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mission Father had given me, and perhaps, by proving my loyalty, earn the right to go home, or at least to live without fear of some agent of Mueller coming to remove a threat to the government.
    I went east, toward Nkumai, toward the rising sun—rising, that is, in former days, when it used to move across the sky. The journey changed not at all. The same confusion, the same exhaustion—for in each march I seemed to cover so much ground that from the map I carried in my head it should have taken two full days at a good hard walk, not the few hours it seemed to take by the sun. I invented dozens of new explanations or codicils to the old ones; I wearied of trying to understand, and let imaginary visions of Saranna draw me forward, remembering her insane loyalty to me when there was no hope that we could be together anymore. At least it was only thoughts of murder that could carry me across the last stretch of forest without water to break the poisonous air—I dreamed of killing Dinte; and, ashamed of such thoughts toward my own brother, I dreamed of killing the Turd. I imagined that once she had sustained her mortal injury, her magical spell would be released, and she would be revealed as a huge writhing slug oozing along the stone floor of the castle, leaving a trail of thick pus and ichor and glistening slime behind it.
    I ate what berries I could find, and my pack was long since empty; my body, which had always been muscular, now became lean, and my womanly breasts, which had grown soft and large on the comfortable diet of Mueller, were now tight and spare and hard, like the rest of me. It made it somehow easier to bear having them, knowing that they had to respond to the same urgencies that drove the rest of my body. Scant rations and hard work affected them along with the rest of me. They were a part of myself. They might have been unwelcome when they first appeared, but it didn’t feel strange to have them anymore.
    Finally I reached the grey-barked slender ragwit trees that told me I was near
     
    …white-tree Allison,
of dawn and light among the leaves.
     
    Almost at once, with the change of woods, the poisons stopped having their effect on me. I was still weary—as well a man should be, covering a thousand kilometers, what should have been twenty days’ journey even for the bounding stride of a soldier in open country, in only a dozen long, terrible marches. I knew then that whatever seemed to have happened to the sun’s passage through the sky, I had surely covered the ground I thought I covered—that my exertions were as excruciating as I imagined them to be. Indeed, if I ever lived to return to Mueller, and ever somehow became a person again in Mueller’s eyes, the song they would sing of me would surely include this marvelous journey through the poisonous wood of Ku Kuei, covering in what seemed to be a few days by the sun, in a dozen marching periods, what should have taken a man twenty days in open country, well-supplied; what would have taken an army twice that time. If ever a hero-song were sung of me, this journey would be the envoy. So I thought then, knowing so little.
    The madness of the journey was over now, anyway; the sun made its normal passage at its normal pace, and I was able, at last, to walk on until dark.
    In the morning, a road. I went back among the trees and changed into the girl’s clothing that the woman of the High Hills had given me. I counted my wealth: twenty-two rings of gold, eight rings of platinum, and, in case of great need, two rings of iron. A dagger in the pack.
    I was unsure what to do next. The last news we had heard in Mueller was that Nkumai was attacking Allison. Had they won? Was the war still raging?
    I stepped onto the road and walked east.
    “Hey, little lady,” said a soft but penetrating voice behind me. I turned and saw two men. Rather larger than I—I still didn’t have my full man’s weight, though I did have near my height since I was fifteen. They