martha, my doe-wife

by Shrutidhora P Mohor

Before the end of the first year at our new home, I realized my wife has become a deer.

Everyone had said, get a home overlooking the forest. It’s going to be cool, green, breezy.

I asked Martha if she would like a home away from the town centre. Away from the din of the marketplace. No buyers, no sellers, no traders, no shutters pulled down or rolled up, no chimney smoke, nor the clank of metal, the creaking of wheels, the ignition of machines. She watched me for a whole minute, chewing on something that I hadn’t seen her picking up from the table, and then came close to me to snuggle her head into my chest.

We shall never be short of food and water, she said after some consideration. Clean air too, she added.

I knew that was a yes from her. It seemed to be a strange way of saying yes, but then, Martha has always been unique.

Martha and I took a home accordingly.

Even at the height of summer, the days were cool, breezy, touched by the abundance of verdant nature. The nights were quiet and dark, with the breeze looping through the branches of huge trees, cascading on the lake by the side, cutting through the courtyard in front with a swishy-wishy hoopie-swoopy sound, half-waking me up from time to time in the comfort of known surroundings. It was pleasantly eerie, making me shiver in pleasurable chill. I pulled the quilt over my neck and resumed my sleep soon enough. Sometimes, I saw Martha’s side of the bed empty. Once or twice, I got up to find her on the terrace, looking dreamily out at the adjacent forest. There were dewdrops on her head and shoulders, and her skin looked slippery. I moved close to her and put my hands around her shoulder. My fingers turned moist as they touched the dewdrops. She had a strange smell on her face and mouth. I thought I should be able to identify the smell, an earthy, organic kind of scent, but couldn’t exactly place it.

When I asked her why she was sleepless, she said that she had been sleeping until she saw a fawn enter our home. Its white spots were like little stars, faint, at a distance, their outlines slightly uneven.

I frowned, trying to decide if I should trust her words.

“Martha!” I exclaimed softly, as one does in half-belief.

She nodded in affirmation.

“The young one called out to me. It looked lost, scared. I had to get up to make it warm. I had to.” Her voice pleaded with me.

“Martha!” I repeated in the same tone and volume.

“Hm hm, I cuddled it to sleep, rocking it on my chest. It fell asleep. Like my baby.” She added the last few words without any conscious thought. Only her pupils gleamed with hope and sorrow. I pulled her closer, burying my nose in her hair. A twig and some loose, damp soil stuck to my face. Slightly disturbed, I moved back.

Months passed. The monsoons arrived. The forest turned into a formidable deep, dark, blackish green. Lush undergrowth leaped in height by the day, appearing as elephant grass. Branches of gigantic trees crossed their limbs overhead, creating a mesh of an impenetrable, leafy, hanging carpet. I shut the windows facing the forest fearing the darkness to intrude into our beautiful, airy home. I could sense that Martha wasn’t too happy with my housekeeping decision but neither of us said anything.

I also began noticing that with time it became clearer that she looked over her shoulders every now and then, her eyes nervous and scared. She’s timid like a doe, noiseless in her movements, her sudden swerves like yellow electric currents, flashing across the rooms, her shadow now on this wall, in the next instant on the back door, sometimes stunted and crooked on the lower part of a wardrobe, then again, elongated, or sometimes bulging, depending on the source of light, up on the ceiling, like an apparition. She was swift and strong, yet shy and silent. I watched her intently as she sprang from one room to another and often leapt through the backyard and onto the stairs.   

Sometimes I noticed her standing on her hind legs, her arms hanging in the air as she raised her mouth to grab a cheese bun from the top kitchen shelf. Her body was well-shaped and smooth, her coat a polished brown, her ears sensitive and perked, and whenever she thought she heard me behind her, she pranced up, looked back and with a bit of the bun stuck between her teeth, she seemed ready to scamper away to a safe hideout. I called her, softly at first and then loudly, “Martha! My doe-wife! Run not! It’s me, your hubby!” She vanished behind walls and all I could spot was her moving shadow, swinging like a quick pendulum on a pile of dry leaves.

Every day, for a few hours, I knew she retreated to the forest, enjoying her solitude. Later when one day, Martha told me she has got a lover in the woods, I realized that the forest gave her companionship too, no doubt better than mine.

“A handsome one. With a set of handsome antlers on his head. Exceptionally eye-catching arrangement,” she insisted.

I ran my hand over my flat head in frustration.

However, she assured me that she had little interest in him except for the stories that he had to share with her when they met.

I wondered if I should be jealous.

I wanted to forbid her from seeing him.

She noticed the disapproval on my face and proceeded to let me know that she met him only on full moon nights.

“Why so?” I wanted to know, a little irritated by then.

“Because, it’s under a moonlit sky that he teaches me how to undertake the migratory run.”

“What migration?” I sounded alarmed.

“The great migration.”

“What’s great about it?” I snapped.

She smiled like an indulgent mother. “Almost everyone living in the forest travels. They move to the south. It’s warm, it’s bountiful, it’s pleasant.” She paused and then thoughtfully added, “I too shall this winter. We shall all migrate for a couple of months. Down south, there is food and water for everyone.”

