Two

The houses and cottages of Greymist Fair clustered in a shallow valley, stitched together by cobblestone streets and warm lamps on crooked posts. Firelight spilled from dusty windows. Wildflowers grew in planters outside doors, lovingly tended and allowed to twirl and twist up along the faces of the cottages.

Heike sprinted up the west road, past the sign welcoming travelers to Greymist Fair, past the first homes. Behind one, a large, happy cow chewed cud. Atop the next perched a row of blackbirds that watched Heike pass with disgruntled croaks. She entered the town proper, flying past Ada Bosch and the seven children she led, hand in hand; past Gottfried, carrying his polished hunting rifle and followed by his loping Great Dane, The Duke; then into the village square, where Heike’s friend, Wenzel, stood sweeping the stone steps of the inn and singing songs they’d learned together as children, when things were simpler and Wenzel was known by a different name.

When he saw her go by, he yelled, “Heike? Heike!”

She continued past the great stone well that stood in the center of Greymist Fair and out to the opposite side of the village, where the cottages dotted the northern hills. The home of Ulrich the carpenter was largest, and the farthest north, up against a small swath of cleared forest. Ulrich himself stood outside at the top of his hill, splitting logs. A burly man with dark skin, a thick beard, and a healthy respect for the forest, Ulrich was one of the few people in Greymist Fair who ventured into the woods. He lowered his axe when he saw her climbing toward him.

“It’s Tomas!” she gasped as soon as she knew he’d hear. Her hair hung in sweaty tangles around her face, and the ribbon had nearly slipped off the end of her braid. “Tomas is . . . on the west road . . . he’s . . .” She put her hands on her knees as her torso cramped. The image of the blood floated before her. She was used to seeing blood and smelling rotten meat, but not from a human. She couldn’t stop herself from vomiting straight onto the scuffed toes of Ulrich’s boots. Ulrich dropped his axe and put a large, warm hand on her shoulder.

“Henrike. Speak slower. What happened to Tomas?”

She told him what she’d found. As soon as she’d finished, he was off, dropping his axe and rushing behind his cottage. Heike slumped next to his pile of wood. Numbness filled her from her hips to her feet. She pulled the ribbon from her hair with cold fingers and combed through her braid. Ulrich came back moments later on his horse, with his wood cart hitched behind, and started down the hill and into the village.

From where she sat, Heike could now see people emerging into the streets, talking, pointing the way she’d gone and up toward Ulrich’s. Ulrich disappeared between the buildings. A moment later he reappeared as a dark speck on the west road before he disappeared again between the trees, followed by several other men.

“Heike!”

Wenzel’s long legs brought him swiftly up the hillside. His brown skin had turned wan with worry, his dark eyebrows pushed together over his warm brown eyes.

“Don’t come too near,” Heike called. “I might vomit on you as well.”

“What happened? Ulrich said something about a murder when he passed by, told me to call Doctor Death.” Wenzel took in her sweaty face, her muddy boots, her tousled hair. “On second thought, let’s get to the inn, and then you can tell me.”

“I don’t know if I can walk,” she said.

Wenzel turned, kneeled, and motioned to his back. “Hop on.”

They had done this when they were younger, but as children it had been Heike carrying the smaller Wenzel on her back. Taking his shoulders, she pulled herself up. She relaxed to the bounce of his stride and his arms holding her legs. Her berry basket jolted against his stomach. Johanna and Dagny, the baker wives, gave them strange looks as they passed, first at Heike’s bunched-up skirts and then at Heike herself. The apothecary startled and dropped his armful of herbs when he saw them.

Heike hid her face in Wenzel’s shoulder. She hadn’t expected anything less. Her mother had gone so often into the forest to appease the witch, the villagers had kept their distance from her. Heike had never gone into the woods and had never seen the witch, but her mother’s reputation had passed right down to her, just like her clothes, her profession, and the color of her eyes. To the villagers, the witch was a servant of death, and anyone who associated with her was just as bad.

They reached the front steps of the inn. Heike said, “Put me down.”

Wenzel shouldered his way through the front door. “Not yet.”

“I can walk.”

“I know you can.”

Without any travelers, the inn sat empty and unused, Wenzel its only occupant. A draft cut through the darkened great room. Wenzel carried Heike past the log desk, past the staircase that led to the second floor, past the empty chairs and tables. Papers full of scrawled handwriting were scattered across one table, Wenzel’s jotted notes of stories he’d collected over the years. He set her down in an armchair by the hearth, and she dropped her berry basket. In a minute Wenzel had a small fire crackling at her feet. He hurried off again, behind the staircase to the kitchen, and returned a moment later with a mug of warm milk. Several times Heike began to tell him to sit still, but the words never escaped her. She was not prepared to deny Wenzel his nurturing tendencies.

“Don’t call Doctor Death,” she said. “I’ll be fine soon.”

Wenzel shook his head and pulled up a second armchair. “Now, what happened?”

She explained as she sipped, considerably calmer. As Wenzel listened, his face turned greener and greener, and he covered his mouth with his hand. Heike kept the details to a minimum, but Wenzel had always been squeamish at the mention of violence.

The more Heike talked, the less real the scene on the road felt. She must have looked at the boots only for a second or two, long enough to confirm they belonged to Tomas. The memory felt like a berry dying on the vine; even now its innards were rotting away, leaving only a husk. It felt like someone else’s memory from another time.

