Olikea glanced at the distant water and shrugged. “It is a great water. No one has ever gone around it, though if you travel north far enough, it is said there are islands one can visit. They are cold and rocky places, good for birds and seals that eat fish, but not a place for the People. This valley is the best place for us. It has always been our Wintering Place.”

“Why?”

“By now the leaves will have fallen in the forest on the other side of the mountains. There will be no shelter from that light, or the deep cold. Here, the trees never lose their needles; it is always dim and gentle beneath their canopy. Snow falls in the valley here perhaps one year in five, and when it does come, it does not linger. It rains here, sometimes a great deal, but rain is kinder than snow and freezing, I think. In both late autumn and early spring, fish are thick in the river, and deer in the woods. In winter, we can live in plenty here.”

“Why don’t you stay here year-round?”

She looked at Soldier’s Boy as if he were daft. “The ancestor trees are not here, nor will they grow here, even when we have planted seedlings here. And in the summers, this is a place of fog and rains and floods. Sometimes people have tried to stay here, thinking they were too old to make the journey or that they would prefer to summer here. They do not prosper; sometimes they do not survive.”

Soldier’s Boy had bowed his head. Her words tickled at his mind, waking memories that Lisana had shared. He lifted his head and looked out over the valley. Then he pointed and said, “There. Those rising columns of smoke over there. That is our village, isn’t it?”

His eyesight was as shockingly keen as his sense of touch. His gaze picked out glimpses of mossy roofs and then small figures moving nearby. The thick foliage of the prevalent evergreen trees obscured most of the village scene. I could not tell how large a settlement it was. As he watched, a flock of croaker birds rose suddenly from their perches in the trees. They circled once over the village and then flew toward us, cawing loudly.

“Yes. And from the amount of smoke, most of our kin-clan have already returned there. I thought they would still be at the gathering place at the river’s mouth, trading.” She shook her head in disappointment. “We are too late. All our folk have gone to the Trading Place and returned already. What a shame! All the others will have new jewelry and winter robes, but I shall have to make do with what I have left from last year.”

“I did not think you cared for robes and pretty clothes.” Soldier’s Boy gestured at her near nakedness.

“In the Summer Place, there is no need to be hampered by such things. But now?” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “One must be warm. And if a woman is prosperous, she chooses to be warm in beautiful garments.”

“We have missed the trading time?” Likari asked dolefully. The distress on his small face was heartbreaking.

“There may be a few of the clans gathered there still. But the best of the trading will be done. Look at the valley and see the rising smoke. The People have returned to their traditional spaces for the winter. Trading is over.” Olikea pronounced the words like a doom.

Likari’s face fell and he sank into a morose silence.

Soldier’s Boy was perhaps trying to be practical when he reminded them, “We have nothing to trade anyway. We would have gone that extra distance only to be taunted by the pretty things we could not obtain.”

Olikea gave him a sideways glance. “You have nothing to trade. I had plenty in my pack; I gave it to my father to carry it here for me, when I was called away to care for you. I had my trading all planned. Last year, the Spolsin kin-clan had lovely sealskin capes to trade. Warm, sleek spotted fur that sheds water! That was what I meant to get for myself at the trading time. Now I shall have to do with my old wolfskin coat. I hope the mites have not got into it over the summer! Last year, maggots devored Firada’s sealskin boots; she would have been barefoot for the winter, had not Jodoli traded magic for her to have new boots of elk hide with fox trim.” There was no mistaking the envy in her voice. Obviously her sister had the better bargain in a Great Man.

“And did you think of what I would wear, when you discarded my old clothing?”

She looked at him in consternation. “Better to go naked than to wear those disgusting Gernian rags. It would shame me to have you go about the People in such garb! I would beg my father’s old clothes from him first!”

Soldier’s Boy grimaced and I felt the tingling in his blood grow dim. The cold wind chilled him. He’d shut the magic down. I had a glimpse of his thoughts. He was conserving the magic, saving up every bit of it that he could hoard.

My arm itched. Soldier’s Boy scratched it, glancing down at it as he did so. I was horrified at what I saw, but Soldier’s Boy looked at Olikea and changed the subject, asking, “How do I look? Did the pattern stay in place? I like my arms. I am glad I did not scratch them too much and spoil them.”

I could sense his satisfaction and pride, but I felt only horror and dismay. The result of wounding himself with the crystal and the slime was now clear. My skin bore a pattern of blotchy scars from the injuries and the subsequent infections. I was a Speck.

I had never suspected that Speck children were born with unblemished skin. I had thought the dapples that marked their people were inherent to their race, a defining difference that set them apart from both the Gernians and the Plainspeople. To discover that it was a deliberate marking, a cultural rather than a biological difference, disturbed me. Soldier’s Boy had irrevocably marked my body in a way that proclaimed I was no longer Gernian. The fat had been an extreme enough departure from my image of myself. This was worse. Even if by some miracle I discovered a way to regain control of my body and return to my previous level of fitness, my skin would be forever scarred with the dapples of a Speck. I felt helplessly suspended as I watched my own life drift even further from my reach. Soldier’s Boy’s satisfaction was, I suspected, twofold. He had marked himself as a Speck, to further his own cause. And by doing so he had dealt me a crippling blow, claiming the body even more as his own. I suspected he could feel my despair and rejoiced in it.

Olikea looked at his face critically. Then she walked slowly around him as if he were a horse at the fair and she were considering buying him. When she came back to face him, her eyes were approving. “I have marked babes before; Likari is my work, and you can see that I patterned him tightly, so that when he grew, his pattern would still be attractive. With you, it was more difficult, for you are a man grown, and yet you have lost so much fat that your skin was slack. Even now, it is possible that when you are full again, your pattern will not be entirely pleasing. But I do not think it is likely. Your back is dappled like a brook trout, but I looked to the mountain cat for your shoulders. I wish you had let me mark your face. Even so, it looks very good. You have the camouflage of both hunter and prey, a very strong marking. That they have turned out so well is very auspicious.”

She smiled as she spoke, well pleased with her work. But then the pleasure faded from her face and she folded her lips. “But it is a shame that you must show yourself so to our kin-clan, let alone to Kinrove at the winter gathering. Nevare, we must fatten you as quickly as possible. That is all there is to it.”

“Such is my intent also,” Soldier’s Boy replied. I was unsurprised to hear him say so, and yet my spirits sank again.

“Shall we go on to the village, then? If you quick-walk us, we can be there in just a few moments.” She frowned, squinting. “I wish to be out of the light. Even at this time of year, when the clouds are thick as good furs, the light still dizzies me.”