Page 29 of She, Wolf, Him.

And the thought comes up in me as it has before, unbidden and unwelcome. She is too often here. At too many of these. The dead pass through her hands as though the valley appointed her to them. The creature that's emptied four homes has crossed this parish night after night and left her unmarked, so far as any man can see, and she kneels in the middle of all of it with no more fear in her than a woman has at her wash.

Lucky, I tell myself. Some are. Or not lucky, only placed by hard living where the rest of them won't stand. She's near the dead because she's the one with the stomach for the work, and the work keeps finding her because there's no one else in this valley fool enough or strong enough to do it.

I make myself believe that for as long as it takes to think it, which isn't very long. I turn and go before standing there too long lets any of it show on my face.

I clean the mud off my boots at my lodging. The drover's dead and I've nothing to show for it. The priest is out there selling devils. I don't believe in devils. But a hunter who can't name what he's hunting is a hunter who's lost, and I have never been lost on ground I've walked twice. I am now.

16

TWO WHO WON'T PERFORM

AGNÈS

She did not weep. She did not cry out. This was remarked upon by those who watched her at the grave.

— PARISH BURIAL RECORD, LOZÈRE, 1761

He finds me at the well at dusk, when the light's gone grey and the rest of the village has shut itself in early against a fear that's had a fresh body to feed on since yesterday.

I've come out late on purpose, as I do now, because the well at dusk is one of the few corners of my life where no one's by to see how I bear it. I've the bucket up and brimming, my fingers cold on the iron, when his step gives him away. He doesn't walk like a village man. He moves slow and sure, with a care for where his weight goes, as though the ground might be asked to account for him later.

He stops a good way off. Not cornering me. He's learned, in his weeks here, how close a man may stand to a woman alone at dusk without it becoming talk by morning, and he stands a hand's breadth back of that line. The courtesy of it reaches me before anything he says.

"The drover," he says. "Jean. Did you know him?"

"No. He was nobody's, here. Passing through." I set the bucket on the lip of the well. "I'd not have laid him out so careful if I'd known him. It's easier with strangers."

The true answer comes before the seemly one. It's been happening since the night he rode in.

He takes it without a flicker. "Easier how."

"You don't owe a stranger the grief. You can just do the work." I hear how it sounds and don't soften it. "Everyone here wants me to weep for the men it takes, and I've washed too many of them to have weeping left. The priest marks it. The women mark it. You'll have heard."

"I've heard." His eyes rest on me, the last of the light caught in them, and there's none of the village's wary measuring in the look, only a plain attention, as though I'm worth the trouble of seeing clear. "You don't seem frightened."

There it is, what they all circle. From Reynaud it's an accusation. From the women it's a fear they catch off each other like a chill. From him it's only a question, asked level, and so I answer it level, with a piece of the truth I've never handed anyone.

"I've been frightened my whole life," I tell him. "Of one thing and another. Of going hungry, of the men who decide my days, of a hundred small fears that had nothing to do with any beast. You can only carry so much of it before it stops weighing what it should. By the time the Beast came, I'd no room left in me to be afraid of it." I lift the bucket.

"And the Beast itself," he says. "It doesn't frighten you at all."

"It does. I've washed its work. It's only that I've known worse fears, nearer home."

He's quiet a moment. Then, "That's the truest word I've had since I crossed your valley."

To be believed should cost nothing, and it unsteadies me. There's a danger in it I feel even as it warms me. I've made certain I need no one. Needing is a door you can't bar from your own side, and I've enough of those already.

So I say nothing. The quiet between us shifts and settles into a recognition neither of us will name.

He reaches for the bucket. "Let me."

I should say no. A woman lets a man carry her water and the village builds a wedding on it, or worse, this season. But my fingers are cold, my arms are tired, and under those true small reasons there's a truer one I won't face, which is that I'm not ready for him to go yet. So I let the handle pass from me to him. In the passing his fingers cross mine, rough and warm against the cold of them, and the touch goes through me like the first swallow of brandy on an empty stomach. Neither of us looks down at it. Neither of us moves back. He has the bucket. I have the place on my skin where his fingers were.

We walk up toward my door with the bucket between us and a careful foot of dark air held open at his choosing.

He asks me questions as we go. "You've always been here," he says. "Never been past these hills."

"Three leagues past the well," I say. "Once. There's nothing out there but more of this."