“I know you have questions. I can see them on your face,” Brom said, putting the saddle away and making up a bucket of oats for Donar. He rubbed the horse’s muzzle affectionately. “But it’s late, and we both need sleep. And I think your grandmother should be a part of this conversation, too.”
I didn’t want to go to bed. There was no part of me that was ready to rest. My brain was whirring with everything that had happened that day, and everything that Brom had just told me. And he couldn’t just tell me that Schuler de Jaager was related to me and then pat me on the head and send me to bed.
But that, it appeared, was exactly what Brom intended to do. He shuffled me inside, ignored my questions, and only allowed me to say good night to Katrina before sending me upstairs.
Katrina, for her part, kissed me good night and gave my hair a sad look. (I imagined she wouldn’t stop doing this for some time—Katrina had always loved my hair even if I did not.) She didn’t even ask why Brom was hurrying me upstairs—they did that silent communication trick that they had, where they spoke complete sentences with their eyes, and Katrina understood exactly what Brom wanted.
I thought about that connection between the two of them as I dressed in my nightgown and climbed into bed. I’d always thought the two of them were almost uncannily joined, and the uncanny was something that you didn’t easily dismiss if you lived in Sleepy Hollow.
The connection was something Brom had felt from the start, from the time they were very small, and Katrina must have felt it, too, or else she wouldn’t have pushed so hard against it at the end. I found myself feeling sorry for Crane again, though by Brom’s account the schoolmaster had never been truly in love with Katrina—only her wealth. Still, it had to hurt when someone strung you along for her own purpose. Katrina’s purpose had only been to make Brom jealous, and according to Brom her plan worked.
But the strangest part of the story wasn’t that Brom had pretended to be the Horseman—I’d always thought he knew more about that story than he let on—or even that it had grown to a legend in the Hollow. It was that Schuler de Jaager had seen Brom as the Horseman and never told anyone, and that Schuler de Jaager was somehow responsible for my father’s death, and that Schuler de Jaager was my other grandfather.
I’d never really thought about my mother’s parents. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because Brom and Katrina filled my view so completely that I’d never felt the lack of anyone else. Maybe it was because they never really talked about Fenna, except to say that she was fair and sweet natured and that Bendix had loved her, and Katrina sometimes reminded me that I was nothing like Fenna at all.
To find out that I had another living relative and that it was Schuler de Jaager, of all people—I couldn’t believe Brom expected me to go to sleep after hearing that. Schuler was so old—much older than Brom. Schuler was seventy if he was a day, and he looked even older—withered and gnarled like an ancient tree.
He did say earlier that he had his child late in life. But it must have been very late for him.
I couldn’t imagine calling Schuler de Jaager “Opa,” or laughing with him the way I did Brom. I couldn’t imagine him being a father, never mind a grandfather. There was something crafty about him, something deep and almost eerie. He’d never have the kind of arms you’d run into and feel safe. He wasn’t Brom.
Well, Ben, there’s lots of people in the world who aren’t Brom. It’s not a character flaw.
I’d had a feeling the whole time I was with Schuler de Jaager that I was missing something, that we were speaking at cross-purposes. He knew he was related to me and I didn’t, so that might have accounted for the strangeness of the conversation.
(And why didn’t he say anything about it to me? That seems like the sort of thing you might mention, the sort of thing that you wouldn’t keep from a child.)
But that wasn’t completely the reason our conversation was so odd. There was something else—something Schuler de
Jaager knew that nobody else did.
I needed to find out what he knew. It might have to do with Crane, or the Kludde, or it might be some other secret that he’d scooped up and kept close to his heart for the day when it would be useful to him.
How are you going to convince him to tell you what he knows when he never even told Brom?
Well, there was that. If Brom couldn’t get him to talk, then what powers would I have to persuade that secretive man?
Brom is not the blood of his blood. You are.
I shuddered. I didn’t like the idea of Schuler de Jaager’s blood running in my veins. I didn’t like the idea of being connected to him at all.
Connections. Between Brom and Katrina, between Brom and Schuler, between Bendix and Fenna, between me and all of them. There was something in that web, something tangled deep down, and that something was the source of all the trouble happening. Those boys were dead because of it.
Brom had said Bendix was dead because of Schuler de Jaager.
I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow. I wasn’t getting anywhere—my brain was spinning in circles. I determinedly closed my eyes and thought, Sleep, sleep, sleep.
