I’m holding Liesel in my arms. I’m holding her, and I’m promising that she will not be taken, that Dieter cannot reach her, that I will protect her no matter what. I’m holding her and then—
I’m not.
I stare down at my empty arms. She was there, solid, her weight pulling against my body, and now…she’s not.
Oh, God. I’ve already failed her. “Liesel!” I scream, spinning around.
There’s no one.
“Fritzi!” I am not ashamed of the fear piercing through my shout; I am afraid.
“They’re not coming,” a voice says. I spin around again, and there, sitting on the rocky edge of the river, is a young maid. Her hair is tightly braided and hidden behind a kerchief, and her long tunic dress is cut in the older style, a span of green wool with laces up the sides, cinched at the waist with a leather belt.
Her eyes, the exact same emerald as her dress, watch me curiously.
“Where are they?” I ask, breathless, on edge. The young woman is beautiful, but I have long ago learned that monsters wear human faces.
“Oh, they’re here,” the maid says, smiling. “But safe. So, not here. But here.”
The maid.
This is magic beyond any I have witnessed before. But still, I think I recognize it. The old woman at the mill had told Liesel of the White Maiden. Fritzi told me the goddesses she worships were called the Crone, the Mother, and…
The Maid.
Doubt wrinkles my brow. I grasp at my thoughts, trying to remember the name Fritzi had told me. Which one is which? Abnoba is the old one, the one linked to Liesel. And the Maid is…
“Holda?”
She smiles, ducking her head. “I have many names. That is one of them,” she allows.
I blink several times, unsure of what to do. What to think.
Liesel had shouted about mist to Fritzi, but I hadn’t seen any mist. I see it now—surrounding me, isolating me with this woman. I don’t recall stepping into it, but pale white clouds form a barrier around us. My hand drifts to my waist, my sword. Her eyes follow the movement, and her smile grows cold. I think about making a run for the fog, but even as I think that, the pale white barrier seems to glint, as if there are knives hidden inside the mist. It creeps tighter around us.
“You cannot go,” Holda says softly. “Not until I’ve tested your worthiness to pass through to the Well. Testing one such as you—hexenjäger kapitän—may take quite a while.”
That’s right—Fritzi told me there was a barrier. Dieter couldn’t get in because the goddesses know he is a threat.
I require a trial.
“Will you take me to Fritzi?” I ask the goddess.
“No,” she says simply.
“What have you done with her? With Liesel? I swore to protect them!”
“Ah,” the woman says, leaning forward. “Protect. Is that what you do? You are a protector?” She looks faintly amused.
“I—yes—”
“Is that what you did with the others, for all those years? Protection?” The woman stands, her green dress trailing in the icy blue water without, I notice, getting wet. “Is that what you did for your stepmother? Did you protect her?”
Acid rises in my throat. “I was a child,” I start to say, but Holda’s bitter laugh cuts me off.
“A child? When is that no longer an excuse?”
“You weren’t there!” I shout.
She arches an eyebrow. “Wasn’t I?”
My blood runs cold.
“You gave me a sacrifice, Otto Ernst, just last night, and now you pretend not to know me?”
My eyes rake over the goddess. She looks like a simple maid, like any of a hundred different girls I have seen in my lifetime. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “You don’t know me,” she says, a statement, not a question. “What a fool you are, to offer a sacrifice without knowing to whom you sacrifice. Or,” she adds, cocking her head, “without knowing exactly what you are sacrificing.”
She flicks her hands, and although nothing seems to change, my body is perfectly still. I try to yank my arms out, kick my legs forward, but it’s useless. I cannot move. I can barely breathe; it’s as if iron bands encircle my body.
“In the old days, we demanded sacrifices greater than a bottle of beer.” Her lips curl in disgust. My offering offended her, although I had meant it sincerely. “We demanded sacrifices of blood and flesh.”
She steps forward, and I see for the first time a blade in her hand, made of shining brass, the edge gleaming and sharp. She does not hesitate as she presses the tip of her blade right at the outer corner of my right eye. The thin skin parts easily, and blood makes my eye burn, mingling with a tear as she traces the tip of the blade in a curling line down the side of my face. The blade is so sharp that I do not feel the cut, only the pain after as my hot blood steams in the cold air. I cannot move; I cannot scream, not even with the blade tracing the edge of my jaw, down over my neck. I swallow, the movement enough to make the knife edge cut deeper.
