“Are you excited for tonight, mein Schatz?”
Mama kneads dough at the table, flour coating her arms to her elbows. Sunlight slants through the kitchen window, pillars of light that catch on the white dust in the air, the wave of excess flour that comes when she tosses a handful onto the dough mound. Her schupfnudeln is my favorite dish in the world—potato dumplings that are buttery and crispy and eye-rollingly good.
She also has my favorite stew—Gaisburger Marsch—simmering in a huge cauldron over the fire, which makes our cottage smell like savory broth, and she had Aunt Catrin buy my favorite apfelwein at the market.
A girl only turns eighteen once, after all.
I hold a glass of that wine and force a smile at Mama.
“Of course,” I say and take a sip. It washes over my tongue, liquid golden honey with a sharp tang at the back of my throat.
The smoothness of the alcohol almost makes me tell her. The words are on my tongue, nestled beside the wine’s sweetness.
I almost say it. Mama, I invited him. He’s coming back.
Mama pauses to swipe hair out of her face. It leaves a trail of flour across her forehead.
“Soon enough, you’ll be an elder with me,” she says with a proud grin. “You grow up so quickly. I can hardly believe it.”
I give her a sardonic smile. “I’m hardly elder-old yet.”
“Old? You think I’m old?”
I laugh as she does, giggling into my wine.
“Besides,” I say, “maybe I won’t be an elder at all.”
Mama starts rolling half the dough into a long tube. Her eyes go from her work to my face and back again. “Oh? Are the Maid, Mother, and Crone calling you elsewhere?”
I lean forward, apfelwein sloshing. Some of it puddles on the floor. “What if they haven’t spoken to me at all yet?” The words gush out of my mouth, just as accidental as the spill, another sticky mess I’ll have to clean up. “What if the Three never speak to me?”
Abnoba, the Crone, wise and ageless and bright, protector of our forests, and prime guardian of life.
Perchta, the Mother, goddess of rules and traditions, of the hunt and beasts.
Holda, the Maid, guardian of the afterlife, of winter, of duality and coming together.
They guide us, bless us, watch over us—and speak to us, sometimes. It is a quiet whisper, I’ve been told; a settling of your soul, a rightness you can feel to your very core. It was how Mama knew she would become our coven’s leader; Perchta, the Mother, appeared to her in a vision. It was how my cousin Liesel, just ten, knew from practically infancy that she would be the most powerful augur in a generation; Abnoba, the Crone, took great interest in her.
I have an affinity, like all other witches—the Well’s magic channels through me when I use herbs and potions, but every witch has an affinity that they hone from an early age, chosen through interest or need or aptitude. It is one of the laws that governs how we keep the Origin Tree’s magic uncorrupted: witches adhere to their affinity and the rules laid forth by the forest folk for how each affinity may be used. Plants and potions have always come naturally to me.
But no goddess has spoken to tell me of a mightier destiny. Nothing more has stirred in me at all.
Well—that’s not true, is it?
I shake the voice away, flinching at the shiver that races down my spine.
Mama sees the way I twitch. She braces her hands on the table to give me a level look, one that instantly makes me want to defer to her, bow my head in surrender. But I hold her gaze.
“Friederike,” she says, and her voice is full of such tenderness that tears warm the backs of my eyes. “Do you trust me? Do you believe I am a worthy leader of our coven?”
I sag in my stool, my spine hitting the wall. “Yes. And I know what you’re going to say—since I’m your daughter, my blood will ensure that the Maid, Mother, and—”
“Absolutely not. Blood has nothing to do with the Three connecting to you. Don’t speak for me, child.”
I go silent, lips pressed together.
“I was going to say,” her eyebrows lift, but she’s smiling, “that I do not allow anyone unworthy in our coven. Even my own kin. If you don’t trust yourself, trust me, and my necessity to protect this family. You’ve seen the sacrifices I have made to keep us safe. The Three will speak to you when they are ready to guide you; be patient.”
Her eyes peel away from mine.
After a moment, she adds, “Do you still hear the voice asking you to use wild magic?”
There is no emotion in her words.
Will you lie to her, hm? What use is there in lying? She sees your truth.
“No,” I say instantly. “Not for years.”
She nods with a grunt. A breath catches in my throat as she punches the remaining dough, hard, shaking the table.
“If you were someone unreachable to the goddesses,” she tells me, “I would have thrown you out long ago.”
Smoke billows.
