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So, it was agreed that for two weeks out of every month the girl would spend her days with the elderly healer. Ginevra was nervous about this new arrangement. Her parents had never given her to another person before and she wasn’t sure what bad thing she had done to deserve it. On her first day as helper, she squeezed through Monna Vermilia’s narrow door, marked by a tiny carving of a snake crawling through a coral branch. Inside, she observed a woman with a face so ancient it practically disappeared beneath its wrinkles. Vermilia wore a black dress and tight hood as if she were a widow, though she had never married, and frizzled gray strands stuck out of it, framing her face like the tentacles of a sea anemone. On her left hand, she wore a ring set with a large orange stone carved with a winged figure. Ginevra felt oddly drawn to the jewel and stared hard at it, forgetting her manners.

“Do you know why you’re here, child?”

Ginevra’s gaze snapped back to the weathered face and she shook her head “no.” She looked around and then shifted and hunched her shoulders inward to avoid the sticky pots of goo, lichen balls, and stacks of dead crabs that leaned up on walls and lay in piles upon the floor.

“Close your eyes,” commanded Vermilia, “and listen. And tell me what you know.”

“I know that Mary is the Mother of God, and all the saints are to His glory—”

“Don’t tell me what you’ve been taught, tell me what you know.”

Ginevra was frightened and stepped backward toward the narrow door. With the agility of a much younger woman, Vermilia darted behind her and pulled it closed.

“Now, make your mind dark and quiet like this room. And tell me what you know.”

Ginevra decided that to start talking was her only chance of escape. She closed her eyes. “I know... I know that there are seeds in the dirt waiting to grow if we would stop packing it down with our feet. I know that the oysters in the harbor can never love each other because they love only their pearls. I know that there are many people who feel very itchy, and twice as many over who are worried about...about going bald?” She clasped her hand over her mouth, shocked at her strange babbling.

But Vermilia smiled. “Do you understand how you can know these things?”

“I don’t know why I said any of it. Please, don’t tell my parents—please, can I go home—”

“You know this because you are tied to the strings that are tied to everything else. To the past and the future, to other people, to creatures and to plants and to stones.”

Ginevra fanned out her fingers and wiggled them but she saw nothing, felt no pull. She looked back, bewildered at Monna Vermilia.

“They are invisible to us, but they have always been there,” offered the old woman. “There used to be more of us that could feel their pull. Now, not so many. But you are special, like me. It is in your blood.”

Ginevra looked again at the blue veins in her hands, which seemed so normal, so like everyone else’s. Vermilia clasped her own gnarled hand over Ginevra’s. “And because we are special, it is our duty to help those who are not.”

Ginevra tried to pull away but Vermilia’s grip was firm. “Close your eyes.”

She struggled and a pot of goo fell off a shelf and shattered on the floor. “Close your eyes, I said!”

The girl obeyed. She knew that the city walls had secrets they would never tell. That the favorite food of fishes was beautiful stones. That the shade of a strawberry plant was the thing held most precious by worms. And she knew—she knew—that Vermilia was a friend. Her fear gave way to a most exquisite joy. She opened her eyes. The room appeared bright now. The balls of lichen seemed to shimmer, the stacks of dead crabs emitted rays of light. She was more than a helper on her father’s fishing boat. She was her own self; a conduit through which the secret powers of the earth would be concentrated into visible good.

TWO

SO YOU WILL KNOW

About 1330, City of Genoa

In the center of Vermilia’s chaotic room was a small wooden table where a sliver of light came in through the doorway. It was here that clients were received. Ginevra’s first duty was to sit in the corner, fetching things as requested and quietly observing.

She observed how Vermilia would nod her head as people whispered their troubles in her ear. They would complain about a quarrel with their neighbor or show their sore foot or brazenly lift their robes, modesty erased by desperation for a solution. Then Vermilia would flit about the mess of her room, pulling leaves from bundles on the ceiling rafters, telling Ginevra to get a scoop of powder from the orange pot painted with black warriors, a stone from a specific bridge, or a hair from the tail of a dog. Sometimes these things would be ground into a paste or rolled up in a pill. Other times Vermilia would tuck them inside a pouch or embed them in clay, and tell a person to wear it around their neck or bury it under a tree and then say a special prayer over it. As soon as the patient went away, questions exploded from Ginevra:

“What were those leaves?”

“Why a stone from that bridge?”

“How will burying it under a tree help?”

And Vermilia answered all of them:

“The leaves are from an oak and will fix his digestion.”

“Because she was walking over that very bridge when the argument began.”

“Because the tree will appreciate the gift and so make their child well.”