And even if it wasn’t a devil, the way the chickens had acted and the prickling between her shoulder blades warned her this was someone who could probably do her a lot of harm if disrespected.

So she stood up, still with her back to the lane, brushed her skirt and apron off carefully, dusted her hands, so that she’d show proper politeness by making sure she was clean and tidy, and then turned.

To see what was literally the most beautiful woman she had ever seen in her life standing a little distance away in the lane, with her head cocked slightly to one side. She had the face of an angel, the body of a heathen goddess, and her garments were—unbelievable.

She wore a gown of vivid green that was like nothing Anna had ever seen before. It had no real waist, and nothing like a full skirt; instead it fell down from the shoulders in a widening column, with full sleeves gathered into cuffs, and a neckline gathered with a gold ribbon. In fact, if it hadn’t been that it was so glorious, it would have reminded Anna of her own nightdress. The cuffs were of gold embroidery, there were more bands of gold embroidery on the sleeves, and gold trim that matched the cuffs at the hem, and it was made of no fabric that Anna had ever seen before, but it looked soft and lustrous, sleek and shiny, with a metallic sheen to it. Over it she wore something like an apron, that wasn’t an apron, of a slightly darker green; it appeared to be a front and back piece sewn together under the sleeves. The shoulder straps were of bands of the same gold embroidery. There was a panel of that embroidery across the top of the garment, and a thicker band of it running down the middle of the front from the top piece to the hem—which also had a band of gold embroidery around the bottom, just like the dress worn beneath it. This appeared to be made of a thicker fabric, not quite as shiny, but just as soft and lustrous.

But most astonishing of all was what the woman wore on her head. It was a kind of pointed half-moon of gold-embroidered fabric that was fastened to a kind of cap of gold beads that hung over the woman’s forehead, with fringes of gold beads on either side of the woman’s head. This astonishing piece of headgear was held on with a huge swath of ribbon tied in an extravagent bow around the hair at the nape of the woman’s neck.

And her hair! It was—crimson. There was no other name for a color that intensely red. It was decidedly not ginger, nor strawberry blond. It was red as holly berries, or completely ripe strawberries, glossy and thick as the mane of a prize horse, cascading in a shining waterfall all the way down to her feet.

The woman’s features were so perfect it seemed as if they could not be real, like the face of an angel. Her complexion was exactly like cream, with a hint of pink on her cheeks. And the crown jewel in a face that literally left Anna feeling stunned was the pair of eyes an impossible green with hints of blue in it, eyes that looked at her with an expression she simply could not read. The cool, dispassionate gaze, the expressionless face—there was something so uncanny about both that it made Anna shiver.