But I didn’t sleep. How could I sleep when I was under the stars, under the big dark night? How could I sleep when the horse was running underneath me, running so fast that it seemed impossible? How could I sleep when I could hear his heart—his wild, wild heart?
No, not his heart. My heart. Because my heart was his heart and his was mine. We were the same, the same under the skin.
I sat straight up in bed, my eyes wide open. The morning sun blinded me. I had slept, but I didn’t feel as though I’d rested. I’d dreamt the whole night of him, of riding on his horse, of listening to his laughter.
I crossed my hands over my own heart, felt the rhythm of the galloping horse there.
Stop thinking of the Horseman as freedom.
But the Horseman had saved me in the woods. He’d called the Kludde off me.
(because he’s always watched you always since you were a little child and you made him out of nothing)
I stopped, tried to grab that thought, but it was smoke that dissipated before I could breathe it in. Sleepy Hollow was a magical place, a place where enchantment could drift on the air, but sometimes that enchantment could blow dust in your eyes, make it hard for you to see what was right in front of you.
(Remember you need to remember him there’s something important to remember)
I shivered, and got out of bed, dressing in the same clothes I’d worn the day before. I felt a strange sense that I was doing that day over again. I was dressing in my boys’ clothes. I had many questions with no answers. I needed to talk to Brom. Another boy was dead.
Please don’t let every day be like this from now on. Please let the Kludde have gotten what it wanted from us.
At some point I’d decided I didn’t believe what Schuler de Jaager had said about a curse taking victims. It was ridiculous, and besides—it would be impossible to keep something like that a secret in Sleepy Hollow. Everyone was always so willing to believe in the strange and unnatural, and they liked telling stories about those strange things best of all. If a creature regularly emerged from the woods and snatched up a child then there would be a story about it. Henrik Janssen had said that the people of the Hollow accept those sorts of things as part of the fabric of their lives here, and it was true. There was no story; therefore it wasn’t true.
(Or maybe it was true and you just never heard about it. That happens here, too. There are blind corners, and secrets that never bubble up. Look at the very fact of Schuler de Jaager, that he’s related to you and you never knew.)
I shook that off. Yes, things were hidden in Sleepy Hollow, things I might never learn. But this wasn’t one of those things. This was too big. So why had Schuler de Jaager made it up? Why did he tell me something I could easily check? All I needed to do was ask any of the village gossips and they would gladly tell me the story if they knew of it.
Not that I would bother with such a task, I decided. Schuler was clearly lying, and there was no need to waste a whole day inside, buried in dusty parlors, having tea foisted on me and being forced to listen to stories that I hadn’t come to hear.
But I could do some poking around, and listening to adults talk when they didn’t think anyone was about.
I had a sudden idea that I ought to go to Cristoffel van den Berg’s house. I could say that I came to say sorry about Cristoffel, and his mother would have to invite me inside for a few moments, and then I could find out if Cristoffel’s body had melted like the sheep and Justus Smit.
It would be horrible if that had happened, because Brom said he’d taken Cristoffel right to the Van den Berg house. That meant that his parents would have watched him rotting right before their eyes.
Nobody was at the breakfast table, though all the dishes had been left out for me. I took all that I wanted and ate until I felt really full for the first time in ages. It was so wonderful to eat without Katrina watching and tutting over the amount of food I put on my plate.
Katrina. I had some things I wanted to ask Katrina, as well. I pushed away from the table and went looking for her.
She was in the parlor, sewing. She sat in her favorite chair beside the window, where she could see the front drive and know if anyone rode up to our door.
And where she could also keep watch for wayward grandchildren who came home later than they ought, I thought.
The sun was shining and her golden hair caught its rays, making her look like she’d been crowned with sunlight. She looked up when I entered. Her eyes flicked up to my hair again and I saw her suppress a sigh.
“You slept late,” she said. “It’s nearly ten.”
“I was eating,” I said, though I had still slept much later than I usually did. I was normally up with the sun, because that was when Brom rose. He said a farmer needed to keep the sun’s hours, and since I wanted to be a farmer just like him, I did the same.
But you don’t really want to be a farmer just like him anymore, do you? You want to ride through the woods under the starlight.
“Well, I’m glad you’re finally up. I need to see if these will fit you.”
She held up what she was sewing and I realized that she was making new breeches for me.
She saw my expression and said, “It’s only that I’m tired of you ruining every dress you own.”
But I knew that wasn’t why she was making them, and I loved her so much just then I thought my heart would explode.
I obeyed, and she held the breeches up to my front.
