No. I was a creature of this border world now, a man infected with magic. A monstrous power slept inside me, and unless I could rid myself of it, I would have to live in fear of my honest emotions. I had to find a way to rid myself of the magic. I had starved my body of sustenance to no avail. I had thought that if I could regain my former body, I could take back my former life. Now I saw that I had been starting at the wrong end of the problem. If I wanted to take back my old life or any semblance of it, the first thing I had to do was be rid of the magic that lurked inside me. It was the true change that had befallen me, not the layer of fat that covered me. My fat was only an outward sign of the real transformation.

Spink had offered to help me. I suddenly longed to be able to seek him and Epiny out and have someone I trusted on my side in this battle. Perhaps I could find a way to contact Spink, and I tempted myself with the thought of revealing myself to Epiny. I banished the hope by recalling how the folk in town had looked at me today. Did I want to bring that kind of disgust and shame to Spink’s doorstep? Did I want tales of whores and insults to women on the street to attach themselves to my real name, as they surely must if Epiny acknowledged me as her cousin? I imagined such gossip reaching my father’s ears, and Yaril’s, and I cringed. No. Isolation was better than shame. I would continue on my own. This was my fight and no one else’s.

I stayed away from town for over a week. I was well settled in my cabin now. I dug myself a garden patch, well away from the grave sites, and planted a small vegetable garden. I tended the graves of the folk I had buried over the winter; the frozen earth I had tossed down on their coffins had settled unevenly. I leveled it now, and whenever I noticed wild flowers sprouting near my path, I dug them up and moved them to the new graves.

Rabbits and birds were attracted to the spring grass on the open hillside of the graveyard, and I began employing my sling to obtain fresh meat for myself. I began to wonder how independently I could live. Eventually I must return to town for fresh supplies and to fulfill my duties, but each time I thought of going, I found an excuse to stay home.

I was hoeing in my little garden one morning when I heard hoofbeats. I hurried around the front of my cabin and then stood and watched as a lone horseman followed by a mule and cart came up the rough road to the cemetery. It took some time before I recognized Ebrooks and Kesey. Even then, I was reluctant to go and meet them. I stood silently until they pulled in their animals. Ebrooks dismounted and Kesey clambered down from his cart. The cart held a coffin.

“No mourners?” I asked as I approached them.

Kesey shrugged. “New recruit. He managed to get himself killed the first day he was here. The corporal that did it is locked up now. I expect that before the week is out, you’ll be burying him, too.”

I shook my head at the sad tidings. “You could have just sent a messenger out here. Clove and I would have come for him.”

“Yeah, well, it’s that time of year. You’ll be seeing me and Ebrooks regular now. Colonel doesn’t like the grass to get more than ankle-deep here. We’ll be cutting some each day; it’s the only way to keep it down.”

It was strange to have company. They helped me lower the coffin into the waiting grave, and then watched me fill it in. It annoyed me that neither one appreciated that a dug grave was already waiting, nor did they help to fill it. At least they bowed their heads with me as I said a simple prayer over the grave.

“Used to be every soldier from our outfit had a real funeral,” Kesey observed. “But I guess funerals are like birthdays. Once you reach a certain number of them, they don’t seem so special anymore.”

“As long as I’m here, I’ll do my best to see every man buried with dignity,” I replied.

“Suit yourself,” Kesey said. “But Ebrooks and I won’t always have time to help you, you know.”

His callousness angered me. I took a petty revenge. I professed ignorance as to how to put an edge on a scythe. I watched them do all the tool sharpening, and then feigned that I did not know how to use one and spent the rest of the day “learning” by watching them. I discovered they were actually very competent at their tasks. We began at the oldest section of the cemetery, and worked row by row to take down the grass that had grown too tall. As we raked it into piles and collected it, they complained that once simply putting a couple of sheep out to graze had accomplished this task. It had been stopped not out of exaggerated respect for the dead, but because three times in a row, the sheep had been stolen. When I expressed surprise, they laughed at me. Had I forgotten that most of the population of the town around the fort were criminals?

As the afternoon shadows lengthened, we returned to my cabin. To my surprise, they’d thought to bring food with them, and we made a meal together. They were not companions I would have chosen for myself, yet it was still good to eat and talk and laugh without regard to anything else.

After our meal, they headed back to town. They invited me to come with them and join them in a beer, but I’d spent my money on the Old Thares newspaper, and told them so politely. And so they departed, with the promise or warning that they’d return to work again tomorrow. As they waved at me, they laughed, and told me to keep good watch tonight, lest the Specks come to steal my latest resident. I waved them off and went back into my cabin.

I’d worked longer hours than I had in some days, and I went to bed early, actually anticipating the morrow with some pleasure. After all my days alone, it would be good to have company each day. I tried not to wonder if I would soon weary of the twosome. I slept well and deeply.

Dawn woke me, and I rose and followed my routine. When I went to fetch water, I received again the strong impression that someone was watching me from the forest. I steeled myself to the magic’s insidious creeping and shook my fist at the forest before I carried my bucket of water home. While I waited for the icy spring water to boil for tea and porridge, I took my sling and went out across the grave sites looking for rabbits or birds. I’d resolved to make a nice meat soup for all of us for supper, and suspected that the scent of newly shorn grass might have lured in a few fat spring rabbits, or perhaps some birds come in quest of gravel or worms.

What I found instead shocked and horrified me. Somehow, the tales of body-snatching had seemed only that: tales to frighten a man new to his task as a cemetery guard. To see the gaping grave and the plundered coffin crookedly perched upon the heaped soil raised the hair on the back of my neck and sent a shiver down my spine. I approached it cautiously, as if it were somehow dangerous to me. It was empty. Only a smudge of caked blood from the dead man’s wound remained to show that a body had been in there. In the loose soil beside the grave, I found two sets of barefoot prints. I lifted my eyes to the forest that crouched on the hillside above the cemetery.

The Specks had come and taken the body into those woods. Somewhere in there, I’d find him. All I had to do was muster the courage to go and look for the corpse.

Ebrooks and Kesey found me gathering what I thought I’d need. I’d found a piece of old canvas in the tool shed, possibly left over from crude shroud-making for plague victims. I had the canvas and a good length of rope. I’d slung those onto the back of Clove’s saddle. My long gun was in the scabbard. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, and not just because I didn’t want to face a difficult situation. I had no faith in the battered weapon. I had expected them to share my horror at the body snatching. Instead, simpletons that they were, they roared with laughter at my predicament and wished me “good hunting” but declined to make any effort to help me. Kesey offered me the only helpful bit of information. “Sometimes they puts them right at the end of the road, where the workers would find them. I think they do it to frighten them. But other times, well, there’s just no saying. That feller could be anywhere in the woods, from here to the other side of the Barrier Mountains.”