She started to walk back to the car, then paused, realizing that, once again, she was no longer alone. Her pulse quickened as she turned. The moon was almost gone now, the night much darker than when her car had first broken down. At first she thought it was a huge deer standing behind her. Then she realized it was a man. Or at least the shape of a man, dressed in tunic and trousers of some kind of light-coloured cloth that made his skin appear to be very dark. On his shoulders he wore a headdress of a deer’s head, the tines of his antlers rising up into the starry sky like a smaller version of the elm at her back.

There was just enough light for her to see the glisten of tears on his cheeks.

“That was kindly done,” he said.

When she saw the lips move, she realized it wasn’t a mask, but for some reason that didn’t trouble her.

His voice was soft and warm, husky with emotion. She wondered if her dream had now conjured up the ghostly spirit of the dead animal for whom she’d played her funereal air. It didn’t matter. This was far better than the horrible little bogan men, or the brusque Indian, even if he had rescued her and used his magic to fix her car.

This was like the time that she and Siobhan had gone camping with her grandfather. Pappy always went to bed late, but he was an early riser, too. “Don’t need the sleep like I used to,” he’d say, “and I never needed much then.” The two of them were up and sitting on a log by the lake where the campsite touched the water when they heard a rustle behind them. Turning slowly, they saw a doe and her fawn stepping out across the dew-laden grass.

She’d never seen eyes so warm and deep and brown. Something rose up from deep in her chest, and she’d gripped Pappy’s hand as they sat there for a good fifteen minutes, watching the two creatures feed. And long after they were gone, that feeling stayed inside her, the same deep warmth that she’d seen in the eyes of the deer. Years later, that memory could put her in a dreamy trance that helped wash away hurts or sorrows or simply the feeling that the world was all the same, one day blurring into the next.

This moment was like that, a great wash of awe that didn’t make her feel small, but rather, made her feel connected to everything.

“I . . . thought he needed some kind of a send-off,” she said.

The deer man nodded, antlers dipping.

“Her name was Anwatan—‘calm water’ in your tongue. She was my daughter and I give you the knowledge of her name as a gift for the music you played to send her spirit on its way.”