I felt my way down the doe. There was absolutely not a secret invisible saddle. I turned and pinned Dain with my rattled stare. All he did was lace his fingers behind his head and raise one eyebrow again.

"There's no such thing as an anti-wig," I said, and patted the doe's side. "There is no saddle here. I am putting my hand through air where there should be a saddle."

"Don't be obtuse," he said, starting to sound annoyed. "You saw me without tails, wing-arms, horns, or spines. I can make myself look like a man; are you truly so astonished that I can hide a saddle for a few hours?"

I made a pained sound and let the doe go graze, not answering Dain. I didn't know what to say, and it wasn't worth the battle.

Instead, I walked away from the glamored deer and towards the outcropping, looking at the stone. It reminded me of some of the climbing on the East Coast, pale stone with nice handholds and horizontal cracks. I put one hand in the stone, half-expecting terror to flood me. Instead I remembered days spent out in the sun, climbing anywhere there were things to climb. I'd met James at a crag, both of us third wheels for climbing buddies who were dating. Luck had us both hundreds of miles from our homes, which happened to be only forty minutes apart, and the rest had been history.

Mourn in my own way, I thought, closing my eyes and smiling a little, remembering. Kamharida had told me that our loved ones would want us to keep living, and she was right. James would have wanted me to keep climbing, to enjoy the sunlight and the wilderness. He would have smiled to hear me laughing, that goofy lopsided smile I had loved so much.

Maybe one day I would be able to go back to Yosemite, to look at those ancient granite mountains, and remember with a wistful smile instead of tears. Dying, I'd thought I could lose myself in Yosemite, and let my atoms become part of the wilderness. It was true for him, too. One day, maybe I could go back, put my hand on a granite wall, and look up at the circling ravens, knowing that they carried the memory of love with them. His ghost could climb those cliffs forever, and his body had become part of Yosemite. If I put my hand on that stone again, I knew I'd be climbing alongside him.