My arms shook and I pressed them to my sides. I flickered back to the moment in the woods, Dice telling me I’d tripped into a quarry and could avoid pain by falling apart. “I’m sorry,” I said.

He smiled down at me, his bristly hair sparkling. Branches clanged against the Dumpster, the sky was winter calico, and I felt hopeful, briefly, that my mother would understand. I wanted to tell her there was no definite self—maybe she would understand, since she collected objects like they were her memory, the same way a spider uses its nest as part of its brain.

As we drove from the lot I saw kids selling pink cardboard boxes of candy. It was, unbelievably, Valentine’s Day. “Hey, mister,” one called to Bay as we headed out. “Something sweet for your girl?”

Bay said, “Love every day of the year, I say.” He bought a box. He handed it to me, but I could not open it.

I sank down in my seat, nausea crashing over me. I couldn’t open my eyes till we were halfway back up the mountain, back in the real world.

spring

CHAPTER 9

One of the last lambs of the season got stuck on the way out and died. This was in early March, when Bay was still gone, finding new family. The ewe screamed and screamed. Queen found me in the hayloft before dawn. She shook me awake and told me to get a bread knife from the kitchen.

The baby had emerged headfirst, not hooves-first, with blood-soaked wool. We couldn’t pull it out.

Queen cut off the lamb’s head with the bread knife and then pushed the body back inside so that she could angle its feet out and pull it away. My job was to hold the ewe’s head. I couldn’t let her see the dead baby. This time was easier than when Dice had asked me to slaughter a lamb the previous month. Maybe I was more open now. Queen took the two pieces of lamb outside and flung them to the dogs. We brought the ewe to the mothers’ enclosure, since she had milk now. “The others will be good to her,” Queen said. “Sheep mourn their dead friends.” I remembered the lamb Dice had killed and wondered if her friends missed her.

She went to the cellar and skimmed two ladlefuls of cow’s cream into a pot, which she heated on an ice-blue flame. I made a fire in the pit back behind the storage building and hauled some chairs from the kitchen outside.