Three

On a chilly spring day, with the wind whipping whitecaps across Grey Lake and the orioles shuttering themselves in the trees, Katrina became friends with Hans, the butcher’s son. He had always made her uncomfortable, and there was something strange about his eyes, but he was available, and he promised her something she wouldn’t forget. Perhaps friends was too strong a word for what they were, but Katrina had never had friends, so this was as close as she had ever been.

They walked south to the lake together, where they met Fritz, the fisherman’s son, untangling nets by the dock. While Hans was of perfectly average height and proportions, blond hair neatly cut and parted, his face and clothes clean of dirt, poor Fritz looked as if he’d been grabbed by the head and feet and stretched until his bones no longer connected. A streak of grime ran over his cheek and up his long nose. Dark strings of hair hung into his dark, frightened eyes, which were like the eyes of a rabbit.

Fritz saw them coming and immediately froze, rabbit eyes darting toward a shack nestled up against the trees.

“You shouldn’t be here now!” he hissed. “My father will—”

“Your father is puking fishes,” Hans said, full volume, gesturing back toward the shack. “I’ll bet Doctor Death is still in there, isn’t he?”

Fritz’s tight-lipped silence confirmed this. Fritz dropped the nets and, as if he already knew why Hans was here, motioned them down the northern lakeshore. As he strode off the dock, he cast poorly concealed glances toward Katrina, as if he couldn’t believe she was there.

The shore was gray and rocky, strewn with dead branches. Katrina’s basket bounced against her leg as she followed Fritz. Soon after they set off, the uneven beach disappeared entirely, replaced by a steep wall of tree roots and earth, the forest pressing over the edge of the lake. Katrina saw—and smelled—what waited for them at the far end of the lake before they reached it: a carcass of some dead creature, bigger than Katrina herself, mostly picked away so the skeleton leered out between ribbons of rotted flesh. She held her hand under her nose, trying to ward off the thick musk of death with the butter and yeast scent of the apple pastry, and watched Hans hurry almost giddily forward. Why this? Why had he thought she would be interested in seeing this?

But when they reached the creature, she understood. She had thought perhaps that it was a bear that died and fell, somehow, into the lake, only to resurface. But up close, it was no bear; it had flippers, for one thing, three on either side of a long, round body. A great slab of flesh had been carved from its flank, showing its ribs, and much of the other skin had been picked off by scavengers. It had a long neck, curled up and around itself, the vertebrae now only held together by strings of graying meat. A round head and a short snout filled with razor-sharp teeth. And it must have also had a tail, a long one, but those vertebrae disappeared into the water.

She had never seen anything like it. She looked out over the lake with a shiver. Had it been here the whole time? What else dwelt beneath the water?

“What is it?” Katrina asked, looking at Fritz.

Fritz jumped when he realized she had addressed him. Rubbing his hands together, he said, “I’m n-not sure, Lady Katrina. I’ve never seen anything like it. Neither has my father. He thought it would be good meat, but he got sick when he tried to eat some. That’s why Doctor Luther is with him now.”

“It showed up—what, two days ago?” Hans said, looking to Fritz for confirmation, though he didn’t wait for an answer. “We think it must be a sign of the witch.”

Fritz blushed at this.

Katrina looked between them, the stench forgotten. “Really? You really think this is—this creature was created by magic?” Now that was interesting, and she felt bad for doubting Hans.

“Fritz says he has never seen anything like this on the lake before, and neither has his father. And his father is as ancient as the town! When strange things happen, the witch is to blame!”

“Then why hasn’t Falk told anyone else about it yet?” she asked.

Fritz made a strangled noise. Hans continued to talk over him. “You start telling everyone there’s witchcraft in the lake and no one will want to eat fish anymore. And maybe that’s a good thing, if even his putrid father—Falk—got sick from it. Maybe the witch is trying to poison the food supply.” Hans’s eyes lit up, and for the first time he looked truly alive, truly part of the world he stood in. “This appeared now because she’s casting her spells again. Maybe the tailor hasn’t been doing a very good job.”

