His hands shook as he lowered the knife; he looked sad, but more than that, he looked angry. He almost vibrated with intensity, and all my instincts were to soothe him. To distract him from this. But I did not know how to calm him, whether I should calm him at all.

Then the knife went in. It was as though that thing I saw sometimes beneath Victor’s surface, struggling to get out, had been released with the first cut. He sighed, and his hands steadied. He no longer looked afraid, or angry, or sad. He looked focused.

He did not stop. I did not stop him.

Red leaves. Red knife. Red hands.

But white dresses, always.

The deer stopped keening. It did not die as Victor tugged the knife through the skin over its stomach. I had imagined it parting like the crust of a loaf of bread, but it was tough, resistant. The sound of tearing made me sick. I turned away as Victor strained to make progress with blood coating his hands and making the knife slippery.

“It will be harder,” he said, breathing heavily with exertion, “to get through the ribs before the heart stops beating. Run to the house and get a bigger knife. Hurry!”

I ran. I did not beat the failure of the heart. Frustration and disappointment twisted Victor’s face as I held out the long, serrated knife the cook would be blamed for losing.

He accepted the knife and got to work on the now-still rib cage. I turned away again, keeping my eyes on the scarlet leaves trembling above us. A single leaf fell, and I marked its lazy path down until it landed in the darker crimson pooled at my feet.

I saw nothing. I heard everything. Knife ripping skin. Blade against bone. All the delicate viscera that support life spilling like slop onto the forest floor.

Victor learned about the paths blood takes in a living creature, and I learned the best ways for cleaning that blood from hands and clothes so that his parents would never know the course of our new studies.

When I crept into Victor’s room that night, I found him drawing the deer still alive, but flayed so that all the parts he had seen inside were showing. He shifted to let me into the bed. I could not get the deer’s noise out of my head. Victor actually fell asleep before I did for once, his face at peace.

That winter was long and cold. Banks of snow as high as the first-story windows sealed us in, away from the world. And while his parents did whatever it was they did when they were not with us—we were utterly uncurious about them—we played games only a child like Victor could design. He had been inspired by the deer. And so we played.