Joachim answered with infuriating patience. “The saints are still here with us on earth at the same time as they are in heaven. Even you must know that.”

“But why would priests in a distant city want an old dead saint’s toe anyway?”

Joachim sighed. “This may be hard for you to understand. Their church, the church where Eusebius originally made his profession, has wanted his relics for fifteen hundred years. He was a priest in their city, the son I believe of a provincial administrator under the Empire, before he came to this valley to become a hermit.”

A city boy like me, I thought, or least like I used to be.

“After the saint was martyred,” Joachim continued, “the priests there even rededicated their church in his name.”

“But that was all so long ago!”

Joachim shook his head, with the air of someone who had known all along that I wouldn’t understand. “Individuals forget, and individuals die. But churches are undying institutions, and they never forget.” He took a deep breath. “But you don’t need to worry about either the saint or the hermit who lives there now. That’s my responsibility. I want you to worry about the wood nymph.”

He stood up and took the offending bridle with bells off his horse. In a few moments, with our harnesses where they should be and the stirrups readjusted, we continued on across the plateau.

In another mile, the road turned abruptly to the left. Ahead of us was a low stone wall. Rather than turning, Joachim rode his bay up to the wall. “Look at this.”

Although one could not see it until almost on top of it, before us was a narrow and very deep valley. I pulled my mare’s head up more sharply than necessary when I realized we were standing at the very edge of a cliff, with only the low wall between us and an abrupt drop. The morning mists still lingered below in the shadow of the valley walls. Beneath the vertical white cliffs, an intensely green valley curved away, a narrow river rushing down its center.