Luna laced up her boots and left the house to walk. She hoped the cold air would help clear her head. She was confused by the frustration and felicity that jostled within her after the professor’s invitation. The wind wailed louder the farther from the house she went. She paused at a gnarled and ancient tree and lay her hand upon its trunk, then she pressed her cheek against the hard wood. ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered, a phrase she uttered often these days when alone. Then she heard a loud yelp of pain. Luna paused, listening and looking around, and heard a groan. She turned towards the sound and trudged through the trees.

She didn’t have far to go before coming across Elisabetta beneath an olive tree, hugging her leg. A basket lay beside her, one broken egg oozing yolk into the woven rope. Her face was pinched with pain.

‘I’ve been bitten,’ she said through clenched teeth.

Luna dropped to her knees beside her. She could see the puncture marks of a snake and where the skin was already beginning to mottle and redden. She gently touched the spot. What on Earth was a snake doing out in the cold of a winter’s day? Elisabetta groaned again. Luna searched the base of the tree and saw where the snake had probably been asleep. There was an indent in the roots where the wood had bowed and formed a cavity that would be warmed by the winter sun, a perfect spot for a viper. Elisabetta must have stepped right on it but it was nowhere to be seen.

‘It hurts.’

‘I know it does but I’m going to get help.’ Luna pulled the comb from her hair. ‘First I must do something. Look at me, Elisabetta, don’t look down. Keep looking into my eyes.’ As she spoke, Luna dug the sharp ivory teeth of the comb into the flesh of the bite mark and then set her mouth to the bleeding wound. Elisabetta cried out and Luna grunted at the sting of Elisabetta’s clawing fingers but she sucked on the wound and spat the metallic tang of blood into the dirt. Then she wrapped her scarf around the wound.

‘I will be as quick as I can.’ She knew snake venom worked rapidly and a single bite could be deadly. ‘Help, I need help!’ she called out frantically as she pushed through the doors of the house. Luna looked into the main hall but the professor and Nicolaus were no longer there. Her mind raced; Luna knew she had to get Elisabetta home but she could not do it by herself. She opened the doors to the studiolo but it was empty. She shouted again.

Footsteps sounded and then Nicolaus was there.

She took his arm without even thinking. ‘Elisabetta has been bitten by a snake. We must help her back to the house.’