“However,” she continued. “I’ve been thinking that we should change the cut for you. Even though you don’t care in the least what anyone in the village says about you—you’re like your grandfather that way, he’s just as impervious.”
The way she said this made it clear that it wasn’t a compliment.
“But I don’t want people thinking you’re indecent. You’re still young but you’re going to have a woman’s body someday whether you like it or not. I’d like to make these a little longer for you than other breeches, and perhaps not so tight as the mens’.”
Normally I had no interest in clothes-making, but I was intrigued by the idea of breeches just for me.
“A little extra room would make it easier to climb,” I said. “I wouldn’t be so likely to tear them. But not so much that the fabric gets in my way, like a dress.”
Katrina ordered me out of my bottoms then and had me put on the breeches. There wasn’t much to them yet—only a waist with bolts of cloth hanging off—and she spent the next several minutes pinning and adjusting while I stood with my arms overhead. This process would usually have me fidgeting uncontrollably, but I made myself stand very still. Katrina had decided to make something I really wanted and I wasn’t going to throw that generosity into jeopardy by irritating her now.
After a while she had what she wanted and I was allowed to put my (now obviously too small) breeches back on. I watched her for a few minutes as she made careful, neat stitches despite the thick cloth. I’d never been able to make stitches like that. I wondered if my mother had.
“Oma,” I said. “What happened to my father?”
She put her sewing down and looked at me, and something in that look told me she’d been waiting for me to ask that very question from the moment I stepped into the parlor.
“You know that a fever swept through the Hollow many years ago?”
I nodded. “And you always said that my mother and father both fell sick because of it and died.”
Katrina stared out the window, but I don’t think she saw anything beyond the glass. Her eyes had gone someplace—no, sometime— far away.
“Your mother did fall ill because of the fever, and she died because of it, too. But your father died because he went into the woods looking for a way to save her, and you.”
“Me?”
Katrina nodded. “You were just as sick as your mother. It was a terrible thing to see. So small, you were, just a few years old, and your little body limp from the fever. You wouldn’t even cry. Poor Bendix, he was out of his mind with worry.”
“Opa said that Schuler de Jaager is the reason why my father died,” I said, watching her carefully. Katrina could explode very suddenly, like a cannonball tearing through a line of soldiers.
Her eyes hardened. “That old bastard. I wish he’d die and go to the devil where he belongs.”
I stared at her in shock. Katrina never spoke like that. Brom, yes. But not Katrina.
She saw my expression and gave a short laugh. “Believe me, Ben. If anyone deserves to take a direct route to hell, it’s him.”
“Brom said Schuler was my mother’s father?” I put the question mark at the end because I was still hoping it wouldn’t be true.
“And you’re wondering why we never told you that. Well, you met him. Would you want him as your grandfather?”
“No,” I said, so quickly that Katrina laughed again.
“Even before what happened with Bendix and Fenna we didn’t want you near him. I loved your mother very much but I never understood how she came from the same blood as that man.”
“He made my skin crawl.”
“He does that to everyone. I think even his wife felt that way, though she only lasted long enough to birth Fenna and then she died.”
So that was a lie, I thought. He told me that his wife died of grief when Fenna was taken by the Kludde. I can’t trust a single thing he told me yesterday. What did he want me there for, if he was only going to tell me stories?
“Even Fenna was a little frightened of him. She didn’t speak often of her home life, but I had a strong impression that Schuler de Jaager was not an ideal parent.”
Katrina fell silent again, brooding.
“But what happened to my father? I don’t understand how Schuler de Jaager could have been responsible if my father died like Cristoffel did. If he was killed by the”—I almost said
Kludde, and then decided not to use Schuler’s word for it—“creature in the woods.”
“You have to understand your father. He was like Brom, and like you. Bendix could never bear to be still and wait. He wanted to do something. He needed to do something. He couldn’t just sit in the sickroom and watch his wife and child waste away. Schuler knew that. He took advantage of Bendix’s nature.”
Katrina sighed. I recognized the grief creeping into the corners of her eyes, a thing that she kept hidden most days—as if she wouldn’t allow herself to feel it.
“Brom hated having Schuler visit, would always avoid it if he could, but with the man’s daughter ill we felt we had to allow it. Schuler insisted upon it, in fact, and Brom was so tangled up in worry himself that he assumed the old man felt the same way.
“But Schuler de Jaager did not come here to pray over his daughter or his granddaughter. He didn’t come to hold our hands and speak words of comfort together. He came here to whisper a tale into Bendix’s ear, and I can only believe that, given the outcome, Schuler meant harm to our son.”
