I found her on a walk one day. When the blacksmith, my master, drinks more than usual and slumps into a stupor, I sometimes slip away and wander through the woods behind the town. I ramble for hours with no set trajectory in the hills above Valdoray. I memorize birdsongs, learn the tracks of rabbit, deer, and bear, and find clusters of red ropeberries like caches of jewels. The village people say the forest is dangerous and home to a thousand wicked things best not named, but I find its creatures far more civilized than the villagers. Certainly, when a fox kills a hare, he does so to satiate his hunger, not for jealousy of his neighbor. The hills' mossy caves are a far more peaceful resting place than my cramped, smelly room above the blacksmith's, where the landlord smashes bottles in brawls every night. The forests' inhabitants are incapable of judgement, unlike the people who stingily guard their scanty food and commodities and refuse to speak to me because I am an orphan who was taken in by the blacksmith as an apprentice.

She was like a pearl in a bed of leaves. The glass coffin was hidden in a moist grotto where I stopped to drink from a stream. I first thought the glint to be the sun against a drop of water, and then I saw the glitter of rubies and onyx. I pushed back the heavy leaves of a wet fern and saw her.