One

Liesel’s mother died giving birth to Liesel’s younger brother, Tomas. Liesel wasn’t old enough to remember it, and her father had told her no details, but she’d watched him dig the grave. Her mother’s gravestone stood in the field behind their home, surrounded by weeds and wildflowers.

Liesel’s father died ten years later, trampled underfoot by one of Elma Klein’s stocky plow horses. It had been spooked by a bolt of lightning that cracked a nearby tree in half and set the remains on fire. Liesel saw his caved-in chest and the blood still soaking into the soil. Elma Klein had dug the grave next to Liesel’s mother’s, and her father’s gravestone was smothered in vines.

Now Liesel buried what remained of Tomas—his boots—in the field beside her parents, with her breath clouding the air as she shoveled dirt into the dark hole, and the sky rumbling with thunder. The worn boots disappeared in sections, then all at once. She did not welcome their going, even though they smelled like corpse.

Jürgen had helped her dig the hole in the hard, cold ground. He was the only person who hadn’t yet looked at her with pity, and he hadn’t spoken while they worked. Before he left, he handed her the shovel and said, “He was a good boy,” then he lumbered back to the village with his shoulders hunched and his ruddy face fixed in a perpetual scowl.

It was late in the afternoon when she finally finished. She planted the shovel at the foot of the grave and set off for the village with dirt caked on her hands and her skirts. Greymist Fair bustled with families preparing for the annual winter trim—a last haircut before the cold months truly set in and a signal that Yule festivities were near. A single chair was brought out of each house. Neighbors conversed as husbands and wives took turns cutting each other’s hair, then their children’s. Siblings took turns as well if they were old enough, or if there were no parents or siblings, friends would do. Hair gathered on the side of the road to be picked at by the wind and birds. Liesel kept her eyes down as she passed Ada Bosch, with her seven children lined up and the youngest sitting in the chair and swinging his legs and nearly ramming his neck into his mother’s scissors. One of the children called out to Liesel, so she walked faster. She looked up only when she got to the center of the village, because she was afraid if she didn’t, she’d topple headfirst into the well.

Godric, the blacksmith, sat like a boulder outside his forge while his daughter trimmed away his graying hair. Across the square, Johanna the baker snacked on a malformed loaf of bread while her wife, Dagny, carefully snipped bangs across her forehead. Jürgen now stood outside the butcher shop, hacking at Hans’s unruly mane until he looked like a boy again.

“Liesel!”

Wenzel perched on a chair in front of the inn, hand raised in greeting. Behind him, Heike drew her scissors back, looking disgruntled. Liesel’s hands itched for scissors, for the soft fall of hair. Tomas had never sat still when she cut his hair. Last year she’d considered tying him to the chair.

Heike glanced at her but didn’t wave. Ever since she’d come back from the woods, Heike had acted as if she knew something the rest of them didn’t. Just like Heike to act superior. So Death had killed the witch and taken up residence in her shack. It didn’t matter to Liesel; Tomas was still gone. Liesel ignored them both and made a beeline for the butcher’s shop. Jürgen had disappeared inside and left Hans to sweep up the hair. The muted thump thump of metal on wood came from the shop behind him.

“Hi,” Hans said. His expression was as blank as always as he looked her up and down. “You could use a wash.”

Liesel wiped her hands on her skirts, wishing he would at least smile when he saw her. She had never known Hans to be warm, but he had coveted her, once, when no one else ever had. “Do you have more work to do today?” she asked.

“No. Father lets me go early on trim days,” Hans replied. “Fritz and I were going to go to the lake.”

Liesel started. “To Grey Lake? You’d go that close to the forest, after what happened?”

Hans shrugged.

She tugged on his sleeve and swished her skirts, doing her best to look enticing while covered in dirt. “Stay here with me, instead.”

Hans looked at her hand on his sleeve, at her face, then to the south, in the direction of Grey Lake. Anger burned up Liesel’s arms again. How hard was it to decide between an afternoon with her, sneaking into the loft of Albert Schafer’s barn to nest in the hay, and an afternoon with gangly, awkward Fritz on the awful muddy shores of Grey Lake? In the last two years, Hans had never refused her, but he came closer and closer every time.

Hans used his broom to nudge at the dirt around the cobblestones. “Maybe tomorrow.”

If she’d had anything to throw, she would have thrown it.

“Fine,” she spat. “Have fun with Fritz and the lake scum.”

He didn’t even call after her when she stormed away.

The night was bitterly cold. Liesel wanted to keep a candle lit by her bedside, but since Tomas’s death she’d been tossing in the night, and she was afraid she’d knock it over and set the house on fire. She stripped Tomas’s bed of its blankets and added them to her own, and as she laid there, shivering and listening to the wind howl through the cracks in the walls, she thought about how cold it must be under the ground.

Trying to keep herself from crying—again—had been a complete failure. She was sick of crying, and it had only been a few days since Tomas was found in the woods. She was sick of not knowing why Tomas had gone down the road, what he’d seen or felt or thought just before Death came for him. She was sick of feeling useless, like there was nothing she could have done to save him even if she’d been there.

The front door slammed open with a thunderous CRACK. Liesel screamed and froze, her wet cheeks stinging from the chilled wind that whipped through the room. Moonlight barely outlined the doorframe, and the curls of dead grass on the ground outside. The door banged against the wall once, twice, again and again in a steady rhythm that made Liesel’s heart hammer in her chest.

She knew that the latch on the door was bad, and that the wind was strong enough to blow it open, and all she needed to do was close it and shove something heavy in front of it to keep it shut.

She felt that if she went to close the door, something terrible would happen.

She got up to close it.

Where she’d expected some man or beast to be standing on the road, watching her house, there was nothing. The blue ghostlights flickered along the road, as always. She shut the door. The only heavy thing she still owned that might be able to hold it closed in such a wind was Tomas’s bed, so she turned to pull it over.

A boy sat on the edge of the bed. He glowed from the inside out as if he’d swallowed one of the roadside lanterns. His shirt was ripped to shreds, and his terrified face was striped with tear tracks. He looked up at her, shaking in the cold, and said, “Liesel, why did you take my blankets?”

Liesel’s flesh prickled from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.

“Tomas?”

“Have you been crying?” he asked.

Liesel stared at the unblemished, luminescent plane of his chest visible through the rags of his shirt. The wind pushed the door into her back.

“Please don’t cry. You’ll make my blankets all wet, and then they’ll be cold, too.”

“What are you?” Her voice was swallowed by the wind, but he still heard her.

“What . . . ? Liesel, it’s me.” Tomas looked hurt. “Why are you being so cruel?”

“Why are you here? What do you want?”

With the next slam of the door against her back, he was standing before her. He hadn’t seemed to move except to tip slightly forward, and then he’d faded from one spot and reappeared in the next. His eyes, which had been a dull gray in life, blazed with blue fire. He smelled like the bitter bite of winter.

“I need to tell you something,” he said.

And then he was gone.

The room returned to rattling darkness. The wind thumped the door between Liesel’s shoulder blades one, two, three times. She sank to the floor in front of it, arms wrapped around her knees, and remained there until morning.