And for the first time, he felt not like a man betraying a memory, but a man permitted to live again. The summer deepened, the heat settled in the valley. The corn they had planted was shoulder high. Their intimacy was a simple, unspoken fact, a rhythm as natural as the passing of the days. They woke together, they worked together, they slept together.
He began to notice small changes. Tyen, who had a wolf's appetite for jerky and smoked meat, suddenly turned from it. One morning, the smell of bacon frying made her gag and run from the cabin. She was tired, more so than the work warranted. He would find her asleep in the shade of the porch in the middle of the afternoon.
He thought she was sick, a summer fever. He worried she, too, was confused. Her body felt alien to her. She was a person who knew the meaning of every subtle shift in the wind, every track in the dust. But the changes in her own self were a mystery.
One night, she woke him, her hand gripping his arm. He bolted upright, reaching for the rifle, his heart pounding. "What is it? What's wrong?" "The dream," she whispered, her eyes wide in the dark.
"A nightmare?" he asked, his panic easing. "No, not—not a bad dream." She sat up, pulling the blanket around her. It was different. You know, I dream of the deer, he nodded.
She had told him. Her nightmares were of running, of being chased. Before, she said, her voice full of a strange awe. The deer sees me. It is afraid.
It runs away. Always. It runs. She turned to look at him, her face a pale oval in the moonlight. Tonight, it did not run.
It followed me. It walked beside me in the aspens. It was not afraid. It was just with me. Daniel stared at her.
The deer followed her. A quiet companionable animal. A fawn. His mind, slow with sleep, began to work. The sickness in the morning, the weariness, the turning from the meat.
He did not know much about these things, but he knew. He knew the basics. His voice was tight, almost a croak. Tyen, your your monthly time, your bleed, she looked at him, confused by the question. It has not come for how long, she thought, her head tilted.
Since the snowmelted? Since it since the night of the storm. The night of the storm? No, not that night. The night.
The night she had asked him. The day she had worn his shirt. He counted in his head. April, May, June. It was near the end of July.
Two, maybe three months. The breath left his body. Tyen, he said, his voice shaking. I I think the deer. It means a child, she looked at him uncomprehending.