And when my inn was built, I thought of how I would bring Amzil and the children there and surprise them with a snug, clean home of their own. I’m afraid I imagined an entire life there with her, gaining her trust, building our love, watching her children grow, adding our own to the brood. It was mawkish, a schoolboy fancy that I embroidered over and over, yet when all other diversions failed, I could taunt myself with thinking of her and pretending a life of shared love.

Not all the time, of course. No one could have lingered in that endless emptiness and stayed completely rational. There were times when I railed and threatened, times when I prayed, times when I cursed every god I could name. I would have wept if I’d had eyes to weep, I would have taken my own life if it had been within my power to do so. I tried every way that there was for a man to escape himself, but in the end, I was all that there was, and so I had to come back to myself.

I plotted a hundred revenges. I shouted to his unlistening ears that I would surrender myself if only he would allow me to stop existing in this vacuum. I found a deep faith in the good god and lost it again. I sang inane songs and made up new verses for them.

I did all those things not for a hundred years, but for a hundred centuries. I became certain that Soldier’s Boy had died long ago, but that somehow I continued to exist among his slowly decaying bones. I lived in a place beyond despair. I became stillness.

I do not know if it was because I stopped trying to exist or because he forgot to fear me. Tiny bits of sensory information began to drift down to me. It did not happen often; I could not conceive what “often” would mean anymore. A sour taste. A brief scent of wood smoke. Likari’s giggle. Pain from a cut finger. Each tiny bit of sensation was something to be pondered. I did not rise to them like a fish snapping at bait. I was too worn down for that. I let them drift down to me, where I considered them without haste.

One brick at a time, a wall can rise. One small experience at a time, life and awareness came back to me. I felt like a toad emerging from hibernation, or a pinched limb slowly tingling back to life. A conversation was falling all around me in disconnected bits.

“The horses are essential.”

“Then they’ll have to learn, won’t they?”

“Find a way to carry fire, then. Clay pots nested inside of one another, perhaps. And carry the oil separately. That would be less showy than torches.”

For the first time, I caught a soft mumble that could have been another voice. I savored it. Soldier’s Boy spoke again.

“No. Find someone else to do that. These men must remain here. They have to concentrate on what they are doing.”

“I know it’s heavier. Aim it higher than the target you want it to hit. But be careful. It must hit the wall high, not arch over it. We don’t have many. We will give three to each of our four best archers.”

“Drill is essential. It’s boring, but it’s essential. If we attack as you suggest, then the intruders will still see us as a disorganized horde. Ranks and precision will convince them that they have finally incurred the wrath of the Great Queen of the Specks, and that she has sent her army against them.”

I did not open my eyes. I had no eyes. I became aware of Soldier’s Boy rubbing his eyes, and when he was finished and opened them again, an immense vista of detail unrolled in front of me. Color and shape and shadow. I could not at first interpret it all. There was so much, it was overwhelming, painfully so. Was this what it was like the first time a newborn child beheld the world? I held myself back from it, keeping my distance as if it were a fire that might burn me with its intensity. Very, very gradually the scene resolved itself around me.

I was indoors, in a place I didn’t recall. It was a comfortable place. There were woven rugs on the floor, wall hangings, and comfortable furnishings. I sat in a sturdy chair with cushioned arms and a well-padded seat, comfortably close to an open hearth. Near my elbow was a laden table. An open bottle of wine was flanked by a steaming roast with near-bloody slices of meat coiling from the side of it. Roasted round onions were cozy with thick, bright orange baked roots. A loaf of dark bread had been cut into thick slabs and a pot of golden honey rested beside it with a large spoon sticking out of it.

Soldier’s Boy had been outside. Had he been reviewing the troops? Mud crusted my boots. Someone crouched before me, taking them off my feet, his head bowed to his task. One of the feeders who assisted Olikea with my care, I suddenly knew. His name was Sempayli, and he had come to my service from another kin-clan because he wanted to serve the Great Ones who would strike back at the intruders. A number of men and a few women had come to me that way. Dasie had been right about that. There was a deep discontent stirring among the Specks. Things were changing too quickly for the older folk, and the younger folk felt affronted by the intruders’ assumptions. Many felt it was time to strike back, and hard.

All that information poured into me in an overwhelming flood. I could scarcely digest it, but there was no respite. Life was happening all around me, unpausing and constant. All I could do was try to catch up. Soldier’s Boy drank red wine from a crystal glass, and for a long moment, the twin sensations of taste and smell ruled me. Heavenly, heavenly wine.

Across from me, Dasie was enthroned in a similar chair. Her feeder was kindling a pipe for her. The Great One had grown. Her belly and thighs and bosom were burgeoning curves that spoke of her wealth and comfort. That realization came to me so naturally that I did not at first recognize it as a Speck interpretation. My mind fluttered round it like a moth around a flame. They saw the lean, muscled folk of Gettys as the result of hardship and unnatural strife. Such bodies were the result of people who lived against the world rather than with it. They did not relax and accept the bounty the world offered them. They did not recline with one another in the evenings, making music or having soft talk. They constrained their deprived bodies with restrictive clothing and tight belts and snug shoes, and punished themselves with endless activity. They forced themselves to go out in the harsh sunlight and the cruel cold, as senselessly as if they were animals rather than humans. They seemed to rejoice in the harshness of life, restricting themselves from the enjoyment of food, sex, and plenty.

As if in reaction to the stinginess they inflicted on their bodies, they demanded largesse everywhere else. A trail through the forest created itself as folk traveled from here to there. A trail was as big as it needed to be for the traffic on it. Only the intruders would think that they needed to enlarge a trail with axes and shovels and wagons. Only the intruders would build a crust of dwellings over the lands so that they could winter in a place where the snow fell thickly and cold was a crushing blow. Only the intruders would rip all plants and trees from a space and then open the skin of the earth and force new plants to grow in precise rows, all the same. The Specks would never understand a folk who chose hardship over comfort, who insisted on tearing a life from the land rather than one flowing over the world and accepting its plenty.

It was like seeing a stranger across a crowded room and actually “seeing” him before recognizing him as an old friend. All that I accepted about my own people, all our values and customs, were, for that moment, peculiar and harsh and irrational. If a man had enough to eat and plenty besides, why should he not be fat with enjoyment of his life? If he did not have to work so hard that life leaned the flesh from his bones and put muscles on his limbs, why should he not have a softer belly and a rounder face? If one had the good fortune to be treated well by life, why should it not be reflected in an easier body?