Katrina paused for a long while, and I tried very hard not to yell, “But what did Schuler de Jaager say?” because I knew that she would get to it in her own time and that if I showed any sign of impatience now she might give up on telling me the story altogether.
“He hardly seemed to notice Fenna at all, or you, for that matter. He was in the sickroom for a few moments before coming out again, and though none of us went in with him, I can’t imagine that Schuler wept any tears of grief. Then he asked to speak to Bendix alone, and again we permitted it, because we thought it was appropriate for Bendix’s father by marriage to have a few quiet words with him. They went into Brom’s study, and they stayed there for an hour—long enough that Brom and I began to wonder what they could be saying to one another.
“When they came out Bendix had a light in his eye that hadn’t been there since before you and Fenna fell ill, and the sight of that spark unnerved me. But it was Schuler’s expression that truly placed terror in my heart—he looked satisfied. I didn’t think a man should look like that when his daughter was so ill with fever she hardly knew where she was. He shouldn’t look as though he’d gotten his way, and was pleased with it.
“Brom noticed, too, and as soon as Schuler de Jaager left the house we asked Bendix about it. But Bendix wouldn’t say anything, wouldn’t even hint at what the two of them discussed. Well, there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. Bendix was a grown man, and his business was his own if he wanted to keep it. But I worried.
“The next day was the worst of the fever. You’d stopped crying altogether, and would lie there so still that sometimes I held my hand under your nose to make certain you were breathing. Fenna thrashed and screamed and shook so hard that sometimes she rolled off the bed, and I couldn’t keep the cloths cool enough—as soon as they touched her skin they would heat through and be useless. Bendix and Brom and myself were the only ones who went into the sickroom—we felt that we couldn’t risk the servants who weren’t already sick themselves. We each took a few hours in the room with the two of you. I remember that day that Bendix was with you for all of the morning, and I came in around noon and stayed until evening, and then Brom arrived to relieve me.
“I went out to check on the sick servants. Two of them had died that day—the cook that we had before Lotte came to us, and a scullery maid. There were many preparations that needed to be made and so I was fully occupied until well after dark. I hadn’t seen Bendix since that morning, but I didn’t think anything of it—Brom and Bendix were sharing the farm duties, and I presumed he was out on the grounds somewhere.
“I went up to my bedroom to wash and rest. I was at the washbasin near the window when I saw a figure leave the house out the kitchen door. The night was clear and the moon was full, and it was obvious that it was Bendix. What’s more, he was trying to be furtive. I saw that immediately. He was always terrible at sneaking, even when he was a boy.
“I don’t know what made me do it. I pulled on my darkest-colored shawl and made sure my hair was covered and went out after him. He hadn’t gotten very far—his silhouette was clearly headed for the road that ran along the woods. He looked back several times, but he never seemed to notice me. For a while I kept just far enough away to follow without being seen, but then I realized that I was being silly. Bendix was my son. I was his mother, and I had every right to ask him where he was going in secret, after dark. I called out to him.
“Bendix was so tense that he leapt into the air on hearing the sound of my voice. Then he realized it was me, and when I approached he began shouting at me for following him. Bendix was always even-tempered so it was a shock to hear him speak to me that way. But I was also angry, and he’d never been able to stand up to me when I was in that state, so I managed to worm it out of him.
“I wish that some of our last words were not angry ones. I wish I’d told him how much I loved him.”
She wept as she spoke, and I felt torn. I didn’t want her to go through this, to relive the last moments of her son’s life. But I thought, too, that I needed to know—that I deserved to know. Bendix was her son but he was my father, and all my life I’d been told a lie about him.
I put my arms around her and hugged her tight, and she clung to me as she cried. I had never, never seen Katrina show such weakness like that, and it scared me. It was as if Bendix had died the previous day, not ten years ago.
For her it probably always feels that way, I thought with sudden insight. When do you ever get over the loss of a child?
Schuler de Jaager doesn’t seem to be especially bothered by the loss of his, and this thought was followed by a spurt of anger.
After a while Katrina composed herself, and waved me into the chair across from her. She continued the story as though there had been no interruption.
