“Such a small woman, and having such a hard time just now. She can’t keep a bite of food down, and yet she said she could watch my three while I did a bit of sewing work.” Somehow her words seemed accusing, and I let a silence fall that was broken only by her commands that I lift my arms, turn, and hold a paper of pins for her. It was more humiliating than being measured by my mother’s seamstresses, for this was a woman, I reluctantly admitted to myself, for whom I had feelings, even if I was not exactly certain what they were. Once I had been measured, she turned me out of my own house. Midway through the day, she called me back and left me to try on what she called “the basted pieces.” Both the jacket and the trousers had more seams than any such garments I’d ever seen before, for she had had to “ease them,” as she put it, to fit me. By the time I finished my work and returned to my cabin that evening, I found a jacket and trousers and a shirt that I could actually put on and button. I walked around my small home, marveling at how freely I could sit, stand, and even bend. Then, but with reluctance, I carefully hung them up, resolving that I would not wear them again until the inspection team arrived. By day I appeared content to be a cog doing this humble work for my king. I resumed the proper regimen of a soldier. I rose early, as I always had. I made an honest entry in my journal. I had resolved that no one but me would ever read it, and thus I did not mince words. Afterward, I washed and I shaved. Both Ebrooks and Kesey commented on my new demeanor, and they themselves began to look more clean and trim. They both had seniority over me, if not rank, but I began to notice that they deferred to me in how the cemetery was kept. I was their de facto corporal even if the sleeve of my uniform lacked stripes. By day, I was a good soldier.

By night, I belonged to the forest.

It was not always a conscious decision. I was coming to think of my other self as my Speck self. He was part of me and apart from me. Some nights, after darkness had fallen and Ebrooks and Kesey had left, I would enter the forest and seek Olikea. At other times, when I tried to resist the double sirens of food and sex and simply go to my own bed, I would awaken from a dream of walking in the forest to find that I was, indeed, walking in the forest, the dew-heavy hem of my well-worn nightshirt slapping against my calves. I thought of tethering my wrist to my bed, as the sergeant in my academy dormitory had once suggested to me, but I decided it would do little good. I was living two lives now, and with a bystander’s neutrality, I watched and waited to see which one would come to dominate me.