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touch them.”
    He had the fire going at last and was feeding it with pine needle and bits of dry rot and deadwood. I looked down at him in amazement, wondering if he might not be jesting, and saw that he spoke, as usual, merest truth. Quite at ease, he rose to greet the deer maidens, gave them a grave and courtly bow of welcome, then gazed at them much as I had gazed on the white-misted meadow, with the same sort of love. Certainly not with any will to possess.
    The deer maidens carried rude baskets of willow and were laying out mats of woven willow. On them they placed what looked like the oat cakes Kor’s people called jannock, or perhaps a sort of scone.
    â€œBread!” I exclaimed, all other desires forgotten for the time, and Kor softly laughed at me.
    We sat and ate greedily. The cakes were made of wild seed, I decided after a while, coarsely ground and mixed with honey. Only a starving stomach could have thought them good. That, or the tastes of a bark-stripping deer. There were roots of some sort, also, baking like earthapples near the fire, and a basket of late berries, most of them bitter. I ate them anyway. The viands and Kor’s demeanor had served to cool my cock somewhat, and while I ate whatever one of the lovely damsels laid before me, I made sure I never touched any of them, even so much as to brush finger against finger when they offered me food.
    When dusk had deepened nearly into nighttime, the white hind and her deer maidens left the roots baking in the embers of our fire, gathered up their willow baskets, and left us as silently as they had come. I looked after them with longing and relief quaintly mingled in me. Birc smiled crookedly at me in what might have been sympathy of a sort and slipped away into twilight like the others. Kor and I were left with fireglow and shadows.
    We lay back on our blankets. Somewhere a mallow thrush sang.
    â€œAre you going to be all right?” Kor asked. “Through the night?”
    â€œIf not, I will shout.”
    â€œNot bolt, like a roused stallion?”
    â€œI give you my word, I will bide.” I looked across firelight at him with some annoyance, more wonder. “I cannot believe you do not long for them,” I said.
    â€œHow can I, since I have seen Tassida?”
    I stared. “You are joking,” I said, though I knew better.
    â€œNo jest. I have never wanted to lie with any woman since I have known her. I think I shall never want any except her.”
    The hopelessness of his love, and mine … I felt hollow, aching. “That’s a drawback,” I muttered, “in any case except this.”
    â€œIt is,” he admitted, for his faithfulness was nothing to boast of, to a tribesman’s way of thinking.
    Silence for a while. He shifted his bed so that he lay back against a rounded boulder. Darkness hid our faces, a comforting darkness, letting us speak of secret things.
    â€œDan, I never told you. The nights we stayed with your tribe, a maiden of your people came to me. Karu, they called her.”
    The flower of the Red Hart, she. Tall, straight, and fair, skin like a clear sunrise and her yellow braids hanging below her waist. She had gone to Kor, when to my knowledge she had never gone to any other! I sat up and stared at him.
    â€œYou should feel honored,” I said with more awe than jealousy.
    â€œI felt greatly honored, and I told her so. But I had no heart to lie with her. And I told her that as well, and why.”
    â€œBut why!” I protested, astonished.
    â€œI have just told you! I—”
    â€œBut how can you be so sure? It takes much searching to find a lifelove. Two come together and then, if the bond does not hold, they part to try again with others. How else is one to know but by trying?”
    â€œI know my lifelove,” he declared.
    â€œKor—”
    â€œWere you so willing to hurt and be hurt when Leotie left you?”
    She who had taken my brother Tyee