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in order to grow, but what do I know?”
    She ignores the basket I offer her and suddenly drops her eyes to the line of red growing beneath my sleeve.
    You’re bleeding.”
    “Look at that, I suppose I am. Thorns are sharper than they look, aren’t they?” I pluck a few thorns from my torn sleeve, flicking them to the ground.
    “Let me help you with that.” Before I can object, she is pushing my coat sleeve up and rolling my cuff away from my wrist, exposing my forearm, which is indeed sliced and trickling with blood.
    “It looks to be clean,” she assesses softly, then leaves my arm to scoop something green from the ground, then presses it lightly to my skin.
    “Is that…sanitary?”
    “It’s quite safe,” she replies. “It’s called Sphagnum Moss. It will stop the bleeding and prevent infection.”
    Her hand is warm and gentle as it holds my arm still, and I can’t help watching her closely, noting how softly her dark hair coils at the nape of her neck, how smooth her cheek appears.
    “So something good comes from this forest after all?”
    I don’t receive a spoken answer, just a hesitant nod accompanied by a slight blush. For all the forest is associated with, I wonder if I’ve assumed incorrectly, and then, I take a quick glance behind me and see how the darkness creeps along the edge of the tree line, deepening as far as I can see. I am not quite ready to say it doesn’t make me uneasy.
    “Forgive me,” I whisper, hoping she isn’t regretting helping me. “My name is Laurentz, or rather, should I say today I am a bumbling idiot. I know nothing of…Stagnant Moss.”
    She laughs at my terrible pronunciation. “Sphagnum Moss,” she corrects me. In an instant, the mood is light again, and I am mesmerized by her agile touch as she treats the cuts on my arm.
    My name doesn’t seem to register with her, which is fine by me. I’d much rather learn more about her than blurt out the fact that I’m the son of the Electorate of Eltz.
    “Rune,” she answers back after a few seconds, and continues to press the strange spongy moss into my cut.
    “Rune…” I repeat her name, letting it roll on my tongue, feeling how unusual it sounds. My arm feels oddly warm all of a sudden, and just as I am about to ask if I could be reacting to the moss, Rune lifts the green bandage. My skin sticks to it for a moment, then releases. She pulls the moss away.
    “Good as new,” Rune says in a quiet, nervous voice.
    I hold my arm out in front of me, and turn it over then back again. There is no blood. There is no sign that my arm has been cut in the first place, save for the garnet stain on my sleeve.
    “How…?”
    A peculiar look blooms across her face that tells me I’m on the brink of asking too much. She takes the empty basket and steps away from me. But I cannot let it go, and am about to ask again when her face pales. She looks frantically toward the village instead of answering me. My horse stamps her hoof, suddenly agitated. A breeze stirs on the village side of the hedge, then cuts through the middle of it, disappearing into the trees. I am left staring after it as if I’ve just witnessed something that has a mind of its own; then, I look down at my arm again and touch it with my finger. It is hot, but not feverish or alarming, and my skin is smooth, as if the thorns never cut me.
    A whisper of white snagged on a thin branch within the green border distracts me, and I pluck it away between my fingers. It is crumpled, but still delicate, and although the handkerchief briefly reminds me of the one the bishop carried earlier in the chapel, I suspect it might belong to Rune.
    “Is this yours?” I ask as I turn to her, but she is gone, and I am left with the shadows between the trees.

Chapter 6
Rune
    M y side hurts from running, and I press my hand to my ribs once I am safely hidden behind the tree. I peer around the thick branches to see if he’s watched me run away, but he is far from sight. I’ve never