Greta couldn’t see her feet. But she’d seen the knife. She’d felt its tip. Heard the awful tearing of her skin from the sinew and bone beneath. There was no mistaking the smell of blood or the feeling of it being pumped out of her body in great gushes. Already, the room around was darker than when she’d entered it, and she knew it was not for any lack of light. She wanted to struggle, but she could no more move her body than a tree could walk.

Candles made from the fat of animals flickered. She was used to their scent. She’d used a blade on so many animals, and now the blade had been turned on her. It had always seemed sad that a thin layer of skin, something easily slit by a blade, was all that kept a body intact. Souls should be housed in sturdier stuff. Oh, to have been more like one of the trees she loved so much. Their skins were so thick it took an ax to kill one.

To kill.

To be killed.

Albrecht.

He’d left the room after pinning the skin from her feet to a board.

It was so dark now, and the dark felt good and safe. Her body was heavy, as in the last minutes before she lost herself to sleep. Music found her. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from. She didn’t have the strength to sing along. But it was beautiful, beautiful music. It was a song with a story to tell. A secret. Something about … ah.

Listen. Just listen.

Hans. She wished him safety. She wished him love. Sabine. Sabine and Ursula. What would happen to them? To all the people? The werechildren? What world would they inherit?

Breathe.

Her feet hurt. She was standing on the point in the universe where every road of pain met. Like lightning spearing the sky over and over again. Crash.

Crash.

That noise. Albrecht was back. Touching her wrists.

No.

Too weak to struggle. The darkness was beautiful. A blanket.

“Greta.”

Not Albrecht. Not Hans. Sabine. Greta tried to work her mouth.

“Shh. Shhh.” Sabine’s fingers on the straps. Greta’s arms thumped at her sides. Then her ankles freed. Don’t cry, Sabine. Don’t cry.

Did she say it out loud? Greta could no longer distinguish the noise from inside her body and outside. Maybe that’s what happened when your insides were set loose by a blade. There was no outside. There was no inside. There was you and the world and all you could feel of it. Eyes closed. Everything else open.

What was happening now? Something to her feet. Heat. Comfort. And then pain again. She wasn’t in the chair anymore. She was wrapped around someone’s shoulders. Sabine’s. Greta was a cloak. A cloak made of flesh and blood. Well, less blood than before. The thought made her laugh. Or think of laughing. One or the other.

Either way, she had laughed, she understood, for the last time.

So many things for the last time.

So many lasts.

She did not know.

She never knew.

I did my best, she thought. And now I want to go home, home to the woods where I was born. The woods where I belong.

She listened. She yearned.

Music. There it was.

She hoped the song would carry her all the way.