Fritz started. “She is still going, isn’t she? Hilda? Into the woods to talk to the witch?”

Hans sneered at him. “You shake any harder, Fritz, you’re going to shake your own skin right off. Calm down; she still goes into the forest.”

“Nobody has ever . . .” Katrina paused, wondering if she was about to sound very naive. “Nobody has ever seen the witch, besides Hilda, have they?”

Fritz shrugged. Hans said, “No, not unless they’re in league with the witch and hiding it.” This made Fritz rake both hands through his hair.

“Do you think there really is a witch?” Katrina asked.

They both stared at her, and then Hans burst out laughing, which made Fritz smile nervously. “Of course there’s a witch!” Hans said. He motioned to the creature’s corpse. “How else do you explain this? Or the frosts in the middle of summer that kill the crops? Or the ravens that follow you around, gathering all your secrets?”

Katrina had never known the weather to be particularly stable in Greymist Fair, and she didn’t think there was a way to prove the ravens were gathering secrets, but she didn’t have any explanation for the dead creature.

Hans was pacing around the creature now, his arms crossed. Katrina wanted to tell him to stop; it seemed the creature might come alive at any moment and bite off his leg. “Can you imagine what it must be like, to have the power to create living things? To change the weather, or make animals your familiars? Do you think the witch was born with magic, or did she learn it?” Hans asked.

Katrina and Fritz glanced at each other. Fritz shrugged.

“What would you do with magic, if you had it?” Hans asked them. He’d stopped, feet planted, near the creature’s head.

“I—I dunno,” Fritz said.

“Of course you do,” Hans snapped. “Everyone knows what they would do if they could do anything. What would it be?”

Fritz, shuffling in place and looking around as if an answer might be somewhere near him, at last said, “I guess I’d make myself stronger. Then I could build a better boat.”

Hans rolled his eyes. “What about you, Katrina?”

“I would make myself like everyone else,” she said, without hesitation.

Hans’s eyebrows furrowed. “What for? It’s better to be special.”

“Well, what would you do with magic?” Katrina shot back, motioning with her basket. “Your father has provided you with a house to live in, you have fine clothes, plenty to eat. What would you want that isn’t silly or simple?”

Hans’s lips parted to reveal his crooked teeth. He spread his arms wide. “I would make myself the King of Greymist! I would hold feasts every night, and the whole village would dance and sing. I could invite anyone I wanted to my table, I could appoint whomever I wanted as my servants, I could have anyone I wanted. Even my father wouldn’t be able to tell me what to do, the cruel bastard.”

He looked so young, and he sounded so serious, that Katrina started laughing. Hans dropped his arms and flushed red from his collar to his hairline. He glared at Fritz, who had to turn his laughs into coughs.

“You think the witch would teach you how to use magic so you could go and make yourself king?” Katrina wiped her eyes, barely breathing through the last of her laughter. “Well, actually, maybe she would. That would be a fast way for her to burn Greymist Fair to the ground.”

“You think she’d teach you just so you could make yourself like everyone else?” Hans said. “She’d turn you into a toad for such a stupid request.”

Katrina folded her hands on the handle of her basket. “Would you like to bet on that? I think she’d laugh in your face.”

“I’d happily wager my life on that.” Hans’s chest was puffed up, his chin thrust out, pride and defiance in his eyes. “You and I, Katrina, we’ll go to the witch’s home in the forest. I’ll find the way. We’ll ask her to make us students, then let her decide who she’ll take. And we’re betting our lives on it.”

Of course we will, Katrina thought, pursing her lips to keep from smiling again. She was absolutely sure that Hans would never find the path to the witch’s home, and they would never go to her, and there would never be a winner or a loser. Hans was marching his ego around, and this grand declaration was all that would ever come of it.

Two weeks later, she was proven wrong.