“But that’s horrible! We’re literally killing their elders when we cut those trees! By the good god’s mercy! No wonder they think we’re monsters!

Nevare, when you went to Colonel Haren, you should have told him what those trees were! If only he had known!”

“Epiny. I know you’ve read my journal. I did go to Colonel Haren, the morning before the Dust Dance. I told him what those trees meant to the Specks and even warned him that if the cutting did not stop, we’d be facing a different kind of war. He dismissed my concern, and said that he thought less of me for having it. He’d heard it before. He saw it as silly superstitious nonsense, and said that once the trees were gone and nothing bad happened to the Specks, they’d see they’d been foolish and come around to our way of thinking. It was as if he believed that if we took their culture away from them, they’d instantly convert to thinking like Gernians. As if our way of seeing the world were the only real one, and that anyone, given the opportunity, would think like we do. I couldn’t make him see any other point of view. Even if I’d told him that the trees were actually the Specks’ ancestors, he’d have been unable to believe me.

But, yes, we knew those trees were sacred to the Specks. We’ve evidently known it for a long time. And we keep trying to cut through there anyway.”

“We’ve been fools! Couldn’t someone, for just a moment, have believed the Specks knew the secrets of their forest better than we did? We’ve brought all this on ourselves! The fear, the despair, the Speck plague! It’s all our own doing.”

“I wouldn’t go that far—” I started to say, but she interrupted me.

“So what did you try, then, to stop the cutting?”

“I—well, that is, what else could I do? I told the colonel and pleaded with him to stop it. He refused.”

“Well, you should have done something more!”

“Perhaps I could have, if I’d had time. But on my way home, your friend Hoster’s men shot me.”

“He thought you were a murderer,” she said. She sounded angry and embarrassed.

“I still can’t believe you trusted that man!” I retorted. She stopped and looked up at me, and her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

“You should just say it and get it over with, Nevare. It’s my fault that you’re in that cell facing death. I betrayed you. I’m so sorry! So sorry.”

“Oh, Epiny, I didn’t mean it that way! You didn’t betray me. All you did was what you thought you should do, keep faith with a man you trusted.

And maybe by his own lights, he was a good man. If he believed me such a monster and a threat to the women of the town, then maybe he was justified in sending those men after me. It’s all about what we believe, isn’t it? Not just Gernians and Specks, but even down to individuals like Hoster and you. All we can do is what we think is right, driven by what we know, or what we think we know.”