Four

The next morning Heike took the yarn from the pot over the long-dead fire and hung it up to dry. It had taken on the deep blood red of the berries, her mother’s favorite color, and it would be some time before she could make anything of it. She arranged the strands flat and straight and allowed herself a few moments to watch the dark water drip and pool on the floor.

Only a few villagers came to see her off. They stood by the back of the inn while Wenzel packed and repacked bread, cheese, and a waterskin in Heike’s bag. Ulrich had come with him and stood facing the forest.

“The trees will turn you around,” he said. “The forest wants us to get lost. I’ve tried marking my trail with sticks, with rocks, with yarn. The sticks get knocked down, the rocks buried, the yarn torn from the branches. I once tried to tie a line from one tree to the next as I went deeper in, and on my way back I found the line cut and scattered on the forest floor.”

“Did you ever see what did it?”

“No. I’m not sure it was one creature. It may have been many.” He took a small knife from his belt and held it out to her. “Take this. Falk discovered that it can’t get rid of cuts on the trees. It tries to slash them out, but that’s still a mark. At least you’ll keep yourself on one path.”

Heike started to tuck the knife into her belt, then thought better of it and kept it in her hand. Wenzel yanked the flap of her bag down over its lumpy contents and frowned at her boots.

“Your hair needs cutting,” she said. “We’ll do that when I get back.”

He grunted.

Doctor Death appeared around the side of the inn. He glanced once at the group of villagers before passing them by. Under the gray morning light, Doctor Death looked carved from bone. The collar of his black coat curved up around his jaw, and its tails flapped around his legs. As he approached, his colorless eyes roved from Heike to Ulrich to Wenzel and back again. His high cheeks and beaked nose had turned red in the chilly air.

“Something wrong, Doctor?” asked Ulrich.

Doctor Death stopped several feet away. He was always accompanied by a shift in the air, an unease that reminded Heike of the feeling she got when she discovered a dead bird splayed on the ground. It was the feeling that kept the villagers away from him unless a loved one was mortally ill. Early winter frost had gathered around his boots, though the ground nearby showed no sign of it.

“Head northwest,” the doctor said. “If you reach the bend of the Idle River, you’ve gone too far.”

“You know where the house is?” Heike said.

Doctor Death reached into his coat and pulled out a small leather pouch. He unwrapped the cord from around the pouch, folded it open, and drew out a dried sprig of plant.

“Keep this with you,” he said. “In a pocket where it won’t fall out. Not in your bag. You might lose that.”

Heike took it from him. “Sage? My mother always tied this to our door.”

“It will act as a ward. Or I hope it might. Keep it with you.”

She tucked the sprig of sage in the deep pocket she’d sewn into her skirts. “Thank you.”

“Safe journey,” he said, studying her. “Your mother prepared you well.”

He turned then and walked away. Heike, Wenzel, and Ulrich watched him go. The spot where he’d been standing was free of frost, the grass a soft green-yellow.

“Do you think that’s safe?” Wenzel asked. “What he just gave you? Is it really sage?”

“The doctor has no reason to put any of us in danger,” said Ulrich. “Heike, you should leave now before it gets any later.”

Heike waited until Doctor Death’s tall form disappeared around the inn again, then drew Wenzel into a hug. He hugged her back tightly without hesitation. As she pulled away, she kissed his cheek and said, “I’ll return before nightfall. There’s plenty to do here, so I’ll be upset if I find you waiting.”

Wenzel pressed his lips together. Heike looked to Ulrich, who nodded, and then shifted her bag over her shoulder, gripped the knife in her hand, and started toward the forest.

This morning, the trees were still. Their highest branches did not flutter, and the spaces between the trunks were wide and empty and mostly clear of underbrush. Heike oriented herself northwest and used the knife to carve an arrow pointing back toward Greymist Fair on the first tree. Her boots crushed twigs and fallen leaves. On the next tree, she carved another arrow, this one pointing to the first tree. She looked back at Wenzel and Ulrich still watching her, now small enough to pinch between her fingers. She turned around and kept walking. The trees enfolded her.