“Don’t worry, Otto, I’m avoiding your arteries,” she says pleasantly. She leans back, inspecting her handiwork. I cannot see myself, but I can feel the cut she traced from my eye down to my clavicle. She cut deep, enough to make my mouth go slack on one side, the skin too loose to hold any expression even if the pain would allow it. Blood pours from my face. I will be scarred forever, if I do not die of infection.
“Is it enough?” I barely manage the words, blood spraying from my lips as I try to speak.
“Enough?” she asks.
“Is my blood enough of a sacrifice,” I say, carefully enunciating my words, “to protect Fritzi and Liesel from your knife?”
She smiles again, this time a little more sincere. “I never wanted your blood, Otto Ernst.”
In a blink, the pain is gone. I stumble. She’s released me from the invisible bonds. My hands go to my face—there is no cut, not even a scratch. I look at her hands. There is no knife.
“What do you want?” I ask. If not my blood, my pain, what?
“I want to know if you are truly a protector,” she says. “That’s what I am. I am the goddess of protection.” As she says those last words—goddess of protection—for a moment, her green gown brightens to glimmering white.
Maybe this test is only for me. Fritzi and Liesel know this goddess; perhaps they are already safe.
And then I remember something else Fritzi told me, about how her spell on my sister had been one of protection. “Hilde,” I say, my sister’s name escaping my lips. “Did you protect Hilde?”
Holda smiles fondly. “I did.” Her look turns ferocious. “Not for you, stupid boy. I found her worthy, and, despite her lack of magic, granted her entry to the Well. As a favor. To my champion.”
She means Fritzi, I think. Fritzi called to her goddess for protection, and Holda answered—perhaps a bit more enthusiastically than Fritzi had intended, but…
“Can I see her?” I ask.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Holda answers.
“You require a sacrifice,” I guess.
“I require only the knowledge that you are worthy.” Holda paces in front of me, and it’s then that I realize the barrier of mist around us has grown smaller. There’s only room for her to pace a few steps before she must turn around and go the other direction. The mist is thicker, utterly opaque but still glimmering with the same sharp edges. My right eye twinges.
“You say you are a protector,” Holda continues, “yet there were dozens, hundreds of innocent people you did not protect.”
She means those burned in the witch trials. “I tried, I—”
My voice stops working. My mouth moves, but no sound comes out.
“I didn’t say that you could not protect them,” she snarls. “I said that you did not protect them.”
The weight of my failures falls upon my shoulders. I stagger back, and I hit the white mist. Fire erupts along my skin, and although there are no flames, I feel my skin cracking, my flesh burning. The deaths I did not prevent. Screams filter through the sound of sizzling, and I recognize every voice of every victim I did not save.
I tried—I think again, but did I try enough? I used the excuse of working in the background, of seeding chaos and attempting to help without being detected, but was it enough? People still burned. I did not help enough to save them all. I could have done more, been more, worked more—I could have killed Dieter. I could have killed the archbishop. I could have burned Trier to the ground. I could have—
The burning sensation evaporates, but my sobs do not stop. I fall to my knees. I am not begging forgiveness; I do not deserve any. But my sins are too heavy for me to bear.
“Tell me why you started working as a hexenjäger,” Holda says coldly.
“To try to help others—”
“Do not lie, mortal.”
I force my sobs to stop. I force myself to look at what I have done, and what I have not. “I became a hexenjäger to spit upon my father’s grave,” I say, my words strong because they are true. I hated my father. I hated what he had done. I wanted to become the exact opposite of him. I joined not to save others, but because I knew nothing would have enraged him more than to know I made a mockery of his beloved religion, that I spent my life undercutting the beliefs he had built his life erecting.
I look up into the goddess’s eyes. Her expression is unreadable, but I suspect that she has found me lacking. “I became a hexenjäger for revenge against my father. I didn’t care that he was dead; I hope his soul burns in hell, and that it’s tormented by the knowledge of the man I have become. And I do not regret that action.” I take a deep, shaking breath, the air rattling in my throat, reminding me of how easily the goddess had made me believe my neck was cut. “But I remained a hexenjäger because I wanted to help as many as I could. And I failed so many more than I saved. I know that. That is the sin I live with. I am not a protector.”
“You’re not,” Holda says, repeating my words. “You are not a protector.” She kneels down before me, so that we are eye to eye. “But fortunately for you, Fritzi does not need a protector. She needs a warrior.”