“Why do they do it?” I demanded furiously, not expecting an answer.

“Most likely because it bothers us so much. For a while there, Rheims, the fellow who dug graves before you, he kept a list of the ones that were stolen, and which ones he brought back and buried and which ones he never found. Colonel Haren got angry about that.”

“That he never found some of the bodies? I don’t blame him! That’s awful. Think of the families.”

“No, not that. He got mad that Rheims kept a list. Sergeant Hoster told us a new rule for it, after Rheim disappeared. You got to go look for the body at least three times. If you don’t find it after that, you can just fill in the grave and keep your mouth shut about it. Now, Ebrooks and me, we asked him, ‘What do you mean?’ Do we only have to go looking for the corpse three times all told, or that we got to try to find it three times each time it gets stole, no matter what?”

The horror I felt was only getting deeper. “What did Hoster say?” I asked faintly.

Ebrooks laughed sourly. “Not much. He just shoved Kesey down and called him an old fool and then stomped off. And over his shoulder he shouts at us, ‘Work it out for yourselves.’ So we did. And we decided three times was the maximum we’d go into the woods for any body. And that’s how we’ve been doing it.”

I felt queasy. “And how many bodies have been lost that way?”

They exchanged a look. It was an agreement to lie. “Oh, not many,” Ebrooks said airily. “But we don’t really know the count, because Colonel Haren forbade keeping track of it. And neither of us are much good at writing anyway.”

“I see.”

They went off to their grass-cutting after that, and I took Clove and my corpse-packaging materials and went back to the empty grave. I resolved that I would start there and see if I couldn’t discover any sort of trail. I also decided that I would approach Colonel Haren about acquiring a dog, to both help me guard the cemetery and to help track down stolen bodies when the occasion demanded it. This time, however, I knew I was on my own.

From the tracks in the disturbed soil around the grave, I decided there had been two intruders, one smaller than the other. They had walked through the uncut grass burdened with a corpse. I mounted Clove to enjoy a better vantage point. There had been a heavy dew the night before. As I had hoped, the passage of the grave robbers had disturbed enough of the moisture on the tall grass that I could see where they had gone. Even better, it indicated they had left after most of the dew had formed. I kicked Clove, and we followed their trail through the grave markers. It made straight for the woods.

The forest looked beautiful in the morning light. The new leaves were at their brightest, and the contrast between the shades of green shown by the different kinds of trees made a springtime palette. The sky was a pale blue, with wispy clouds. In the near distance, the mountains shouldered up above the hills, still mantled with snow. It looked as if clouds had snagged on their rugged tops and flew there like banners. The woods should have looked welcoming, but the closer I got to them, the more they breathed dullness and fatigue and deep dark despair.

At the edge of the meadow, I dismounted. From here, I’d have to walk if I was to keep my eyes open for sign. And walking would force me to stay awake. Already sleepiness buzzed in my ears and my eyelids were heavy. I rubbed my eyes, scratched my head briskly to try to rouse myself, and entered the woods. Clove came behind me.

The packed litter of the forest floor looked deep and undisturbed. I tried to imagine myself as two men, burdened with a corpse. Where would I choose to walk, what would I avoid? I picked my way up the hillside, avoiding the denser thickets of underbrush. I struck a deer trail, and was rewarded by a fresh scuff mark on the bark of a tree beside it. I yawned prodigiously, shook my head, and forced myself to go on. The forest smelled lovely, both lush and rotting in the rising warmth of the spring day. It reminded me of something…no, of someone. Of her. Tree Woman. It was the smell of her breath and body. In a sort of daze, I drifted into a walking dream of lying beside her, in warmth and ease. My discouragement turned to a shameful longing for a past that I didn’t even remember.

Can a man fall asleep walking? I’m not sure, but it is possible to waken by jolting into a tree. I shook my head, and for a moment I could not remember where I was or what I was doing there. Then Clove nudged me from behind, and I recalled my task. We had not strayed far from the deer trail. I went back to it, and trudged on. I used every trick I knew to keep myself alert. I bit my lip. I scratched the back of my neck. I forced myself to walk with my eyes open very wide. Such antics kept me awake and moving, but it was devilishly hard to focus on trying to find marks of a trail. I saw nothing for a long time, and cursed my luck, wondering if in my sleepiness I’d missed some key clue. Then I saw the unmistakable mark of three muddy fingers on a tree trunk. Someone had paused there and steadied himself. I tottered on, yawning. That hand mark meant something more than the fact they had passed this way. My mind chewed the thought slowly. I decided it meant they were getting tired.

The nature of the forest was changing. The woods right above the cemetery were of fairly young trees interspersed with large charred stumps and fire-scarred giants. Clove and I came now to the edge of that old burn, and in a dozen paces the open, airy forest of deciduous trees abruptly gave way to something darker and more ancient. The underbrush dwindled and gave way. The crowded trees that competed for space and survival had no place in this cathedral of giants. The forest floor became a deep carpet of moss. A few broad-leaved plants and ferns broke the floor, and occasionally the long, crookedly sprawling and fiercely thorned canes of demon’s club sprouted like strange forest cacti.

Previously, Clove had had to shoulder his way along the narrow path. Now we were dwarfed. The trunks of the trees were columns that held up a distant sky. The giants were widely spaced, and I could not reach the lowest branch on any of them. Their leafy limbs began far overhead and reached out to mingle in a canopy that, when their leaves were fully developed, would completely block the light. I had never walked in such a forest, and the magic’s sleepy spell was abruptly dispersed by a jolt of genuine and deeply felt fear. I’d recognized these giants of trees. They were the same as those at the end of the road. I halted where I stood and stared all around me. The vista of thick columnar trunks extended in all directions. I had no name for the trees; I’d never seen them anywhere else. The upper reaches of their trunks were mottled in color, from green to reddish-brown. But down here, at my height, the surface of their bark was ropy, as if the trunks were braided tendrils rather than a single stem. The roots that radiated out from the trees raised hummocks in the forest floor. Their fallen leaves from last autumn made deep leafy beds of humus among the tangling roots. The rich smell of healthy rot filled my nostrils.

The silence in that place was a pressure I felt in my ears, and between one heartbeat and the next, I suddenly acknowledged a thing I had always known but never fully realized. Trees were alive. The colossi that surrounded me were not the work of man or the earth’s bones of stone. They were living creatures, each one begun from a tiny seed, and older, far older than anything I could imagine. The thought sent a sudden shiver up my spine, and suddenly I needed to see the sky and feel moving air on my face. But the trees hemmed me round and closed me in. I glimpsed an area that seemed more light and open and made directly for it, heedless of leaving the deer trail that was now only a winding indentation through the mossy earth.