Forest Mage. Робин Хобб
only improve.’
‘Yes, Mother,’ I replied dutifully, and left her there. My stomach was clenching so desperately with hunger pangs that I felt nauseous. I did not go up to my room, but went to the kitchens instead. I worked the hand pump at the sink until cooler water came, and then drank as much as I could bear. If anything, it made me more miserable.
I went up to my room and tried to sleep until just before dawn. I was standing with the rest of the crew when the wagon came for us, and went out for another day’s work. The catalogue of my misery: blisters, hunger, aches, nausea and, roiling beneath it all, a sense of bewilderment and outrage at the injustice of life.
By the second half of the day, I was staggering. When the rest of the work crew broke out their simple packets of meat and bread for their noon meal, I had to walk away from them. My sense of smell had become acute, and my stomach bellowed its emptiness at me. I wanted to wrestle the food away from them and devour it. Even after they had consumed it all and I came back for my share of the water, it was difficult to be courteous. I could smell the food on their breaths when we huffed and strained to lift the larger rocks, and it tormented me.
When we finally received the signal to quit, my legs were like jelly. I did not do my fair share at the final unloading of the wagon. I saw the other men exchange glances over it and felt ashamed. I staggered back to the wagon and barely managed to climb aboard.
When the wagon dropped us off, the other men strode towards the town. I tottered up the drive and into the back door of the house. I had to pass the kitchen. The air was thick with wonderful smells; the cook had begun to prepare the special cakes and breads for the wedding. I hurried away from that torture. My father had not told me to fast entirely. I could, I knew, have a small meal. But that thought seemed a weakness and a betrayal of my determination to change. Fasting wouldn’t kill me, and I would return to my normal self that much sooner.
The steps to my room seemed long and steep, and once there all I wanted to do was curl up around my miserable belly. Instead, I stepped into the low tub that had been left for me and washed myself standing. I stank. Now that I was heavier, I sweated more and the sweat lingered in every fold of my flesh. Left too long, the perspiration made a scald mark on my skin, painful to touch.
Rosse’s old clothes, freshly washed and newly let out, awaited me. They felt tight and awkward against my damp skin. My cadet haircut had begun to grow out. I towelled it dry and then, mindful of embarrassing my mother, I shaved before I went down to her sewing room.
My mother awaited me with the two seamstresses. The last time I’d been measured for clothing, the tailor had done it and I had been fit and trim. It was inexpressibly humiliating to undress to my small clothes and then have three women hold pieces of fabric against me, pinning the parts together around me. One seamstress glanced at my belly and rolled her eyes in disdain at the other seamstress. I went hot with a blush. They pinned my new clothing around me, stood back, consulted like hens clucking in a barnyard, and again surrounded me, moving pins and having me turn and lift my arms and raise my knees. The fabric was a very sombre dark blue, nothing at all like the brave green of my cadet uniform. By the time I retired behind a screen to get dressed again, I felt that nothing worse could happen to me.
I climbed up the endless stairs to my room. With grim determination, I decided to avoid the dinner table entirely. I did not think I could withstand the wonderful aromas of cooked food. I went to bed.
In my dream, I was my other self, and I was ravenously hungry. I recalled with sorrow all of the magic that had been wasted at the Dancing Spindle. I was proud that I had halted the Spindle’s dance and ended the plainsmen’s magic, but I regretted that I had not been able to absorb more of it into myself. It was a bizarre dream, filled with the elation of triumph underpinned with a grating hunger for foods that would properly nourish my magic. I woke at dawn still feeling both hungry and vaguely triumphant. The first I could understand; the latter made me feel ashamed. I shook the cobwebs from my head and faced my day.
That day was a repeat of the previous one, only more miserable. I felt dull and weak. I was late to meet the wagon, and it took a great effort for me to lever myself up into the back of it. Terrible hunger cramps wracked me. My head pounded. I crossed my arms on my stomach and slumped over them.
When we reached the field and the wagon stopped, I jumped down with the others, only to have my legs fold under me. The rest of the crew laughed, and I forced myself to join in. I staggered upright and took my levering bar from the back of the wagon. It felt twice as heavy as it had the day before, but I set to work. I tried to jab it into the hard soil at the edge of an embedded stone, but it only skipped across the surface. I wanted to shout with frustration. I felt no strength in my arms. I used my weight instead, and spent a miserable morning. After a time, I got my second wind. The nagging of my hunger receded slightly. My muscles warmed up, and I devoted myself to doing my share of the work. I still walked apart from the men when they took out their noon packets of food. My sense of smell had become a special torment. My nose told me all that my mouth was forbidden to taste, and my saliva ran until I thought I would drown in it.
I tried to remind myself that this was not the first time I had fasted, or even the longest time. Certainly in my days with Dewara, I had eaten very sparsely and still retained a leathery energy in my body. I was at a loss to explain why I now suffered so acutely when I had previously been able to discipline myself and endure. I came to a reluctant conclusion. I had lost self-discipline at the Academy. From there, I had to make the next logical assumption: that I had brought this on myself. It was foolish for me to go on insisting that, since I had only eaten what had been placed before me, I had no culpability for what I had become. It did not matter that my fellow cadets had not gained weight as I had. Obviously what was enough for them had been too much for me. Why had I stubbornly resisted seeing that? Hadn’t the doctor attempted to point that out to me when he so carefully asked me what I’d been eating and how much? Why hadn’t I taken alarm then, and cut down on my food?
My father was right.
I had only myself to blame.
Strangely, with the guilt came an odd relief. I’d finally found a cause for what had befallen me, and it was myself. Suddenly, I felt I had control again. Before, when I’d been unable to admit I’d been doing anything wrong, the fat had seemed like a curse, something that had befallen me, an effect with no cause. I thought of how I’d wanted to blame it on the plague and shook my head at myself. If that were so, then every cadet who recovered from the plague should have been affected as I had. I took a deep breath and felt the strength of my resolution surge within me. I’d finish out my fast today.
Tomorrow, I’d rise and go to my brother’s wedding. I’d face the humiliation that I’d brought upon myself, and I would practise great self-discipline in what I ate, not just on that festive day, but on every day that followed. When I returned to the Academy, I intended to go back as a thinner man. And I promised myself that by high summer, I’d be moving the buttons on my uniform back to their proper positions.
With determination strong in me, I returned to the after-noon’s work and drove myself relentlessly. I raised and broke new blisters on my hands, and didn’t care. I rejoiced at how my back and shoulders ached as I punished my recalcitrant body with hard work and deprivation. I thrust my hunger pangs out of my mind and toiled on. Towards the end of the day’s work, my legs literally shook with fatigue, but I felt proud of myself. I was in charge. I was changing myself.
That was my attitude when I returned home, washed, and went down for a final fitting. The seamstresses were both tired and frenetic as they rushed me into my new suit. They had brought a mirror into the room, for my sisters were likewise having the final touches put on their clothes. What it showed me rattled me. I did not look any thinner than I had when I arrived home. The weight made me look older, and the sombre blue made me look middle aged and staid. I glanced at my mother, but she was preoccupied with picking stitches out of something pink. There was no reassurance for me there. I could not focus on the seamstresses as they pinched and tugged at the fabric, poked in pins and marked lines with bits of chalk. I stared at my own face, round as a full moon, and my stout body beneath it. I did not recognize the miserable man who stared back at me.