I looked up to find Jodoli leading his people back into the camp. I sat by his hearth, waiting for him to return and see what I had done. Instead, he went to another fire. The people gathered fearfully around him. I felt a surprisingly strong pang of envy as he called on his magic and the earth rose beneath his feet, elevating him above his listeners.

“Do not fear,” he told them. “There is but one more step to drive the ghost from our midst.” He turned to Firada. She reached into her pouch and handed him a double handful of leaves. “These were taken from his own tree. He cannot resist them.”

With those words, he cast the leaves into the nearby fire. After a moment, white smoke began to rise. I’d had enough. I stood up and walked toward them. I would seize him by the throat if need be, but he would recognize me.

Instead, I walked out of the kin-clan’s campsite. I had no change of heart, no second thoughts about attacking Jodoli to make him recognize me. If anything, my anger and frustration only rose stronger. I roared and I would have sworn that I charged toward him.

But abruptly I was at the edge of the campsite. I spun about, incredulous, and saw Jodoli carefully laying down a line of salt that completely closed the circle around the campsite. After he finished, he stood up with a sigh. He looked directly at me, but refused to meet my eyes. Olikea stood beside him. I think she looked for me, but her gaze went past me into the forest.

“Shadows are not even ghosts. They are just the pieces of a man who cannot accept his life is over. It should go back where it belongs. And once it finds that no one here will pay attention to it, it will.”

“This is where I belong now,” I told him, and strode back toward the village.

But the strangest thing happened. When I reached the line of salt, I could not cross it. I would step forward, only to find I had stepped backward. It was simple salt, harvested from the sea, yet I could not step past it. Shouting and storming, I circled the encampment, refusing to believe that I could not cross a line of salt. But I simply couldn’t.

I spent the rest of that day futilely circling the camp, and that night, I slept rolled in my cloak, staring at the unwelcoming fires. When I awoke the next day, I was hungry and thirsty. The kin-clan was already stirring. I could smell food cooking and hear people talking. After a time, I saw a party of hunters preparing to leave camp. They slung their quivers over their shoulders and each one checked his bow. As they did so, I saw Jodoli come over to speak to them. I watched as he gave each of them a small bag to hang about his neck. And into each sack, Firada poured a measure of salt.

I was a fool. I waited until all three of them were outside the circle of salt and then charged down on them. I would prove that although Jodoli’s magic might keep me out of the camp, a little bag of salt could not stop me from making them notice me. I intended to knock at least one of them over. Instead, impossibly, I missed all three and went sprawling to the ground. They didn’t notice me. I shrieked curses at them as they strode unconcernedly away.

I sat on the ground, wrapped in my cloak, and stared after them. I looked up to see Jodoli watching me. “I’m not a ghost!” I shouted at him. “I’m not a shadow.”

I heard a sound I had come to dread. Heavy wings flapping. Orandula alit first in a treetop and then hopped down heavily, branch to branch, until he perched on one well out of my reach, but clearly visible to me. He settled his feathers, preened his wing pinions, and then asked me sociably, “How are you doing?”

“Oh, just wonderfully,” I snarled at him. “You took my death. But my people won’t believe I’m alive. Jodoli has used his magic to ban me from the camp and to keep me from contacting the People. The only clothing I have is a cloak and some shoes that are too big for me. I’ve no food, no tools, no weapons. Is this the life you gave back to me?”

He cocked his head at me and the wattles around his beak jiggled horribly. “I didn’t give you a life, man. I took your death. And even that didn’t go quite as I had planned.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m surprised that you need to ask. Obviously, you’re dead here. You show all the signs of it; no one can see you, can’t cross a line of salt—I thought you would have understood that by now.”

“But I have a body! I get hungry, I eat, I can move things! So how can I be dead?”

“Well, you’re not. Not completely. As I told you, things didn’t go exactly as I expected them to. It often happens when gods squabble over something. Neither one wins completely.”

I pulled my cloak more closely around myself. Despite the growing warmth of the spring day, I felt a chill. “Gods fought over me?”

He began diligently preening his other wing. “Part of you remained dead in this world. Part of you didn’t. I feel a bit sheepish about that. I like things to balance, you know. And right now you are still a bit out of balance. I feel responsible. I want to correct that.”

I didn’t want him to “correct” me any more than he had. Doggedly, I tried my question another way. “Is Lisana, is Tree Woman, a goddess? Did she fight for me?”

He tucked his bill into his breast and considered me. I wondered if he would answer. But finally he said, “Hardly a goddess. She fought for you, of course. And I suppose that in some ways she is connected to Forest, and Forest might as well be a god with all the power Forest has. But, no, Lisana is not a goddess.”

He shook his feathers again and opened his wings.

“Then who—?” I began, but he interrupted.

“I, however, am a god and therefore feel no obligation to answer a mortal’s questions. I will be considering how best to balance what remains unbalanced. I like to leave things tidy. Hence my affinity for carrion birds, don’t you know?”

He jumped off the branch and plummeted toward the ground. His wide wings beat frantically, and with a lurch, the falling glide turned into flight.

“Wait!” I shouted after him. “I still don’t understand! What is to become of me?”

Three raucous caws were my only response. He banked sharply to avoid a thicket, saw an opening in the canopy, and suddenly beat his wings harder, climbing toward it. An instant later, he had vanished.

I stood up slowly. For a short time I stood staring at the kin-clan’s encampment. There, people were going about their lives. I could see Olikea sewing something. She lifted it up, shook it out, and held it toward Likari. I recognized the fabric. It was from one of my robes. Evidently she was remaking it into something Likari could wear. The boy was already running naked in the spring sunshine, playing some sort of jumping game with the other children of the kin-clan. I hoped she would make it large, so he didn’t outgrow it before winter returned and he could use it.

I wanted to offer some sort of farewell. I thought about that for a time, and then turned away silently and walked into the forest.