I cough, running through the haze—no, no, Mama! Liesel—I’m coming, I swear, I’m coming—
I run, and run, but the smoke swirls and thickens, swelling all around, and I wheeze in it, lungs filling only to deflate in hacking coughs—
A jolt rips through me, and I fly awake. Hard. The reality of lurching out of sleep hits me like I drank too much apfelwein, jagged tendrils of a headache pulsing across my scalp and down my neck.
I sit there, gasping, hands on my head.
I fell asleep.
Unverschämt, you idiot!
I must’ve tripped again sometime last night. I’m sprawled over the roots of a tree, tucked up alongside a gnarled bush and at least out of sight of anyone passing by. There are no main roads around, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other travelers hoping to avoid soldiers or hexenjägers.
A groan, and I crouch forward, trying to will my headache away. A layer of frost coats my jacket, skirt, and boots. The solstice hasn’t yet passed, but winter is approaching hard and fast and relentless.
I need to forage—if it frosted last night, most useful herbs will soon die off under the winter chill.
But Liesel could be in Trier by now, if the hexenjägers who took her didn’t detour.
What few hours of restless sleep I managed have cleared my head enough that I realize I can’t very well show up in Trier sleep-deprived and manic. The headache thuds dully across my scalp, and I wilt between my bent knees.
Schiesse. How have I survived even this long? I’ve let grief drive my every action, and look where it’s gotten me.
Deep breaths. Just take a moment to—
I breathe again. Sniff tentatively at the air.
Smoke.
I didn’t dream that.
I fly to my feet. My body seizes from the hard ground, and I bite down a wince, rubbing a kink in my back and warmth into my limbs as I try to figure out where I am.
The sun is not yet high—barely dawn. I’m still angled more or less south, maybe a little more east now, and I sniff again, tracking the direction of the smoke like a morbid hunting dog.
There—that way.
I stumble forward. Sleep hazes my mind enough that I only half-think to ask myself why I’m going toward a fire. But I’m hooked, drawn like a fish up a line.
The forest pulls away a few paces later into a small tidy clearing. A single thatched-roof house sits far back from the trees, its plaster walls white and clean, its crisscrossing wood boards in need of paint but solid. A chimney at the rear belches smoke into the air over the soft brown slopes of the dried straw roof.
I hover at the edge of the forest. My mind is still in a fog, and I stare up at the smoke like it will unfurl answers across the sky. Liesel can read signs like that.
My stomach grumbles, pointing out another area I’ve failed spectacularly in. I haven’t kept a steady supply of food.
Well, where there’s a house, there’s people; and where there’s people, there’s food.
Mama drilled our coven’s laws into my head before I could even walk. We put good into the world, and our Well of magic feeds on that good. Putting negative into the world feeds wild magic, and we do not touch wild magic.
But I’ve already stolen a few things since leaving Birresborn. And stealing isn’t really putting bad into the world, is it? More like…taking good.
I survey the clearing, see no one from this angle, and creep up to the house.
There’s a back door that opens into a small garden, and the wall has a few haphazard windows strewn across the back. Whoever is inside could easily look out and see me, but my stomach flips again.
I’ll risk it.
The garden’s dirt is upturned, soft with recent harvesting. There are a few crops left, the sturdier late-autumn ones that can withstand frost and chill. Winter greens and squash.
I drop to my knees, rip two orange squash off their vines, and start to duck back for the forest’s edge.
From inside the house, something slams. A table overturning maybe, or a chair smashing to the floor.
“You monster!” a woman screams.
I scramble, but not for the clearing; closer to the house, flat against the wall and out of sight of the windows. But it isn’t me she’s yelling at—there’s more crashing within, clear signs of a struggle.
And in that noise—boots. The jangle of swords, the unmistakable rattle of weaponry.
Heart in my throat, I ease around the corner of the house and stop just before the front yard. Slowly, so slowly, I lean around—and spot a group of horses pawing the road, tied to the yard’s fence.
Latched to them is a prison wagon.
Liesel.
Tears sting my eyes. Maybe the Three haven’t forsaken me after all.
Or, at the very least, they haven’t forsaken Liesel, but whatever the reason, I’ll take their gift.
I throw down the squash. Within the house, I hear now the gruff, taunting voices of men who think they’re in control. The woman they’re arresting is putting up a fight, spitting all kinds of vile insults at them—I’d laugh, if I was still capable.
There are a number of windows that look on the front yard, and the open door too.
I take off at a full sprint, running as hard as I can for the horses. They’re war horses; my approach doesn’t faze them in the least. I slide to a stop beside the prison wagon, the slickness of the dirt road sending me to my backside, but I’m hidden now from view of the house, and no one calls out Hexe! or After her!