“Bendix told me that Schuler de Jaager claimed there was a creature who lived in the wood, in the place beyond where the trail ends, the place where no one in Sleepy Hollow ever goes. Schuler told Bendix that if he went to this creature and”—her voice hitched here, but she steadied herself and went on—“sacrificed himself to it, that the creature could heal Fenna and you, and everyone in town, as a matter of fact. The creature could end the fever, Schuler said, if only someone brave and true would give himself up for everyone else. Bendix would have done anything for Fenna, anything for you. He loved you so much, and he wanted to be doing. He wanted to feel he could solve the problem. Bendix didn’t tell us about it because he knew we would object and he’d already made up his mind. If I hadn’t seen him sneaking out of the house then I never would have seen him again. He would have disappeared into the woods without a trace.”
“But why?” I burst out. “How could he believe anything that Schuler de Jaager said? There’s no guarantee that Schuler was doing anything except sending my father to die for some reason of his own.”
“And that’s exactly what I told him,” Katrina said, with a touch of her usual tartness. “There’s magic in the woods, and danger, too, but there was no possible way to know if this creature would actually heal you or Fenna. It was madness, but I could not persuade him to return home.
“He couldn’t persuade me, either, though he raged at me for some time. I finally told him if he wanted me home he’d have to bring me there and stay there himself. Of course he wouldn’t do that, because he’d screwed up his courage and if he went home then Bendix wasn’t certain he’d come out again. He didn’t say this, but I knew. So we went on together.
“The woods seemed darker that night than they’d ever been, and every step we took filled me with deeper dread. I wasn’t certain what I could do to stop it but I had no intention of letting Bendix sacrifice himself to some monster in the woods. We’re not pagans. That was old country nonsense that Schuler had planted in his head. Bendix didn’t say a word to me until we reached the place where the path ends. Then he turned to me and said, ‘Mama, it’s time for you to go home now.’ I shook my head at him and he got angry again and said, ‘I don’t want any harm to come to you,’ and I replied that I didn’t want any harm to come to him, either. He threw his hands into the air and he went off the path into the deep part of the forest.
“I couldn’t let him go, so I followed. But Ben, there was something wrong there. I felt it immediately. It was as if something was pulling at me, but trying to tug in all directions, and there was a sound, a sound like . . .”
She trailed off, and I said, “Like something buzzing in your ears, like it was pressing in on you, and there were many voices at once.”
Katrina gave me a sharp look. “You’ve gone to the end of the trail, where you’re not supposed to.”
I gave her a sheepish look, one that I’d seen Brom use many times. “I didn’t go any farther. I only stepped off for a moment, so I could see what it was like.”
She muttered something in Dutch, then sighed, and went on.
“I clung to Bendix, because all the noise made me disoriented and I felt things tugging at me, tugging at my skirts, pulling at my hair. I don’t know what Bendix felt. He didn’t speak to me, but I could just make out his labored breath over the strange sounds in my ears. I don’t know how long we walked on, but I heard something like singing. I say ‘something like’ because it wasn’t quite speaking, but it didn’t have a melody, either. It drew me in a way I didn’t understand. I felt my grip on Bendix’s arm loosen, and somehow I drifted away from him in the dark.
“As soon as I lost hold of him I came to myself again and called his name, but he didn’t answer. The only sound that came back were many voices calling me, saying, ‘Katrina, Katrina, Katrina.’ I knew they were trying to lure me, trying to put me under their spell, but I wasn’t having any of it. I needed to find Bendix. I needed to save my son. But I couldn’t see anything in the dark, and now the calling voices were laughing at me, and I spun and stumbled and cried out for Bendix but there was nothing except the dark and the woods and the creatures that lived there pressing all around me, keeping me from my child.
“Then I heard him scream.
“His scream was so long and so terrible that it was like a trail for me to follow, and I chased after it. Somehow I was able to shake off the horrible little creatures that tugged at me with their grasping fingers and I ran, ran, ran toward the sound of Bendix.
“I stumbled into a clearing. There was a perfect opening in the canopy of trees, a circle, almost as if it had been cut there on purpose, and the moonlight shone down through the opening and I saw it.”
“A shadow,” I murmured. “A long shadow that shifts and shimmers and doesn’t seem to hold its shape, but somehow it has sharp teeth and eyes that glow.”
“Yes,” she said. “And it had already taken Bendix’s head and his hands, and it was hunched over him, drinking Bendix’s blood—my blood, Brom’s blood, the blood that was created from our love for each other. I screamed. I screamed and screamed so long that I didn’t know when I would stop. And the creature stopped, and looked up at me, and Ben—I had the strangest feeling then. I felt that I’d seen it before, and that it knew me.”
She shuddered, and I reached across and took her hand. Her fingers were like ice.
“What happened then?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I fainted, I think, and when I woke it was morning, and the creature was gone, and all that was left of Bendix was a body without its head and hands.
