All flowers sing but his. When he came back to live among us he was already an old man, old even for a magician. My mother sent me to wash his feet with cardamom and tangerine water, to spread seed-butter and dogrose jam on his bread—the tasks of wo…

The forest gave Catalina the road, as she stepped under its boughs; for it was not a sleeping forest. It had its coat of thorns for the wood-cutter folk, the high path for wagons, lush trails made right for foragers. via Pocket