“But . . . Tomas.” Wenzel sat back. “The wargs. It had to be.”

“But on the road? The road is supposed to be safe.”

“Then you think a person did it? Why leave the clothes?”

“Maybe they wanted to make it look like a warg killed him.”

Wenzel turned toward the fire. His frown deepened. “Warg or not, what if it’s still out there? What if it had hurt you, too?”

“It didn’t, and wondering about what ifs isn’t going to solve what happened. People go down that road all the time and they don’t get torn open. It’s not normal.”

“But the things in the forest—”

“There have always been dangerous things in the forest. The road is supposed to be safe.”

She caught Wenzel’s gaze over the rim of her mug. “What about Katrina?” he said. “And what about your mother?”

Heike went very still. The fire flickered low. “They weren’t on the road.”

“But they did die the way you said. Didn’t they?” Wenzel cleared his throat, fingers flexing against the arm of his chair.

“Ulrich was the one who found Katrina and my mother,” Heike said. “And all he found of them was tattered clothing and their shoes. No blood, he said. Maybe he’ll know if the same thing did this to Tomas.” She stood and held her mug out for Wenzel. The strength had returned to her legs, and she had a sudden desire to be by herself to think. “I need to prepare this dye. I’ll be back once Ulrich returns—I’m sure he’ll have questions for me.”

“Wait.” Wenzel caught her arm. “Let me go with you. It’s so close to the forest.”

“I live plenty far from the trees. And nothing has ever come into the village before—why would it now?”

“Why would it attack anything on the road, either?”

Heike didn’t respond. Looking unhappy, Wenzel took the mug from her and let her go.

Heike’s cottage had once belonged to her mother, and to her mother’s mother before her. It sat on a hill just behind the inn, up a dirt path and beneath the wide branches of an old and twisted linden tree. Tied to the door was a bundle of sage, holly, and chamomile, something her mother had put up that Heike now kept out of habit. At the door, Heike could see the shepherd’s flock grazing beneath the gray sky, and past them, Ulrich’s home on its own hill in the north. To her right, in the south, was Elma Klein’s farm, where the winter wheat was poking from the ground in green shoots.

To the west was the edge of the forest. Wind ruffled the treetops. The trees seemed to loom up as if climbing the hillside. She shivered, wishing she’d taken Wenzel up on his offer, and ducked inside.

The cottage was one small room divided into two sections. In the smaller was the heavy iron washtub, the oak dresser carved by her great-great-grandmother, and the bed in which Heike had slept with her mother when she was a child.

The larger section held all her mother’s tailoring tools, some now largely unused. A tall, upright loom, the biggest instrument she owned, stood against the back wall. Heike had spent more time learning how to repair it than she had using it. Beside it on the floor was a pot where she kept her distaffs, and a smaller pot on the table nearby that had become a repository of spindles. She had baskets and baskets of wool and linen, a bit already dyed and a bit kept aside for times like these when she found rare colors. She had boxes of needles made of wood, iron, and bone, some of them warped so badly she couldn’t use them; boxes of pins of different shapes and sizes, some plain and easy to lose in the fabric, others fixed with bright but chipped jewels on their ends; boxes of thimbles, some so old the dimples had near worn away. There was a fireplace where she boiled water to make dyes, and beside that, the worktable where her mother had kept her tools for shoemaking.

Heike’s mother had taught her how to make shoes by having her make them for Wenzel. He’d been raised by the previous keepers of the inn, a kind elderly couple who had no children’s clothing. Heike’s mother had provided them with everything they’d needed in exchange for food and someone to watch Heike when she went into the woods, and she’d used the making of Wenzel’s clothes to teach Heike what she knew.

Her mother had done the best work in the village, but there were others who knew how to spin, weave, sew, and cobble, and so most villagers avoided the witch-speaker who lived so near to the trees. Her mother had kept food in Heike’s stomach by doing work for the innkeepers and by selling goods to the traveling merchants and adventurers who came to Greymist Fair. Her remains—the tattered clothing, her old boots—had been found in the forest, close to those of Katrina, a girl who had been Heike’s age. They were killed by the wargs of Greymist, everyone said; spirits of the forest, loyal to the witch, that preyed on any who entered their domain. The wargs would make sense, because anyone who died of violence in Greymist Fair became a warg themselves, leaving no corpse behind.

Heike sat at the worktable by the empty fireplace and did her best to gather herself. Her mother had died four years ago, but it felt like today. It felt like it had been her mother’s clothing she’d found on the road. She’d never seen the scene herself—Ulrich wouldn’t let her. She’d only seen the small gravestone with her mother’s name carved on it, marking a grave with no body.

Preparing the berries and her dye pot took away some of her nerves, at least for a short time. She’d already cleaned the wool she planned to use, and it had been tucked carefully away in a linen bag she kept below the worktable. While the berries boiled over the fire, she took the prepared wool from the bag and ran her fingers over it, then held it close and smelled it. Her mother had smelled like wool and berry dyes and bone needles. She’d never cursed her lack of work, or how far they felt from the village. Heike rested her head on the edge of the worktable and looked down at the muddied toes of her boots. Her mother could make boots that lasted twenty years, but she couldn’t make the village accept her.

Boiling the berries seemed to take a lifetime, and as she finished straining the dark crimson water, shouts from the village came in through the open window. She dumped her wool into the pot with the dye, left it over the fire, and took off running back toward the inn.