“And here he is,” I heard Tree Woman say. But not to me. Epiny stood there beside her, leaning on Tree Woman’s trunk, looking pale and sweaty and disturbingly real. She had been wearing a straw sun hat; she had pushed it off and it dangled down her back by the ribbon around her neck. Her hair had been pinned up as befitted a married woman, but it had come down messily in tendrils around her face. The dark blue dress she wore struck me as peculiarly shapeless and unflattering. Then I abruptly realized it had been cut to accommodate the growing child inside her.

“You cannot be here,” I said to her. She peered at me, her eyes widening. “You can’t be here,” I said more loudly, and then she seemed to hear me.

“I am here,” she asserted, an edge of anger in her voice. She squinted at me and then, with a small gasp, lifted her hand to her mouth. “You are the one who cannot be here. Nevare. You are rippling.”

“It is only by her pleading that you are here,” Tree Woman rebuked me as she wavered into view. She sat on top of her stump, looking older and wearier than I had ever seen her. She was thinner, I realized. Depleted of her fat. That was disturbing. “You see what you have reduced me to!” Tree Woman rebuked me. “This is your own fault, Soldier’s Boy, that I have so little strength to help you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He never understands anything,” Tree Woman observed to Epiny in the voice of an older woman advising a much younger one.

“I know,” Epiny replied. She sounded both exhausted and fearful. She was breathing heavily, and when she set her hand to the top of her belly, my heart tightened.

“You shouldn’t be here. How did you get here?”

“I walked.” She took a breath. “Uphill. And against the fear.”

“I am surprised she managed it,” Tree Woman observed. “She came into the forest calling for Olikea. She is fortunate that I answered instead of that one. She is still very angry with you, Soldier’s Boy. I can imagine too well how she would have vented that anger.”

“I don’t understand how any of this can be,” I repeated. “Isn’t this the other place? Aren’t I dreamwalking?”

“Yes. You are. And you have dreamwalked to a real place, just as your cousin has hiked here. So. Here we all are. And she tells me she would do anything, give us anything, if the magic will help her find a way for you to live.” Tree Woman cocked her head at me and her eyes went cold. “Perhaps I should ask for her firstborn child.”

“No!” I roared, but my roar had the strength of a cat’s hiss.

Epiny had gone paler, but she said nothing. She looked at me and her eyes filled with tears. She bowed her head.

“She is going back to her husband right now,” I announced.

“Oh, is she?” Tree Woman laughed humorlessly. “Stop giving commands. You are powerless here. And you are powerless by your own choice. Again and again, you refused to serve the magic. Repeatedly, you refused to answer Olikea’s summons so that she could build you up with the correct foods. You have been like a small boy refusing to do his chores. With your willfulness you have tangled the magic until I begin to wonder if anyone can make it work again. But some tasks must be done, and if the proper person will not do them, another will be found. Your cousin has come here of her own will. I do not know why the magic did not choose someone like her to begin with. I think she will serve it far better than you have.”

“You can’t do this! You can’t take her instead of me!”

“Do you think not? She has strength, and a natural affinity for this world.” The woman on the stump looked down on Epiny, and her smiled narrowed. “I recall the first time that she and I fought over you. I was surprised at her strength then. And on the day you cut me, she came into my world and dared to challenge me for a life the magic had already claimed. She took him back with her, and a man who should have fed the magic has instead fathered her child. It would suit me very well, Soldier’s Boy, to see her bow her head to the magic. It would be fitting if she lost what I lost.”

I looked at Tree Woman. I still felt my love for her, but I also felt the gulf between us that she could even threaten Epiny so. “What can I do to persuade you to let her go free?” I asked bluntly. “I’ll give you anything to see her safely home.”

“That’s the wrong bargain,” Tree Woman replied. “She has already told me several things she is willing to do to win your life back for you. The only thing that is left for me to decide is if we have any use for you.”

“Let Epiny go. Help me to live and I will come to you and serve the magic. Even if it means going against my own people to do so.”

Tree Woman cocked her head. She was quiet for a time, but it was more as if she were listening than thinking. I stood beside Epiny and tried to take her hand. She watched owlishly as my phantom hand swept through hers. I put my arm around her. She gave me a pale, tired smile and then turned her worried glance back to Tree Woman. I looked past the meditating woman to the new tree sprouting from her prone trunk. Its leaves hung limp and motionless in the summer breeze.

Lisana focused her gaze on us again. “The magic will take both of you,” she announced, obviously pleased.

“That wasn’t offered!” I retorted angrily.

“Of course it was,” she replied. “Epiny said she’d give anything to save you. You said you’d do anything to see her safely home. The magic agrees to both.”

“That isn’t fair!” I cried.

“What would be fair, Soldier’s Boy? Shall we let her go, let you die, let the intruders cut down the ancestor trees? Let the road gash through the forest like your blade cut through my trunk? Cut the People loose from their roots as you severed me from mine? That would be fair?”

“I’m sorry I did that,” I said again. I suddenly understood that Epiny’s venture into the forest had reawakened all of Tree Woman’s hurt and anger. Lisana and I had set our great battle behind us; we had even seen ourselves as victims of our own conflict. Epiny’s presence tipped the scales a different way. She was my ally who had aided me in Tree Woman’s defeat. Tree Woman felt afresh the ignominy of her defeat. Epiny was the living embodiment of my other life and my loyalty to it. She represented everything that kept me away from the magic. “Please, Lisana. Please let her go,” I said simply at last.

“You ask that as if you think it were in my power. She came here howling out Olikea’s name like a she-cat in heat. She is lucky that one did not come to her. Olikea and the others have fled into the mountains. They fear what is to come. When the magic is angered, all suffer. The People are converging on Kinrove’s folk now. They fear his magic has ceased to work. The Fear his dancers make no longer holds the intruders at bay; the ancestor trees have begun to fall again. Kinrove is the oldest and fattest of our Great Ones. They will petition him to stop the dancing, and begin a war such as your folk will understand.”

“There is no need for that!” Epiny broke in. She gave me a single sideways glance and then said, “I can do what you have asked of me. I can stop the men from cutting down your ancestor trees. And I will do it, if you find a way for Nevare to live.”

For a long time Tree Woman regarded Epiny silently. Then she said, “I told you. The magic has accepted. It is up to the magic now, not me.”

“But what are we supposed to do?” I asked.

“Whatever the magic wants you to do,” Tree Woman replied.

“Lisana,” I begged. “I have told you over and over again. I do not know what the magic wants of me. If I knew, I would have done it by now.”

“You are the only one who can possibly know. I suggest you listen more closely to it,” she replied stiffly. I suspected I had offended her by calling her by name in front of Epiny. She turned her back on both of us, and then, suddenly, she wasn’t there. In the instant she vanished, I suddenly felt frail, a shadow blowing in a black wind. Then Epiny looked at me and set her hand on top of mine, which rested on her shoulder. Her fingers went through my hand; she clasped her own shoulder but I felt more stable.