“Kill him and spare you?” The bird cocked his head the other way. “An intriguing idea. But not very practical.”
Soldier’s Boy moved swiftly, snapping the empty mug toward the bird’s head. The croaker bird dodged, but the cup still hit him, a solid jolt that dislodged a puff of feathers and won an angry squawk from the creature. He gave two hops, then lifted off into heavy flight. As he gained altitude, he cawed down, “You will both pay for that!”
“I don’t care!” Soldier’s Boy shouted after him. He walked purposefully back to the lodge and directly to the cedar chest where Likari’s things were stored. He opened it and rummaged through them roughly until he found the sling. He took it and then left the lodge, not even bothering to shut the trunk. “Next time, I’ll kill him,” he vowed aloud.
“I don’t think you can kill a god,” I said into his mind.
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying,” he muttered to himself.
“What did Lisana say to you?” I asked him abruptly. “What changed everything?”
“I told you. I woke the hatred of the Gernians, and their hatred is now stronger than their fear. Daily the work crews go to the road. They have almost repaired all the damage you did. They sharpen their axes already. Soon trees will be falling. In time, Lisana will fall. Even if I died tonight and they put me in a tree, we would have perhaps a year of this world’s time together before we both died.”
“There is no afterlife for a Speck without a tree?”
He shook his head impatiently, as if he could toss me and my foolish questions out of his mind by doing so. “There is. But not what we could share if we were both in trees.” He was making his way down the path toward the stream as he spoke. It felt strange to him to be walking along in the daylight, all alone. All the People had departed, and the not-silence of the living forest had flowed back in to take their place.
I grasped what he told me without any further explanation. “Your spirit would go on, but without the sensations of a body. And Lisana would be somewhere else. What you want is to live on, where she is, with the illusion of being in that world corporally.”
“I wouldn’t call it an illusion. Isn’t it what you would choose if you could? A tree’s life to be with someone you love with all your senses?”
“I suppose I would.” I considered it for a moment, and wondered if Amzil would still want to spend even an ordinary life with me. Useless to wonder. I did not even have that sort of a life to offer her. “But I sense there is more. What else did Lisana tell you?”
“What we have both known for some time. That divided as we are, you and I are useless to anyone. The magic isn’t working, or at best works only halfway. When Lisana divided us so that I could stay with her and be taught, she never anticipated that we would remain divided.”
“No. As I recall, she intended that I would die of the plague.”
“I was to have the body and you were to become part of me,” he corrected me.
“I don’t see the difference. Isn’t that what we are now?”
“No. You oppose me. Just as I opposed you when you sought to be fully in command.” For a moment, he seemed invisible to me, caught in thoughts of his own. Then, reluctantly, he said, “We were supposed to become one. I was to absorb you, your knowledge, your attributes of character, your understanding of your people. We would have been one merged person, completely integrated. And the magic would have had access to both of us, and it would have been able to achieve its goals.”
“But I killed you instead.”
“You thought you did. And I resisted being absorbed by you, just as you have resisted becoming part of me. But until we are one, the magic cannot work. It moves by half measures, more destructive than if it did nothing at all. Lisana is convinced of this.”
“She knows this?” It seemed to me there was a difference between being convinced and knowing.
“She knows it,” he replied, but his words had taken too long in coming. I didn’t believe that Tree Woman was certain of this. We had crossed the bridge. He sat down again on the same rock where we had spent so much time the night before. It was just as uncomfortable now as it had been then. A thin spring sunlight filtered down through the trees. He closed his eyes and turned his face up to it, enjoying the warmth on his face.
“You’re guessing,” I accused him.
He gave a harsh sigh. “Yes. I am. So? Nothing else has worked. I think we both need to give way and accept it.”