Sickened and shaken, I dragged my thoughts back to my work. I drove the shovel deep into the earth again. I worked until there was no light left in the day and then returned to my cabin. There was little left in my pantry, but I made a meal off the last end of the bacon, a few vegetables from my garden, and some hearth bread. After my day’s work, it was less than satisfying, but I sternly told myself it was enough. And then the long night stretched before me. I had nothing to read nor any way to occupy my mind. For a time I sat and stared out my window and tried to empty my mind. Despite my efforts, my thoughts returned to the looming plague, the felling of the ancestor trees, and my determination that henceforth I would be a part of neither people. After a time, I took down my soldier son journal and made the longest entry that I had written in some weeks. I poured my thoughts onto the paper, and when I had finished, I felt almost at peace. I waited a few moments for the ink to dry, and then leafed back through it. The entries I had made at the academy now seemed shallow and boyish, and the sketches I had made of my classmates were the scribbles of a child. As I paged through the leaves of the books, the entries grew longer, and the thoughts more considered. I’d been lax in my duty to be a naturalist as well as a soldier. There were few sketches, and other than an attempt at showing how the specks were placed on Olikea’s hands, they were all of plants I’d seen. The soldier son journals I’d seen at my uncle’s house had been terse accounts of battles and journeys over difficult terrain. In contrast, mine looked like a schoolgirl’s diary. I closed it.

“Nevare.”

Olikea’s call was a whisper on the night wind. I tried to pretend I’d imagined it. But it came again and with more urgency, like a doe’s mating call. “Nevare.”

Against my will, I felt stirred. I knew exactly where she would await me, in the trees just behind the spring. I gritted my teeth. She would have a basket of food with her, I knew. My will began to crumble. What would it matter if I went to her one last time? Didn’t I at least owe her an explanation? After all, it was not her fault that I was caught so harshly between our peoples. Hurting her served no useful purpose; in a way, it was giving way to the magic, to let it force me to be cruel to her.

I had almost convinced myself; indeed, I was rising to go to her when I heard a sound that stood the hair up on the back of my neck. Hoofbeats. A horse was coming up the road to the cemetery at a canter. In a rush of wariness, I was sure it was someone coming to kill me. My attackers would know I had lived because no one had found my body by the road. They’d want to be sure I was dead before I could step forward to accuse them. I suddenly saw how stupid I’d been not to go to town to report the assault and the theft. If they killed me now, there would be no one to accuse them.