When I saw the deer, I cursed the fate that had made my father withhold my weapons from me. He was not a large animal; probably he was a yearling. I looked away from him, recalling that Dewara had told me that any prey could feel the stare of a hunter’s eyes. I mouthed my new words silently. “I need food for my journey to the territory of the Specks.”

There was a rock in my sling, smooth and hefty. It would easily have stunned a rabbit or a bird. It would not kill a deer. When I moved my arm to wind up momentum for the sling, the deer would startle and be gone. I knew there was no magic in me, no magic anywhere. I was merely a fat man, my body the freakishly rare result of my exposure to Speck plague.

My heart thundered in my chest as I let the stone fly.

It hit the young buck just above his left eye. I heard the crack of stone against bone. The animal started, and a tremor ran through him. He took two steps. His front legs folded under him as if he were going to bed down for the night. He sank down. With a heavier crash, his hind legs teetered under him and he fell. His entire body gave a jerk.

I did not wait. I rushed forward, running down the hill at him, drawing my sheath knife as I ran. I turned one ankle slightly, hit a sapling with my shoulder, and plunged on. When I finally reached him, he was trying to get up. I fell on him. Using every bit of my strength, I punched my knife into his throat just behind the curve of his jawbone. He gave a wild leap and an inhuman cry of pain. I threw my weight on him then, and held him down as I sawed with my knife, groping for some vital artery. He tossed his head wildly, crashing his skull into mine. I shouted wordlessly and worked the knife in him. A leap of bright red blood rewarded me. Still, his hind legs kicked and it was some moments before he subsided into death.

Panting, I rolled off him, feeling shaken and bruised. For a time, I lay on my back next to the dead yearling, staring up at a blue sky through yellow leaves. I tried to decide if I’d been lucky, or if magic had prevailed. I decided that as long as it came down to having meat, I didn’t care.

Dragging the dead deer through the forest was a trial that I shall never forget. It would have been a task even if I’d been my old fit self. It had no antlers to drag it by, only nubby spikes. I tried hauling it by the hind feet, but the grain of its hair created more drag than I would have thought possible. I ended up gripping the front feet and dragging it that way, with the head flopping about and snagging on every imaginable obstacle. As soon as I had it to the edge of the stump field, I left it and went back to the door of Amzil’s house. “I’ve killed a deer,” I said to the closed door. “If you help me butcher it, I’ll leave you a goodly share. But some I’ve got to take with me, to travel on.” “A deer?” The door all but flew open. “How did you kill a deer?”