Forest Mage

I did my camp chores while I pondered it. I fetched water and set it to heat, and cut toasting sticks for the venison. I was filling our water skins at the spring when I noticed a water plant I didn’t recognize. Its leaves were wide and a few were green, but most had gone spotty and pale with the threat of winter. I stared at them. I was sure I’d never seen it before, but it was uncannily familiar. I gave in to the impulse and reached into the water to pull one up. It came up reluctantly, a thick white root sucking out of the mud as I dragged on it. I rinsed it off and took it with me when I went back to our campsite.

Hitch had made an effort to be useful. He’d scraped together a couple of mounds of fallen leaves and pine needles. One-handed, he was trying to put my blanket on mine.

“In the good god’s name, Hitch, just rest. I can take care of that in a moment.”

He turned his whole head to look at me. “I hate being useless.” Nonetheless, he sank down to sit on his own leafy bed. “I hate owing anybody anything.”

“You don’t owe me anything. Stop worrying about it.” I handed him his water bottle.

“What’s that you’ve got there?”

“These? Some kind of water plant. It looked vaguely familiar. You know it?”

He leaned closer, peering at it, and nearly fell over. He swayed back into place, chuckling grimly. “Yes. I do. The Specks use it. They call it drawroot.”

“How do you cook it?”

“You don’t. It’s medicinal. For a fouled wound.” With his good hand, he fumbled at the buttons of his shirt. “You cut the fresh root and put it, cut side down, on the wound. It sucks the foulness out.” He gave an exclamation of disgust as his opened shirt permitted a wave of stench to waft from his chest injury. “Damn magic seems to be working again. At least this time it’s to my good.”

I helped him get his shirt open, tugging it gently free from his injured arm. He gritted his teeth so hard I heard them grind. He directed me as I cut the root and placed it. I had to go back to the spring for more of it. Luckily, it seemed plentiful, so I harvested a good supply. He lay back on his bed near the fire, sections of cut root arranged over his pus-oozing wounds. I had small faith in their efficacy. He closed his eyes and dozed as I finished the camp chores and arranged our venison to cook over the fire. The fresh meat was starting to sour, so I decided I’d cook it all. It made a fine, toothsome smell as it sizzled over the fire. I looked up at the deep blue of the evening sky. Scudding clouds obscured the early stars. I hoped we’d have no more rain.

“Food’s done,” I announced, and he opened his eyes. He didn’t sit up at first. Instead, one by one, he peeled the slices of root off his arm and chest. They came free stickily, with sucking noises. He shied each one off into the woods as he loosened it. Where the roots had rested, the angry wounds had calmed from red to pink, and the swelling was substantially reduced.

“That’s amazing,” I said.

“That’s why they call it magic,” he replied.

I handed him a stick laden with dripping meat and took one for myself from the fire’s edge. “How did you get caught by it?” I asked him quietly.

He smiled slightly in the firelight. “A woman. Of course.”

I was quiet, waiting.

He took a bite of the venison, holding the meat on the stick to rip it free. The meat was good, juicy and flavorful, but not very tender. I was chewing a mouthful myself when he added, “I wanted her. Not that it would have mattered if I didn’t. She’d made up her mind to have me and with a Speck woman, what she wants is what she gets. But there was a sort of initiation she put me through. The first time it was a holy smoke she made on a fire inside a small hut. We sat there, breathing it. And the second time, it was a tree resin that she made me chew. I…traveled. I saw things and I was tested.” He stopped speaking for a few moments and then said, “I don’t really want to talk about that part of it. Does any man want to admit he found the limits of his courage? When they asked me if I wanted to live, I said yes. And they let me. As a servant of the magic.”

I swallowed my meat and took another skewer from the fire.

“You know how it is,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

We talked that night. At first, we feinted and dodged, but slowly our two stories were spilled to one another. They were in some ways similar and in others wildly different. I told him how my father had given me to Dewara, and how the Plainsman had sent me up against the Tree Woman. I spoke of my other self, the one who lived and learned in a dream world. There were two places where I faltered and nearly lied to him. I didn’t want to admit that I had loved the Tree Woman. That I still did love her. And I didn’t want to confess that I was the one who had given the signal to the dancers she had sent to Old Thares. With a motion of my hand, I had bid them do their Dust Dance, and in that motion, I had betrayed all of Old Thares. Hundreds of people had died because of me. I confessed that guilt to Lieutenant Hitch. He shrugged his shoulders to it.