Her hands rose as claws and she screamed wordlessly at me. I lifted my hands to defend my face from her nails. “Stop!” I told her, and to my horror, the magic obeyed me. She halted, straining against it, longing to rake me bloody, but unable to push past the boundary I had put there. For a moment she scrabbled against it wordlessly, a savage animal caged behind glass. Then she stopped. Breasts heaving, eyes streaming tears, she let her hands drop to her sides.

She took a ragged breath. When she spoke, I could hear how she forced the words past the lump in her throat. “You think you can do this! You think you can swell up big with the magic of the People and use it against us. You cannot. You will come to do what the magic says you must. This I know. Of this, I say to you, ‘It is inevitable!’ And you shake your head and make your eyes sad and do not believe me. I do not care. The magic will convince you. It will send you a messenger you cannot ignore, and then you will know. You will see.” She crossed her arms in front of her and stood tall and straight, reclaiming her dignity. “I did not think you were so stupid, Nevare. I thought that if I fed you, you would see the path of wisdom and tread it.” She fluttered her fingers dismissively. “You did not. But it does not matter. You will do what the magic had destined for you. You will turn your people back to their own lands. We all know this. Soon, you will know it, too.”

She turned her back on me and walked away. Her stride was arrogant and free once more, not that of a woman scorned but rather that of a woman who had won and no longer cared whether I recognized that or not. As I watched her go, the dawn’s light broke through the canopy overhead. In that sudden brightness, I could not see. I blinked frantically, but she seemed to be disappearing even as I stared after her.

I shut my eyes and knuckled them.

When I opened them, fingers of strong daylight had reached through the cracks in my window shutters to fall across my face. My back was stiff and my neck ached from sleeping with my head thrown back against my chair. I sat up, flinching as my neck bones crackled. Despite all my efforts, I’d fallen asleep. And I’d dreamed…something. The first thought that came to me filled me with dread. I’d promised to go and see Epiny today.

I groaned and rubbed the back of my neck, and then scrubbed my stiff face with my hands. When I lowered them I was stunned at what I saw. My fingers and hands were sticky and stained red from the fruit I had shared with Olikea. My mind wobbled as it tried to integrate the idea of dreaming myself into a world that left physical evidence of itself. The other side, Olikea had called it. And now I was back on this side. The strength of the sunlight filtering through my shutters told me that I had slept far past my usual rising time. I rose and opened the window to the day. It was sunny and fine, and the sun already stood high in the sky. I rubbed my face again, and then grunted in annoyance.

By the time I’d wiped the stickiness of the dream fruit from my face and hands, I had another distraction. The sounds of a horse and cart reached me through the open window. I wondered if someone was returning Clove to me, but a glance out the window showed me that was not so. A man with his face muffled in a scarf perched on the seat of wagon pulled by a swaybacked black nag. It took me a moment to recognize Ebrooks. Three coffins jutted from the open back of the cart. My heart sank. It had begun.

I went out to meet him. He waved me back. “Speck plague!” he shouted at me “Going though the town like a prairie fire. Here. Put this on before you come any closer.” He tossed me first a small glass bottle and then a folded cloth. The liquid in the bottle proved to be vinegar. “Wet the cloth with that and tie it over your nose and mouth.”

“Will it keep away the plague?” I asked him as I obeyed him.

He shrugged. “It’s mostly for the smell. But if it keeps you from catching plague, well, you haven’t lost anything.”

As I tightened the knot in the kerchief over my face, I heard a terrible sound. It was like a distant scream, breathlessly and hideously prolonged. It ended with a monumental crash that shook the earth under my feet. I staggered a step or two from the impact and then stood unsteadily, dizzied from the experience. “What was that?” I demanded of Ebrooks.

He gave me a puzzled look. “I told you. Just vinegar. But some folk say it wards off the plague. Can’t hurt is what I say.”

“No, not that. That noise in the distance. The scream. That explosion.”

He looked puzzled. “I didn’t hear anything. There was some talk in town that the high mucky-mucks from Old Thares were saying that we were wasting time trying to fell those big trees with saws and hatchets. One fellow suggested drilling a hole and packing a black powder charge into the trunk and then touching it off with a long fuse. Don’t know that they decided to do it, though. And I’m not sure you could hear if from here even if they did.”

“Oh, I think I’d hear it,” I said faintly. The world still seemed to shimmer at the edges. I knew what I’d heard. The ancestor tree had fallen. That piece of the past had been destroyed. I had a sense of a gaping tear in time, and a cold wind blowing through it. What had been known was unknown now. Names recalled, deeds of old, all gone, as if in an instant a great library had collapsed into ash. Gone.

“You all right, Nevare? You coming down with the fever?”

“No. No, I don’t have the plague. I’m just—forget it. Forget it, Ebrooks.” All would be forgotten. “Three bodies. It seems so sudden.”

“Yes, well, the plague is always sudden. There will be more before the day is out. The colonel himself has it; they say every officer that was on the reviewing stand is down with it, and a good portion of the troops. The infirmary filled up last night. Now they’re telling people to stay home and put a yellow flag out in front of their houses if they have sickness and need help. Town looks like a field of daffodils.”

“But you’re all right?”

“So far. But I’ve had it twice, and lived both times. Makes it less likely I’ll get it again. Come on. No time for talking. We’ve got to get these ones planted before the next load arrives. Kesey was waiting on coffins when I left. Luckily, they had a batch of planks all sawn, just the right size.”

“Yes. Lucky.” I didn’t say that was due to my foresight. What had seemed eminently practical when I had suggested it now seemed grisly and foreboding. I felt as if I’d been the croaker bird waiting for the dead to die. As if my thought had summoned them, I heard a hoarse cawing. I turned to see three of the carrion eaters sail in from the seemingly empty blue skies and alight in the branches of my newly planted trees, which bent beneath the weight of their heavy bodies. One of the croakers spread his wide black wings in alarm and cawed again. I felt cold. Ebrooks didn’t even notice them.

“All those empty graves you dug will come in handy now. Time to show the colonel what you’re made of.”

“Is he very ill?” I asked him. I walked beside the wagon as he drove it slowly to the opened and waiting earth.

“The colonel? I reckon. He’s never had it before. First year he was here, it went through the ranks like a batch of salts. Killed the commanding officer; that was when Colonel Haren got jumped up to commander. Well, the day he did, he all but went into hiding. You’ve seen how he is. Hardly ever leaves his rooms if he can help it. I hear he’s got them all fixed up like a little palace in there. Comfy as a bug in a rug. Winter and summer, he keeps a fire going in there; I know that rumor is true, because I see the smoke all the time. Someone told him that fire fights off fever; burns it right out of the air before it can get to a man. Seemed to work for him, anyway. But maybe this was just his time for it. He come down bad, I hear, and none of those visiting officers are likely to go home. Well, actually, they will, but in boxes. Too good to be buried out here in the wild east with us common soldiers. They’ll go home to their fancy stone tombs. Well, here we are. Last stop, folks.”