by Robin Hobb
I had been fat and now I wasn’t. I thought of how I had once longed for that change and how important it had seemed. Now it seemed a foolish thing for me to care about. What did it matter, what did it change? I was still myself. So what did I care about, if not the shape of my body? Where was my life? I prodded at my emotions. Amzil came to mind immediately. I cared about her. I wanted her to be safe and well. And Epiny and Spink. And their baby.
It was so strange. As I thought of them, they suddenly gained importance in my mind, as if I’d forgotten about them completely and only now their significance was coming back to me. What else, I wondered, had I lost? What had been left behind in that old body? What of it would I recover?
I wandered through the camp, watching people who would not acknowledge me. I helped myself to breakfast from various cooking pots in the camp. One woman looked straight at me as I ate from her pot. I was pleased when I found Kilikurra. Olikea and Firada’s father sat by his fire, braiding sinew into a fine line, probably for a snare. He had been the first Speck I’d ever spoken to; we had not had many dealings together, but he had treated me well. I touched him gently on the shoulder. He turned his head, but his mismatched eyes looked right through me. “Please, Kilikurra. You were the first to befriend me. I desperately need a friend now.” Even when I spoke to him, he gave no indication of hearing me.
I sat down next to him by his fire. “I don’t understand,” I told him. “Was I so terrible as a Great Man? I know I led the warriors to defeat. But I thought I paid for that when I went to Kinrove and gave myself over to him. I danced his dance, and the magic now flows free. Everyone has told me that. So why am I an outcast here? What do you want from me?”
He gripped one end of the braided line in his teeth as he wove the sinew together into a tight cord. His black lips were pulled back from his white teeth in a grimace. He abruptly finished the length of cord, knotted it off, and set it down.
“Kilikurra. Please. Speak to me.”
He tossed another stick of wood on his fire, waking sparks and smoke. He ran his sinew cord through his fingers and nodded, well pleased with his own work.
I rubbed my eyes, winced at the touch of my hands on my thin skin, and then pressed my temples gently. My head had not stopped throbbing since I had left my tree. I pushed my hair back from my face, mildly surprised to find I still had hair, and then flinched as my fingers encountered the scabbed-over wound. My heart leapt in terror and then began thumping wildly. With both hands, I carefully explored the injury on the top of my head. It was almost perfectly circular. I recalled how Lisana had gripped me by the hair and held on so tightly while Orandula peeled my flesh away.
She had held me like that once before, when first I had met her as guardian of the spirit bridge. She had defeated me, seized me by the hair, and then ripped half my soul out of my body. I did not doubt for an instant that she had done so again. She had kept all of me that she could hold on to. How much was that? What part of me had she judged worthy of being her lover and companion? Tears stung my eyes. My beloved had chosen, not me, but only parts of me. That was far more bitter than if she had rejected me entirely and chosen another man in my stead. And I, the rejected bits of a man, the unloved parts, was now a ghost. What had she taken, and what was left to me? Was this why I felt so disconnected and vague? What had she done to me? Was I condemned to wander the rest of my years like this, unseen and unknown?
Fear and frustration overwhelmed me, but that is no excuse for what I did next. I leapt to my feet, bellowing my outrage and betrayal. I rampaged through the settlement. I knocked one man to the ground, overturned a cooking pot of stew, snatched up folded bedding and strewed it about. That got a reaction, but not the one I had hoped for. There were cries of dismay and fright, but no one tried to stop me. They looked at the havoc that I wrought but paid no attention to me. I stood in the center of the camp and shouted, “I’m here! I’m not a ghost. I’m not dead!”
“Be calm! Be calm! All of you, bring every bit of salt that you have to me. I shall need it all!”
The words came from Jodoli. He stood at the edge of the camp. He was panting, as if he’d just been running, but I suspected that he had just returned from quick-walking to my tree and back. Olikea and Likari were with him, as was Firada. Firada ran to their fire and snatched up her bag of cooking salt. Olikea seemed paralyzed; she stood and stared all around her. Only Likari looked at me. His heart was in his eyes.
