Forest Mage (45 page)

I returned from that walk a sobered man. Grass grew past my knees throughout most of the cemetery. The trench graves I had noted earlier betrayed the regular waves of plague that had swept through Gettys. The markers for individual graves, mostly made
from slabs of wood, were rapidly losing the painted or carved epitaphs they had once held, but they retained enough information to be heart-rending. The cemetery had begun in an orderly fashion. In the oldest section, officers and their family members were grouped together, as were enlisted men. But after the first trench grave, the burying ground had become a much more egalitarian place. Infants reposed alongside captains, and humble nameless privates rested next to colonels. I had thought every grave untended. That was not so. True, wild grasses dominated the area, but here and there I would literally stumble across a marker standing sentinel above a groomed grave site. On a few, flowers grew. On one, perhaps a child’s, a simple string of wooden beads, their paint fading in the weather, festooned the marker.

When I came to the most recent section of the graveyard, the change was remarkable. Here, only a season had passed since the last wave of interments. The last mass grave was a weed-covered hummock crawling across the hillside. A row of individual graves marked the first rank of those who had fallen to the plague. A second row after the trench grave marked, perhaps, those who had lingered before they succumbed, or the natural deaths that had occurred since the last wave of plague. The markers were newer and easier to read.

To my horror, I discovered that some kind of animal had burrowed into one of the most recent graves. A mostly decomposed hand had been brought to the surface and feasted upon. It was a man’s hand by the size of it, shriveled and dark. The animal had gnawed at the fleshy palm and mostly ignored the curled fingers with their yellowed nails. I looked away from it firmly. The size of the burrow made me think the scavenger was a fairly small creature. I wondered if these were the depredations that Colonel Haren had been lamenting. If they were, then a good watchdog might be my best assistant. Jaw traps might also help me find a solution. But surely a sturdy coffin would have been the best preventive of such incursions.

I performed my first act of duty, though I will admit that it made me feel not just edgy but queasy. There were no sticks close
at hand. With the toe of my boot, I nudged the hand back into the creature’s excavation wishing I had a stick to poke it farther in. Again with my boot, I scraped and kicked soil back into the hole, and finished up by firmly plugging it with several rocks of the right diameter. It did not seem a very respectful way for me to deal with it, but I judged that in this case, promptness exceeded the need for reverence. I patrolled the rest of the line of recent graves, and found three other places where wildlife was intruding on the resting places of the dead. I repeated my rock- and earth-scuffing at each site, resolving that after this, I’d always take a shovel with me when I made my daily circuit of the graveyard.

The high clouds and fresh wind of the day had thickened to dark overcast and bluster. The first heavy drops began to fall. The moisture in the air made it hard to continue ignoring the clinging smell of the place. Nothing smells quite like rotting human flesh, and my experience at Widevale had forever associated that terrible stench with my own stunning losses. It horrified me that such a foul smell carried my mind immediately to thoughts of my mother. Worse were the mental images of Elisi that came with it. Try as I might, I could not recall my elder sister at her harp or sewing, but only as that perpetually sprawled and futilely grasping corpse. The thought ambushed me that I had done no better by my family with their hasty burials than Gettys had done with theirs. It both shamed me and woke kinship in me.

This duty that had been given to me, however lowly anyone else might regard it, was a trust. In life, these men had served their king as best they might. They and their families deserved respectful rest. I saw now the wisdom of the stored coffins in the shed. There were not enough of them. I wondered if I could persuade my commander that we needed a warehouse full. I grimaced as I imagined how that would affect morale at the fort. Planning to be decimated by disease was scarcely optimistic. But I thought I could convince him it was better than being overwhelmed with dead bodies when the annual onslaught of Speck plague began.

I thought of the anonymous trench graves. Well, that was within my power to correct or at least lessen. I’d proven myself as
a gravedigger. If I dug a grave daily and left it open and waiting, would I stay ahead of the plague victims when the hot dusty days of summer brought the sickness again? I was not sure, but it was worth trying.

