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Soldiers had gathered to cross her Cavalla soldiers Cadets fro veterans, retired officers They patiently waited their turns to cross Cold wind blew past us, and brought to us the distant cries of the living "Papa, Papa!" soeddown his pallid face It was his turn He trudged onto the bridge, head bent as if to a wind I did not feel

I saw Trist in that gathering, and Natred, and Oron They slowly milled with the others They did not speak to ed forward, interested in nothing except their own slow progress toward death I calmly realized that was our destination Like , and here our spirits waited, on the teetering point between death and life So time and seemed to resist the draw Others seee It was a bridge, I suddenly knew, that did not belong here Prior to my alliance with the tree wo, twisting its lines froic of her people into s was this traverse made that lured the spirits of other soldiers like myself to cross They, too, I suddenly perceived, had touched the ned over cinches, not knowing that when the tiic would hold them fast as well Yet as the line of people shuffled forward, I floith the I, too, would cross When it came my time, I stepped past the Kidona swanneck that secured the footrope of the bridge and out onto it I shuffled forith the rest

I reached the e before I lifted my eyes to see my destination A dised-off hillside I had passed on my river journey toward Old Thares, but it was not the sa hills lay before me The sheared stumps before me dwarfed me and reordered my concept of the word "tree" Giants had flourished here, and were no od had been ransacked and robbed Cold rain was falling on it, cutting rivulets in its bare flanks The still-slowed a dark, evil red Steae of boots and tearowth and underbrush reetation sprawled like slaughtered children Only on the tops of the hills did trees still stand, and I knew that their reign was soon to end A crude roadbed snaked toward theirl called from somewhere far behind me "Come back, Nevare!"

Once I had known someone named Nevare I turned my head slowly and looked back the way I had come Whoever had calledsouls were crossing the bridge behind e, and Natred Still others lanced back the way I had co crowd Oh So they, too, were dying And they, too, were called to cross the bridge I turned forward and walked on

As the spirits ahead of me reached the stripped and barren hillside, they drifted aimlessly Their purposelessness seemed a form of torment, as if they had had some important destination they now could not recall Soed stuainst them as if they were doors that would not yield Slowly those ones sank down beside the stu at the base of the chopped trees A wisp of vapor rose froo that way He er puddle than most of the others

I saw Tree Woman then, and my other self She stood at the crest of the hill where a line of unharvested trees reiants, and looked down on us She judged us froo far fro forest My other self did that for her He hunted deliberately across the bare hillside a hi wraiths Heprey

Tree Woet that one, hurry before he is gone He had far more power than he knew, far more wisdom But he had no tree to put it in; the fools never learned to save a place to store their ic before it disperses Your people have little ic to them You will have to devour many more before you are full Eat!"

That other self that was somehow still me in spite of the antipathy I felt toward hihosts, he see Leaves were his only garments His scalp-lock had been smeared with pine pitch and plaited down his back and interwoven with green vines He rushed to the puddle that had been Sergeant Rufet and dropped to his knees beside it He scooped up the white liquid before it was sucked into the earth He used no leaf cup now Instead, erly lapping the thick porridge of what had been Rufet’s soul For a moment, I was he I felt the stickiness onconsumed his essence