He fell silent, palm up and empty, reached out toward me, waiting for a response. He seemed terribly moved by what he had told me. “It’s a nice story,” I said at last. “But I don’t see how it helps me understand whatever it is you’re trying to say.”

He shook his head at me in disgust and went back to sit in his chair. “For her, it’s not a metaphor. It’s reality. She truly believes that we are connected to one another and that in some way we are all part of one big…something.”

“Some big what?”

“We don’t have a word for it. She’s told me about it a hundred times, but her truth is in a place where our words don’t reach. It’s like disease. Our children get sick, we try to find out why, and we try to make them better. We cover them up with blankets to try to sweat the fever out or we give them willow bark tea. Because we think sickness means something is wrong with a child.”

“And Specks don’t think something is wrong when a child gets sick?”

“No. Do you think something is wrong when a boy’s voice changes or he sprouts whiskers out of his face? They think children are supposed to get sick. Some get better and live, and that’s fine with them. And some die, and that’s fine with them in a different way.”

“Do you see her often?”

“Who?

“Your Speck woman!”

“Yes. In a way.”

“I’d like to meet her,” I said quietly.

He seemed to think about that for a long time. “Maybe you can, if she wants. In spring.”

“Why not sooner?”

“Because it’s winter. No one sees Specks in the winter.”

“Why not?”

“Are you playing with me, Never? You are so damn frustrating. How can you have Speck magic all through you and not know a thing about them? Specks don’t come around in winter. They just don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Well—I don’t know. They just don’t. They’re gone in winter.”

“Where? Do they migrate? Do they hibernate?” I was getting as impatient with Hitch as he was with me. He’d come here, full of mystical hints and warnings, and told me next to nothing.

“I just told you, I don’t know. They keep to themselves in winter. No one will see a Speck around here until spring.”

“I saw a Speck woman here, but it was only a dream.” I think I threw the words out just to see what he would say.

He gave a huff of displeasure. “I like how you say ‘only,’ Never. Are you that comfortable with it? Speck comes walking around in my dreams, it still puts the wind up my back. Of course, to them it’s nothing; they go journeying by dream all the time. Noselaca, she can’t understand why I make such a fuss about it.”

“So you dream of your woman—Noselaca?”

“She’s not my woman, Never.” He spoke quietly, as if sharing a dangerous secret with me. “Never talk about a Speck woman that way. She could put you in a bad way over something like that. And I don’t dream about her. She comes into my dreams.”

“What’s the difference?”

“In the world you and I grew up in, nothing at all. In her world, well, in her world she walks into a dream like you walk into a different room.”

I’d almost forgotten the apple in my hand. I took another bite of it and chewed it slowly, thinking. “She believes that she can visit you in your dreams.”

“She not only believes it, she does it.”

“How?”

“Are you asking how I experience what she does, or how she does it? The answer to the first is that I fall asleep, and I think I’m having an ordinary dream, and then Noselaca comes into it. As to how she does it, I’ve no idea. Maybe you should be telling me. You seem to be the one using a lot of magic.”

The apple was down to a stem and the core. I looked at it for a few moments, then put the core in my mouth and chewed it up. I tossed the stem in the fire. “A year ago, I would have thought this whole conversation was utter nonsense. Now half the time I don’t know what I think. A dream is just something that happens in your mind at night. Except when a Speck woman walks into it and starts teaching you things. Hitch, I can’t make sense of my life anymore. Once, it was all laid out for me so clearly. I’d go to the academy, graduate with honors, and I’d get a good commission with a top-notch regiment. I’d move up fast as an officer, I’d marry Carsina, the girl my father had chosen for me, and we’d have children, and eventually, when I was old, I’d retire from the military and go back to Widevale and live under my brother’s roof until I died.”