“No,” I said. “Here we don’t have possessions.” I felt him breathing. “I don’t know if you heard,” I said, “but you can stay three days or the rest of your life.”

We sat there for a long time. The hayloft was as full as it would ever be. I remembered the snow blowing in the long house while we sang last winter. How frightening nature was, in the end. How the melt uncovers what you buried. How the stream finds the bones and carries them out to the light.

CHAPTER 21

The light changed to afternoon’s gold, and we came to our senses—better not to linger. I told Isaac to leave his camera in the hayloft, but I brought the piglet flashlight with me. “I think Osha should be the one showing you around,” I said. We looked for her in the stables and the storage house. Isaac quickly tired of the search. “What’s the matter?” he said. “Aren’t you allowed to do what you want?” He tilted his head at me, taunting. He knew there were rules. What he didn’t know, as I did now, were the consequences.

Instead, I said: “Of course I can.” So we made ourselves livermush sandwiches. We turned the cheeses in the cellar, and then we peeled carrots and snapped beans in the kitchen. Osha came in with a basket of mushrooms and didn’t try to separate us. She sent us to find the sheep. As I strode through the meadows, the sun combed by the dying grass, I turned back and saw him with his camera up to his face.

“You have to hide that camera,” I said.

“Just pretend you didn’t see it,” he said. He stooped and photographed me through the grass. I tried to be mad, but I loved being Isaac’s model, being seen by him. I felt something unfamiliar and I knew it was the simple form of happiness. Unlike with Dice and Bay, I knew just the right way to please him. We walked on through the evening, which was crazed with saturated light. Love! Love! Love! I couldn’t let Isaac take me away from all this. And especially now, as I was trying to gain back their trust. But I also cared what Isaac thought of me, of us, of Dice. I was not in the habit of splitting myself in two. I’d devoted all my time to oneness.

So I tried to show Isaac what I loved about the place. I told Isaac about sheep. I told him how one of the sheep got killed by a copperhead, and the others missed her. I thought of Queen and Pear. “They know grief,” I said. Isaac nodded politely at the story, like a foreigner who doesn’t understand the language. We came up over the ridge and found the flock basking in the sun.