“Likari!” My heart leapt with joy. Even if only one person would acknowledge me, that meant I was real. I started toward him. “If you are all right, then it has been worth it all.”
I opened my arms to him. I nearly reached him, but Firada was there first. Jodoli seized the bag of salt from her and took a big handful. As I stared at him in consternation, he sprinkled a circle of salt onto the ground around the boy. When he closed the circle, Likari looked up at Jodoli in surprise. “He’s gone!”
“He was never really here. That was a shadow, Likari, not Nevare. You saw his tree? That is where he is now. It prospers. It has taken him in, very swiftly, and grows well and strong. I spoke to him at his tree. He is well and very happy. So we should be happy for him. Let him go now, lad. Thinking of him and missing him will only call to his shadow. And that is bad luck for all. Let him go.”
A series of emotions flitted over Likari’s face. I watched him, hoping against hope, but resignation was what finally triumphed. He spoke softly. “When I touched his tree, I thought I could feel him there.”
Jodoli nodded indulgently. “Perhaps you could. The magic permeated you when you danced for Kinrove. Perhaps it has left an awareness in you. That would be a great gift. Let it comfort you. But do not encourage the shadow by seeing it or speaking to it.”
Olikea stepped up and put her arm around her boy. “We loved him, and now we let him go. He would not want you to spend your days mourning him, Likari. He called you his son. He would want you to live your life, not dwell in the past.”
She spoke so sincerely. I wanted to be the selfless person she described, but I also wanted, desperately, to know that I was still real to someone. “Likari!” I bellowed, but he did not even glance my way.
Jodoli had taken the bag of salt from Firada. Other Specks were hastening to him, bringing their own cooking salt. Many of them glanced fearfully about, while others kept their eyes desperately on the ground in front of them, for fear they might see me. Jodoli held up Firada’s sack of salt. “Make a little hole in each salt bag. Like this.” He took out his knife and demonstrated, then pinched the hole shut with his fingers. “Then follow me. I will walk a circle around the camp. Each of you will take turns to let the salt trickle in the path behind me. Come. The sooner we seal ourselves off from his shadow, the sooner it will disperse. Don’t be afraid. He cannot hurt you.” Jodoli glanced at me and said more loudly, “I do not believe he would want to hurt any of you. He is simply confused and lost. He should go back to his tree, and find peace there.”
I held my ground, glaring at him. He turned his back on me and walked ponderously to the edge of the camp, and then beyond it.
They made a strange parade. Jodoli walked slowly and every person in the kin-clan followed him. At the end of the line came Firada, patiently dribbling a fine line of salt from her sack. When it was emptied, another woman took her place.
Jodoli walked a generous circle. Within it, he included the waste pit and the pool where they drew their cooking and drinking water. I crossed the camp and walked beside him. I tried to speak reasonably. “Jodoli, whatever I did to break your rules, I’m sorry. But I’m not a ghost. I’m here. You can see me. Likari can see me. I think you’re using your magic to keep the others from seeing me. Or something. Can you just cast me out like this, after all I’ve given up for the magic? I did what it made me do, and I accomplished my task. And now you will turn me out?”
He did not look at me. I reached to seize his arm, but could not. I suspected that he had protected himself and was sh
ielding himself with the magic. I turned away from him and stalked back to his campfire. I picked up the folded blankets and threw them onto the flames, quenching them. “Can a ghost do this?” I demanded of him. I emptied one of Firada’s supply bags, dumping out smoked meat and dried roots. I picked up a slab of smoked venison and bit into it. It was tough but the flavor was good. Between bites, I shouted at him, “A ghost is eating your food, Jodoli!”
He did not even glance my way. His slow parade continued. I sat down comfortably on his mossy couch and finished eating the meat I had taken. There was a skin of forest wine there. I took it up and drank from it, and then spat out what I had taken. Firada had doctored it with herbs to build his magic. It tasted vile to me. I dumped it out onto the stack of smoldering blankets.
