Three

Ulrich had returned. Sitting up on his horse, he looked like a man carved from stone, his eyes shadowed and his thick beard masking the stern set of his jaw. His cart was empty. Gottfried, with his gun and his Great Dane, and Jürgen, the butcher, had followed Ulrich into the forest and now trailed behind the cart. Gottfried looked paler than usual, and Jürgen’s ruddy face was unreadable. Ulrich rode through the center of the village and past it, toward his cottage.

Heike stood with Wenzel outside the inn. As Ulrich passed, he’d looked down at them and said, “Find Liesel, please. Bring her to me.”

Liesel was Tomas’s older sister. They’d lived together in the home that had belonged to their parents, like everyone in Greymist Fair, but while Tomas had never shied away from playing where Heike was, Liesel had heeded her parents’ wishes and stayed away. Liesel was already outside in the road, watching the villagers congregate, when Heike and Wenzel found her. Her gaze snapped to Heike.

“It’s Tomas, isn’t it?” she said. Her voice was stronger than Heike had expected, though her eyes were red. “He didn’t come home yesterday.”

“Ulrich asked for you.”

Liesel followed them north to Ulrich’s. Ulrich and Gottfried were outside the barn, staring into the back of the cart. Ulrich’s wife, Gabi, stood nearby with one hand on her forehead and one on her hip, looking flustered. Jürgen waited by the barn doors, arms crossed over his expansive stomach, with his son, Hans, who was Heike and Wenzel’s age. Hans mimicked his father’s posture, though where Jürgen could have taken up the entirety of the barn door, Hans could have slipped through them while they were closed. None of his clothes had ever quite fit his thin and reedy frame. His gaze fixed first on Wenzel and then on Heike as they came up the hill.

“Liesel,” Gabi said as they drew near, “I’m so sorry, dear.”

Liesel went straight to the cart. “Can I see him?”

“Not much to see,” Ulrich said. He motioned to the cart, which held the ragged remains of a linen shirt, pants, and shoes. “When was the last time you saw Tomas? What was he doing?”

Liesel’s expression was unreadable. “Yesterday morning. He left before sunrise to come here.”

“He never arrived,” Ulrich said. “Gottfried, you’re usually out in the mornings. Did you see him?”

Gottfried, who had huddled into his coat like a turtle, his neat black hair bristling around his collar, said, “No. Normally I do see him come along the road on my way to the bakery, but Oswald and I were . . .”—he cleared his throat—“busy yesterday morning.”

Ulrich grunted.

“Why do you need to ask questions, Ulrich?” Jürgen shifted his huge body away from the barn. Hans glided along in his shadow, his blue eyes flicking to Heike. “You said yourself this is exactly what happened to Hilda and Katrina.”

Liesel made a small noise and put a hand over her mouth.

“Jürgen.” Gabi motioned toward Heike.

Jürgen scoffed. “She knows good and well what happened to her mother, and so do we. We all know who did this. That damned witch. We’ve left her alone in the forest all this time and now she’s come for us.”

They all looked at Heike then as if she might transform into the witch herself. Wenzel took her hand in his.

“You’re sure of how you found him?” Ulrich asked. “There was no body at all? Just the blood?”

“The blood and the smell. I didn’t think anything was left of the body at all after the wargs’ attack.”

“Nothing is. This was something else.”

Heike realized there was another meaning to Ulrich’s questions. Coldly she said, “I didn’t do this.”

“No, I didn’t mean that, of course, Heike.” Ulrich’s voice went soft. “Did you see anything else nearby? Anything moving in the trees? Did you hear any strange sounds?”

“Why were you that far down the road, anyway?” asked Hans, sounding more curious than accusatory.

“I didn’t hear or see anything,” Heike said. “I was there for the berries. There are ripe redberries in the forest, far out of season. I went to look for bushes close to the road so that I could gather some for dye.”

“Dye for what?” Hans asked.

“Does it matter?” Heike snapped. She squeezed Wenzel’s hand, holding back the urge to punch Hans, something she’d wanted to do often when they were children. Her anger had never been able to penetrate Hans’s blank expressions, his absolute lack of concern for anyone but himself. Wenzel rubbed her knuckles to bring some heat to her cold fingers.

“We’ll call the village to a meeting,” Ulrich said. “We need to decide what action to take, if any.”

“Where?” asked Gottfried. “Since Lord and Lady Greymist passed, the manor has been closed off.”

Wenzel stepped forward. “At the inn. There’s plenty of room.”

Ulrich nodded. “Let’s spread the word, then.” He glanced at Jürgen. “We are not sowing rumors or opinions. We’ll let the village decide how this should be handled.”

Gabi collected Liesel and turned her toward the cottage. Heike pulled Wenzel away from the others, back toward the village center, very aware of Hans’s gaze on her as they departed. On their way down the road, they called out to anyone they passed about the meeting, then continued south through the village until they reached the Klein farm. Someone ran down to the lake to tell the fisherman and his son. Clusters of villagers began moving toward the inn, and Heike and Wenzel hurried back to build up the fire in the great room and clear out a space where Ulrich could stand to speak.

Ulrich arrived with Gabi, Liesel, Jürgen, and Hans. Gottfried and Oswald arrived behind Johanna and Dagny, the baker wives. Falk the fisherman, his son, Fritz, and Elma and Norbert Klein came in with many of the workers from Elma’s farm. Wenzel pulled over a table for Ulrich to climb on so everyone could see him. When Heike was sure the entire village was there, a tall, dark figure appeared in the doorway, and the crowd in the back parted to allow him to enter.

Doctor Death, dressed all in black, took a place against the back wall. He would have blended with the shadows if not for his pale skin and golden hair. Heike didn’t know where he had been or who had told him about the meeting, but she wasn’t surprised to see him. He always seemed to know when something wasn’t right.

