Four

On a dark spring day, with the clouds scudding across an overcast sky and the orioles complaining from their hiding spots, Katrina crept after Hans past the hill upon which sat Hilda’s cottage. It looked gray and ramshackle, tiny compared to Greymist Manor, and Katrina felt like Hilda was watching them from its windows and knew what they were doing.

“I know the way. I know how to get to the witch,” Hans had said when he’d found her taking her walk through the square the week before. “I don’t know what everyone is so scared of. It’s just some trees. Only the weak fear the forest.”

He had followed Hilda when she went on her visit. He had remained close enough so as not to get lost, close enough to call out to her if he got into danger, but the forest hadn’t seemed dangerous at all.

They had come to a cottage deep in the woods, in a clearing where all the trees were losing their leaves, as if it was fall. The cottage was nothing to look at, he said. Like any other cottage in the village.

“She didn’t go inside. She tied some plants to a string on the door and then walked around the outside a few times. It didn’t take very long at all. It’s no wonder the witch is putting monsters in the lake—the tailor isn’t even talking to her anymore!”

Katrina’s stomach flipped as she and Hans crept closer and closer to the forest’s edge. She had never been this close to the trees before; they seemed to touch the sky, their highest branches bending to a wind she couldn’t feel here on the ground, their leaves rustling from an invisible touch. Since she had offered the bet, she had considered what she would do if she won it—what would she do with magic, besides making herself normal? And what did that even mean, normal? She still wanted to be beautiful, but she also wanted to have friends, and to be allowed to go out whenever she chose, and she wanted people to listen to her when she spoke—but she hadn’t thought that Hans would figure out how to get to the witch. Katrina had not considered the actual journey.

Fritz had refused to go, despite Hans’s nearly constant harassing. “I don’t go in the forest. Da says no forest, so I don’t go in the forest. There’s enough weird things coming out of the lake; I don’t want to see what’s in the forest. People get killed in there, you know?”

Katrina knew—even if she didn’t know about the witch, she knew the forest itself was not worth the risk for most of the villagers—and Hans should have known, but either he had chosen to ignore the warnings, or he believed they didn’t apply to him.

And now here they stood, at the first of the trees, with the village at their backs. Hans dove in without hesitation. Katrina scanned the hazy blue shadows between the trunks, listened for sounds deep from those unknown places of tunneling roots and twisting branches. There was no movement, and the sound was a low-volume hum of insects and wind broken only by the low hoot of an owl that Katrina could have imagined.

The walk was long, and the chill settled under Katrina’s clothes not long after Greymist Fair disappeared behind them. Once inside of it, she didn’t find the forest as scary as she’d expected. There were birdcalls, and the soft rustle of leaves, sounds not so different from the ones she heard out her window every morning. Hans never went too far from her, always turning to make sure she was still there, holding out a hand to help her over fallen trees and down sudden slopes.

To mark their path, Hans had brought small white sticks wrapped with red string that he tied to bushes and low branches. When the last marker had almost been swallowed by the forest behind them, he hung another. The bag slung across his chest was full of them. Katrina paused to looked closer at one after he hung it. The little stick was knobbly at one end and jagged at the other and hollow on the inside. She couldn’t think of what tree or bush it had come from, but then she realized it wasn’t a stick: it was bone.

“My father gives me a lot of the bones from the animals he butchers,” Hans said when she asked. “I put them in the sun so they turn white, and then I make things out of them. You should come see them sometime—they’re good.”

“Are you sure this is the way?” Katrina asked when his bag hung limp and nearly empty and the trees curved together overhead. “We’ve been walking for a long time. You said before that Hilda only stayed for a few hours—”

“There!”

Hans darted forward. Heart in her throat, Katrina hurried after him. Past the fall of low branches and light-starved undergrowth, the forest opened suddenly into a perfectly round clearing. Katrina stumbled, gasping; she could have sworn moments ago that the trees continued on, that this clearing could not exist. But they were standing here now, the sky like a steely pot lid clasped down over the rim of the treetops, and in the middle of the clearing was a cottage.

It was just like the cottages in the village, as Hans had said, but it wasn’t only like the cottages of the village: it was one cottage specifically. Hilda’s. There was no mistaking it. The old stones in its walls, the way the thatched roof was beginning to come apart on one side, the herbs tied to the door, and the tree—the exact same linden tree as stood atop the hill, with the same twist to its trunk, the same three low branches reaching out to shade the area beneath it. Had Hans not noticed when he’d come last time? Why would the cottage look exactly like Hilda’s?

