Cappella paced the forest near the clearing all night, waiting for Hans to return. When the music of the trees turned frantic, their branches crackling and moaning even in the absence of wind, she knew something had gone terribly wrong.

A short while later, Sabine burst out of the darkness, naked, in her human form, with Greta over her shoulders. There was no Hans. There was no Ursula. Cappella went numb.

Sabine set Greta down and collapsed. “Get help. Greta’s been hurt.”

The bottom of Greta’s dress was wet. Even in the darkness, Cappella knew what liquid drenched it. The scent, the heaviness. Blood. Greta’s skin, always pale, was white.

“Mother! Mother!”

Cappella unwrapped Greta’s feet. Bone and sinew glistened in moonlight. She’d never seen anything so horrible.

Esme arrived, out of breath.

“What happened?”

“Albrecht,” Sabine said.

“What should we do?” Cappella said.

“Tend to Sabine,” Esme told her. “I’ll see to Greta.”

Sabine waved her off. “I’m fine. Just exhausted. Where’s Ursula?”

“Not back.” Cappella handed Sabine her cloak.

Esme lifted Greta’s right leg. She held the skinless foot. Cappella expected her to wrap something around it. Leaves. Bandages. But she didn’t. Instead her mother closed her eyes and rooted her free hand deep in the soil. Her body trembled and her lips moved. She thought she heard her mother whisper, “Flesh.”

Overhead, branches shrieked. Greta whimpered. Esme pleaded, plunging her arm deeper into the ground. As far as Cappella could see, nothing was happening. Esme cursed and lifted the other foot so that she had one in each of her bloody hands. Cappella took hold of a leg, trying to help her mother, whose eyes were closed, her face twisted with effort, sending tears in haphazard trails down her skin.

Cappella was bloody too. On her hands. On her tunic. On the pipe in her apron. She could feel it sizzling. Could feel it coming apart. But there was nothing she could do.

Her mother begged. “Please,” she said. “Please. I have nothing to give this time, but I am begging you.”

As Esme spoke, a change came over Greta’s feet. Skin, coated with fur, grew over the wounds. Cappella wondered if Greta had a hidden were nature. But the fur lasted only a few seconds before it turned to shreds.

“Gold, then,” Esme cried out. “Give me gold!”

Her hands shook and a skin of gold coated Greta’s feet. But this too dissolved. Greta’s feet had soaked everything. Her gown, Esme, Cappella, even the soil. The air reeked.

Greta, her teeth chattering, whispered, “Hans.”

“Shh,” Sabine said. “Save your strength.”

Greta would not be silent. “Let …”

Cappella put a hand on Greta’s cheek, leaving a bloody handprint. “It’s all right. Hush.”

Greta took a rattling breath. “Me …”

Then one more word. “Go …” So faint, the rustle of a single leaf scraped by wind.

“Never,” Esme said.

“P-please.”

Esme cried out. Now it wasn’t just Greta shaking. It was all of them and the earth below. The world around was a blur of sound and color. Dirt flew. The forest screamed. Cappella curled into a ball and held on.

And then the earth split in two.

Out of the gap, a tree rose.

A tree whose roots were the bloodied feet of a girl who had committed no crime. The roots born in blood grew swift and deep, as though they’d been hooked to the beating heart of the land.

From those fathomless roots spread a trunk so wide a dozen women holding hands could never hope to embrace it. The tree was tall. Not as tall as Albrecht’s tower, but tall enough that it sheltered the ground beneath its branches, branches that reached for the heavens like many pairs of upraised arms.

The noise was raucous. Like a storm, but instead of the percussion of thunder and rain, there came a sound like the moaning of strings, and another of a half dozen tuning forks struck. The rising tree knocked Cappella aside. In her terrified egg position, she tumbled through the skeletons of fallen leaves and newborn soil.

Then the earth stopped heaving.

Cappella looked up. The branches were blacker than the sky itself. Starlight found its way through, though, and the edges looked as if they burned with silver flames.

The forest had stopped singing. It was as though it was holding its breath. Greta’s dress was in ribbons and a few scattered gems from the necklace she’d been wearing lay on the forest floor, glowing softly in the moonlight. But Greta wasn’t there.

Cappella could not speak. Not even a whisper. She could not bring herself to move. She looked at the tree and wondered where Greta had gone. She couldn’t see Sabine or her mother, though she could hear them on the far side of the massive tree, gasping and weeping. The absence of music ached.

After a while, the forest’s song started again, along with a crackling that sounded like fire but gave no heat and made no smoke. It wasn’t fire, it turned out, but the trees themselves, their trunks oozing a bloodred liquid that hardened swiftly, drinking in starlight till it gleamed.

Cappella was lying like that, her face wet with tears, the ruins of her pipe in her hand, when Hans and Ursula found her.