I felt childish and vindictive, yet oddly justified in my destruction. I knew he could see me. Why wouldn’t he talk to me and explain what was going on? All I wanted was to understand what had happened to me.
I looked up to find Jodoli leading his people back into the camp. I sat by his hearth, waiting for him to return and see what I had done. Instead, he went to another fire. The people gathered fearfully around him. I felt a surprisingly strong pang of envy as he called on his magic and the earth rose beneath his feet, elevating him above his listeners.
“Do not fear,” he told them. “There is but one more step to drive the ghost from our midst.” He turned to Firada. She reached into her pouch and handed him a double handful of leaves. “These were taken from his own tree. He cannot resist them.”
With those words, he cast the leaves into the nearby fire. After a moment, white smoke began to rise. I’d had enough. I stood up and walked toward them. I would seize him by the throat if need be, but he would recognize me.
Instead, I walked out of the kin-clan’s campsite. I had no change of heart, no second thoughts about attacking Jodoli to make him recognize me. If anything, my anger and frustration only rose stronger. I roared and I would have sworn that I charged toward him.
But abruptly I was at the edge of the campsite. I spun about, incredulous, and saw Jodoli carefully laying down a line of salt that completely closed the circle around the campsite. After he finished, he stood up with a sigh. He looked directly at me, but refused to meet my eyes. Olikea stood beside him. I think she looked for me, but her gaze went past me into the forest.
“Shadows are not even ghosts. They are just the pieces of a man who cannot accept his life is over. It should go back where it belongs. And once it finds that no one here will pay attention to it, it will.”
“This is where I belong now,” I told him, and strode back toward the village.
But the strangest thing happened. When I reached the line of salt, I could not cross it. I would step forward, only to find I had stepped backward. It was simple salt, harvested from the sea, yet I could not step past it. Shouting and storming, I circled the encampment, refusing to believe that I could not cross a line of salt. But I simply couldn’t.
I spent the rest of that day futilely circling the camp, and that night, I slept rolled in my cloak, staring at the unwelcoming fires. When I awoke the next day, I was hungry and thirsty. The kin-clan was already stirring. I could smell food cooking and hear people talking. After a time, I saw a party of hunters preparing to leave camp. They slung their quivers over their shoulders and each one checked his bow. As they did so, I saw Jodoli come over to speak to them. I watched as he gave each of them a small bag to hang about his neck. And into each sack, Firada poured a measure of salt.
I was a fool. I waited until all three of them were outside the circle of salt and then charged down on them. I would prove that although Jodoli’s magic might keep me out of the camp, a little bag of salt could not stop me from making them notice me. I intended to knock at least one of them over. Instead, impossibly, I missed all three and went sprawling to the ground. They didn’t notice me. I shrieked curses at them as they strode unconcernedly away.
I sat on the ground, wrapped in my cloak, and stared after them. I looked up to see Jodoli watching me. “I’m not a ghost!” I shouted at him. “I’m not a shadow.”
I heard a sound I had come to dread. Heavy wings flapping. Orandula alit first in a treetop and then hopped down heavily, branch to branch, until he perched on one well out of my reach, but clearly visible to me. He settled his feathers, preened his wing pinions, and then asked me sociably, “How are you doing?”
“Oh, just wonderfully,” I snarled at him. “You took my death. But my people won’t believe I’m alive. Jodoli has used his magic to ban me from the camp and to keep me from contacting the People. The only clothing I have is a cloak and some shoes that are too big for me. I’ve no food, no tools, no weapons. Is this the life you gave back to me?”
He cocked his head at me and the wattles around his beak jiggled horribly. “I didn’t give you a life, man. I took your death. And even that didn’t go quite as I had planned.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m surprised that you need to ask. Obviously, you’re dead here. You show all the signs of it; no one can see you, can’t cross a line of salt—I thought you would have understood that by now.”
