Neither he nor his dog go hunting with her. She goes out to see what she can find for the pot. She takes the hunter’s gun. There is only the one bullet, a precious gift not to be wasted on a rabbit. The knowledge of it gives her a sense of power; if anyone comes for her she at least is armed and has one chance to protect herself.

‘If you catch many more birds, you might fly away on borrowed feathers,’ he says.

Edith has finished the skirt and jacket she’s made from her wedding dress and other pieces of fabric she found in the chest. She’s embroidered them with red flowers.

Edith eats a pheasant she has trapped, cooked in plum wine and snowmelt with mushrooms and barley. He watches as he always does.

‘Why weren’t you wearing your boots when Misha found you?’ she asks.

He thinks for a moment. ‘It seems so unimportant. I was washing my feet in a stream. I saw a butterfly, and I wondered who made this world with its mountains, its valleys, and also thought to make something as delicate as the butterfly.’

‘Didn’t you hear the footsteps behind you?’

‘Don’t be sad,’ he said. ‘That’s the difference between us. I neither care nor have any interest in who pulled the trigger. I’m dead.’ He touches her face and asks, ‘Do you know what makes snow?’

‘Rain,’ she says.

‘Rain and particles of dust. Without the dust there would be nothing for the snowflake to form itself round. Each one different, gentle, soft. The dust of me will always be there in the snow.’ He looks out of the cabin window. ‘The moon is full. If I play will you dance for me?’

She stands and puts on her fur hat with its antlers and feather. In the silvery pool of moonlight, she begins to move, her hands held across her chest. The music starts slowly. She is conscious of him watching her. Eyes closed, she opens her arms and whirls round and round. She takes off her jacket but the music asks for more. Layer by layer her clothes come off until she is naked apart from her hat and her boots. Only then does the dance become hers. She dances for her lover’s wound, she dances for the life he didn’t own, she dances for the passion that’s in her. She is reborn into her skin and begins to understand this cloth of flesh pulled tight over muscle and bone and the pleasure it gives her to dance naked for herself, for her lover.