Heike kept her eyes forward and carved arrows on every tree she passed. Her mother had walked this way often—Heike’s own boots had walked this path. The roots of the trees rose from the ground in great arcs and swells as the landscape became an undulating wash of hills and valleys. The muted forest light changed only slightly as the day wore on, growing brighter, then warmer.

Heike stopped only once to eat, nestled between the roots of a tall poplar growing on a slope. As she pulled out the bread and cheese Wenzel had given her, a hard and quick scratching echoed through the woods. The birds had gone quiet overhead. The scratching stopped, then started again, louder, closer. Like claws tearing through tree bark. Stopped, then started, louder again. She stared at the last tree she’d marked, on the opposite side of the small valley, where her small carved arrow was barely visible. The scratching stopped. Heike shoved the cheese into her mouth and the bread into her bag and started walking again.

She carved her arrows faster now, three lines, nine quick strokes to make the cuts deep. The scratching began again behind her. When she turned, there was no sign of any person or animal. She’d seen no other life since she’d entered the woods, though from her cottage she’d spotted rabbits, squirrels, and even the occasional lynx prowling through the trees. She knew there were deer and bears as well, though the only bears she’d seen were the ones Gottfried killed and dragged back to the village.

When she dared to glance behind her, the woods were still and silent, as if patiently waiting for her to continue. She pushed the memory of Tomas’s body away and instead thought about her mother. Heike had watched every time her mother had made her new clothes when she was growing up, until they were the same size, and her mother had passed on her bright skirts and the boots that never seemed to wear.

“Never go out without these,” her mother had said as she kneeled before Heike and tied the laces, though Heike was well old enough to tie them herself. Her mother had said it with a smile, but there had been a grim set to her mouth as she pulled on an older, dusty pair of boots Heike’s grandmother had worn, the laces frayed and the soles peeling. Her mother had always looked grim when she thought Heike couldn’t see, and it had aged her beautiful face. In the early mornings, when she’d stood by the twisting trunk of the linden tree and looked down on Greymist Fair, speaking a prayer Heike never heard, she’d appeared as old as the earth. Heike had always wondered if her mother had a magic of her own, a counterpoint to the witch’s, strong enough to keep the whole village safe.

Heike knew now that the grim expression had come from the treks her mother had taken through the forest, because Heike was sure that she herself was wearing the same expression. She was lonely but not alone, stalked by something that didn’t mind if she knew it was there but wouldn’t let her see it. She had been walking for so long, she should have come to the Idle River by now, unless it curved much farther west than she thought. Or perhaps the forest had caught her in the same trap it caught all travelers, on an endless path to a destination that didn’t want to be found. Perhaps being hard to find was not a characteristic of Greymist Fair. Perhaps the forest was just good at hiding things.

When Heike walked along the road and wanted to return to Greymist Fair, she thought of home. The branches of the linden tapping at the sides of her cottage. Wenzel and warm milk by the fireplace on a cold evening. The colorful caravans of the traveling merchants who came from faraway lands once or twice a year to set up stalls and trade in the village square. Then the road would fall away behind her and the village would appear between the trees as if she had summoned it.

But that wouldn’t work with the witch’s home. She didn’t know what it looked like, or smelled like, or sounded like. She had no memories there. Heike looked down at her boots and imagined her mother walking this way. She imagined her stepping over fallen branches and through bramble thickets, pushing the sweaty hair from her brow as she trudged on. Her mother had known exactly where the witch lived. She had gone often.

Heike carved her arrow on one more tree, ignoring the frantic scratching that started up several trees behind her, and stepped around the tree and into a clearing.

The forest made a wide and perfect circle around a little cottage with herbs tied to the front door and an ancient linden standing guard.