Zahra smiled. Her pale gray eyes gleamed with a wolfish light. “Given where goat cheese comes from, your grandfather’s floor is the cleanest place it has been!” She chuckled and lifted the bowl to her lips.

Anna giggled at the old woman’s foolishness.

A farmer approached, hurrying toward the groves. As he passed, he spat into the folds of Zahra’s robe. She continued to eat, accustomed to the insult. Many of the villagers disliked the old woman. They said she was a heathen who spoke to animals and disparaged the Lord.

But if Zahra were so evil, Anna wondered, why did everyone call on her whenever someone was ill?

She remembered the day her neighbor, Daniel, had laid on his mat unable to breathe. When the priest who often visited their village could not restore the boy, Daniel’s father had called for Zahra. The old woman had shown up immediately, as if she had smelled illness on the wind. With strong, wrinkled hands, she had spread a minty balm across the boy’s chest and pressed her fingers into the narrow canals between his ribs. As she worked, she had spoken to him in a soft voice, asking questions and letting him speak.

Within hours Daniel was back outside playing with his friends.

Daniel’s father had run through the streets shouting thanks to the Lord for the miracle. He later slaughtered a goat in gratitude. But to Zahra he offered no recompense, as if her efforts had played no role in the resuscitation of his son.

Unlike most of the other villagers, Anna was fond of the old woman. She especially admired the way Zahra could imitate birdsongs—so true were her calls that the creatures would flock around her! Whenever they could find a secret moment, away from the villagers’ prying eyes, Zahra would help Anna learn to emulate the songs of wheatears, bee-eaters, tree creepers, ravens, and doves. Still, no matter how much she practiced, Anna could not lure the birds into responding as Zahra could.

The old woman swallowed the last of the cheese and lifted her face toward the sun. “Thank you, Great Mother,” she whispered.

Anna often heard Zahra speaking to her mother, which she thought odd since her mother could certainly no longer be living. But when Anna asked her about it, the old woman would only shake her head and say, “Knowledge given too early can be more deadly than poison.”

Fearing that she had been away too long, Anna looked back toward her house to see if her mother had come outside. When she turned, the sun’s rays glinted across her face.