Lily comes for the last time

Lily slowed as she reached the edge of the woods. There was a field to cross, and then she would have to slip between the wall and the back of a barn before reaching the garden. This was the hardest part.

She licked the tip of her nose and then trotted anxiously along the edge of the field. The earth had been recently harrowed and lay half-​​hidden beneath a sparkling mist. It was difficult, dangerous going. If a dog came after her as she crossed the field…

She wouldn’t go.

Yes, she would.

She bounded off across the open space as if she were already being pursued.

She leapt lightly now. She had nearly forgotten how fast she could fly without that burden… but this emptiness was like a burden too, this loneliness, and it was this that she was trying to shake off by returning to the garden.

Her fawns had come too early. Her first fawns. One of them had kicked her hind legs a few times, while the other had never even breathed. Lily had licked and licked and licked them for hours, but neither stood.

The other does had not sympathized. It was unwise to have twins the first time. She hadn’t meant to! All their thoughts were turned to their fawns not yet born. No one spared a thought for her – not even her own mother. And the stags would not look to her again until the fall.

It would be a relief to go to the garden, and lay her muzzle in the woman’s hand, and look into the woman’s face. The woman loved her. The woman loved her as her mother had before Lily had grown too big to nurse – but the woman always would love her thus. And sometimes she had corn.

It had been long since she had seen the woman. The woman did not like the garden in the winter, though she still came to see the deer sometimes. But now the garden should be full of the delicious, thick green shoots of the bulbs, and even some of the flowers should be blooming. Perhaps the woman would smile and pretend not to see if she nibbled a few.

She slipped past the barn and came to stand at the far edge of the garden. There was a dark form sitting on the bench. She had come!

Lily bounded forward a few steps and then paused, one hoof raised. She had forgotten to test the air. It might not be the woman, and then – ?

She gently lowered her foot and lifted her nose to await a shift in the breeze.

It was the man. She did not smell the woman, but surely the man would not come alone? He never had. And the man smell was so much stronger than the woman smell… perhaps she was simply too far away.

Lily walked delicately up to the far edge of the pond and flicked her ears. He had seen her now and watched her. The woman was definitely not there.

She bent her head and drank to give herself a moment to think. The man was a hunter, or had been. Without the woman, would she be safe?

She lifted her head and started. He was speaking to her. His voice was soft and sad. He wouldn’t understand about the fawns, but mightn’t he understand about… something?

She walked slowly around the pond, one leg after another, always keeping enough contact with the ground to allow her to spring away at the least sign of danger.

He was talking to her. He kept repeating the same phrase, she thought, like a bird. But he wasn’t trying to soothe her – only trying to make her sad.

She came closer and reached out her long neck to sniff at him, trying to find the scent of the woman on his clothes, as hers had always borne his. It was not there. Was this what he was trying to tell her?

She looked up into his face. He shook his head.

And then he grew angry. He leapt up off the bench and roared at her, waving his arms.

She was gone at once. She would tell the others. The woman was no longer, and the man was a hunter.