I undressed in the dark, I quietly told him everything. He was silent. I shook out my damp uniform but knew that it would still be wet when I donned it again tomorrow. It was not a pleasant thought to take to bed with me. I tried, instead, to focus my mind on Carsina, but she suddenly seemed far away in both time and distance; girls, perhaps, did not matter as much as deciding how I would make it through the rest of my first year. I was in my bed before Spink asked his question.
‘Was the liquor on his breath?’
‘He reeked of it.’ We both knew what that meant. As soon as he recovered, Tiber would be suspended and face discipline. If he recovered.
‘No. I mean, was he breathing the smell at you? Or was it just on his clothes?’
I thought about it for a minute. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t think to check anything like that. I just smelled spirits, very strong, when I got close to him.’
Another silence followed my words. Then, ‘Dr Amicas seems very sharp. He’ll know if Tiber was really drunk or not.’
‘Probably,’ I agreed, but I wasn’t sure I believed it. There wasn’t much I had faith in any more.
I fell asleep, and dreamed deep. The old fat tree woman sat with her back against her tree and I stood before her. Rain was falling on both of us. Although it drenched me, it did not wet her. As soon as it touched her, it was absorbed as if her flesh were thirsty earth. I didn’t mind the rain. It was gentle and soft, and its chill touch was almost pleasant. The forest glen felt very familiar, as if I had been there often. I was not dressed against the weather, but sat bare-limbed in the rain, enjoying it. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Walk and talk with me. I need to be sure I understand what I have seen through your eyes.’
We left her tree, and I led the way, walking on a winding path through a forest of giants. In some places, the overhead canopy of leaves sheltered us completely from the falling rain. In others, the water plashed down, from leaf to twig to branch to leaf and then down, to soak into the forest floor. It did not bother either of us. I noticed in passing that although she seemed to walk freely with me whenever I glanced at her she appeared to be in some way part of the trees. Her hand would touch the bark of one, her hair would tangle against another. Always, always, she was in contact with them. Despite the swaying bulk of her body, her heavy walk had an odd grace. She was strength and opulence in my dream. The pillows of flesh that softened her silhouette to curves were no more repulsive to me than the immense girth of a great tree or the vast umbrella of its branches and foliage. Her largeness was wealth, a mark of skill and success for a people who lived by hunting and gathering. And this, too, seemed familiar.
The deeper I went into her forest, the more I recalled of this world. I knew the path I followed, knew that it would lead to the rocky place where a stream ran down from a stony cleft to suddenly launch itself in a glittering silver arc into the forest below. It was a dangerous place. The rocks close to the edge were always green and slick, but nowhere else was the water so cool and so fresh, even when the rain was falling. It was a place I cherished. She knew that. Letting me go there in the dream was one of my rewards.
Rewards for what?
‘What would happen, then,’ she asked me. ‘If many of the soldier sons who are to be the leaders were slain, and never ventured east to bring their people against the forest? Would this stop the road? Would it turn these people back?’
I had been thinking of something else. I came back to her question from my distraction. ‘It might slow them for a time. But it would not stop them. In truth, nothing will stop the road. You can only delay it. My people believe that the road will bring riches to them. Lumber from the forest, meat and furs. And eventually, a way to the sea beyond the mountains, and trade with the people there.’ I shook my head in resignation. ‘As long as wealth beckons, my people will find a way to it.’
She scowled at me. ‘You say “my people” when you speak of them. But I have told you. You are no longer of those ones. We have taken you and you belong to The People, now.’ She cocked her head and stared deep into my eyes. I felt she looked inside me and out the other side, as it were, to some other eyes I did not know I had. ‘What is it, son of a soldier? Do you begin to wake to both worlds? That is not good. Not yet should you do that.’ She set her hand fondly on the top of my head.
It was a comforting touch that dispelled all anxiety. Some worry I had felt had slipped away from me. All would be well.
She lifted both her hands to her face and hair. She smoothed them over her head as if to ease the anxiety I knew she felt. Then she looked at me through her plump fingers. ‘You still have not spoken of your magic, soldier’s son. At the moment it was given to you, it began to work through you. What have you done for us? The magic chose you. I felt it take you. All know that once the magic of the god touches a man, he does his task. You were to turn the intruders back and make those who are here leave. What did you do?’
‘I do not understand what you are asking me.’
Both her question and my response were as familiar to me as my evening prayers, learned at my mother’s knee. She tried again to explain. ‘You would have done something. Some action of yours is supposed to begin the magic that you will finish when you are a great man. Telling me will not stop the magic. It will only ease my fears. Please. Just tell me. Put my mind at ease, so I may tell the forest that the beginning of the end of waiting has begun. The guardians cannot dance much longer. They weary. They die. And when they all die, there will no longer be a wall. It will fall, and nothing will remain to hold the intruders at bay. They will walk freely under the trees, cutting and burning. You know what they will do. We have seen it.’
We were nearly to the waterfall. I longed to see it. I tried to see it through the forest, but the trees leaned together, blocking my view. ‘I do not understand your words.’
She sighed, like wind in the trees. ‘If such a thing could be, I would say the magic chose poorly. I would say that one of The People would have known better how to use the given gift.’ She shrugged, lifting the soft roundness of her shoulders and then letting them fall. ‘I will have to do what is within my power to do. I do not do it lightly. My time for doing things should be past. This should be only my time for being. But I fear you cannot turn them back by yourself. My strength is needed, still.’ She sighed and then she brushed her fat hands together. Dust, fine brown dust, fell from the surfaces of her palms as they passed one another. ‘I have thought of a thing, and now I have decided I will do it. I will send one of the old magics to you. With it, we can harvest from the intruders some of what they are. No knife is sharper than a man’s own turned against him. Perhaps it will give us more time to discover what it is you have done to help us.’ She lifted her hand and waved it oddly at me. I sensed immense power in the simple gesture. ‘When the magic finds you, it will signal you. So. Then it will begin. Do not struggle against it.’
I felt a terrible fear. She stared at me, the colour of her eyes going darker in disapproval. ‘You should go now. Stop thinking about these things.’
I awoke with a start to deep darkness, and the sounds of rain beating on the roof above me and the stentorian breathing of my fellows around me. The rags of my dreams hung about my mind. I touched them and tried to pull them together, but they went to threads in my fingers. I felt dread unlike the fear I might feel from a nightmare. This was the dread of something real, something I could not recall. The wind gusted, and the rain suddenly pattered harder and swifter against roof and windowpane. It lulled, then gusted again. I listened to that, sleepless, until morning, and then rose wearily to face another day.
