Rosse’s old clothes, freshly washed and newly let out, awaited me. They felt tight and awkward against my damp skin. My cadet haircut had begun to grow out. I toweled it dry and then, mindful of embarrassing my mother, I shaved before I went down to her sewing room.

My mother awaited me with the two seamstresses. The last time I’d been measured for clothing, the tailor had done it and I had been fit and trim.

It was inexpressibly humiliating to undress to my small clothes and then have three women hold pieces of fabric against me, pinning the parts together around me. One seamstress glanced at my belly and rolled her eyes in disdain at the other seamstress. I went hot with a blush. They pinned my new clothing around me, stood back, consulted like hens clucking in a barnyard, and again surrounded me, moving pins and having me turn and lift my arms and raise my knees. The fabric was a very somber dark blue, nothing at all like the brave green of my cadet uniform.

By the time I retired behind a screen to get dressed again, I felt that nothing worse could happen to me.

I climbed up the endless stairs to my room. With grim determination, I decided to avoid the dinner table entirely. I did not think I could withstand the wonderful aromas of cooked food. I went to bed.

In my dream, I was my other self, and I was ravenously hungry. I recalled with sorrow all of the magic that had been wasted at the Dancing Spindle.

I was proud that I had halted the Spindle’s dance and ended the Plainsmen’s magic, but I regretted that I had not been able to absorb more of it into myself. It was a bizarre dream, filled with the elation of triumph underpinned with a grating hunger for foods that would properly nourish my magic. I woke at dawn still feeling both hungry and vaguely triumphant. The first I could understand; the later made me feel ashamed.

I shook the cobwebs from my head and faced my day. That day was a repeat of the previous one, only more miserable. I felt dull and weak. I was late to meet the wagon, and it took a great effort for me to lever myself up into the back of it. Terrible hunger cramps wracked me. My head pounded. I crossed my arms on my stomach and slumped over them.

When we reached the field and the wagon stopped, I jumped down with the others, only to have my legs fold under me. The rest of the crew laughed, and I forced myself to join in. I staggered upright and took my levering bar from the back of the wagon. It felt twice as heavy as it had the day before, but I set to work. I tried to jab it into the hard soil at the edge of an embedded stone, but it only skipped across the surface. I wanted to shout with frustration. I felt no strength in my arms. I used my weight instead, and spent a miserable morning. After a time, I got my second wind. The nagging of my hunger receded slightly. My muscles warmed up, and I devoted myself to doing my share of the work. I still walked apart from the men when they took out their noon packets of food. My sense of smell had become a special torment. My nose told me all that my mouth was forbidden to taste, and my saliva ran until I thought I would drown in it.