“There!” he exclaimed in relief. We all stared at Dasie’s body and I saw nothing at all. But a moment later, the corner of Dasie’s mouth twitched. I was not certain I had really seen it, but then her head subtly shifted.
Beside me, Jodoli breathed a sigh of relief. “The tree has welcomed her,” he proclaimed, and there was a flutter of movement among her feeders as they exchanged looks. Tears began to flow again, but they were like the tears shed when a difficult birth still yields a viable child. Anguish gives way to joy, and then to peace. Her feeders went quickly to work again. They shrouded her from head to toe in a woven blanket. This they doused with water from the waterskins and then shaped it to her body. “It will freeze that way,” Jodoli explained, “and seal her against the tree, so that scavengers do not carry off what rightfully belongs to the tree. This has gone better than I expected. I would have liked to see a livelier joining to the tree, but this is enough. Dasie has her tree.”
Her feeders and guards were busy again, now using the snow they had scraped away from around the tree to bury the wrapped body. Jodoli withdrew some little distance and Soldier’s Boy did likewise, but did not follow the Great Man. Instead, he walked to the clearing’s edge. He stared out into the pillared dimness of the forest canopied by the intersecting branches of the kaembra trees overhead. The day seemed darker when he turned his back to the little clearing, and the forest more mysterious. Almost he fancied he heard a soft voice calling him.
“Nevare. Neva-are.” A man’s voice. Soldier’s Boy turned his head rapidly from side to side, scanning the forest. He saw no one.
And then more clearly, “Never, you old sonovabitch, aren’t you going to say hello?”
Buel Hitch. His mocking tone was unmistakable.
Soldier’s Boy turned his head slowly to regard the tree next to him. It was a young kaembra, approximately the same age as the one that Dasie had just joined. Heart thumping, he took one step closer to it. He trod on something under the snow and stepped back hastily. It had not been a branch. Bone. A leg bone.
“It was a big honor they done me. Not a Great One nor a Speck. But her kin-clan knew I had served the magic as well as I could, and so they brought me here and gave me a tree. I never got to thank you, Nevare. So I’ll do it now. Thanks for keeping your word, even after you found out how I betrayed you. Thanks for letting the Specks take my body out of that wooden box and bring me here.”
“Buel.” Soldier’s Boy spoke the name aloud with me. I do not know which half of me was more shocked, the Speck or the Gernian, that my friend and my betrayer lived on here. Soldier’s Boy pulled the heavy mitten from his hand, and set the bare flesh of his palm to the tree’s bark.
“Careful!” Buel warned me, standing as clearly before me as if his bones still wore flesh. “It’s a young tree and I’ve only been here a few months. The tree’s pretty deep asleep, but if it starts to wake hungry, it’ll go for you, just like a snake after a rat. So. Well, look at you. Now who’s gone native, old son? Specks and all.”
Soldier’s Boy spoke to him. “I’m not who you think I am.”
Buel grinned. He didn’t look quite as I remembered him. He was taller, more muscled, and his hair was combed. I suddenly realized that I was seeing his own idealized version of himself. That was a breathtaking insight into Lisana. I might have startled Soldier’s Boy by sharing that thought, except that what Buel said next shocked me even more. He shook his head and the ghost’s grin grew wider.
“Oh, no, old son. Now you’re exactly who I think you are. Maybe even more so.” He cocked his head and then craned it down to look into my eyes, smiling all the while. And I suddenly knew that he saw me, as I was now, but that all that time, he’d been seeing Soldier’s Boy as well. He shook his head in sympathy. “Well, you’re still in a fix and no mistake, my friend. Maybe a worse fix than when last I saw you, though that’s hard to believe. You forgave me, didn’t you? Don’t you?” His smile had faded to an earnest look.
I was at a loss. Had I forgiven him? How could I? He’d killed a woman and made it look as if I had done it. He’d spread the whispers that had turned public feeling against me to the point where a mob had tried to murder me. He’d done it under the duress of the magic. Yet even knowing that—
Soldier’s Boy answered for both of us. “I understand you. Sometimes, when you understand a man that deeply, forgiveness becomes a moot point. You did what you were supposed to do, Buel Hitch. You did the magic’s bidding.”