“If you would, please,” Olikea said gratefully.

“And I will go with you,” Likari announced as he sat down again.

“As his feeder, that is your right,” the Great Man confirmed.

I saw Likari start to roll his eyes toward me. Jodoli raised an eyebrow at him. Likari lowered his head.

“I’m not a ghost!” I said incredulously. “Is this a joke? Have I offended all of you in some way? I don’t understand! I’m hungry. I need help!”

I stepped closer into their circle. None of them reacted. Likari might have hunched his shoulders a little tighter. I reached toward the skewer of meat that Jodoli held. It had been a bird; I seized the wing and tore it free. If he felt or saw me take it, his face did not show it. I devoured the salty, greasy meat, chewed the gristle off the end of the bone and threw that tiny piece into the fire. The flames spat as they tasted it.

By the fire, Firada spoke to Olikea as if nothing were out of the ordinary. “So. What will you do now?”

“What I have always done. I’ll live.”

Firada shook her head. “It was wrong of Kinrove to keep all that treasure. He should have given at least some of it back to you. You tended Nevare well. Now, except for the lodge and what it holds, you are right back to where you were.”

Her sister sounded sympathetic but Olikea still bristled. “Perhaps the lodge holds more than you know. Perhaps it was not all of Lisana’s treasure that he threw at Kinrove’s feet.”

Firada lifted one eyebrow. “Truly?”

Olikea smiled small. “I said perhaps.”

Firada made a small sound in her throat. “You have always known how to take care of yourself.”

“I’ve had to,” Olikea said.

There was a skin of water on the ground beside Jodoli’s couch. I picked it up and drank, but spat it out as hastily. The taste was familiar; the water was flavored with a bark that Olikea had often mixed with my water. It was an herb that amplified the magic. But now it made my gorge rise. I had no sooner dropped the skin than Jodoli picked it up. He drank thirstily, and then returned to tearing meat from the skewered bird.

“Olikea,” I begged suddenly. “Please. Please help me.”

She stretched out on the moss beside Likari and closed her eyes. A tear trickled down her cheek. I groaned and turned away from her.

I left their fireside and walked down the hill. A woman had set aside a stack of hearth cakes to cool. I took three from the top of the stack and ate them. No one noticed me.

I grew bolder in my efforts to make someone acknowledge me, and also to satisfy my needs. I took a man’s cup that he had just filled with hot soup and set aside to cool, drank it, and set it down in a different place. He merely scowled over his forgetfulness.

My hunger sated, I returned to Jodoli’s fire, in time to see Likari and Olikea settling for the night. The night was mild. Olikea spread out a blanket for both of them to share between the roots of a tree. They settled quickly and soon fell asleep. Olikea’s pack was nearby. Shamelessly, I ransacked it. When I saw that she had my winter cloak among her possessions, I boldly took it from her pack, shook it out, and put it on. It was too big for me. I lapped it around my body twice. My shoes were there, too. I put them on. They fell off. I dug into her pack again and found her knife and sewing tools. I crudely tightened the soft leather shoes to fit my feet and put them on. I cannot express the comfort of them; it was as if my body had forgotten how to keep itself warm.

After I was warm and had a full belly, sleep suddenly demanded to be indulged. Habit made me look for a place beside Olikea. But she had wedged herself and Likari into the space between two tree roots, the better to trap their own warmth. There was no room for me there. I found a place near them, lay down, then sat up and moved several small branches. My body seemed very mindful of being poked and prodded. I looked at the ground and recalled how the magic would answer me and prompt the forest into providing a soft bed for me. I could recall that I had done it, but could not remember how I had even begun to do such a thing. There was not even the smallest trace of magic left in my body.

I looked up at the sky through the forest canopy and thought about that. My magic was gone. The fat that had housed the magic was gone. I was no longer a fat man. Was I dead? Was I a ghost now? Orandula had said he would take my death from me, and apparently he had, but what sort of a life had he exiled me to?

I wished I were more comfortable, but the sleepiness that was welling up through my body insisted that I was absolutely fine. As it sank its hooks into me and dragged me under, I had a fleeting moment to wonder who and what I was now. Would a ghost have been hungry and cold? Could a ghost possibly be this sleepy? I toyed with the idea that I was asleep already and that all of this was a dream. I think I fell asleep wondering exactly at what point my real life had ended and this dream begun.

I woke with the dawn to the sound of people stirring in the camp. I rolled over, pulled my cover more tightly around me, and went back to sleep.

I awoke the second time to stronger light and the sensation of being too warm, very hungry, and badly needing to empty my bladder. I flung back the cloak from my face and stretched. Then, as my life came rushing back to fill my mind, I sat up, thinking that today I was better, stronger, and that life would resume making sense to me.

All around me, people were living their lives. Two women were crouched down as a toddler negotiated her first steps from one to the other. An older woman was grinding some dried roots into flour. A boy was working a rabbit skin between his fingers to soften it. As I walked through the camp, it was as it had been in the twilight. No one acknowledged me.

I found the waste pit beyond the edge of the camp, relieved myself, and walked back, feeling even more self-assured. Surely ghosts did not piss. And my body had begun to look more normal. My skin, so close to being transparent the day before, had begun to appear more opaque. My hands and feet were still unnaturally sensitive, and the entire surface of my body was still generally painful, as if I’d been sunburned. But it didn’t hurt as much as it had the day before, and from that I took heart. I noted with interest that the skin on my arms was a uniform color; my specks were gone. That seemed as great a change to me as my greatly reduced girth. For a moment, I pictured myself as torn from my old body, leaving behind a casing of fat and skin, emerging naked from behind a wall of fat. I shuddered at the image and pushed it away.

I had been fat and now I wasn’t. I thought of how I had once longed for that change and how important it had seemed. Now it seemed a foolish thing for me to care about. What did it matter, what did it change? I was still myself. So what did I care about, if not the shape of my body? Where was my life? I prodded at my emotions. Amzil came to mind immediately. I cared about her. I wanted her to be safe and well. And Epiny and Spink. And their baby.

It was so strange. As I thought of them, they suddenly gained importance in my mind, as if I’d forgotten about them completely and only now their significance was coming back to me. What else, I wondered, had I lost? What had been left behind in that old body? What of it would I recover?

I wandered through the camp, watching people who would not acknowledge me. I helped myself to breakfast from various cooking pots in the camp. One woman looked straight at me as I ate from her pot. I was pleased when I found Kilikurra. Olikea and Firada’s father sat by his fire, braiding sinew into a fine line, probably for a snare. He had been the first Speck I’d ever spoken to; we had not had many dealings together, but he had treated me well. I touched him gently on the shoulder. He turned his head, but his mismatched eyes looked right through me. “Please, Kilikurra. You were the first to befriend me. I desperately need a friend now.” Even when I spoke to him, he gave no indication of hearing me.