Oriell was fascinated with the hermit. She had been old when his grandfather was a little boy. How could no one think that strange? He was bursting with questions. Where had she come from? Why did she live alone?

Every Wednesday, he climbed the Aethela, thinking to find the answers he sought, and every Wednesday he did not get them. Arnica rarely entered the glade while Oriell was there. When she did, she spoke little and only of plants. December and January came and went, and Oriell knew only the hermit’s name. He grew sullen and resentful, and he no longer dallied in the glade in the hopes of meeting Arnica.

One day in February, frozen rain pelted Oriell as he climbed the mountain. An hour into the hike, his foot slipped in a puddle of icy mud. He fell and slid on his face and his back through sludge, filthy and cold. Embarrassed, with mud in his hair and sleet between his and sliding down his spine, Oriell stormed down the Aethela. She could chop her own wood, he fumed.

At the foot of the Aethela, he stopped. Oriell wanted to go home. He wanted a hot shower, dry clothes, and his x-box, but he couldn’t just show up now; it was hours too soon.

He considered going home anyway, but he knew it was no use. His mother would send him right back out again. The poor old woman needs our help, she’d say. His father would give him a disapproving lecture about responsibility and do the same.

Besides, what if someone else saw him? He would never hear the end of it. Well, he was not going to climb that mountain again. A slip like that could have killed him, after all. Oriell found a dry spot in a grove of pines and huddled miserably until the grey sky began to dim, and he judged enough time had passed.

During his hot shower and all that week, Oriell wondered guiltily about the hermit. She was fine, he told himself. She manages perfectly well on her own. All the same, it was a cold, damp week, and he often found himself wondering whether Arnica had enough firewood. Worse, he wondered how she would greet him when they met again.

The next week, Oriell ran through a thousand scenarios in his head, as he climbed the Aethela. She would not be there. That was the most likely, surely. She nearly always avoided him. He kept a wary eye on the ground, but it had not rained in a few days, and the path was dry and firm.

She would be angry and demand to know why he had abandoned her.

Oriell had a hard time imagining anything so emotive as anger from the old woman, but perhaps she would shout, and her dry voice would be terrible in its rage. She would not have noticed. It must be hard to keep track of the days, living as she did. A pile of wood always awaited him, but maybe it was always there; maybe she piled logs every day.

As Oriell neared the glade, he did not know what he expected of the hermit, but it certainly was not what he found.