The rain began to fall in earnest, a driving curtain of water. As I cut short my tour of the graves and cut across their lines in my trek back to my cottage, I resolved that I would remember that every body buried here had been beloved by somebody. I passed Clove, hobbled in the tall standing grass. He’d turned his big rump to the wind and had his head down. He was already drenched, and I pitied him. I led him to the lee of the shed. If winters here were as harsh as I’d heard, I’d need to put up some sort of shelter for him. I’d forgotten to request his corn and oats; a cavalla man’s horse received his own rations from the regiment. Tomorrow, I promised myself. Winter was just around the corner, and I still had much to do to make myself ready for it.

The downpour firmed my decision that I would not return to town this evening. I found I rather looked forward to my first night in my own residence. Once inside my cottage, I shut the door firmly behind me. I was pleased to find that the roof was tight, and that the hearth was sufficient to warm the room to a comfortable temperature. I took off my wet cloak and hung it on a peg by the door, and pulled off my boots and stood them under it. And there I stood, suddenly safe within doors in my own little place, with more comforts than I’d enjoyed in weeks and with remarkably little to do.

I busied myself as best I could. The beans had begun to swell in the water. I added more liquid to them and set the kettle at the edge of the hearth. By tomorrow they would be softened. I would add salt and the last of the bacon to them, and let them cook all day. Contemplating that gave me so much satisfaction that I was rather shocked at myself. Surely I wanted more out of life than to simply have my next meal secured and a tight roof over my head.

But did I?

It was strange to look around my little cottage and realize that I’d fulfilled my ambition for myself. I was, technically, a soldier. I had a post and a task. If I saved enough of my pay to afford it, I
could have a uniform made that would fit me and I could wear it. I doubted that my father would ever be proud of me, but at some point I was sure that I’d let him know that despite his lack of faith in me, I’d achieved what the good god had decreed for me.

And did I want no more than that out of life?

I was irritated with myself. I took the spindly chair and set it by the hearth and cautiously perched in it. I’d come all this way to do this, and now that I’d done it, the first thing I did was question the value of it. Could not I take even one night of satisfaction in my accomplishment? What was wrong with me?

I added a bit more wood to the fire and stared at it for a time.

Yaril came to mind. I had said that I would provide for her, that I would send for her as soon as I was able. In the next few days, I should write to her and tell her where I was and that I was, indeed, a soldier. I looked around my snug little cabin. Then I tried to picture my sister there. My heart sank. Yaril had said that she would manage anywhere I did, but I could not imagine my pretty pampered sister coping here. She had always lived in privilege and comfort. Could she adapt to life here? I would have to add another room onto the cabin. How long would she be content, sleeping on a sack of straw, cooking on an open hearth, fetching her own water to bathe in a pan? Gettys would offer her little in the way of amusement or company. How soon would she become bored and bitter? How could I offer this to Yaril as an escape?

I sat down with my journal. I took paper from my extra leaves, and wrote Yaril a letter telling her briefly of my adventures on the road and that I was now at Gettys and an enlisted man. It was hard to tell her that my situation was such that I could not welcome her yet. I tried to make the words gentle and affectionate, but feared that no matter what or how I wrote, she would feel abandoned. I sealed the note, resolving to send it the next day.

My thoughts had spiraled downward. I suddenly saw that all my life, I’d been shallow and without ambition, content to take my birth order destiny and make it the sole focus of my life. I made my nightly entry in my journal. I recounted how I’d finally enlisted, but also included my terror at nothing and my final image of myself at the end of the day, a lowly soldier unable to keep his
promise to his sister. It was a savage denunciation of myself. The tidy little cabin I had so enjoyed earlier in the day now seemed an empty little shell that I had moved myself into, something that would permit me no growth, nothing but existence.

My hearth fire was the only light in the cabin. I banked it, undressed, and lay down on my hard bunk. I listened to the wind howl, pitied poor Clove standing in it, and then fell into a deep sleep.

