‘It’s an apology for prying.’ I poured a cup of tea and placed it before her. ‘I am sorry.’
‘I am sorry, too. I should not have been short with you.’ The Witch took an obliging sip of tea, but she looked as uneasy as I felt.
After a moment, she said, ‘Take me on a walk.’
It was not that I misunderstood her request, but the phrasing of it caused my mouth to quirk in amusement. Totake her for a walkas though she was a small lap dog that needed airing.
She saw my amusement, and scowled. ‘Youliketo walk in the forest, do you not? Or are you an idiot that gets trapped in the snow only because you are too stupid to know to stay at home?’
‘Yes, I like to walk.’
‘So take me. I want to see why it interests you. Like your rocks, it is baffling to me and I do not like there to be things I do not understand.’
‘Very well.’
We picked a bright, cold day with little wind and packed a picnic provided by Wolf into knapsacks; I laced myself carefully into my walking boots. The sun was strong and the sky a vivid lapis lazuli from mountaintop to mountaintop. Nothing like the snow before; we would be safe.
Still, apprehension prickled along my spine as we set off, tracking east along a low path between broad, soft-boughed beech trees that followed the course of the river. Now I understood what I felt for the Witch, I was acutely aware of her body, how far she stood from me, the warmth of her arm brushed too close, the curve of breast or hip beneath the fabric of whatever black dress she wore that day. It was maddening. I wanted something more from her, but I could hardly let myself dare think of it. It wasn’t what women wanted from each other, at least as far as I had ever been told, but then again it wasn’t something I had been told women wanted atall.
I found myself advancing through the forest so quickly the Witch pulled me to slow down.
‘You run this walk like a race, determined to leave me in last place,’ she growled. ‘Is that it?’
‘It’s not a race.’
I slowed enough for her to stay beside me.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to a large tree.
‘An ash. Don’t you know the names of the trees?’
I thought I might have seen a hint of colour in those alabaster cheeks, but she only looked at me haughtily and said, ‘I have far more important things to occupy my mind thanplants.’
‘So why ask me?’
She rearranged the wide-hipped dress she wore like a bird settling ruffled feathers. It was entirely inappropriate for a walk in the forest, square cut and boxy as though the skirt hung off a shelf at her hips to trail in the mulch, the bodice a flat-fronted stomacher that pushed up her breasts.
‘Because I am an elegant and generous conversationalist when I want to be. You like trees: tell me about them.’
We walked past the stand of ash in silence as I worked myself around the idea that twice now she had insisted she wanted to know about the things I liked. I knew there was something here worth enduring for.
‘That’s an oak,’ I said, pointing to a trunk so tall and straight it was a wonder no one had cut it down for a ship’s mast. ‘And here, to the right of the path, that must be an abandoned hazel coppice. They make good walking sticks, and fencing, but no one has cut them down in a long time – look how thick and tall that one is? It’s rare to see any left alone to grow that long.’
I pointed out boxwood, something she would never have left on her land unmanaged if she’d known its value in carpentry, lithe willows bending towards the water, silver birch with its curling paper bark and sweet chestnut growing too deep in the shade to bear fruit. The Witch listened attentively, asking astute questions about plant use, how to tell wild forest from managed land. I stopped in a hazel grove to find two branches of the right height and thickness and cut them off with my pocketknife to make us two walking sticks. They would have to be properly dried and treated to last – perhaps I would try to learn how if I could find a book on it – and we turned uphill, working towards the crest of a foothill.
We stopped at a rocky outcrop where the topsoil had washed away and nothing but scrubby heather and thistle could take root. The valley rolled out on either side, before and behind us the tree-clad mountains rising like cupped hands trapping sunlight and warmth between them. We spread the blanket and set out the picnic of roast chicken, soft cheese and rye bread, a tied cloth of apples, and a glass bottle of elderflower cordial. There was still winter in the air once we stopped moving, a note of ice on the wind blowing off the snow-capped mountaintops.
‘Do you have a question for me?’ she asked so suddenly I only blinked in surprise.
‘A question?’
‘You were full of them before.’
I blushed and took an apple and began to quarter it with my pocketknife for something to busy my trembling hands. ‘I apologised for prying. My curiosity got the better of me.’
‘You will learn curiosity is not always a virtue,’ she said coldly, and I thought of the way I had spied on her at the start. Fromcuriosity. Perhaps she was right. ‘I have thought on it, and I have decided I will answer one question.’
I looked up sharply.
