The sudden uncertainty I felt about my wife-to-be, coupled with my anxiety about the upcoming exams, put me in a foul temper. I said little at our noon meal and could scarcely bear to watch Natred and Kort exchanging comments about their most recent missives from their sweethearts. It did not help my mood to see how longingly Spink followed their conversation. He looked a wreck. His uniform, never well-fitted to him, hung on his thin frame, unbrushed and rather spotted with mud about the cuffs. His eyes were red, his hair unruly, and his skin gone sallow from too many sleepless nights. The rumour of his probation had spread throughout the Academy, though not the reason for it. It made him an object of curiosity and speculation, and if he had had the spirit to pay attention to the stares that followed him, I’m sure he would have been annoyed.

The night before exams, Spink was ill. I couldn’t tell if it was nervousness or if the prolonged lack of sleep had made himself genuinely sick. Half way through our final cramming session, he simply gave up. He closed his books and without a word, only a doleful glance around at us, went off to bed. Our mood, not bright to begin with, sank into the depths. Gord was the next to surrender. “Suppose I’m either ready for them or not. I’ve done, the best I can,” he observed. He heaved himself to his feet and began to stack up his books.

“Done as much as you can for now, and will do as much as you should, tomorrow,” Trist observed. He made it a statement, not a question. His meaning was clear to all of us. Gord didn’t rise to it.

“I’ll do all I can to pass every one of my exams well and keep our patrol safe from culling. More than that, none of us can do.”

“One of us could do more, if he had the balls to do it. If he really cared about the rest of the patrol.” Trist raised his voice on the last sentence, to be certain the Gord had heard it. The closing of the bedroom door was his only response. Trist uttered an obscenity and sagged back in his chair. “That fat bastard is going to do us all in with his phoney honour. He’s probably hoping we’ll all be culled. Then he can go home to his trough, say it wasn’t his fault and forget about being a soldier. I’m going to bed.”

Trist slammed his book shut disdainfully, as if there were no use in further studying, as if all hinged on Gord and Spink, and none of us could do anything to change our fates.

Rory closed his books more quietly. “I’m done in,” he said with resignation. “My head is as stuffed as it can get. I’m going to bed and dream about Dark Evening. Our scores won’t be posted until after the break. So I’m going to go out and enjoy myself in Old Thares. Might be the only opportunity I ever have. Night, fellows.”

“He’s got a point,” Caleb declared. “I, for one, am going to give myself a night such as I’ll never forget. I’ve heard the whores will be free that night, but just in case, I’ve saved two months’ allowance. I’ll leave them limping, I will.”

“You’ll be the one limping, after you come down with the dick scald. You hear what happened to Corporal Hawley from Shinter House? Dick-scald so bad he couldn’t even piss without screaming. Don’t take a chance on the whores, friend.” This from Rory, over his shoulder as he left.

“Ha! Hawley was too cheap to go to a good house. Took alley girls, is what I heard. Not my idea of fun, standing up and thrusting while some poor girl knocks the back of her head against a brick wall.”

“I’m for bed.” Kort’s voice betrayed his amused disgust with them both. “Good luck, everyone.” As he stood, Natred did, too. I began stacking my books, as did every other man at the table.

Tomorrow, I knew, would determine my entire future. It burned in my heart that even if I scored perfectly on every test tomorrow, one of my fellows could bring me low. I looked round at them and for a moment, I knew hatred for Colonel Stiet and the Academy and even my fellow cadets.

Late, as I lay in bed, I closed my eyes and tried to grope my way toward sleep, but could not reach it. Eyes closed, body relaxed, my mind hovered in the place between wakefulness and rest. I felt I dangled, helpless, over an abyss and that I had no power to save myself from falling. The feeling was doubtless responsible for my nightmares about the tree woman.

Yet my dream began not with terror, but comfort. I was in my beloved forest, at peace. Sunlight broke through the canopy overhead and dappled my skin and I smiled as I looked at it on my bared arms and legs. The rich smells of humus rose around me. I picked up a handful and considered it. It was a layer from yesterday’s leaf, down to the black loam that had flora five years ago. Busy little insects toiled in it. A tiny worm coiled and uncoiled desperately on my palm. I laughed at his fears and restored all to the forest soil. All was well. I said as much to my mentor. “The world lives and dies as it should today.”

The tree woman nodded to me, making shadows shift over my flesh. “I am that you have come to understand that the dying is a part of the living. For too long, you clung to the notion that each life was significant and too important to perish for the whole. But now you see it, don’t you?”

“I do. And it comforts me.” And it did. At least it comforted the part of me that sat on the forest floor at the feet of the great tree, his back to its rough bark. That part of me saw no woman, only felt and heard her speaking to me.

Yet the part of me that stood in the shadowy space between dreams and waking was horrified at my behaviour. I consorted with the enemy. There was no other way to look at it. My worst fears were confirmed when I heard her say, “It is good that you have come to the understanding. It will make it easier for you.”

“Did you ever have doubts when the magic first claimed you?” I asked her.

I felt her wistful sigh in the gentle rustling of the leaves above me. “Of course I did. I had plans for my life, and dreams. Then came a time of drought. I thought that we would all die. I made a spirit journey, just as you did. A choice was offered to me just as it was offered to you. I chose the magic and the magic chose me. The magic used me and my people survived.”

Unbreathing in the shadow, I heard my traitor self ask her, “The magic will use me, also?”

“Yes. It will use you as you use it. It will give to you and, in the process, it will take from you. You may mourn what is taken. But the loss will make you stronger and truer to your task.”

My dream self made a gesture with his hands. I sensed it signified acceptance. I felt impotent fury that this other self would passively accede to such a fate. And in my fury, I was somehow separate from him, and could observe him. He filled me with contempt. He leaned back, naked and smiling in the gentle balm of the sun. His skin was evenly browned, as if he had never known a scrap of clothing. He had dirt under his fingernails, and his bare feet and ankles were permanently grimed. He was a man turned into a beast of the forest. Yet, he was pleased with himself, content in whatever life this was he lived. I hated him, hated myself and my weakness with a terrifying passion. Then, as he shifted, I felt a thrill of fear strengthen me. I had thought that dream self my twin, but now I saw he was not. What I had taken for a head as shorn of hair as my own was actually a bald pate. At the crown of his skull, sprouting like a rooster’s tail, was a sheaf of hair. I knew with sudden certainty that his crop of hair would exactly match the missing piece of scalp on my scarred head. This was the stolen self that Epiny had spoken about with Spink.

The tree had continued to speak to my dream self. “It is good that you are prepared, for soon I will reach out to you with the magic. I have considered long whether it was wise for me to take action on my own. Usually, when the magic takes a vessel, the magic soon acts through the vessel, and the events that will make all right for The People are set into motion. But you say you have done nothing; that the magic has not acted through you. Of this you are certain?”