“No, you didn’t say it out loud, but you were staring. And that is what it looks like, I guess. Plus we’re in the woods, you find them lying around sometimes. An antler, right? Deductive reasoning.” He holds the thing up and briefly shines the light on it.

Whatever it is—not an antler—it’s long and curved and white.

Maeve thinks: Oh no.

It’s a spear. He’s one of those forest guys. Like some kind of medievalist who runs around in the woods pretending to be Robin Hood.

A trickle of sweat runs down her back, and she shifts, uncomfortable. Wondering how she herself must look after her long day. She spent the first hour pacing and staring at herself in the studio mirrors—Work, damn you! You can’t waste a whole day!—then tentative starts, falling again and again into old traps. Small gestures, the compact sequences that can ghettoize women’s work. One eye on the mirror, Iain’s voice in her ear: You have no aggression! You could never direct, Maeve. All you can do is what you’re told.

She gave up, hauled a mat out of the closet, lay down flat, and went to sleep, exhausted by her own anxiety. When she woke, she thought of nothing at all, just stripped down to her underwear and went through a Lester Horton class by memory and on from there, hours of it, worked herself till her hair was slick against her face and the back of her neck. Worked herself better, sore and down to the bone.

She’s tired and dirty and standing in the woods without her coat, and now there’s a guessing game. “It’s bone,” she says. “Your whatever you have there. Made of bone, yes? What is it? A spear or something?” She stops short, catching herself, a hint of impatience in her voice shining through. “Sorry, it’s just—”

“Don’t apologize.” He nods and drops the light so that they can really see each other. “I’ve interrupted you, that’s irritating.”

That smile again; the more she pushes back, the more he likes her. “It’s a rib,” he says. “So not made of bone. Bone! Just a piece of the rib, the very smallest one. The smallest piece of the smallest rib of a great blue whale. It’s what I’m building with: a whale skeleton. These mountains used to be under the ocean, too, you know. That’s why I’m out here. Looking for a piece of antler the same shape, to match.” The bone flips playfully in his hand, and he gestures to the forest all around them. “Everything,” he says, “is in our service.”

He aims the light ahead for her, and the pathway reveals itself. “You’re the dancer. Is that right?”

“You’re Sim,” she says.