I dreamed of a smell, rich and spicy. It took me some time to identify it, and then I recalled it. It was the smell of magic, the same aroma I’d inhaled when I stood on the pinnacle of the spire and plunged my hands into the magic of the Dancing Spindle. But in my dream, the scent of magic became instead the perfume of a woman’s body. She stood naked before me, perfectly comfortable in her speckled skin. Her nakedness revealed the pattern of her markings. They were much like a tabby cat’s stippling, suggestive of stripes. Like a curious cat, she moved soft-footed and wary around my cabin.

I watched her. The palest parts of her skin were lighter than mine, the darkest a smooth velvet black. She explored my cabin and my possessions. She lifted my shirt, fingering the fabric, and then raised it to her face, where she sniffed it with flared nostrils and half-open mouth. I caught a glimpse of her white teeth and dark tongue as she tasted my scent. When she set down my shirt and moved again, I could see the darker streak that ran down her spine. The speckles that were almost stripes radiated out from that streak. The nails of her hands and feet were dark. Once she stopped her prowling and stared long at me. I looked back at her frankly. Her belly was paler than the rest of her, but still speckled. The nipples of her breasts were dark. Her hair was long and coarse and as streaked as the rest of her. The rain had washed her, and her hair clung flat to her skull and was a soaked veil down her back. Streaks of rain glistened on her skin and small jewels of it sparkled in her pubic hair.

She was not the first Speck I’d seen, nor even the first Speck woman. But this time there were no cage bars between her and me, and I felt her feral grace as a muted threat. Her body was
strong, her legs muscled, her thighs and haunches powerful. She was easily as tall as I was. Her breasts were heavy, swaying with her walk, and her belly curved frankly above the furred mound between her legs. There was nothing delicate about her. She was as unlike a Gernian woman as a wolf is unlike a lapdog. I watched her scoop two fingers full of beans from my pot and taste them, frowning. She pulled her fingers from her mouth and shook them disdainfully. Then she moved again, and came to stand over me in my bed. She leaned down close to me, so close I could feel her breath on my cheek. I smelled her. Arousal shocked through me with an insistence I’d never felt before. I lunged for her.

I awoke on the floor with skinned knees. I was shivering with cold, and still desperately kindled. But there was no woman, not a scent or sight of her. The cold wind and driving rain were coming in through the open door. There were wet leaves tracked across my floor. I wanted most to believe that there had been a woman there, but knew the more logical explanation was that I had been sleepwalking again. The rain had chilled me and a few wet leaves were still plastered to my feet and calves. I stumbled across to the door, shut it firmly, and made sure of the latch. I added wood to my fire and then crawled back into my bed.

I tried to find sleep again, but could only skim the surface of it for moments, like a thrown stone skipping across a river. I listened to the storm rant and rave outside, and toward dawn I heard it finally give up, more from weariness than satisfaction.

I arose to a world washed clean, to blue skies and a fresh, cold wind sweeping the world. Such mornings usually energized me, but today I felt old and stiff and hampered by my weight. I was hungry, yet too bleak to want to prepare food for myself. The swollen beans had burst their wrinkled skins; they looked disgusting. I nudged them closer to the coals and covered them to continue their slow cooking. I hated myself for being too stupid and greedy to save some of yesterday’s loaf to break my fast. I toasted the remaining bacon on a skewer over the fire, ate some, and dropped the rest into the bean pot

When I went for water, the tall standing grass soaked me to the knees. When I stood up from dipping up a bucketful, I looked
up at the forest on the hillside above me. I felt an echo of the wonder I’d felt once before at such a sight. But in the next instant, a wash of fear swept through me. I imagined slogging through wet leaves while water dripped down on me and tangled roots tripped me. Buzzing insects would sting me, to say nothing of the threat of poisonous snakes and the larger predators of the forestlands. No. I wanted nothing to do with the forest. I turned away from that gloomy, dangerous place, wishing my cabin were not so close to it. I hurried away with my bucket.

I made a morning of heating water, washing my clothes and myself, and stringing a clothesline inside my cabin to dry my clothing. I put on my cavalla hat, a jacket that would not button, and a shirt and a pair of trousers still damp from washing. I built up the fire in the vain hope that the rest of my clothing would be dry when I returned, saddled up a disgruntled Clove, and rode back to Gettys.