Then, just as quickly as I had risen over all, I was in my own flesh again, leaning against the severed tree, bereft of strength and hope.
Defeat soured even my brief memory of the triumph I’d felt. I spoke softly. “Magic can’t change it, Tree Man. It isn’t the road or the fortification at Gettys. It isn’t even the people who have come here. It’s so big, it can’t be stopped. You know that even if I could kill all the intruders, I would not. But if I did, if we killed every last man, woman, and child in Gettys, it would be only like clipping off the end of a tree’s branch. Other branches grow. Next summer would see more people here, and the road building would start again. For the Gernians to come here is as inevitable as water flowing downhill. Now that some have come, others will follow, seeking land to farm or routes to trade and wealth. Killing them will not stop them from coming or building this road.”
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.”