Almost stifling with unspoken words, she followed him as the woods thinned and gave way to fields. She followed him at a crouch along ditches and through hedge shadow, across streams and over drystone walls. By the time they reached the darkness of the woods again, she had taken her new pipe from her pocket and was chewing at the stem while she fended the briars from her face.

“I think that pipe is twice as loud as our steps,” Kohlrabi whispered at long last.

His only answer was the sound of wood clicking against the teeth of his companion.

“You must be hungry, if you are willing to devour wood.”

Mosca said nothing, but continued her champ, champ, champ in the darkness.

“At this rate you will chew your way right through the stem. I would probably not have given you the pipe if I had known that you would think so hard with it.”

“I can believe that,” Mosca muttered.

An opening in the trees allowed the moon to fall upon Kohlrabi’s face. He strode in silence for a few moments, then turned a puzzled smile upon his companion. At least, he would have done so if that companion had still been at his side.

“Mosca?” Kohlrabi’s expression seesawed between a smile and a frown as he looked about him. Then both expressions faded like smoke and he wore only the wide-eyed look of one who is listening very intently.

Hidden behind a fringe of ferns, Mosca lay flat, her cheek against the clammy softness of the dead leaves.

“Mosca?”

In a Mandelion street, Mosca would have been at the mercy of its flurry and flow, the hurried weaving of stride and barrow. But this was the freckled woodland, where you needed a different set of tricks. Be still where you can, be as silent as you can, let other small sounds drown your steps. If you cannot fool the eye, then fool the brain—stand where you are not expected and you will not be seen. Keep to the highs, keep to the lows, and avoid eye level if the terrain lets you. These were tricks that Mosca knew.

She had abandoned her gleaming white bonnet and cap on the path as she slipped away. Her dark hair was now pulled forward to mask the pale skin of her face. She waited for Kohlrabi to take a few steps in the wrong direction before rising to a crouch. While he turned his back, a light figure beam-balanced its way along the trunk of a felled tree, arms spread for balance, stockinged feet silent on the dank green velvet covering the bark. By the time he looked back, the figure had dropped out of sight with a faint sound like a chestnut falling.

These were tricks that Mosca knew better than Kohlrabi.