Those lands were largely unsettled. Gernia could have a new seacoast with access to trade. Goods would flow from the eastern seaboard into Gernia.

There would be growth and prosperity. New farms, burgeoning towns.

None of that was bad. But I could no longer say with certainty that it was better than what was here now.

“People could live in prosperity and peace. The Specks would benefit from the trade. They would have everything they need.”

She puffed her cheeks lightly at me. “We already have everything we need, Soldier’s Boy. And we still have our forest and the ancestral trees. When we have lost our shady places and the land that loves us has been cut wide open to the sunlight, will we truly have everything we need? Or will we simply have the things that you think we need?”

I couldn’t think of a response. A slight breeze or a ghost hand stirred my hair. I lifted my eyes to look into hers and asked, “What do you think I should do, then?”

“You know what I think. You have known from the beginning what I think.”

“You say I should do what the magic wants me to do. And you say I should have done it by now. You’ve told me that over and over. But I truly don’t know what that means.”

“Perhaps the magic does not speak to you more clearly because you have avoided it so earnestly. Perhaps if you had not resisted its efforts to fill you, perhaps if you had come more promptly to its calling, you would know what you were to do. Now, I fear, it is too late for you to seek the magic.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I feel the magic reaching out to take you, Soldier’s Boy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said! Always you ask me, what do you mean? You hear my words. When you don’t understand them, it is because you do not wish to understand them. It is the same way that you resist the magic. Why?”

I didn’t even have to think of a reply. “Perhaps I want to have my own life, the way I envisioned it, the way it was promised to me! Lisana, from the time I was small, I was raised to be a soldier. I expected to go to the academy, to be well educated, to become an officer and distinguish myself in battle, to have a lovely wife and children, and eventually to return to my home and retire with honor. The magic took all of that away from me. And what has it given me? A fat body that is awkward and ugly to live in. A power that comes and goes, that I don’t know how to use or control. What good has it done me?” She looked at me sadly for a moment. She lifted her arms as if to display her body to me. “Awkward and ugly,” she said, and when she took the words to herself, it cut like a knife that I had uttered them. “I didn’t mean—” I cried out, but “Hush!” she scolded me. “I do not pretend that I don’t understand what you say! I know what you meant.