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Those last two sentences struck me hard. She had gone to the core. And the implications dazzled me.

Always I'd felt that I couldn't be a good human being and fight them. To be good meant to be defeated by them. Unless of course I found a more interesting idea of goodness.

We sat still for a few moments. And there seemed an uncommon intimacy even for us. She was looking at the fire, scratching at her thick hair which was wound into a circle on the back of her head.

"You know what I imagine," she said, looking towards me again. "Not so much the murdering of them as an abandon which disregards them completely. I imagine drinking wine until I'm so drunk I strip off my clothes and bathe in the mountain streams naked. "

I almost laughed. But it was a sublime amusement. I looked up at her, uncertain for a moment that I was hearing her correctly. But she had said these words and she wasn't finished.

"And then I imagine going into the village," she said, "and up into the inn and taking into my bed any men that come there -- crude men, big men, old men, boys. Just lying there and taking them one after another, and feeling some magnificent triumph in it, some absolute release without a thought of what happens to your father or your brothers, whether they are alive or dead. In that moment I am purely myself. I belong to no one. "

I was too shocked and amazed to say anything. But again this was terribly, terribly amusing. When I thought of my father and brothers and the pompous shopkeepers of the village and how they would respond to such a thing, I found it damn near hilarious.

If I didn't laugh aloud it was probably because the image of my mother naked made me think I shouldn't. But I couldn't keep altogether quiet. I laughed a little, and she nodded, half smiling. She raised her eyebrows, as if to say, 'We understand each other'.

Finally I roared laughing. I pounded my knee with my fist and hit my head on the wood of the bed behind me. And she almost laughed herself. Maybe in her own quiet way she was laughing.

Curious moment. Some almost brutal sense of her as a human being quite removed from all that surrounded her. We did understand each other, and all my resentment of her didn't matter too much.

She pulled the pin out of her hair and let it tumble down to her shoulders.

We sat quiet for perhaps an hour after that. No more laughter or talk, just the fire blazing, and her near to me.

She had turned so she could see the fire. Her profile, the delicacy of her nose and lips, were beautiful to look at. Then she looked back at me and in the same steady voice without undue emotion she said:

"I'll never leave here. I am dying now. "

I was stunned. The little shock before was nothing to this.

"I'll live through this spring," she continued, "and possibly the summer as well. But I won't survive another winter. I know. The pain in my lungs is too bad. "

I made some little anguished sound. I think I leaned forward and said, "Mother!"

"Don't say any more," she answered.

I think she hated to be called mother, but I hadn't been able to help it.

"I just wanted to speak it to another soul," she said. "To hear it out loud. I'm perfectly horrified by it. I'm afraid of it. "

I wanted to take her hands, but I knew she'd never allow it. She disliked to be touched. She never put her arms around anyone. And so it was in our glances that we held each other. My eyes filled with tears looking at her.

She patted my hand.

"Don't think on it much," she said. "I don't. Just only now and then. But you must be ready to live on without me when the time comes. That may be harder for you than you realize. "

I tried to say something; I couldn't make the words come.

She left me just as she'd come in, silently.

And though she'd never said anything about my clothes or my beard or how dreadful I looked, she sent the servants in with clean clothes for me, and the razor and warm water, and silently I let myself be taken care of by them.

Chapter 3

3

I began to feel a little stronger. I stopped thinking about what happened with the wolves and I thought about her.

I thought about the words "perfectly horrified," and I didn't know what to make of them except they sounded exactly true. I'd feel that way if I were dying slowly. It would have been better on the mountain with the wolves.