In her world I accepted, without question, the further mission I would fulfill. I would enter the flesh of the soldier’s son. I would undergo a change and become him. And I would spread the dust of death, not just through the great house where they raised their warriors, but also throughout their stonewalled hives, and even to the crowned ones who ruled them. Thus would I be the magic that turned the intruders back and saved the People.
All this I knew so clearly when I wandered outside my feverish body. Each time I came back to my tortured flesh as my true self, I was weaker. Each time, vestiges of that other life and the knowledge of that world ghosted through my fevered brain.
On my third day of sickness, I rallied briefly during the day. Dr. Amicas seemed pleased to see me awake, but I did not share his optimism. My eyelids were crusted and raw, as were my nostrils. The lingering illness made all my senses preternaturally sharp. The coarse sheets and wool blankets were a torment. I rolled my head toward Spink. I wanted to ask him if Oron had recovered, but Spink’s eyes were closed and he was breathing hoarsely. Nate was still in the bed to my right. He looked terrible. In a few short days the illness had sucked the flesh from his bones and the fever appeared to be devouring him from within. His mouth hung open as he breathed and mucus rattled in his throat. It was a terrible thing to hear, and I could not escape it. The day droned past me. I tried to be manly. I drank the bitter herbal water that they brought me, vomited it up, and then drank the next draft they gave me. There was nothing to do except lie in bed and be sick. I hadn’t the strength to hold a book, and could not have focused my eyes if I did. No one came to visit me. Neither Spink nor Nate was well enough to talk. I felt that there was something important I had to tell someone, but I could not remember what it was or whom I was to tell.
I told myself that I was growing stronger, but as the sun faded into night, my fever returned. I plunged back into a sleep that was neither rest nor true sleep. My dreams swirled like winged demons round my bed, and I could not escape them. I woke from a dream in which I was trapped in the freak tent to find myself in the dimmed ward. I sat up and discovered that Spink had no hands or arms, only flippers. When I tried to get out of my bed, I found that I had no legs. “I’m dreaming!” I shouted at the orderly who came to hold me down. “I’m dreaming. My legs are fine. I’m dreaming.”
I woke from that nightmare, shivering with cold, to find that my head was resting on a pillow full of snow. I tried to throw it off my bed, but Dr. Amicas came and scolded me, saying, “It will cool your hot head. It may break the fever. Lie back, Burvelle, lie back.”
“I didn’t give liquor to Caulder. I didn’t! You have to make the colonel understand. It wasn’t me.”
“Of course not, of course not. Lie back. Cool your head. Your fever is burning your brain. Lie still.”
The doctor pushed me back into the cold softness of the fat man’s embrace. “I used to be in the cavalla!” he told me. “Too bad you can’t be a ranker like me. You can’t be anything now. Not even a scout. Maybe you can be a fat man in a sideshow. All you have to do is eat. You like to eat, don’t you?”
I sat up suddenly. The softness of the cold pillow had wakened a brief connection of memory. It was night in the ward. Dim lanterns burned, and in the beds, shadowy figures tossed. I held tight to what I knew, desperate to share it, to avert my future betrayal of my people. “Doctor!” I shouted. “Dr. Amicas.”
Someone in a doctor’s apron hurried to my bedside. It wasn’t Amicas. “What is it? Are you thirsty?”
“Yes. No. It was the dust, Doctor. The dust they used. Dried and powdered shit from a sick man. To make us all sick. To kill us all.”
“Drink some water, Cadet. You’re raving.”
“Tell Dr. Amicas,” I insisted.
“Of course. Drink this.”
He held a cup to my mouth. It was pure, cool water and I gulped it down. It soothed my mouth and throat. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” And I fell back, through fever dreams of an endless carriage ride into that other world.
Tree Woman shook her head at me. We were seated together in a little bower of flowering bushes, not far from the edge of the world. She smiled kindly at me as she warned me, “You are not strong enough yet. Be patient. You need to consume more of their magic to walk with strength in their world. If you try too soon to cross back with him, you cannot master him. He will betray you.”
We were sitting together in the eaves of a forest. A soft rain was falling. She had brought me a leaf, folded like a cup. In it was a thick, sweet soup, warm and delicious. I drank it and licked the residue from the leaf as she looked on approvingly.