A stranger arrives in a village wary of people coming from elsewhere. The stranger’s community is dying, their children are not surviving. He settles himself with one of the women of the village, and they have a child, that becomes ill. Old memories of healing, a journey to find some plants, and the stranger saves his child. A story of ancient links with nature. Touching.
“Of all the enchantments we witnessed, Minerva was the one true marvel. To this day we do not understand it: how the spirit of a woman could be so watered by the attentions of a man; the way the planes and angles of her body rounded and then softened with his presence; the bright new clarity of her eyes. She preferred this man’s language to our own – this stranger’s way of not saying; his glances and nods and finger-flutterings; the tilting of an eyebrow that would draw a smile; the quivering of lips that caused a small convulsion in her shoulders. We envied the richness of their silence.”