning, and in severe cases, it could distract me until nothing would do until I had found something to put in my mouth. I had learned to set aside a bit of food against moments such as that, for when such hunger overtook me, I became almost irrational. It was a terrible thing to fear that I might slip into such a frame of mind, almost like dreading a bout of madness.

But tonight I had no such fears. I allowed myself a very hearty meal of coffee, bread, and bacon. The drippings from the bacon made a wonderful spread for the fresh bread. By the time I was finished eating, I felt more satisfied than I had in weeks. I tidied up my pan and plate; checked on my horse, which seemed as contented with his lush grazing as I had been with my meal; and then resolved to walk the perimeter of my new domain.

I returned from that walk a sobered man. Grass grew past my knees throughout most of the cemetery. The trench graves I had noted earlier betrayed the regular waves of plague that had swept through Gettys. The markers for individual graves, mostly made from slabs of wood, were rapidly losing the painted or carved epitaphs they had once held, but they retained enough information to be heart-rending. The cemetery had begun in an orderly fashion. In the oldest section, officers and their family members were grouped together, as were enlisted men. But after the first trench grave, the burying ground had become a much more egalitarian place. Infants reposed alongside captains, and humble nameless privates rested next to colonels. I had thought every grave untended. That was not so. True, wild grasses dominated the area, but here and there I would literally stumble across a marker standing sentinel above a groomed grave site. On a few, flowers grew. On one, perhaps a child’s, a simple string of wooden beads, their paint fading in the weather, festooned the marker.