“But I have a body! I get hungry, I eat, I can move things! So how can I be dead?”
“Well, you’re not. Not completely. As I told you, things didn’t go exactly as I expected them to. It often happens when gods squabble over something. Neither one wins completely.”
I pulled my cloak more closely around myself. Despite the growing warmth of the spring day, I felt a chill. “Gods fought over me?”
He began diligently preening his other wing. “Part of you remained dead in this world. Part of you didn’t. I feel a bit sheepish about that. I like things to balance, you know. And right now you are still a bit out of balance. I feel responsible. I want to correct that.”
I didn’t want him to “correct” me any more than he had. Doggedly, I tried my question another way. “Is Lisana, is Tree Woman, a goddess? Did she fight for me?”
He tucked his bill into his breast and considered me. I wondered if he would answer. But finally he said, “Hardly a goddess. She fought for you, of course. And I suppose that in some ways she is connected to Forest, and Forest might as well be a god with all the power Forest has. But, no, Lisana is not a goddess.”
He shook his feathers again and opened his wings.
“Then who—?” I began, but he interrupted.
“I, however, am a god and therefore feel no obligation to answer a mortal’s questions. I will be considering how best to balance what remains unbalanced. I like to leave things tidy. Hence my affinity for carrion birds, don’t you know?”
He jumped off the branch and plummeted toward the ground. His wide wings beat frantically, and with a lurch, the falling glide turned into flight.
“Wait!” I shouted after him. “I still don’t understand! What is to become of me?”
Three raucous caws were my only response. He banked sharply to avoid a thicket, saw an opening in the canopy, and suddenly beat his wings harder, climbing toward it. An instant later, he had vanished.
I stood up slowly. For a short time I stood staring at the kin-clan’s encampment. There, people were going about their lives. I could see Olikea sewing something. She lifted it up, shook it out, and held it toward Likari. I recognized the fabric. It was from one of my robes. Evidently she was remaking it into something Likari could wear. The boy was already running naked in the spring sunshine, playing some sort of jumping game with the other children of the kin-clan. I hoped she would make it large, so he didn’t outgrow it before winter returned and he could use it.
I wanted to offer some sort of farewell. I thought about that for a time, and then turned away silently and walked into the forest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
DEAD MAN’S QUEST
I thought I walked aimlessly. I crossed a stream and drank there, but it did little for my hunger. There were probably fish
in the stream, and I thought of trying to tickle a few. But I would have had to eat them raw; I was not yet that hungry. It was too early in the year for berries, but I found a few greens I recognized growing there and picked and ate them. I recalled that once Soldier’s Boy had eaten vast quantities of the water-grass that grew along the bank. I sampled it. Even the youngest, most tender shoots seemed unbearably bitter. Another food that belonged only to the Speck Great Ones.
I left the stream and walked on, staying in the shade under the trees. The touch of sunlight on my thin skin was still uncomfortable and when I touched my hand lightly to the top of my skull I found it was still sore there. The skin was thicker over my muscles and bones today than it had been yesterday. It was not as gruesome to look at myself as it had been. So, I was healing rapidly, but not in the miraculously quick way in which the magic had healed me. It seemed obvious to me that I had a physical body, and it moved, so I could not be dead. Yet, if I was alive, who was I? What was I?
Jodoli had told me to go back to my tree. Coincidence or an unconscious intention led me back to Lisana’s ridge overlooking the Valley of Ancestor Trees. I stood for a time looking down on it before the silence intruded on my brooding thoughts. I squinted, peering at the King’s Road in the distance. All was silent there. No. Not silent. Merely bereft of the sounds that men always bring to the forest. Neither shouts nor axes rang, no wheels ground along over a rough roadbed, no shovels bit into the forest turf. Birds sang and swooped through the afternoon light. I could hear the wind blowing lightly through the trees. The leaves whispered softly to one another, but the voice of mankind had been muted.