“I had to do something, had to get my boy back home. I didn’t want to leave him there in that terrible place. And I knew that Brom would be half out of his mind by then, with both me and Bendix missing. But I wasn’t certain how I would do it. I couldn’t possibly carry Bendix.
“The noises I’d heard in the night had faded but not disappeared entirely. I felt, though, that they weren’t as malicious as the voices in the dark. They seemed like they were, oh, I don’t know—encouraging me? But none of the voices’ owners appeared to help me.”
“Oma,” I said, then hesitated. I didn’t know if she knew about what happened to Justus and the sheep. “In the morning, when you saw my father’s body . . . was it whole? Whole except for the head and hands, I mean.”
“You’re thinking of Justus,” Katrina said. So Brom had told her, then.
“Yes. Was my father—” I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t ask her if her son’s flesh had melted away like soft candle wax, if there was nothing left of the boy she loved except bones and wriggling worms.
“Bendix wasn’t like what you found last night. I don’t know why that happened to those boys, to Cristoffel and Justus.”
“Do you think that it’s because the creature in the woods has changed somehow? Gotten stronger?”
Katrina frowned. “I don’t know if this means it’s stronger. But something certainly has changed.”
We were both quiet for a while, thinking about what the changes could mean. Then Katrina went on.
“I’d started to despair that I’d never get Bendix home, that I’d have to leave him there in the woods. I didn’t know how I’d find that clearing again, or if I’d even be allowed to. The spirits in the woods might not let me. Then I heard the sound of a horse, clop-clop-clopping soft over the dirt and grass, and a little whinny.”
My heart raced. Had Katrina met the Horseman—the real Horseman? Had he helped her bring my father home?
“Then a black horse appeared before me, almost like a miracle. It was Daredevil, your grandfather’s horse—the one he had before Donar.”
I felt a spurt of disappointment, but didn’t say anything.
“He was the smartest horse I’ve ever seen. If your grandfather hadn’t had Daredevil he never would have managed that Headless Horseman stunt. No other horse could have run like that in the dark, with his rider half blind from that silly costume.”
I gave her a surprised look, and she smiled.
“Yes, I know Brom told you. I’ve always hoped the story of the Headless Horseman would fade away but the people of this village won’t let it go. They’ve made Brom’s prank something real—at least in their minds.”
“But nobody knows it was a prank,” I said. “Except us. And Schuler de Jaager.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That man. He’s like a demon who’s haunted us ever since that night. He knows what happened to Ichabod Crane, but he won’t tell anyone.”
He just likes having power over Brom, I thought. He likes knowing something nobody else knows.
“I know that God will think me wicked, but I’ve wished every day that the old man would just die. When the fever swept through the village, and so many young people went—your mother, and so many others—all I could think was, ‘Why won’t that man die?’ He must have made some compact with Lucifer. That’s the only possible reason he could still be alive when so many good people are gone.”
Her voice was laced with venom. This wasn’t a Katrina fit of temper—it was hatred, deep and wide. I think in that moment a little of it infected me, too, a drop of poison in my blood. Schuler de Jaager had done his best to make Brom and Katrina miserable, and he’d certainly been the reason that Bendix went into the woods that night and met the terrible creature of shadow.
“So Daredevil found me in the woods, and I somehow managed to sling Bendix over his withers, and then I got onto his back and Daredevil took us home to Brom.”
A tear rolled onto her cheek, and she swiped it away with an impatient hand.
“It was all for nothing, too, just as I’d thought, for when I returned home I discovered that Fenna had died while Bendix sacrificed himself in the woods because of that terrible man’s whim.”
But I lived, I thought. I would never say this, though, especially as I didn’t think that my life had been gained at the cost of my father’s. I just happened to survive, the way some people do.
If only Bendix hadn’t gone out that night, I thought. If only he had waited one more day. Fenna would have died and he would have known that no sacrifice of his could make a difference. I would have had a father, at least.
I shook those thoughts away. Bendix might have died anyway, might have caught the same fever that ravaged me and my mother. And while I missed the idea of him, it wasn’t as if I’d wanted for affection. I’d always had Brom—and Katrina, even if I didn’t really always understand the way she cared for me.
Katrina shifted in her chair, bending over her sewing again. “You should go out and find Sander. There aren’t many days of sunshine left this autumn.”
I hesitated, but I could tell that she wasn’t going to say any more. I left her there in the parlor, bent low so nobody would see her weeping.