I stared at her, not knowing what to say.

“Don’t look so worried, hubby, I shall be back. I shall be back before you realise. Before the northern hemisphere fully breaks out of its chill, before the days start turning golden, before you begin to miss me and my warm coat, I shall be back. Promise!” Her little tail bounced in anticipatory joy, or so it seemed to me.

I sat speechless, my lips half-open as I sulked and sank into despondency.

Looking at me, she said, “Oh hubby! You don’t know the ways of the forest!”

“I don’t need to! I don’t care!”

“Shhh! Don’t say that! The forest is our sustenance. Don’t belittle it. Aah! Please, for my sake!”

I looked away, my eyes steaming with an uncertain pain and fear.

After minutes, I gathered my senses to argue. “But you had said there is food and water here aplenty before we moved in. Then?”

“Nature, hubby. Nature’s own cycles. Winters are hard. We can’t risk scarcity, can we? I’ll be back here when this place fills up again. Nothing is permanent in nature, isn’t it?”

Drawing a deep, angry, helpless breath, I whispered, “And why do you have to go with him, be with him? What stories does he tell you?”

“Aah, hubby! Life-saving stories. You can’t hope to return safely unless you know the route, know the threats, know your predators, their strengths and weaknesses, your shelters, your opportunities. It’s a lesson to learn, hubby. I have to learn these things.”

“Is there no one else to teach you?”

“None as deft as him. He is an experienced one. Several expeditions to his credit. His antlers, those stunningly seductive ones, do the trick for him. They are like his antenna. They sense dangers and save him.”

I banged my fist on the wall.

As the heat of the sun waned and the days shortened, Martha took leave.

“Won’t you kiss me goodbye?”

Pushing back my tears, I mumbled, “I would rather save that for a ‘welcome back’.”

She left without any ado.

A couple of months later, I began observing how the landscape changed here. The grass grew in fresh green tufts over arid, broken land, tiny buds appeared on the moist edges of branches, slim layers of moss crept to life on tree trunks. I sat studying earthworms crawl up light brown barks, well camouflaged in their self-built design.

I waited impatiently for Martha to return.

One day she did.

I hugged her and asked her how the expedition had been.

“Full of risks, plenty of dangers!” She admitted with a smile. Her coat was polished clean, her little white tail dust-less.

I hugged her again and then stepped back. My eyebrows curved in discomfort. I looked over her head behind her, at first close, then a little farther. At last I asked unwillingly, “And, he?”

“Who?”

I scratched my ears and said in a bottled up voice, “Your lover.”

She shrugged.

Astonished, I stared at her, unable to say a word. Blinking after some seconds, I asked again, “But didn’t you go with him? You said you wanted to experience the great migration wave, the journey, the thrill, his stories of reckless courage, how he escaped predators and hunters. What happened to him?” In a whisper, I inquired, “Did he decide not to return?” I so wanted her to confirm my hunch. I so very badly wished that was the case.

Martha shifted her hooves with a soft clacking sound on the floor. Then, taking time to tweak her ears, she said, “He probably didn’t even reach the destination. I don’t think he made it till the end.”

An oversized octopus swam down my throat to my chest and back to my throat again. “Why?” That’s all that I could manage to voice although a million words jostled inside my throat.

Martha now looked tired. “Can I go inside and rest for a while?”

“Of course!” I made way for her, embarrassed and overwhelmed.

As she was settling down for a nap on her warm bed, Martha looked shyly at me a few times. I asked her if she wanted to say something.

“Nothing much. Remember his antlers? The strong, well-arranged bouquet of branches on his head which I found so handsome?”

“What about them?” I almost fell over in suspense.

“Nothing much. While we were all on that expedition, crossing hundreds of miles each day, scared, hungry, sick, someone informed me that he needed help.”

“Help? Why? What kind of help? Did you help him? What help?” I practised no patience.

Martha raised her palm to calm me down. “When I saw him last, he was stranded amidst a dense high stretch of shrubbery, his antlers locked for good in the grid of stems and branches overhead. No one saw any more of him. This must have become his last migration. Poor thing!”

Martha stocked up our kitchen well in the next few days and assured me that until the onset of next winter, we would have no reason to worry.

Photo of Shrutidhora P Mohor

BIO: Shrutidhora P Mohor (born 1979) is an author from India writing literary fiction. She has been listed in several competitions like Bristol Short Story Prize, the Bath Flash Fiction Award, the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, the Retreat West monthly micro competitions and the quarterly competitions, the Retreat West Annual Prize for short story, the Reflex Fiction competition, Flash 500. Her writings have been published by several literary magazines and been nominated for Best Micro fictions 2023 and the Pushcart Prize 2024. Her latest book of short stories has been published by Alien Buddha Press (February 2025). Mohor (she/ her) is the pen name for Prothoma Rai Chaudhuri, MA Ph D, Faculty, Department of Political Science, St Xavier’s College, Calcutta, India.