Still, I hold for a breath, two, willing my heart to slow.
“Liesel?” Her name comes out of my throat croaked and trembling. “Liesel?”
I knock on the outside of the wagon.
No answer.
She could be unconscious. Or tied up. Or—
She’s alive. He wanted her alive. She has to be alive.
Shaking, I push to my feet and round to the back of the wagon. There’s a small window with iron bars across it, and I use the step at the back to hoist myself up and peer within.
“Liese—”
I don’t even finish saying her name.
It’s empty.
This isn’t the group that arrested my cousin. That killed my coven.
My stupidity heats my chest. That I thought the Three could have turned a blind eye to my sins. That they would have rewarded me, even if to reward Liesel more.
What will I do now?
I know what I won’t do.
I won’t keep trudging through this forest, lost, desperate, scared.
Hexenjägers stomp through these lands, lands they stole from the tribes that came from these hills, and they incite fear and terror into all who hold to the ancient ways. And now they’re arresting yet another innocent woman, dragging her back to Trier for a faux trial and gruesome death.
It’s time they trembled.
It’s time they feared.
Deep in my mind, beneath the surge of righteous fury, I swear I hear the voice sigh happily.
That should give me more pause than it does.
I wouldn’t be the first witch to crack like this. To give in to wild magic out of anger and well-earned rage, only to become exactly that which the hexenjägers preach against: a murderous demon that could bring down curses on whole herds of livestock, make men blind where they stand, and mutilate flesh with a snap of their fingers.
Their fear of us is not entirely unjustified.
And I feel that now more than I ever have. It would be so very, very easy to destroy them all.
But I would destroy myself in the process.
Wild magic is corrupting. It is poison. It draws its power from all the foulness of the world, and to touch it is to let your soul shrivel in its rot.
I jump down from the prison wagon. The hexenjägers haven’t come out of the house yet—there’s a raised argument happening now, one of the jägers shouting at the woman, trying to calm her down.
She shouldn’t be calmed. She’s right to be furious.
I am furious.
And I’m going to act.
Yes, the voice says, giddy. Yes. Act! Make them suffer!
Not with wild magic, I snap back. I don’t need you to be powerful.
I hurry back behind the house. The small garden waits for me, and my eyes cast over it, searching, searching—
Something bumps my leg.
I nearly scream. But the moment I look down, a small ginger cat stares up at me, and any noise falls flat in my throat.
Mama loved cats. We had dozens over the years.
The cat makes a low grumble of a purr in her throat. She coils away, tail flicking, before she bounds over the garden fence—
And right into a small bush of rosemary.
I scramble for it. There’s nettle too—and witch hazel—
All powerful protection herbs.
I pull out one of the empty vials I had on me when I left Birresborn. From the house, I hear a scream. The telltale sound of irons locking around wrists.
Hurry, hurry—
I stuff the vial with herbs and add a pinch of snow on top, a crude, quick potion.
Please work.
Then I rush for the cottage. A bracing breath in, a slow breath out, and with the heel of my boot, I kick in the back door.
All attention swings on me. The hexenjägers. The woman they’re arresting.
The lot of them throw ferocious glares, all assuming I’m a threat, either another witch or another hexenjäger. The woman’s wrists are in manacles, the center chain held by a hexenjäger who has a look that isn’t just angry—it’s panicked.
Good. Let him writhe.
“Herb and plant with roots that roam,” I start the spell that will channel the Well’s magic and turn these herbs into a protection potion. “Help me here keep safe this home. Protect and care, shield and cover, lend your might to this lone daughter.”
Tears sting my eyes as I weave the words around my vial. Mama’s spell mingles with mine, the one she used on me.
Raw, aching grief pours into my spell, and I feel the power build and build, so I say it again—
“Herb and plant with roots that—”
“Stop her!” The hexenjäger holding the chain shouts. “Hexe!”
“—keep safe this home. Protect and—”
The hexenjägers tear toward me.
“Shield and cover, lend your might to this lone daughter!”
I shout the words.
I scream them.
They rip from the center of my being, that tight knot of fury they planted there, and my palms grow warm around the vial, burning, burning.
Too hot. Too much. I lurch back, hands opening, and my vial launches out like a ball from a cannon. The glass hits the floor and shatters, spraying the potion up in thick green smoke.
This potion shouldn’t smoke.
Thicker and thicker—more and more—
The hexenjägers cry out. I can’t see the woman, but when I scramble forward, the density of the spell shoves me back, out of the kitchen, out of the cottage, launching me across the garden.
I slam against the ground, my head striking a garden post, and all goes black.