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didn’t think his freckles were so charming. “You’re a princess, are you? Like one of the blond beauties upstairs? Well, pleased to meet you. I’m a knight in shining armor, myself.” He bowed deeply to me, and I pulled a branch toward me and let it fly, smacking him on the head.
    The branch left a red welt on his forehead, and in an instant he was after me. I ran as fast as I could along the darkening path, dodging vines and stumps, laughing and gasping as I fled. I was strong and quick, and Breckin did not catch me until we were nearly back at the lakeshore, where he grabbed my shoulders and spun me around and shook me. The nuts spilled out from my basket.
    â€œYou could’ve taken out my eye!” he said.
    â€œAh, but I missed,” I retorted. “Instead, I’ve just erased a few of your freckles.”
    For a minute I thought he really was angry, but then he burst out laughing, and I realized that I liked this Breckin very much indeed. I put my hand up to the welt on his forehead and touched it gently.
    â€œI am sorry,” I said. “Come into the kitchen and I’ll find some salve to put on it. Cook keeps some for burns, but it works on scrapes and cuts as well.”
    We gathered the nuts as well as we could in the dimlight and made our way over the land bridge and into the kitchen. I managed to dress Breckin’s wound before Cook saw me, and he hurried back to his duties in the stables. But before he left, we agreed to meet again in secret. We would both finish our tasks with all speed the next day, and in the late afternoon, if we could get away, he would take me riding. I was so pleased with this plan that I did not mind Cook’s wrath when she saw that I had collected barely enough nuts for a single tart, much less the five she’d made crusts for, and I smiled to myself as I shelled the nuts and then peeled apple after apple to fill the four remaining crusts.

Chapter 4
I N W HICH I M EET A W ITCH
    N o longer did my life revolve around Sunday nights with my sisters. Now when Monday dawned, I knew I might see Breckin. The weeks sped by, and I spent more and more time outside, though the weather grew cold and ice formed in the shallows of the lake. Breckin taught me to ride a horse, and I was pleased to find that I was very good at it. “Better than your sisters,” he told me, having realized that I’d been telling the truth when I told him I was a princess. He’d heard the whole story from the horse master and thought it was appalling. “You can’t blame a child for its mother’s death!” he protestedabout my father’s treatment of me, but when I just shrugged he left it alone. He was good to talk to, always ready with a jest but able to be quiet, too.
    We walked in companionable silence through the forest one morning. It was a warm day, with the muted sunshine that comes only after the first frost, giving a clarity to the yellowed fields and vivid trees. Our feet scuffed aside brilliant fallen leaves as we searched for signs of truffles under the earth. Father loved them shaved on scrambled eggs, and they only grew at the base of certain oaks, and then only at certain times and under certain conditions. We had once had a pig that could sniff them out, but she got loose one day, dug up and ate every truffle that existed for miles around, and then took herself off to a neighboring kingdom to eat theirs. Only recently had the truffles repopulated, but I was terrible at finding them. We had yet to see if Breckin could do better.
    I had learned much about Breckin during the past weeks. We had shared our likes and dislikes: he did not like eating things that were green, or wearing wool, which made him itch; he loved nuts of all kinds. I told him that I could take nuts or leave them, but chocolate—that was my passion. He admitted that he feared snakes above all things, and I told him of my uncanny fear of rats. I admitted to