Still, I am so used to being alone that even his moss green stare feels like eloquence to me. I tell him all the things I know, about the old monastery and hospital, the lost books of the monks, my work in the gardens, and Father’s work as an apothecary. In truth I am afraid to stop talking, for if I do he may hear how my heart pounds and my breath quickens whenever I am near his strange, dark beauty. so I talk and talk, while Weed listens and gazes at me, unblinking as a cat. These conversations seem to satisfy us both.

But he will not go outside and has not ventured upstairs since his visit to Father’s study. He takes water but will not touch most of the food I offer him. A hard-boiled egg, some broth, a slice of cured ham—this is all I have been able to persuade him to eat. Yesterday when I asked him why, all he said was, “I do not wish to hurt.”

“What hurts?” I asked, alarmed. “Your stomach? Or a tooth, perhaps?” He shook his head and would say no more.

Today for breakfast I bring him a bowl of porridge, which he refuses. I ask him again: Why will he not eat? To my surprise he answers me.

“It is alive. It would hurt. It would be wrong.”

“Alive? The porridge, you mean?”

He nods, and looks at the bowl with revulsion. “Oats.”

I try not to smile. “When they were growing in the field, the oats were alive, I suppose. But they were harvested long ago. Now they are dried and cooked.”

He shakes his head. “There is no difference.”

This is a riddle, indeed. But I will solve it.

“What else is alive, then?” I ask. “Bread?”

“Yes.”

“Turnips?”

“Yes.”

“Carrots?”

“Yes.”

“Raspberries? Apples?” He nods.

“Bacon?”

He stops, thinks for a moment. “No.”

I jump up. “Stay here; I will be back very soon.”

I run to the storehouse and find some bacon. It takes me only a few minutes to fry it in the pan. The smell of it fills the house and drifts down to the cellar. By the time I return to Weed with a plate, his eyes are bright with expectation. He devours the thick, greasy slabs as I watch, trying to make sense of it all.

“Weed,” I say gently when he is almost finished. “Why do you feel so strongly about the carrots and apples but not about the bacon?”

“Bacon,” he says through a full mouth, “is not my friend.”

I am overjoyed to see him eat, but Weed cannot live on bacon and hard-boiled eggs. For one thing, meat is costly and we do not have that much bacon put aside, and the chickens can only lay so many eggs each day.