But the most unsettling moments were neither fever dreams nor sickroom glimpses. For me, there was another world, deeper than the fever dreams and far more real. My body lay in the bed and burned with fever, but my spirit walked in Tree Woman’s world.

I watched my other self there, and recalled clearly the years I had spent with her since first she had seized my hair and pulled me up and into her keeping. My true self was a pale ghost floating in their world, a party to their thoughts but nothing that they feared or considered at all. In that world, my top-knotted self had been her student for many years, and now I was her lover. Daily, she had taught me the magic of The People, and daily she had strengthened me in that magic and made me more real in her world. We had walked in her forest and I had learned the irreplaceable value of her trees and wilderness. Her world had become mine, and I had come to see that no measure was too extreme in the war to protect it.

And in her world, I loved her with deep and real passion. I loved the voluptuousness of her flesh, and the deep earthiness of her magic. I admired her loyalty and determination to preserve The People and their ways. I shared her dedication to that cause. In those dreams, I walked beside her, and lay beside her, and in the sweet dimness of the forest night, we made the plans that would save our folk. When I was with her, all was clear. I knew that I had pleased her when I had made the sign to the Speck dancers to ‘loose’ the magic. I knew the performers had not been captives at all, but the most powerful dancers of the magic who could be spared from The People. They had come seeking my soldier’s boyself. They had used that ‘me’ as a compass heading, to find the place where the intruders raised their warriors. And when they had found me, my other self had taken my hand and made the sign, and they had let fly the dust of the disease.

Powdered dung. That was what it was. It was a disgusting magic to my Gernian self, and as natural as breath to Tree Woman’s assistant. It was well known to The People that a tiny measure of powdered dung from a sick person ingested by a healthy child would make the child sick, but only in the mildest way, and never again would the child fall prey to the deadly flux. But in quantity, as they had discovered, the dust could sicken an entire outpost of intruders, cutting down their warriors and women alike and exterminating the workers who slashed the road through the forest’s flesh.

In her world I accepted, without question, the further mission I would fulfil. I would enter the flesh of the soldier’s son. I would undergo a change and become him. And I would spread the dust of death, not just through the great house where they raised their warriors, but also throughout their stonewalled hives, and even to the crowned ones who ruled them. Thus would I be the magic that turned the intruders back and saved The People.

All this, I knew so clearly when I wandered outside my feverish body. Each time I came back to my tortured flesh as my true self, I was weaker. Each time, vestiges of that other life and the knowledge of that world ghosted through my fevered brain.

On my third day of sickness, I rallied briefly during the day. Dr Amicas seemed pleased to see me awake, but I did not share his optimism. My eyelids were crusted and raw, as were my nostrils. The lingering illness made all my senses preternaturally sharp. The coarse sheets and wool blankets were a torment. I rolled my head toward Spink. I wanted to ask him if Oron had recovered, but Spink’s eyes were closed and he was breathing hoarsely. Nate was still in the bed to my right. He looked terrible. In a few short days, the illness had sucked the flesh from his bones and the fever appeared to be devouring him from within. His mouth hung open as he breathed and mucus rattled in his throat. It was a terrible thing to hear, and I could not escape it. The day droned past me. I tried to be manly. I drank the bitter herbal water that they brought me, vomited it up and then drank the next draught they gave me. There was nothing to do except lie in bed and be sick. I hadn’t the strength to hold a book, and could not have focused my eyes if I did. No one came to visit me. Neither Spink nor Nate was well enough to talk. I felt that there was something important that I had to tell someone, but I could not remember what it was or whom I was to tell.

I told myself that I was growing stronger, but as the sun faded into night, my fever returned. I plunged back into a sleep that was neither rest nor true sleep. My dreams swirled like winged demons round my bed, and I could not escape them. I woke from a dream in which I was trapped in the freak tent to the find myself in dimmed ward. I sat up and discovered that Spink had no hands or arms, only flippers. When I tried to get out of my bed, I found that I had no legs. “I’m dreaming!” I shouted at the orderly who came to hold me down. “I’m dreaming. My legs are fine. I’m dreaming.”

I woke from that nightmare, shivering with cold, to find that my head was resting on a pillow full of snow. I tried to throw it off my bed, but Dr Amicas came and scolded me, saying, “It will cool your hot head. It may break the fever. Lie back, Burvelle, lie back.”

“I didn’t give liquor to Caulder. I didn’t! You have to make the colonel understand. It wasn’t me.”

“Of course not, of course not. Lie back. Cool your head. Your fever is burning your brain. Lie still.”

The doctor pushed me back into the cold softness of the fat man’s embrace. “I used to be in the cavalla!” he told me. “Too bad you can’t be a ranker like me. You can’t be anything now. Not even a scout. Maybe you can be a fat man in a sideshow. All you have to do is eat. You like to eat, don’t you?”

I sat up suddenly. The softness of the cold pillow had wakened a brief connection of memory. It was night in the ward. Dim lanterns burned and in the beds, shadowy figures tossed. I held tight to what I knew, desperate to share it, to avert my future betrayal of my people. “Doctor!” I shouted. “Dr Amicas!”

Someone in a doctor’s apron hurried to my bedside. It wasn’t Amicas. “What is it? Are you thirsty?”

“Yes. No. It was the dust, doctor. The dust they used. Dried and powdered shit from a sick man. To make us all sick. To kill us all.”

“Drink some water, Cadet. You’re raving.”

“Tell Dr Amicas,” I insisted.

“Of course. Drink this.”

He held a cup to my mouth. It was pure, cool water and I gulped it down. It soothed my mouth and throat. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you.” And I fell back, through fever dreams of an endless carriage ride into that other world.

Tree Woman shook her head at me. We were seated together in a little bower of flowering bushes, not far from the edge of the world. She smiled kindly at me as she warned me, “You are not strong enough yet. Be patient. You need to consume more of their magic to walk with strength in their world. If you try too soon to cross back with him, you cannot master him. He will betray you.”

We were sitting together in the eaves of a forest. A soft rain was falling. She had brought me a leaf, folded like a cup. In it was a thick, sweet soup, warm and delicious. I drank it and licked the residue from the leaf as she looked on approvingly.

She had a leaf of her own, laden with the same gooey substance. She lapped it slowly from the cup, licking her lips and smiling. Watching her eat made me hungry for her. There was such plenitude to her, such completeness. She was generosity and richness, indulgence and luxury. In her, nothing was denied. I wanted her again. I wanted to be her, full and rich with magic. She saw me watching her and smiled coquettishly.

“Eat more!” she urged me. “Soon, I will show you how to get it for yourself.” She handed me another leaf of the stuff. “Let it fill you. It’s their magic. Isn’t it delicious? Fill yourself with it. Eat and grow full of magic.” She leaned closer to me, offering it, and suddenly it was not sweet. It was foul and thick, congealed like blood, sweet in the rotten way of carrion that draws flies. I jerked back from it.