Forest Mage (The Soldier Son Trilogy #2)

Forest Mage (The Soldier Son Trilogy #2) Page 226

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE ROAD

I became a pendulum, swinging between two lives, committed to neither.

By days I labored in the cemetery. I dug graves and worked on my cemetery wall. The third day after I had set the poles in the earth to mark my fence line, I noticed that the bud nodes on their bark were swollen. In the next few days, leaves unfurled. I decided I had nothing to lose by watering them, and hauled each one a bucket from my spring daily. I thought that the leaves were a last desperate bid at life, and expected them to curl, wither, and die. But they did not. Instead the “poles” began to thrive as swiftly as if they were carefully transplanted saplings rather than posts. The rate at which they put out new stubs for branches was astonishing. I devoted myself to moving rocks, flowering plants, and bushes into alignment with my poles. I hammered stakes and strung lines to mark where the other hedgerows would eventually be, and generally took care that if the inspection party chose to visit, they would find evidence of careful and daily industry.

Amzil surprised me with a visit, one that was all the more astonishing in that she brought tailor’s tools and an assortment of worn cavalla uniforms that she had disassembled into fabric. I was both relieved and embarrassed to have her take on the task of making me presentable. She obviously regarded it as a debt she owed me, for she went at it with pinched-lipped determination. I made one effort at asking her how she did in her new position. She narrowed her eyes at me and said that she much admired the lieutenant’s lady, for she seemed like a woman who deserved better than the hand that life had dealt her, but was nevertheless making the best of her fortunes.

“Such a small woman, and having such a hard time just now. She can’t keep a bite of food down, and yet she said she could watch my three while I did a bit of sewing work.” Somehow her words seemed accusing, and I let a silence fall that was broken only by her commands that I lift my arms, turn, and hold a paper of pins for her. It was more humiliating than being measured by my mother’s seamstresses, for this was a woman, I reluctantly admitted to myself, for whom I had feelings, even if I was not exactly certain what they were.

Once I had been measured, she turned me out of my own house. Midway through the day, she called me back and left me to try on what she called “the basted pieces.” Both the jacket and the trousers had more seams than any such garments I’d ever seen before, for she had had to “ease them,” as she put it, to fit me. By the time I finished my work and returned to my cabin that evening, I found a jacket and trousers and a shirt that I could actually put on and button. I walked around my small home, marveling at how freely I could sit, stand, and even bend. Then, but with reluctance, I carefully hung them up, resolving that I would not wear them again until the inspection team arrived.

By day I appeared content to be a cog doing this humble work for my king. I resumed the proper regimen of a soldier. I rose early, as I always had. I made an honest entry in my journal. I had resolved that no one but me would ever read it, and thus I did not mince words. Afterward, I washed and I shaved. Both Ebrooks and Kesey commented on my new demeanor, and they themselves began to look more clean and trim. They both had seniority over me, if not rank, but I began to notice that they deferred to me in how the cemetery was kept. I was their de facto corporal even if the sleeve of my uniform lacked stripes. By day, I was a good soldier.

By night, I belonged to the forest.

It was not always a conscious decision. I was coming to think of my other self as my Speck self. He was part of me and apart from me. Some nights, after darkness had fallen and Ebrooks and Kesey had left, I would enter the forest and seek Olikea. At other times, when I tried to resist the double sirens of food and sex and simply go to my own bed, I would awaken from a dream of walking in the forest to find that I was, indeed, walking in the forest, the dew-heavy hem of my well-worn nightshirt slapping against my calves. I thought of tethering my wrist to my bed, as the sergeant in my academy dormitory had once suggested to me, but I decided it would do little good. I was living two lives now, and with a bystander’s neutrality, I watched and waited to see which one would come to dominate me.

Olikea I did not understand. She had come too suddenly and too completely into my life. Every night, she awaited me in the eaves of the forest. Every night, she lured me into its depths, and then, when I reached the ancient forest, she would claim me as her own. I could not look at her without becoming aroused, and the food she brought me was the food that a Great One should always eat in order to maximize the growth of the magic. I could not refuse it any more than I could resist her favors. And yet I was not sure that either one was good for me. I could almost feel myself growing fatter when I ate what she offered me; it was not that there was a vast quantity of it, only that it seemed always the perfect food and exactly what I had wanted that evening.