“Good advice too late,” I grumbled. “Not that I ever had the money to do much drinking with the boys. I’m all but banished now. I nearly got stoned to death today.”

“What?” Ebrooks demanded, horrified.

They listened to my tale, nodding gravely. When I described the man who had come toward me out of the mob, Ebrooks nodded and said, “That’ll be Dale Hardy. He’s new. Give him a month in Gettys and he won’t be so piss and vinegar. He’ll get ground down like the rest of us.”

We talked for some time longer, and then they left, promising to bring me supplies from the mess hall the next day. That was small comfort. I’d had next to nothing to eat all day, and the hunger inside me now was not to be ignored. An equation nudged into my awareness. I’d used the magic last night to keep myself warm. And today my hunger was proportionately strong. Magic, it seemed, demanded more food than physical effort. I wondered idly if I could work enough magic to shed the wall of fat from my body. I decided that the appetite it would create would probably drive me insane before I succeeded.

I went out into the gathering evening to see if I could find anything to eat. I carried my gun with me, even as I told myself I was worrying needlessly. If the mob were going to hunt me down and hang me, they’d have done it by now. Wouldn’t they?

As yet, my vegetable garden wasn’t yielding. I went to Clove’s stall and abashedly took a measure of his grain. It was coarse and hard and none too clean, but I rinsed it and put it to soak in a pot near my fire. My water cask was nearly empty; I took my bucket and headed down to the spring.

As I had that very first day, I had the strong feeling that someone was watching me. I heard a shuffle of feathers overhead and looked up hastily to find that a croaker bird had just settled in a tree at the edge of the woods. The silhouette of the trees and the bird were black against the day’s fading sky. He croaked suddenly. A shiver ran up my spine. I lurched to my feet, and my brimming bucket sloshed a little cold water down my leg.

“Nevare.” A voice spoke softly from the woods. It seemed to come from the trees just below the bird’s perch. Although it was a woman’s voice and I recognized Olikea’s tone, my first thought was that death had called my name. On the fleeting heels of that thought, however, was the heated flush of my memory of Olikea. All my senses came to sudden quivering attention. I stared into the shadowy woods and saw no one and nothing, until she moved. Then I could not understand how I had not seen her before. She stepped clear of the sheltering trees, but did not venture out of the forest.

Abruptly I became aware of the basket that she carried on one arm. She held out a hand toward me, beckoning me. I took a slow step toward her, trying to find logic in my mind. Did I wish to reenter her world? I saw her flex her fist, and the scent of fresh crushed fruit suddenly filled my nostrils. She had pulped something in her hand. “Nevare,” she called again, softly, coaxingly. She took a step backward toward the forest. I dropped my bucket and lunged after her. She laughed and fled.

I followed her into the forest. She paused and ran, dodged, hid, and then revealed herself, and I pursued her mindlessly like a dog tracking a squirrel as it jumps from tree to tree. She had reduced me to my most elementary drives, food and sex. Dignity, intellect, rationality fell away from me as I hunted her through the dusky woods.

Night deepened under the interwoven branches. My eyes adjusted to the dimness and my nose became a keen ally. She did not seriously try to elude me, but only stayed just out of my reach, laughing when I got close to her, then fleeing with a sudden dash and vanishing again from my sight as she camouflaged herself in the tricky sunset light.

Before I knew it, we had reached the eaves of the true old forest. Then she ran in earnest, basket jouncing on her arm, and her buttocks bobbing. She made no attempt to hide from me now, and I ran, heavily, panting, but running like a dog on a scent, tirelessly and determined.

Did I catch her or did she turn and snare me in her arms? I could not say. I only knew that near a welling spring, the game suddenly ended in triumph for us both. She had splashed out ankle-deep into the water. I followed her, and there she came to me, suddenly willing and not coy at all. I kissed her, an act that seemed to surprise and intrigue her. She pulled back, laughing and saying, “You do not need to eat me, Great One. I have brought the right foods for you, the foods that will restore you, the foods that will reveal you. I have the dream traveler’s berries and the bark of the flight-of-eyes. I have ever-heal and never-tire. All that a Great One needs, I bring to you.”

She took both my hands and drew me to the riverbank. There she would not allow me to do anything for myself. She fed me from her hands, even to cupping cool water for me to drink. She took my clothing from me, and then offered me more food and herself. The tang of the soft, thin-skinned fruit was interspersed with the play of her warm, wet tongue as she mixed her kisses with feeding me. She had learned so quickly. She held mushrooms between her teeth and offered them to me, refusing to let go so that I had to bite them from her mouth. Her hands were sticky with the fruit she had crushed, and as she ran them over me, the smell of the fruit nectar mingled with the musk of our bodies to become one scent.

Later, I would think it depravity. At the time, it was lust and gluttony combined into one glorious, sense-engulfing indulgence. The moon was high before we had finished our consumption. I lay back on deep, soft moss, completely satiated in every way I could imagine. She leaned over me, breathing her wine breath into my face. “Are you happy, Great One?” she asked softly. She stroked the curve of my belly, following the line of hair that led downward. “Have I pleased you?”

I was far beyond being pleased with her. And yet it was her first question that clung to my mind. Was I happy? No. This was transitory. Tomorrow I would be back in my cabin, fearing to go into town, digging holes to bury men I’d never known, and planning a fence that would keep out this world that I now wallowed in. I answered neither of her questions.

“Olikea, you are a very kind woman.”

She laughed at that and replied, “I am as kind to you as I hope you will be to me. Will you be kind enough to come to my village? I wish to show you to the people there.”

“You wish to show me to your people?”

“Some there do not believe that one of your kind could become a Great One. They mock me and ask, ‘Why would the magic choose as defender the one who has invaded us?’” She shrugged the question aside as if it were of no consequence to her. “So I wish to prove I speak true to them. Will you come with me to my village?”

I could suddenly think of no reason to refuse. “Yes. I will.”

“Good.” She stood up suddenly. “Let’s go.”

“Now? Tonight?”

“Why not?”

“I thought the Speck villages were far back in the forest. Days or even weeks from here.”

She tossed her head and puffed her cheeks. “Some are. All the winter villages are. But our summer village is not. Come. I’ll show you.”

She stooped and seized both my hands. I laughed at the thought of her being able to tug me to her feet. With a groan and a lurch, I rolled over, got my knees under me, and stood up. She took my hand. She led and I followed her, away from the spring and my discarded clothing. Away from everything. At the time, I didn’t even think that I was leaving my old life behind, only that I was going somewhere with Olikea.

The night was velvet around us. Olikea occasionally swatted at the gnats that hummed about her head, but none came near me. If she followed a path, I could not detect it. We walked on banks of moss and waded through drifts of fallen leaves from decades past. Other animals moved in the forest, as softly as we did. Our way led us across the sides of steep hills at a slant, always ever higher. We came to a place where the trees were as big around as towers, their tops lost in leafy darkness. We topped a ridge and went down into the shallow valley beyond it, and never once left the shelter of the trees.