Page 217 (1/1)

Two days after I fell ill, the second wave of plague swept through the Acadeh beds to hold the afflicted, not enough linens and medicines and orderlies The doctor and his assistants did what they could to take care of the cadets suffering in their various dormitories There was little outside help to be had, for the Speck plague was raging through the city by then, and all the doctors who dared to treat the ill had far more work than they could handle

At the ti of that, of course On the second day of my sickness, I was moved to a bed in the infirmary, and remained there "Lots of water and sleep," was Dr Aive him this; he was an old soldier and kneell how to take action even before the coue and treated it as such froue before, and had even contracted awhat he knew, Dr Amicas did the best he could His first recommendation, that we drink lots of water, had not been a bad one No ue A man’s own constitution was his best resource The sy, diarrhea, and a fever that caht recovery, but with night our fevers rose again None of us could keep food or water down I lay onin and out of awareness of the ward around nizance of those days was an interhtly lit and other tie of time Every muscle in my body ached, andwith cold I was constantly thirsty, no matter how ht were in them; if I closed them, I feared to slip off into fever dreams My lips and nostrils were chapped raw I could find no comfort anywhere

When I first arrived at the infirmary, Oron had lain in the bed to one and Spink was there Nate was in the bed to ht We were too miserable to talk; I could not even tell thee or that they were soon to be culled as well I drifted between dreaht cadets, and misery I dreamed that I stood before my father and that he did not believe I was innocent of the false charges against me I dreamed that my uncle and Epiny came to visit me, but Epiny had the deformed feet of the chicken wo sounds

But thelimpses For me, there was another world, deeper than the fever dreams and far more real My body lay in the bed and burned with fever, but my spirit walked in Tree Woman’s world I watched my other self there, and recalled clearly the years I had spent with her since first she had seizedMy true self was a pale ghost floating in their world, a party to their thoughts, but nothing that they feared or considered at all In that world, my topknotted self had been her student for ht thened ic and made me more real in her world We had walked in her forest and I had learned the irreplaceable value of her trees and wilderness Her world had become mine, and I had come to see that no measure was too extreme in the war to protect it

And in her world, I loved her with deep and real passion I loved the voluptuousness of her flesh, and the deep earthiness of her ic I admired her loyalty and determination to preserve the People and their ways I shared her dedication to that cause In those dreams, I walked beside her, and lay beside her, and in the sweet diht, we made the plans that would save our folk When I ith her, all was clear I knew that I had pleased her when I had ic I knew the performers had not been captives at all, but the ic who could be spared fro my soldier’s boy self They had used that ", to find the place where the intruders raised their warriors And when they had found n, and they had let fly the dust of the disease

Powdered dung That hat it was It was a disgusting ic to my Gernian self, and as natural as breath to Tree Woman’s assistant It ell known to the People that a tiny ested by a healthy child would ain would the child fall prey to the deadly flux But in quantity, as they had discovered, the dust could sicken an entire outpost of intruders, cutting down their warriors and wo the workers who slashed the road through the forest’s flesh