I drew a breath. It took so much effort. I thought again of the vine, climbing and choking and overshadowing the tree. “I see only one possible path. What we must do is find a way to persuade the intruders to take their road elsewhere. Show them a route that does not come through the groves of the ancestor trees. Then both our peoples can live alongside one another in peace.”

It was getting harder and harder to organize my thoughts. Speaking seemed a great effort. My words were slurring, but I couldn’t find the energy to sit up and speak clearly. I closed my eyes. A final thought jabbed at me and I made a vast effort to voice it. “If I can stop the road builders, if I can divert them, cannot you send up a new sprout and live? Tree Woman has.”

“Lisana’s trunk was not completely severed. Although her crown and trunk fell, enough of a connection was left that her leaves could go on making food and one of her branches was positioned well to become a new sapling. But I am cut off short, and have no leaves left. Even if I could, I would have to send up a sapling from my roots, beginning as no more than a sprout. I would be greatly diminished for scores of years.”

“But you would be alive. You would not be lost to us.”

He was silent.

All my exhilaration at spending my magic was suddenly gone. We had come full circle back to my great failure. Everyone insisted that the magic had given me the task of making all the Gernians leave and putting an end to their road building. It was impossible. I’d told them that, endlessly, but no one listened. Even the tree elders know that the intruders could not be stopped. Not even with magic.

I managed to lift my hand and placed it against his bark. Something was very wrong with me. I could not feel my legs and my vision suddenly faded. Had I closed my eyes? I could not tell. I forced out sluggish words. “I have used too much magic. I do not have a feeder to revive me. If you wish, take whatever nourishment you can from my body. Use me up. Perhaps you can live that way. Perhaps someone else will find a way to stop the road and let the Gernians and Specks live in peace. It is beyond me.”

Silence greeted my offer. Perhaps I had offended him. As strength fled my body, I decided it no longer mattered. I pushed my fingers into a fissure in his bark; my hand would stay in place even if I lost consciousness. My whole body was clamoring for sustenance and rest. I suspected it was too late. I’d passed the redemption point. “Use me up,” I offered him again and let go.

“You have no feeder? You are a Great One and no one attends you? This is intolerable!” His words reached me from a great distance. I sensed he felt insulted more on his own behalf than concerned for me. “This is not how a Great One dies, untended and treeless. What have the People come to, to allow such a thing to happen?”

My hearing was fading. I was distant from his dismay and alarm. I wondered, dispassionately, what the penal workers would think when they found my deflated body here. It would certainly be a mystery for them. A great mystery.

Everything stopped.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE OTHER SIDE

Lisana,” I said.

She did not hear me. I saw her more clearly than I had in many days; she was as she had been in my dreams when I was at the Cavalla Academy in Old Thares. The Tree Woman was sitting with her back to her tree trunk. Her glossy hair was tangled on the bark. She was naked, a fleshy woman of indeterminate years. The day’s early sunlight dappled her flesh as it streamed through the canopy foliage, and I could not tell the real dappling of her skin from that which the sunlight created. Her eyelids were half closed, her breathing heavy and slow. I smiled down at her, my gaze fondly tracing the lines of her plump lips, the small furrow in her brow that deepened when she was annoyed at me. I came closer to her and whispered by her ear, “Lisana! I’m here.”

Her eyes opened slowly, sleepily, without alarm. The little line on her forehead deepened in puzzlement. Her eyes moved past me and looked through me. Her rounded shoulder twitched in a small shrug. She started to close her eyes again.

“Lisana!” I said more urgently.

She caught her breath, sat up, and looked around. “Soldier’s Boy?” she asked in confusion.

“Yes. I’ve come back to you. I’ve done my best to stop the road building. I failed. But I’m finished. Finished with all of it. So here I am, come to be with you.”

She scanned the forest all around her twice before her eyes settled on me. Then she reached out a plump hand to me. Her fingers passed through me, a sensation rather like sparkling wine spilling on my flesh. Tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, no. No! What has happened? This cannot be. This cannot be!”

“It’s all right,” I reassured her. “I used up all the magic in me to try to stop the road. My body is dying, but I’m here with you. So that’s not so bad, is it? I’m content.”

“Soldier’s Boy, no! No, it’s not bad, it’s terrible. You are a Great One! The magic made you a Great One. And now you are dying, treeless and untended. You are already fading from my eyes. And soon you will be gone, gone forever.”

“I know. But once that body is gone, I will be here with you. And I do not think that is a bad thing.”

“No. No, you fool! You are vanishing. You have no tree. And you have fallen—” She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she did, tears spilled from them. She opened them wide and her gaze was full of anguish. “You have fallen far from any sapling. You are untended and unprepared and still divided against yourself. Oh, Soldier’s Boy, how did this happen? You will fade away. And when you do, I will never see you again. Never.”

The wind blew softly through me. I felt oddly diminished. “I didn’t know that,” I said lamely. Stupidly. “I’m sorry.” As I apologized to her, a flicker of panic raced through me and then faded away. There wasn’t enough life left in me to panic. I’d made a mistake and I was dying. Apparently not even a Speck afterlife was available to me. I’d simply stop being. Apparently, I hadn’t died correctly. Oops.

I knew I should be devastated. An emotion washed through me, too pale for me to recognize. “I’m sorry,” I said again, as much to myself as to her.

She stretched her arms wide and gathered into her bosom what was left of me. I felt her embrace only as a faint warmth. It was not even a skin-to-skin sensation, but was perhaps my memory of warmth. My awareness was trickling away. Soon there would not even be enough left to be concerned. I’d be nothing. No. Nothing would be me. That was a better way to express it. I vaguely remembered how I would have smiled.

The water was sweet. Not just sweet as fresh water is sweet, but sweet as in flavored with honey or nectar. I choked on the gush of it into my mouth, coughed and felt the coolness spatter down my chest. Then I drew a breath through my nose, closed my lips around the mouth of the water skin, and sucked it in. I drank in long gulping drafts, pulling in as much liquid as my mouth would hold, swallowing it down and then sucking in more. I sucked the water skin flat. Nonetheless, I kept my mouth firmly clamped to it, sucking fruitlessly at it. Someone pinched my nose shut, and when I had to open my mouth to breathe, the water skin was snatched away. I moaned a protest.

Another one was offered to me. This one was even better; it was not just sweet water. The liquid was thicker. Meat and salt and garlic were blended in a thick broth with other flavors I did not know. I didn’t really care. I sucked it down.

The disorganized sounds around me suddenly evolved into language. “Be careful. Don’t let him have that much that fast.” A man’s voice.

“Would you like to be his feeder, Jodoli?” That was a voice I recognized. Olikea sounded just as angry as she had been when last we parted. She was a powerful woman, as tall as I was and well muscled. Her anger was not a thing to dismiss. I suddenly felt exposed. I tried to draw my arms and legs up to protect myself, but felt them only twitch in response to me.