Hans had paused on the edge of the clearing, Katrina only a few steps behind him.

“She’ll already know we’re here,” he said. “No point in hiding. I suppose it’d be best to knock on the door, don’t you? Katrina?”

He turned, frowning at her. She was frozen to her spot. The birds had stopped singing. The wind had died. The hum of the forest was gone. It was as if, by crossing the threshold from the trees to the clearing, they had entered another world. They were not supposed to be here. The cottage itself was too quiet; without the wind or the birds, she could hear Hans breathing, felt like she could hear the clouds moving across the sky. There was no light in the small windows, no scuffing of feet or clank and rattle of instruments. Perhaps the witch was sleeping, but in the middle of the day? This was wrong. Something was wrong here.

Hans grabbed her hand, jolting her out of her thoughts. “Come on. We’re going.” He dragged her across the clearing. Weeds caught on her skirts. She fought to remember why she was here, what had convinced her to come in the first place. Was this magic? Silence and foreboding? Even in the worst stories of the witch, there were incantations and thunder, the blood from beheaded magpies and the tails of rats, an immediacy to the action. The magic was always happening now. It was never like this, waiting, hunkered, like an animal with its eyes flashing in the gloom.

“No, Hans,” Katrina said, yanking on his hand. He continued toward the cottage with an almost zealous pace. “Hans! This isn’t safe—we need to leave!”

He couldn’t feel it, she realized. He couldn’t feel the chill of death.

Hans reached for the door.

“STOP.”

The voice came from behind them. The link between their hands burned white hot, so fierce and sudden they both gasped and whipped away from each other. Rushing from the veil between the trees was Hilda, her golden hair flying loose, her eyes wide and grim lines drawn across her face. “Stop!” she yelled again, but there was no flash of fire with it. “Don’t go inside! You’ll be killed!”

Hans shrank, cowed, but only for a second; a moment later he was inflating his chest and sticking his chin out. “And who are you to say what we can and can’t do? Why are you the only one who can speak to the witch? Clearly, she knows we’re here—if she wanted us dead, we’d be dead by now.”

“Foolish boy!” Hilda reached them and grabbed Hans by the collar, dragging him back from the door despite his being taller than she was. Katrina moved away gladly but kept her distance from Hilda. “What did he promise you, Katrina?” Hilda asked. “Did he tell you this would be a fun adventure? Did he make it seem like he knew what he was doing? He doesn’t. He’s a stupid boy trying to impress you. You shouldn’t have come here.” She threw Hans away from the cottage, hard enough that he stumbled and fell into the grass and had to scramble to his feet. “Stupid, stupid boy!”

“I don’t have to listen to you!” Hans snapped.

“Just as I expect from Jürgen’s son,” Hilda replied, marching on him, driving him back toward the trees. “You’re as stubborn and cruel as your father. Go on, go home! Your little bone markers are gone, but you won’t have any trouble, will you? You, who are too ignorant to fear death, you have nothing to worry about. You’ll think of your warm bed and your fine house and you’ll find your way without problem. Go! Go!” She flung her hand out, and Hans, ten feet away and backpedaling, toppled over as if she had shoved him. He pushed himself to his feet again, flushed with anger—had he not noticed that she was too far away to shove him?—and fled into the trees.

He deserted her so quickly. He hadn’t even looked at Katrina before he’d gone. She was alone in the clearing now with Hilda and the cottage that was silent as death, and as Hilda turned to look at her, Katrina took another step sideways, toward the forest.

“Katrina,” Hilda said, carefully.

“Your cottage looks like this one,” Katrina said. She could not stay in this clearing any longer. Death was a hand on the back of her neck, stroking. “You—you made us burn. You pushed Hans down.”

Hilda held out her hands as if to show they were empty. “Katrina, please. You’re feeling something now, aren’t you? You feel the cold? I know it can be frightening, but please, you mustn’t go into the forest feeling this way. It won’t be safe for you—”

But it wasn’t safe here, either; Katrina knew that for sure. There was no witch in the cottage. The witch was standing before her.

She hesitated for only one more moment.

Then she turned and bolted, and when she broke the threshold of the trees, death came for her.