“I did not do that,” I said faintly. “I did not destroy the magic of the Plains people.” I spoke the lie as if by saying such words I could undo it. Her truth had struck and sunk into me, cutting and sticking just as my iron blade had done to her. I had been there when the Spindle stopped turning. I’d felt that magic falter and fail. If I had not been there, if I had not chased the boy from the Spindle’s tip, would he have gone to work his mischief at the base of it? If not for me, would that wedge of cold iron have fallen to where it stilled forever the Spindle’s dance?
And if I had done that, and by doing it, had begun the final end of the Plains people, did it have to mean that I would also be the demise of my own folk? “I cannot do this. I cannot be this.”
“Oh, Soldier’s Boy.” The wind or the caress of a ghostly hand moved through my hair. “So I said, too. The magic is not kind. It makes nothing of what we would or would not do. It takes us as we are, small and simple folk for the most part, and makes us Great Ones. Great Ones! So others name us, thinking we have power. But you and I, we know what it is to be a reservoir of power for the magic. We are tools. The power is not for us to use. Others may think so, and they may think that by befriending us or claiming us, they will gain influence over our power.”
“Are you warning me about Olikea?”
She was silent. I almost wondered if I had embarrassed her. Was it possible that she felt jealous? I think she heard more than I intended. She gave a soft laugh that held echoes of regret. “Olikea is a child. There is little to her; you have already experienced all she has to offer you. But you and I—”
“I have no memories of you and me,” I interrupted hastily.
“You do,” she asserted calmly. “They are deep in you, as deep as the magic. As real as the magic.”
Her voice had grown warmer. I bowed my head, and my throat suddenly tightened with a sorrow that did and did not belong to me. Tears pricked my eyes. I groped out and my hand touched the rough bark of her stump.
“Do not grieve, Soldier’s Boy.” Fingertips of moving air caressed my cheek. “Some loves go beyond bodies and times. We met in the magic and there we knew one another. I schooled you for the magic; it was what the magic demanded of me. But I loved you for myself. And in the place and time where ages and shapes have no meaning, and there is only the comfort of kindred spirits touching, our love remains.”
“I’m so sorry I killed you,” I cried out. I fell to my knees and put my arms about the standing stump of the great tree. I could not embrace it; it was far too large. Still, I pressed my chest and face against her bark, but could not find her there. There was another man within me, one who was me but who had lived a separate life from the young man who had attended the academy. I had battled that self and won, but he resided in me still. The tearing grief I felt was his. It was and was not my sorrow.
“But you didn’t kill me. You didn’t,” she comforted me. “I go on. And when the days of your mortal flesh are done, you will go on with me. Then we shall have a time together, and it will be a far longer time than humans can count.”
“That’s a cold promise for now,” I heard myself say. And it was my own voice and it was me. The tree I leaned on was just a stump with moss creeping up it. I pressed hard against the stump, trying to recapture Tree Woman’s presence, but she was gone, and with her my awareness of my Speck self.
I stood up, and smeared the tears from my face. I left that place. I was only a little surprised to find that a single set of hoof tracks led me uphill to it. We had not come this way before. Neither Clove nor I had ever been here in the flesh before.
I came eventually to where I had diverged from the correct trail home. I plodded along it, hungry, tired, and confused. Was I a dutiful soldier son, a loyal trooper in my king’s cavalla, or was I a disowned son masquerading as a soldier in a threadbare frontier existence? Was I the forest mage’s student who had both loved and slain her? Had I shamed myself deeply last night by having relations with a Speck, or had I simply had a wonderful, extravagant sexual experience? Without success, I tried not to wonder what my encounter with Tree Woman and my other self meant. I had felt the echoes of their emotions and could not doubt the sincerity of what they had felt. It was all the stranger in that I had been a dumb and blind participant in their romance.
When I saw daylight breaking through the forest roof ahead of me, I knew it traced the demarcation between the ancient forest and the younger trees on the burned hillside. My steps slowed. I would soon be leaving one world for another, and as I approached the boundary, I was not entirely sure that I wished to do so. If I left the forest, I would be making a large decision, with consequences I didn’t fully grasp. What did the magic want me to do? I didn’t know, and I also didn’t know if I wanted to fall in with the magic’s plan for me, or fight it with every ounce of my strength. Tree Woman had said that if the magic had its way, I would be the downfall of my entire race. That seemed impossible. But I had been there when the Dancing Spindle stopped turning. It seemed that with my aid, the Speck magic had hastened the end of the Plains magic and all its people. Could I possibly bring a similar destruction down on my own kind?
