It was a quieter ache, a question of betrayal. He had loved his wife, and now he was building a new life, a new love on the very land they were meant to share. He felt one bright afternoon in early summer, that he could not move forward until he had reconciled the two. He took Tyen's hand. He said nothing, just letter from the cabin, past the corral and up the small pine-covered ridge that overlooked their valley.
The grave was there beneath the largest pinon. The wooden cross he had carved was gray and weathered. The mound of stones was undisturbed. Tyen stopped when she saw it. She knew what it was.
Her people did not mark their dead this way, but she understood the meaning of a quiet, separate place. Daniel stood before it, his hat in his hands. This was This is Elara's grave, my wife. He spoke, his voice low, telling her about the woman who had been Comanche and Irish, who had loved this high, lonely country. He told her about the birth, about the long, terrible night, about the snow falling outside as he held his wife's cold hand and listened to the silence of the child who had never cried.
I buried them here, he finished, his voice rough. Together. It was 5 years ago. Tyen listened, her gaze moving from his face to the wooden cross. She saw the story, not in his words, but in the lines around his eyes, in the permanent set of his shoulders.
She understood finally the source of the profound sadness he carried. The answer to her long ago question. "Why does your heart sleep alone?" It had not been alone. It had been buried here.
She did not speak. She stepped past him to the grave from a small leather pouch at her belt. She pulled a necklace. It was not a grand thing. It was a single smooth white shell intricately carved with small crossing lines strung on a simple leather thong.
It was one of the few possessions she had kept, a relic from a life he could not imagine. She bent and laid the shell necklace on the mound of stones. Carefully, so it rested just beneath the carved name. She stood and faced him. She put her small, warm hand on his chest.
"She was first," Tyen said, her voice soft. "She was sad. She let me have you now." Daniel looked from the white shell on the dark stones to Tyen's clear, steady eyes. He had expected her to be jealous or confused.
He had not expected this. A simple profound acceptance, a blessing. He felt a weight he had carried for 5 years, a weight of fidelity to a ghost. Suddenly, lift. He pulled her to him, burying his face in her hair.
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.
"A baby," he said, his hand moving, hovering over her stomach. You You are carrying our child. Her eyes widened. Her own hand came up to cover his. She looked down at her belly, still flat beneath a thin night shirt.
A child. Her child. The idea was so foreign, so impossible. She had asked, "Can I try too?" as a child might ask to try a new food. She had not truly understood the consequence.