Ulrich shifted, making the table creak beneath him, and cleared his throat. Heike, hidden behind Ulrich, in the corner by the fireplace, was just glad no one was looking at her.

Ulrich cleared his throat again and quieted the room.

“Evidence of the death of my young apprentice, Tomas, was found on the west road today,” he said.

The faces in the crowd were pale, nervous. There came a few light gasps at Tomas’s name, but none at the mention of death. Death was well known in Greymist Fair, and never came as a surprise. The only surprise was in the who and the how. Expressions turned grim as Ulrich described the clothing left behind and where it had been found. About how the signs pointed to a warg attack. All the villagers remembered that day four years ago when beautiful Katrina had died, even if they didn’t say it, and their eyes found Heike in the corner of the room. Murmurs grew louder and louder, until Ulrich finished speaking and someone in the back said, “It’s got to be the witch, hasn’t it? The witch, sending her wargs out.”

“We don’t know what did this,” Ulrich said.

Someone else called out, “But the wargs killed Hilda and Katrina, and they died the same way, and the witch controls the wargs.”

“It could be the wargs, yes, but the wargs never leave blood,” Ulrich said.

The villagers’ voices rose and rose until they nearly drowned him out. “The witch killed Hilda when Hilda was of no use to her anymore,” Jürgen yelled, “and she killed Katrina because she was Lord Greymist’s daughter, and now she’s come for the rest of us.”

Several people looked toward the windows of the great room as if the witch would appear then and there to gut them. Heike balled her fists in her skirts. If the witch came after anyone, it would be Heike herself. She looked like her mother, she wore her mother’s clothes, she practiced her mother’s profession. A cold stone of guilt settled in her stomach. The one thing her mother had never taught her was how to go into the forest and speak to the witch. She’d never said where the witch lived or what the witch looked like. She’d never told Heike how to keep the witch and her wargs away from the village.

Did she tell me and I didn’t listen? Heike thought, pressing herself into the corner. Was that her real task, and her tailoring allowed her to stay in the village? Should I have been speaking to the witch in her absence? And because I haven’t, can the wargs now attack us on the road . . . ?

Ulrich took a step back and raised his hands. His voice boomed across the inn. “Everyone, listen. We don’t know if the witch or the wargs did this. What we need to do now is decide what measures to take to keep ourselves and our families safe.”

Heike heard him because she was standing so close, but other voices had already begun to call out over his.

“We should find where she rests and burn it.”

“But we can’t go into the woods.”

“If enough of us go, we can. She can’t kill all of us.”

“When?”

“Immediately.”

“It’s already too dark.”

“First thing in the morning. As soon as the sun is high enough to brighten the forest.”

“What if she kills some of us?”

“That’s why we’ll take volunteers. We all know what we’re heading toward.”

“Who’s volunteering, then?”

Heads turned. They looked at Ulrich, at Gottfried, at Dagny and Falk. They looked at those who sometimes went into the woods or who might be brave enough to go now. Falk the fisherman, with his battered and fur-lined coat and his gray hair curling around his ears, made no move from where he stood with his son, but his watery eyes darted from face to face. Gottfried, who was kneeling near the front and scratching The Duke between the ears, said, “It’s not much of a plan, is it?”

The room went quiet. Heike’s stomach turned, guilt and responsibility and her mother’s warning frothing together. Her head felt light, her feet heavy. The firelight swam around her. Wenzel stood on the opposite side of Ulrich’s table, and when Heike stepped forward, the color fled his face. Ulrich saw her. Then the others.

“I could go,” she said. “I could go alone to speak to the witch.”

The flames crackled merrily in the silence.

Wenzel said, “No,” at the same time Hans said, “Why would she listen to you?”

“My mother spoke to her,” Heike went on, ignoring them both. “She didn’t tell me how or where, but she kept the witch away for many years. I could try. She might listen to me. She might.”

“What if you’re under her control?” Jürgen said. “Your mother might have been.”

“Why not let her go?” asked Elma Klein, the farmer. “She’s got the best chance of any of us.”

“Heike can’t go alone,” said Wenzel. “None of you would go alone. None of you would send your children, either.”

A watery feeling gathered around Heike’s knees, so she kept her eyes on Wenzel instead of the crowd before her. “They aren’t sending me. I’m sending myself.”

“Jürgen’s right,” called someone in the crowd. “This could be a ploy by the witch.”

Heike looked into the crowd but couldn’t see who had spoken. The faces that looked back at her were scared, uncertain. She said, “No one controlled my mother, and no one controls me. Tomorrow morning I’ll go into the woods to find the witch, and if I don’t return by nightfall, you can send your party after her.”

More mutters stirred the room, but she only caught one firm disagreement, and after Wenzel uttered it, he covered his eyes with his hand and leaned back against the wall. Ulrich kneeled down, hand on Heike’s shoulder, and said, “I don’t like the idea of sending you in by yourself. Is this what you want to do?”

“Yes.”

“You’re absolutely sure?”

“I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. I’ll be alert. I’ll be quick.”

Ulrich nodded and stood. “All in favor of Heike’s plan raise your hand.”

Several went up right away. Jürgen’s. Elma’s. Then Johanna, Norbert, Falk. Oswald raised his hand, then elbowed Gottfried hard in the ribs, to which Gottfried jammed his hands stubbornly in his armpits. He was joined by Wenzel, still covering his eyes; Ulrich, glancing at Gabi where she stood by Liesel; Gabi, who looked like she might set fire to those who had already agreed; and Doctor Death, whose tired gaze met Heike’s across the room and quickly looked away. Ulrich began to count the hands under his breath, then stopped. “I suppose we’re for it, then.”