“Thank you,” she said, not quite sure what else to say. She’d always been bad at condolences. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

His sigh of response held a world of sorrow and hurt.

“A father should not outlive his child,” he said.

“I can’t imagine what that must feel like.”

He dipped his antlers again. “I hope you never do. It . . . there’s an emptiness in me where she once was, and moment by moment it seems to only become larger.” His gaze found hers. “Sharing the gift of her true name with another helps only a little.”

That made Lizzie think of her rescuer.

You don’t need my name.

“Is there something special about names?” she asked.

She saw a quick flash of teeth—a smile, she realized, but it never reached his eyes. It was the smile that you saw at a funeral, when everyone’s trying to be normal, but you know it never will be. Or won’t for a very, very long time.

“Names are everything,” he said. “If you know the full, true name of a thing, it is at your mercy.”

“So it’s rude to ask someone their name.”

That got her another attempt at a smile. “It depends on who’s asking and why. If it’s someone who doesn’t know better . . .”

He shrugged.

“So that’s why he wouldn’t tell me his name,” she said.

She was speaking more to herself, but the deer man lifted his head, his nostrils working.

“I see,” he said. “There were others here—aganesha and a cousin of mine.”

“I guess I mean the cousin. Was he another deer man? He didn’t have antlers.”

The deer man shook his head. “He’d look strange with them, a bird with antlers.”

“A bird . . . ?”

“He’s corbae. My people are cerva. We’re cousins, but not close.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They’re just tribes,” he said. “His people usually sleep through the moon’s rise and set. Mine wander under her stillness because her light feeds our spirits, as food does our bodies. But we’re still cousins. If you need a speaking name for him, he’s been known to answer to Whiskey Grey—or just Grey.”

Lizzie smiled. “You make him sound like a bootlegger.”

“Well, I’ve heard that old jay does like his drink. He has his own sorrows, they say. Old ones. I don’t know the details.”

Neither spoke for a moment. Lizzie looked past the deer man for a moment to see the last part of the moon slip under the horizon.

“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” she said.

“No. This is Kakagi-aki—your world. The dreamlands lie on the other side of the between.”

“It still feels like dreaming.”

The deer man nodded. “Perhaps it’s better if you see it that way.”