Forest of Whispers by Jennifer Murgia Page A

for the mushroom.”
    Handkerchief .
    My neck is sweating and I swipe it with the palm of my
    hand.
    “Are you all right, sir?” she asks me.
    Am I?
    The bishop’s words are tumbling toward me like a stampede. It took only moments for me to become caught up in searching for a girl I never laid eyes on until today—one so beautiful, and interesting, and peculiar, with a skill I had never seen before…
    Now, all I can think of is where I am, where I’m sitting, surrounded by filth and contagion. Pyrmont has most likely fallen by now. Eltz is next, and all I do is sit here. If I stay any longer, then surely I will be the one to carry the infection back with me. I will be responsible.
    What have I done?
    I watch the old woman slowly remove her pipe from her mouth. She holds it midair and assesses me, causing me to reach into my pocket and drop a number of coins into her hand. “Please, go on,” I say.
    “You’ve met the little thief, haven’t you? The pretty thief who tried to kill my daughter?”
    “Mama, you don’t know that,” Anna whispers from her thin little bed.
    “But all the same, she could have.” She turns her eyes to me and tilts her head, “You have, haven’t you?”
    I try not to touch my arm where Rune healed the deep scrape from the thorns. I don’t want to bring any more attention to myself, or to her. Something tells me it will not do either of us any good. I swallow hard and stand, because as soon as I can, I will leave this place, where the living are as good as dead.
    “I didn’t recognize her before.” The old woman’s face is lost in thought as she holds the pipe between her trembling, aged fingers. “Something about her face, her hair.”
    Rune’s face materializes in my thoughts—quiet, ethereal. Had I really been face to face with a witch? My instincts tell me no, but from my conversation with the bishop, and now this bitter old woman, I begin to wonder.
    The old woman stares at me as a devilish grin spreads across her sunken cheeks. “The forest looks dead,” she says. “But mark my words, it is very much alive. Today is the day the Hedge Witch conjures, for you and I have both been bewitched.”

Chapter 8
Rune
    W hen I return home my eye immediately notes the small patch of deadly mushrooms, and as I step closer to it, the sickness I felt earlier washes over me again. How could I have been so stupid? “Goddess, forgive me,” I whisper, then I pull the entire cluster from the ground and look beneath the tops. If I’d only taken the time to see how they lack the blunt veins of true Chanterelles, I would have known what they were. I toss them behind the thick Hemlock, kicking dead needles over them to bury the mistake beneath, and open the door to the cottage.
    I am prepared to tell Matilde of the misery I’ve caused in the short while I’ve been gone, but change my mind when I see her sitting alone at the table. Her head is in her hands and the rune stones are scattered about. Something is not right.
    “What happened here?” I ask. “Why are the stones everywhere?” I squat down and begin to collect them from the floor, waiting for her to answer me, but she doesn’t.
    There is no sign of the distraught woman as I look around the otherwise tidy room. Matilde runs a hand through her hair, smoothing the shorter gray strands back into place. “I gave her a cup of Chamomile to settle her and sent her on her way.”
    The face of the fortune-hungry visitor is still vivid in my mind. It was hardly a cup of tea she was after, yet I bite my tongue.
    “And what of her pain, her ailment?”
    “She has no ailment, at least not that I can help with.”
    I’m confused. Surely the woman suffers from something . What else would have brought her to us today? Like earlier, Matilde is distracted, and I can’t help feel the weight of the butcher’s words ringing over and over again in my head. I need to tell her. I must. But now, it seems, I can’t.
    I try to change the subject.