Forest Mage

“Pick the berries for me, Epiny. Even a kerchief full will restore some of my power.” I felt tantalizingly more substantial. The smell of the two berries she’d eaten was on her breath. I longed to devour every one that remained on the bush.



“But you said they’d put me in the magic’s power,” she protested. “Won’t they do the same to you?”



“I’m already in the magic’s power. If you can get them to me in the prison, I may be able to rejuvenate enough magic to be able to help myself. Then you won’t have to.”



“But—”



“I’ve already given Lisana my word. Pick the berries for me, Epiny.”



She stood a long time considering it. Then she spread her handkerchief on the moss and began, one-handed, to pick berries and drop them on it. When she had a goodly pile, she gathered up the four corners of her kerchief and picked it up.



“The way home?” she asked me again.



I made a decision. “Going home the way you came is far too long. Follow this stream,” I told her. “It has to flow downhill. It will take you closer to the end of the road. From there, I think you can beg aid of the men working there. They’ll put you on a cart and get you home.”



It was a long and weary walk for her. The berries, she told me, seemed to have calmed the fear in her and lent her strength. Even so, my heart ached for her. She’d had the sense to put on boots before she stole the horse and cart, but her heavy skirts were scarcely the best hiking garb. I greatly feared that night would fall before we were out of the forest. I wondered if I’d misjudged the way until we heard the muted sounds of axes falling and smelled the smoke of burning brush. “We’re nearly there,” I said quietly. “All you have to do is go toward the sounds. The men working on the road will help you.”



Her response was as subdued. “She took me to the end of the ridge and made me look down on what we had done to her forest. I don’t pretend to understand completely what the ancestor trees mean to her. But for that moment, I felt what she felt, and my heart actually went out to her, Nevare. Different as we are, I still understood that all she wants is to keep things as they are, to protect her people.”



“But we both know that things never remain as they are, Epiny. It’s a lost cause already.”



“Perhaps. But I’ve already said that I’d stop them from cutting the ancestor trees. Do you know exactly what they are?”



“I think that when a Great One dies, the Specks give the body to a tree. And that the tree absorbs the body, and somehow that person lives on as a tree.”



“That’s what Tree Woman is? Lisana?”



“I think so. We’ve never discussed it directly. There are so many things that she assumes I know, and—”



“But that’s horrible! We’re literally killing their elders when we cut those trees! By the good god’s mercy! No wonder they think we’re monsters! Nevare, when you went to Colonel Haren, you should have told him what those trees were! If only he had known!”



“Epiny. I know you’ve read my journal. I did go to Colonel Haren, the morning before the Dust Dance. I told him what those trees meant to the Specks and even warned him that if the cutting did not stop, we’d be facing a different kind of war.



“He dismissed my concern, and said that he thought less of me for having it. He’d heard it before. He saw it as silly superstitious nonsense, and said that once the trees were gone and nothing bad happened to the Specks, they’d see they’d been foolish and come around to our way of thinking. It was as if he believed that if we took their culture away from them, they’d instantly convert to thinking like Gernians. As if our way of seeing the world were the only real one, and that anyone, given the opportunity, would think like we do. I couldn’t make him see any other point of view. Even if I’d told him that the trees were actually the Specks’ ancestors, he’d have been unable to believe me. But, yes, we knew those trees were sacred to the Specks. We’ve evidently known it for a long time. And we keep trying to cut through there anyway.”



“We’ve been fools! Couldn’t someone, for just a moment, have believed the Specks knew the secrets of their forest better than we did? We’ve brought all this on ourselves! The fear, the despair, the Speck plague! It’s all our own doing.”



“I wouldn’t go that far—” I started to say, but she interrupted me.



“So what did you try, then, to stop the cutting?”



“I—well, that is, what else could I do? I told the colonel and pleaded with him to stop it. He refused.”