“Go home,” I told her, bluntly. This was no place for her.

“I can’t,” she said simply. “My Mother would not let me back in the door, for fear I would bring the plague with me. And under the circumstances, there is nowhere else I could go. I’m not only a disgraced woman, I’m probably a plague-carrier now.” She seemed quite cheery about both fates. Then her voice dropped and she added soberly, “Besides. You need me here. Both of you, but especially you. Whatever it was that hovered over you the last time I saw you has grown more powerful. When I thought you were dead… that was what horrified me. You had no breath I could detect, no pulse at all. You—now do not laugh at me—your aura had faded to where I could not detect it. But the aura of that, that other that is within you, had grown stronger. It raged about you like fire devouring a log. I was so frightened for you. You need me to protect you from it”

No, I didn’t. That was the one thing I was sure of. For Epiny to come here, at risk to herself, was the only thing that could have made me feel worse. Bad enough that helping Caulder had condemned me to disgrace. I could die, and my shame would die with me. She would have to live with her dishonour, as would my uncle. A lingering memory of myself as I was in that other world wafted through my mind, like half-recalled perfume. I was suddenly certain that whatever Tree Women was, I did not want Epiny near her.

She was staring at me, round eyed. I saw then that she was not well. Little crusts were starting at the corners of her eyes. I should have known from her cracked lips and her red cheeks. She already burned with the fever of the plague. Dr Amicas had been right again.

She reached timorously to touch my head, and then jerked back her fingers as if scalded. “It comes and goes,” she whispered. “It shimmers around you, weak and then strong. Now it glows above your head. Like flame shows through a sheet of paper before it bursts through and consumes it.”

As she spoke those, words, I could feel him. The other self had grown strong. I suddenly saw with his eyes. Epiny was a sorceress, a mistress of the iron magic. He looked at her and gloated, for powerful as she was, she was doomed. As clearly as I could see Epiny herself, I saw the tie of green vine that bound her wrist to Spink’s. I recognized Tree Woman’s ‘keep fast’ charm.

As my true self, I mustered my will. I reached for Epiny’s free wrist and seized it. I pulled on her as she pulled back from me with a little squeak of alarm. “I have to free you!” I whispered hoarsely. “Before it’s too late.” With my other hand, I tried to make the ‘loose’ sign over the twist of vine that bound her. Once the making of that sign had been my betrayal of my people. Now it would free Epiny. But my other self was too strong for me. I could lift my hand, but my fingers would not move as I commanded. He laughed with my mouth, cracking my dry lips.

“Nevare! Let me go! You’re hurting me!”

At Epiny’s cry, Spink took an uneven gasp of air. Then he sighed it out. Distracted, Epiny turned to him. “Spink? Spink!”

I waited. The moments ticked past. He made no indrawn breath. Then, as he gave a final sigh, I heard the death rattle in Spink’s throat. Epiny sank to her knees on the floor between our beds. I still gripped her wrist. She didn’t seem to notice. “No,” she said quietly. “Oh, please, Spink, no! Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”

He is on the bridge now. I thought faintly. My mouth was no longer mine to speak with. My other self had that now. I wanted to call to Epiny for help. Now that his taking of my body was real, I would have claimed help from anyone who could offer it.

But Epiny did not even look at me. She had begun to rock back and forth, her free hand cupped over her mouth. Her keening still escaped between her fingers. Tears flowed down her face and over her fingers.

I knew when Spink’s spirit left his body. I did not see it go. But I saw Epiny suddenly sit up straight and look at her free hand. I saw the vine tighten on her wrist. Then, as the vine disappeared as if pulled through in invisible wall, Epiny went white. Her mouth gaped and did not close. Linked to Spink by Tree Woman’s ‘keep fast’ charm, her spirit was being pulled into death along with his. Slowly she collapsed to the floor and became still.

I fought my other self then. Fought him, as I had not before, with fury and hatred and disgust for all he had made me. I tried over and over to make the ‘loose’ sign over their bodies. He kept me from it. To the nurses running toward us, I must have appeared a mad man, holding tight to Epiny’s wrist as if I could hold her back from death, all the while grunting and shaking my free hand in the air as I tried to force my fingers to move as I wished them.

I suddenly recalled the scout’s bluff, all those many years ago. I let my control of the hand go lax, as if surrendering. And when my other self lowered his guard against me, I made a sign over my own grip on Epiny’s wrist. Not ‘loose’.

“Keep fast!” I managed to say through my cracked lips. And then my body, too, crumpled to the floor as Epiny’s departing spirit pulled me after her.

Closing my eyes in that world was opening them to the bridge and its moving morass of the dying. Spink was on the bridge and had nearly completed his crossing. Epiny floated above him like a tethered bird. She was terrified, and she fought the bond that joined them. Spink did not even notice her. He moved forward, a step at a time.

The bond that linked me to Epiny was thinner and more tenuous. My charm did not have the strength of Tree Woman’s spell. Here, at least, my actions were my own. “Loose!” I said, and made the sign. I found myself free of Epiny, but dead all the same. I was suddenly on the bridge myself. The gathered crowd hemmed me in and blocked my progress. It edged forward, a slow step at a time. I fought the stolid detachment that wished to take me, fought the magic of the disease that had wasted my body. I had come here to do something. Unlike these others, I had willed myself here. I elbowed and shoved my way through the clustering souls.

It seemed monstrous to me that a plague could be a summoning, that the Tree Woman had sent this sickness upon us to work magic against us. Bad enough that we should die of it; far worse that our deaths should bring us to a place that our beliefs had not made! This was not the sweet rest the good god promised his followers. It seemed cruel that those who had faithfully believed should be deprived of it.

Determinedly I tried to push my way forward through the crowding souls. “Stop!” I called aloud. “Spink! Come back!” He did not heed me. Over his head, Epiny floated, moaning and tugging at the binding on her wrist. Spink left the bridge, stepped into the Tree Woman’s domain and began his slow drift up the desecrated hillside. But at my cry, other spectral faces had turned to me, halting on the bridge to look back at me. I pleaded with them. “Come back. That place is not for you. Return to your bodies. Go back to your loved ones.”

A few wraiths paused, looking puzzled, as if my words had stirred their already fading memories. But after the brief consideration of me, they turned back to their sluggish passage. I had no patience with their delaying me. Heedless of the emptiness below me, I pushed around and past the trudging souls. On the far side, from her post at the top of the hill near the line of trees, the Tree Woman pointed at me. I feared she would fling me back into my body, and only let me return to death after Spink and Epiny had perished forever. I seized the guide ropes of the bridge with both my hands and held on tightly, determined to resist.

A strange thing happened to me then. I could feel the magic coursing through the bridge, and recalled that it was made as much from me as it was from Tree Woman. I recognized the yellow strands that were part of its weaving; they were my own hair. I sensed I could draw strength from it, if I only knew how. That other self would have known how. But I did not, and so I could only hold tight to it and resist her in that way. I did sense that while I held to the bridge, she could not expel me from her realm. I began to make my torturous way across the bridge, slowly moving my grip, hand over hand, to cross it. I barely noticed the evanescent beings who gave way to my determined crossing. I passed them, and crept ever closer to my nemesis. “Spink!” I shouted again to my friend as I saw him toiling up the hill, ever closer to Tree Woman. “Turn back! Bring Epiny back with you, to life! Don’t drag her into death with you.”