Chapter 55

At length he spoke again. “I have been thinking on this. Our life is good together. If this is so, why must we change it?”

Hope flared and died. “Because you are not with the People. You are of them, but apart. Your nights are spent at the Mead with me. You have no family to aid in understanding their needs. You have no wife to interact with the women of the band and draw them to you.”

He lifted his head slightly and smiled. “The women respect you.”

“Maybe so, but they do not discuss pregnancies or the prowess of their husbands or the flow of their menses with me.” I sighed so deeply, his torso shifted with my breath. “You must live among them.”

“And you won’t leave the Mead.” He stated a truth.

We were silent, each taking solace and strength from the other until we fell asleep in a hollow twenty yards from the wagon.