It cut me still to hear Amzil called that name, and it was all I could do to hold my tongue.

“Have you paper and a pen I could use?” I asked him a bit curtly, and he looked hurt for an instant before admitting that he wasn’t much of a reader or a writer, so had nothing like that. After a bit of a search, he reluctantly came up with one of my old newspapers. “Belonged to a friend of mine. I’m not much for reading, but I’ve sort of been saving it.”

I persuaded him to give me one sheet of it, and scratched out a crude message over the print with the burnt end of a stick. There was little room to be elegant or subtle. I printed out, “I’m back, alive. I need clothes. Follow Kesey, and I’ll explain all later.”

I signed it N.B. and entrusted it to Kesey, then watched him ride away on his broom-tailed horse.

After he was out of sight, I found myself at a loss for what to do with myself. I took a brief stroll through the cemetery that I had tended so faithfully. There was a new trench grave there, so recent that the grass hadn’t covered it yet. I frowned at that, for plague outbreaks usually happened in the heat of summer. Then I saw that there was actually a marker, copied from the ones I had made, made of wood with the letters burned into it. Here were buried the victims of the massacre I’d led but a few months ago. The ground would have been too hard and frozen to permit grave-digging at the time they’d died. It gave me a sharp pang to think of the bodies stored frozen in the shed until spring had softened the ground enough to bury them. Doubtless that had been a horrid task for whoever had had to perform it. Probably Kesey and Ebrooks, I realized. I turned abruptly away from the grave of the men, women, and children I had killed and started back toward my cabin.

Curiosity made me pause and look back to where my hedge of kaembra trees had once stood. Fool that I’d been, I’d hoped to keep the Specks out of the graveyard with a barrier of trees and stone. The trees had been cut down and the sections of trunk buried along with the plague victims they’d ensnared, but I saw that the stumps had sprouted again from the roots. I tried to decide what I felt about that sight, but could not. I recalled only too well my disgust as the trees had sent their roots questing into the plague bodies, but now that I understood more fully what it was to have a tree, I felt sad that they had been cut down and the bodies buried. Would it have been so bad for those people, I wondered, to live on as trees? Could they have spoken to us as the other kaembra trees spoke to the Specks? I shook my head at myself and turned back to the cabin. That world was not mine anymore. The forest would never speak to me again.

I sat briefly in my chair, staring at Kesey’s dying fire, and then could not stand the squalor anymore. I went to the spring for a bucket of water and set it to heat. I told myself that when Kesey returned, I’d tell him that I had done it as a repayment for the good deeds he’d done for me. But the honest truth was that it pained me to see that my formerly tidy little residence had become such a sty.

So I scraped and washed the dishes and pots, and then swept a substantial heap of mud and dirt out of the door. In the process of putting the dishes back in the cupboard, I came across what remained of my possessions. Kesey had kept everything that I’d left there. My clothing had been carefully folded. Even my worn-out shoes were there. I shook out one of the shirts and then put it on. It hung loose all around me, and for a moment I marveled that it had ever fit me. I wondered why Kesey had not offered me the use of these clothes, and then was oddly touched that he had not. I refolded the shirt and restored it to its place. He’d kept my things, I realized, as a sort of remembrance of me.

Trying to change clothes had shown me how dirty I was. I heated water, washed, and even shaved using Kesey’s razor. Looking into his mirror was a revelation. I was pale as a mushroom, and the skin on my face was overly sensitive. I nicked myself twice and bled profusely both times. But the real shock was the shape of my face. I had cheekbones and a defined chin. My eyes had emerged from the pillows of fat that had narrowed them. I looked like Cadet Nevare Burvelle. I looked like Carsina’s fiancé. I touched my face with my hand. I looked like my father and Rosse, I realized. But mostly like my father.

Restlessness made me leave the cabin. I felt I could not sit still and wait. I put my rags back on and went out to Kesey’s woodpile. I chopped some kindling for him, until the uncallused skin on my hands protested this rough usage. I put what I had chopped in a tidy stack by his door and wondered how much time had passed. Would he ever return? Would Spink come with him right away or would he think it some sort of bizarre prank? The minutes of the day dripped by slowly.

I paced. I walked out to my old vegetable garden to find it a patch of weeds. Nothing useful there. Using the rusty sabre hilt with its bit of blade and one of the table knives, I successfully repaired the shutter so that it hung straight again. I paced some more. My old sabre still hung on the wall of the cabin. I took it down, hefted it, and tried a few lunges. It still wasn’t much of a weapon. It was notched and rust had eaten at it. But it was still a sword. At first it felt foreign in my hand, but after a few feints and then a solid touch on the door it felt like the grip of an old friend’s hand. I grinned foolishly.

After what felt like several days, I heard the sounds of someone approaching. But it wasn’t a lone horse, or even two horses. It sounded like a cart. I hastily put the sword back where it had been and walked to where I could look down the track that wound up the hill.

Kesey was riding his horse. Behind him, drawn by an old nag, Epiny was driving the most ramshackle two-wheeled cart I’d ever seen. Moreover, she was driving it one-handed. On the seat next to her was a large basket and her other hand rested inside it. In the basket, a baby was kicking and fussing.

CHAPTER THIRTY

REUNION

The world stood breathless around me as that cart slowly came up the hill. I had time to absorb every detail. Epiny wore a proper hat, but it had been donned hastily, unless it was the fashion now to wear it nearly sliding off one side of her head. Her hair had come unbundled and half spilled down her back. One of the wheels on the cart was wobbling so badly that I immediately resolved she could not go back to Gettys in that conveyance until we had secured it. But mostly I just stared at Epiny’s face.

As she drew nearer, I could see high spots of bright color on her cheeks. She was thin, but not as thin as the last time I’d glimpsed her in my dream. I could see her mouth moving as she spoke to the baby in her basket, and then suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer. I began to run down the hill toward her shouting, “Epiny! Epiny!”

Epiny tried to pull in the horse, but my headlong rush toward it alarmed the poor old creature. Instead of stopping, he veered to one side, taking the cart off the track and into the deep grass. There the wobbly wheels refused to go any farther, and that more than Epiny’s tugging on the reins brought him to a halt. I reached the side of the cart in time to catch Epiny as she leapt from the seat into my arms. I hugged her tight and whirled her around, beyond joy at seeing her again. Her own arms went tight around my neck. Nothing had ever felt so healing as that simple expression of pure affection. Other than our kinship, Epiny had never had any reason to love me or to make the sacrifices and take the risks for me that she had. In so many ways, I’d brought pain and suffering into her life. But her honest embrace assured me that she still cared for me, despite how I’d damaged her. Her capacity for love humbled me. Kesey had reined in his mount and was watching us in consternation. Epiny, as ever, never stopped talking even as I spun her around.