The message was delivered on horseback, in snatched breaths and rushed words.

“My lady…we need you…arrow strike.”

Sirona was at her writing desk. She paused, ink pooling at the tip of her quill, a black-blotched full stop cutting short her letter. Her gaze lifted and landed on the paisley swirls of mist at the foot of the forest.

“I will come right away.” This letter could wait.

A twitch of her wrist and the messenger was gone.

In haste, she scooped the necessary dressings and tinctures into the compartments of her satchel: alcohol-soaked swabs, oils drawn from thyme, lavender and witch-hazel under the firm press of pestle, and, for closure, sutures—many of them—arced and pointed, gleaming like moonsickles. She pocketed antidotes from the cabinet too. Their corks were etched with runes only she recognised, though time had rendered these labels redundant: she could discern activated charcoal from dimercaprol solely from their legs and the way the liquid clung to the glass.

Now alone, and only ever alone, she draped a dove-white square of cloth over her head, a rite she never forwent. Her hands smoothed out the creases, until its hem swung at her waist. ‘Providence will guide you’, were the last words of her mother, ‘where I cannot’.

She’d recognised the messenger’s crest embroidered into his cloak. He was from Monningsull, a neighbouring hamlet just a stone’s throw from her cabin.

Brisk strides carried her over spongy earth, sword fern, liverworts and lichen, the cool breath of the forest climbing her ankles.

Something was chewing at her thoughts.

She sensed urgency. The man’s voice bore an unusual gravity that left her ill at ease. Arrow wounds were common: villagers would fall by the dozen following an attack. Some would even treat themselves, drenching weeping wounds with smears of honey. Something did not fit.

Her pace quickened.

Above her, starved corvids circled. Their protestant caws scratched the blank fog that fast became her shroud. Vapour wet her cheeks and froze the linings of her windpipe raw; a thermal curtain that left her blinded to the skeletonised mites and rotting foliage underfoot. Her feet were tricked by inconsistencies of rock versus decay. The ground gave way like a shot mattress. Agony swept from toe to knee in a flaming jolt and her face met the earth with a thud.

For a moment, blackness.

She roused to the same white-grey clag around her, thick as plumes from smothered bonfire. Her satchel lay open on the ground, the herbal concoctions spilling back into the earth to their source. She salvaged what she could and, on all fours, reached for the nearest bore to orient herself. Her eyes followed the trunk of an alder skyward where, just out of reach at half-mast, white fabric hung limp. She had not time nor the spring in her injured ankle to reach it. She hobbled onwards, hoodless, ears prickling in the sting of the air.

Light winds blew holes in the mist’s web and carried the hubbub of Monningsull. She traced the clank of metal, the whinnying and flutter of horse lip, the tumult of villager life to its heart.

A frantic yank at her skirt stole her attention.

“Please, miss…this way!”

Looking up at her was a young girl with white-gold plaits and mouth agape. Her round eyes were drawn to Sirona’s left cheek that throbbed mauve from impact. Her threads were damp and streaked with dirt, a Rorschach print of the forest floor. The girl took her hand and rushed her towards one of the shacks that shuddered with the anguished howls of a man who was clearly dying.

He writhed on the ground, splintered wood poking from his chest, the sear of poison coursing his organs. Sirona dropped to her knees at his side, scrambling for the bottle that had shattered minutes earlier in her clumsy misstep.

She forced the arrow’s point through his ribcage and flushed the torn flesh with water. All too quickly, his screams hushed: the bliss of unconsciousness, a promise of eternal sleep. In his struggle, his matted hair parted to reveal his face, prince-like and chiselled from a cool marble. A mason’s masterpiece. She had known from his cries alone but prayed it were not true. Her hands cradled his cheeks whose colour now crept across the stone.

Later, she would sign off her letter with a confession—With you, my world danced bright as wild flame—before stilling the beat of her heart with the tears of crushed foxglove.