“Where are you going?”

“I go to the road’s end. I will not stay there long; have food ready for me when I return.”

“This is a foolish risk you take. There will be workers there; they may attack you.”

“They will not see me,” Soldier’s Boy said firmly. And with that as his farewell, he set out.

As Soldier’s Boy had recovered his reserves and strength, so had I. He was still not as immense as he had been, but he had regained flesh and energy. He moved purposefully through the forest. The fallen leaves carpeted the moss. They rustled as he strode through them. As he approached the road’s end, Soldier’s Boy slowed and went more cautiously. For a large man, he moved very quietly, and he paused often to listen.

He heard only birdcalls and, once, the thump and rustle of a disturbed rabbit. Emboldened, he ventured closer to what had been the road. Stillness reigned.

By this hour of the day, workers should have arrived, but there were no signs of them. He moved cautiously along the edge of the road. The greenery I had sent out across it had browned, but the vines and crawling brambles had survived and looked undisturbed. Where I had sent plants to block the culverts, swamps had formed on either side of the road. Insects buzzed and hummed near them.

He came to the shed where the men had been keeping watch that night. It was deserted. He walked through it and found the dice still out on the rough table just as the men had abandoned them. No one had been back here since that night.

“Perhaps it was not a total waste of magic,” he conceded reluctantly. “It looks as if the intruders are discouraged. I do not think they will come back before spring.”

He had turned back into the forest before I realized that he had deliberately spoken to me.

“I thought I was doing what the magic wanted me to do.” I could not decide if I wanted to apologize to him or not. It seemed strange to apologize to myself, and even more so to have to apologize for an action I’d been pushed into taking. I wasn’t even certain that he was aware of what I’d tried to say to him. I thought of the times when I’d thought I’d felt Soldier’s Boy stir inside me, the moments when my thoughts had seemed more Speckish than Gernian. Always, I’d felt that he deliberately concealed himself from me. Now I wondered if he had tried to share his views, only to feel as smothered as I did.

He spoke again, almost grudgingly, as if reluctant to acknowledge me. “The magic was mine, not yours to spend. And the magic speaks to me, not you. You should not have tampered with it.”

He seemed to resent me as much as I did him. It scarcely seemed fair. He was the one who had invaded my life. I reined in my resentment and asked my most pressing question.

“Do you know what the magic wants you to do?”

He grinned hard. I sensed him weighing whether or not to reply. When he did, I felt it was because he could not resist the urge to brag. “Several times, I have acted on what the magic wished me to do.”

“When? What did you do?”

“You don’t remember the Dancing Spindle?”

“Of course I do.” At the Dancing Spindle, actions I had taken had ended the Spindle’s dance forever, and dispersed the magic of the Plainspeople. I knew now that Soldier’s Boy had taken into himself as much of their magic as he could hold and had hoarded it. “But what else? When else did you obey the magic?”

His grin grew wider. “You don’t know, do you? That amuses me. Because at the time, I thought I felt you resisting me. And even now, I do not think I would be wise to tell you the things the magic prompted me to do. There were small things that I did, things that made no sense to me. But I did them. And I kept them from you, lest you try to undo them. You thought you had pushed me down; you thought you had absorbed me and made me a part of you. But I won then. And I’ve won now, Gernian. I will prevail.”

I nearly warned him not to be too certain of that. Then I decided not to provoke him to keep his guard up against me. He spoke no more to me but found and followed the stream to rejoin Likari and Olikea. She was sitting close by the fire, her arms wrapped around her naked body. The day had warmed, but not much.

“Finding food would keep you warmer,” he told her. “This is the last day we shall spend here. We’ll eat, and then sleep until nightfall.”

“There isn’t much left to find here!” Olikea protested, but just then Likari made a lie of her words.

He ran up to me, proudly displaying six silver fish hung from a willow wand through their gills. “I caught them all myself!” he exclaimed. His hands and forearms were bright red from exposure to the icy waters.