He releases his grip and stands before me. A gust of wind catches his hair, and the first raindrops begin to fall from darkening skies. “All right,” he says after a moment. “I will tell you what you wish to know. Tomorrow at daybreak I will take you to the meadows. There you shall know everything.”

He glances up at the gray sky. “And then you will truly hate me for a monster,” he adds, as he walks ahead of me, into the storm.

11

WE LEAVE THE COTTAGE SILENTLY, by dawn’s light. Father is still asleep. If he rises to find us gone, will he think something ill?

The thought comes to me unbidden: It does not matter what Father thinks.

Weed does not say where he leads me, but except for the early hour, the walk is our familiar one. We arrive at a not-too-distant meadow and lower ourselves onto the dew-soaked grass. Indifferent to the wet, Weed stretches out on his back, his whole form pressed against the earth.

I take my place next to him. Goose bumps rise on my flesh from the cold earth, and from my anticipation, too. What horrifying truth does he intend to show me? Ought I to be afraid? Perhaps, but my sense of excitement far outweighs any fear.

Finally Weed speaks.

“As we walked here, did you see the grass?” he says. “The trees? The dandelions? The fields of oilseed?”

“I did.”

“Can you hear them?”

I think he means the soft, oceanic rushing, the wind in the grass, the fluttering of leaves. “Yes,” I reply. “When there is a breeze, I hear them.”

“But do you hear them in words?”

“No, of course not.”

“I do,” he says quietly. “I hear everything they say.”

“I do not understand—”

He holds a hand up, to silence me, and raises himself up on one elbow. “Look over there, in the shade beneath the hedgerow. Do you see the mat of broad leaves against the ground, the fresh green spike that will soon be covered with flowers?”

“It is foxglove,” I say, also rising. “Father sends me out to gather the leaves sometimes. They are useful to him in his work, and the wild ones are better than what we might grow in the garden.”

“They do not like to be tamed, that is true.” He cocks his head as if listening. “And they are very vain about their flowers when in bloom.” He flinches a little, as if being scolded. “But they have every right to be, as they have just reminded me.”

Is Weed playing a game with me? I turn so that I can see his face. “What are the foxgloves saying now?”