Best not tell her why I had come to Bann. What Geiléis wanted might not be what the fey folk of the forest wanted. I set down my basket. “My name is Blackthorn. I’m visiting Lady Geiléis, with my friend. May I talk with you awhile?”

The wee woman put her own basket on the ground. Shook her head; laid a finger across her lips.

“You can’t talk?”

She rolled her eyes at me and clapped her hand over her mouth.

“You’re forbidden to talk to me?”

The little woman nodded, then pointed into the woods. She mimed picking something and putting it in her basket. Indicated me, then herself.

“I can come with you, yes. But not far; I’m not familiar with the forest, and if I’m gone too long Lady Geiléis may send folk out looking for me.”

She made a complicated face, then took up her basket and headed off. I followed.

We did not go far; only to a clearing where the rain and sunshine had coaxed up an exuberant growth of plant life. It was a healer’s dream. She and I worked side by side, filling our baskets. She could talk all right; I saw her lips moving each time she cut, no doubt giving thanks as I was. But she would not talk to me.

She found a patch of druid’s balm and tugged at my cloak to draw it to my attention. I plucked sufficient to make a healing draft; I would give it to Grim to take to the settlement. I passed her a share of the toadstools. As soon as she had put them in her basket she tugged at my cloak again, pointing toward the other side of the clearing, where a fallen tree sheltered a prolific growth of small-leaved herbs. She led me there; squatted down, indicated that I should do the same.

I did not see it immediately, and she did not point it out, simply waited, her eyes on my face. What was it she wanted me to notice? A clump of the tiny herb known as true love’s tears, with its cream-hued florets and feathery leaves? A growth of fungi like elaborate tiny palaces? A shiny green beetle?

Still she waited, and at last I saw it: markings made by a knife on the trunk of the fallen giant. Markings so small that a human eye would most likely not notice them unless directed there. I glanced at the little healer, and she lifted her brows as if to say, Well?

Ogham. It was so long since I’d last used the tree alphabet that I doubted I remembered how to read the script. On the other hand, what you learn as a child stays deep in you, and can usually be found when needed. “I’m not sure I can read this right now,” I said.

My companion indicated with grimaces and gestures that this was not good enough, and that if I did not at least try to read the script, I was not much of a wise woman.