E very season must eventually give way to the next.

There were times, during that winter in Gettys, when I doubted the truth of this. It was the darkest, coldest time I’d ever passed in my life. Now that Spink had enlightened me as to the nature of the magic that seeped through Gettys’ streets like a fog and Hitch had confirmed it, I was more attuned to it. I could feel the ebb and flow of the bleakness that afflicted the town. I could sense, without entering the woods, the days on which terror and panic emanated from them, and the days in which weariness and discouragement lurked there. None of that, however, put me any closer to bettering my own state of mind, let alone to breaking the magic’s hold on me.

There were even times when I allowed myself to wonder if that was what I truly desired. As the days slowly lengthened and spring softened the snows by day, I had time to ponder Hitch’s warnings. I could see, now, the danger of using the magic I’d been given. I’d intended good for Amzil, and perhaps exposed her to danger. Had I cheated the man who had owned Clove? But there were times when I’d felt the magic’s tingle, and no evil had come of it that I had seen. Perhaps it was not as Hitch saw it, a dangerous balancing act between my will and that of the magic, but only the much older idea that the more power one has, the more carefully it must be wielded. If I was trapped in this fat body, and if the magic was to have a hold on me, might I not learn to use it wisely and perhaps even well? Such were my thoughts in the evenings, at least, when I lay alone in my bed. I will confess that, a time or two, I tried to summon the magic so that I could use it in small and harmless ways. Could I kindle a fire with it? Command water to freeze or turn a stone to bread as magicians did in the old Varnian tales of magic? Those were feats I attempted and failed at. Afterward, I laughed at myself for such foolish fancies. But late at night, I would again wonder if such magic was that different from commanding vegetables to grow, or waking a whore to true passion’s reward.

Summoning the magic, I decided at last, demanded not will or intellect, but emotion. I could not raise such emotions in myself simply by thinking of them, any more than a man can truly make himself laugh heartily when nothing has amused him. Recognizing that the magic raced in my blood only when strong emotion summoned it was a solid warning to me that it was unlikely to be something I could ever rationally control. Wisely, I decided to leave it be.

During the day, I did my best to keep myself busy. I missed books desperately, so much so that I often resorted to rereading my own journal entries and adding notes in the margin from my older and wiser perspective. I’d lost a strap from Clove’s harness somehow. It took me most of a day in town to get another one from supply. I saw Spink there, but we gave no sign of knowing one another. I came home feeling angry and depressed.

I cut and stacked the wood that I’d brought from the forest. When that log had been reduced, I forced myself to once more take Clove and reenter the woods. I chose a day when only fatigue threatened, and forced my way through the glum discouragement that tried to overwhelm me. My trophy was another section of the trunk from the dead snag. Resisting the urge to lie down even in the snow and take a rest demanded all my willpower. Even after I reached my cottage, weariness debilitated me, and there I did surrender to a long afternoon nap.

Having to battle magic just to have firewood awoke me to what the road workers had to endure daily. Hitch had said that my connection to the magic gave me a slight immunity. I wondered what Spink and Epiny battled each day.

When I was a boy, my father had kept me continuously occupied with lessons and chores. At the academy, the first-year schedule was deliberately designed to be both demanding and exhausting, the better to keep young men from finding mischief when they had free time. That winter was the first time in my life that I’d had dragging hours with nothing to fill them. There were dozens of ways I could have improved my cabin, of course, but the most I did was devise elaborate plans. The dull seep of magic from the forest drained my will.

As the snows melted and the sap ran in the trees, the tiny leaf buds swelled on their branches. The forest beckoned, with game trails to follow and hunting that could fill my dinner pot with meat, but the prospect of battling either terror or fatigue dimmed my enthusiasm and kept me close to home. Every morning, I’d stand by the spring with my water bucket and gaze up into the forest depths. Birds flitted there, and new green leaves bedecked both trees and bushes. I longed to enter, and knew it was a foolish wish. It was a relief when the thawing ground allowed me to resume my gravedigging. It gave me a physical task to occupy my body if not my mind.

One welcome aspect of spring was that the supply wagons began to once more make the long eastern journey to us. The dusty windows of the mercantile stores were uncluttered and wiped clean. Fresh wares were displayed in them: shining tin washtubs, woollen and cotton goods, a gleaming long gun with a curly maple stock that no man could pass by without ogling. Within the store, new casks of pickled herring from the far coast had arrived, along with fresh stocks of sweet fruit preserves and bright packets of garden seeds. All these and much more were bait for hearts and eyes jaded by all the oldness of winter. Yet I had come to the store that day not for anything so gleaming and grand but only in the hope of looking through some of the newspapers that had finally reached us. The articles in them might be weeks or months old, but they were a link to Old Thares and the cities of the west that gave us an inkling of the changes going on in the greater world.

Ostensibly, they were for sale, not casual perusing, but they were displayed in a rack on the wall, and I was not the only fellow standing and reading the front pages.

The papers were expensive, and I could spare money only for one. After I’d read it, I might be able to trade it to some fellow reader for his purchase, but I wished to make the wisest choice. At length I chose one with a front-page story concerning a vote in the Council of Lords about taxation. A side column was an editorial on the number of noble sons who had been shifted into roles other than that prescribed by birth order following the previous winter’s plague deaths. Evidently, some cousins who had hoped to inherit titles were seeking legal redress against “heirs who were not truly heir sons.” I took the paper from the rack and then waited, holding a few packets of vegetable seeds and gripping a fistful of coins, for the clerk to deign to notice me. He was the same supercilious youth who always scorned to wait on me. Today he took my money and passed over the journal with the comment, “Are you sure this is what you want? You can’t eat it, you know. And we’ve a stock of plain paper for wrapping things.”

“Just sell me the seeds and the newspaper, please. I’d like to read it,” I replied quietly.

“Ah, he reads! Will wonders never cease? There you go.”

I ignored his mockery, took my paper and my garden seeds, and turned to leave. As I did so, two women entered the shop. One was a woman of middle years whom I’d frequently seen around Gettys. I was puzzled to notice that she now wore a large brass whistle on a fine chain around her neck. But a greater shock to me was to recognize the finely dressed young lady who accompanied her. My erstwhile fiancée looked lovely. Carsina Grenalter was wearing the latest style from Old Thares, I was sure. Her green bonnet could not contain the flaxen curls that bounced about her shoulders. The cut of her forest-green dress flattered her buxom figure. Little gold earrings gleamed in her earlobes. The fresh air of spring had pinked her cheeks and the tip of her nose. She glanced about the mercantile and gave a strangled laugh. “Oh, my dear Clara! This is dreadful! Is this what they deem a dry goods store in Gettys? My dear, I’m afraid we shall have to send away for the proper buttons and lace if we are to retrim your dresses in the new styles!”