Robin Hobb - Forest Mage

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 later 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 practice 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 afternoon’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. Toward 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.

Then they all but snatched the clothes off me and chased me from the room, ordering me to return in two hours, for Elisi was waiting her turn. I gathered from their talk that a neckline had gone wrong and would require many tiny stitches to alter. As they turned me out of the room, Elisi rushed in.

I trudged up to my room. Only an hour ago, I had felt I’d recovered control. Now I had to confront that the wedding was tomorrow, and Carsina was not going to find a dashing and handsome young cadet waiting to escort her. No. She’d find me. Fat me. I thought of Gord’s girl, and how she seemed to adore him despite his fat. Then I thought of Carsina and didn’t even dare to hope for the same response. Gord, I suspected, had always been fat. Cilima had probably never seen him any other way. But Carsina had seen me fit and lean. I hated how I appeared now; how could she not also hate it?

I was light-headed with hunger. All the fasting, all the toiling of the past three days had done nothing. It was so unfair. I tried not to think about all the rich and wonderful things that were simmering in the kitchen or stored in the pantry right now. The wedding day would be at the bride’s home. We’d arise early and ride there in the carriage for the ceremony. But the festivities that followed, with dancing and eating and singing, were to be held here at Widevale Hall, and the food and drink necessary to such an occasion now awaited the guests. At the thought of it, my stomach growled loudly. I had to swallow.

I rolled over on my bed and stared at the wall. At the appointed hour, I roused myself again and went back for the final fitting. I wished I hadn’t. In the hallway, Elisi rushed past me in tears, calling over her shoulder, “Then I shall look like a cow! That’s all that can be said, I shall look like a cow!” As she passed me, she snarled, “I hope you’re satisfied, Nevare! But for you and your stupid belly, there would be plenty of time to reset the neckline of my dress!”

Confused and alarmed, I entered the sewing room. My mother was sobbing into her handkerchief as she stood in the corner of the room by the window. The seamstresses, both of them red-cheeked, were endeavoring not to notice. Their heads were bent over their tasks and their needles winked in the lamplight as they diligently sewed. I sensed that I walked into the aftermath of a storm. “Mother? Are you all right?” I asked her gently.