“You must go by the old well,” she whispered. “There’s a path behind it, grown over, but it’s still there. Go to the circle. It’s the only place they won’t look for you. They fear it more than the devil.”
I wanted to ask why, but she shook her head. “You ask too many questions, girl. Just do as I say.” She wiped her hands on her apron, then bent close, her breath hot and sour on my cheek. “If you see a man in black, with a wolf on his arm, run faster. He hunts for himself, not for any lord.”
The words chilled me, but I nodded, clutching the bundle to my chest. I tried again to stand, and this time managed it, though the room tilted alarmingly.
At that moment, the sound of hooves rang out, sharp and close. Both our heads snapped to the door. There was no time to argue. The Widow grabbed my arm and shoved me toward the back, her grip stronger than bone or age should allow.
“Go!” she hissed, pushing me into the night. “Trust nothing but the oldest magic. And do not come back.”
I staggered into the darkness, the wind cutting through the holes in my dress, the bundle of food pressed to my breast. Behind me, the cottage door slammed, and the light of the hearth blinked out as if it had never been.
I ran. Or tried to. My legs were half-wood, my lungs full of cinders. But I made for the old well, tripping on roots, cursing under my breath. The path behind it was barely a memory, but I found it, scraping my knees bloody as I crawled through the bramble.
At the top of the rise, I looked back. The men were at the cottage, lanterns swinging, voices raised. The Widow stood in the doorway, arms folded, face a blank mask. One of the men shoved her, but she did not move. She just stared, hard as flint, as they ransacked her home.
For the first time in days, I smiled.
Then I turned, tucked the bundle under my arm, and slipped deeper into the woods. The path was gone before I knew it, lost to the dark. I let the forest take me, trusting only to the magic in my own legs and the memory of warmth. My hands were numb, but I did not care.
If they wanted a witch, I would give them one.
***
The forest had gone mad. Or maybe I had, but the difference mattered less with every dragging step. The snow, once patchy and shy, now fell in sodden sheets, muffling sound and swallowing every mark I made. I tried to keep to the old path, but it was gone, drowned by the hush and by my own wavering vision. I could hear them behind me, the men, their voices thinned to pinpricks by the white-out, but now and then atrumpet would blare, high and reedy, and the fear would push me faster, harder, even when my body screamed to stop.
I clutched the food bundle to my chest, knuckles locked and bright with frost. Every few paces, I stumbled, and once, when a root caught my foot just right, I went down so hard I did not believe I would rise again. The ankle folded beneath me with a sound like a snapping stick, and all the air left my lungs at once. The pain was so sharp I tasted metal, and for a few long moments the world spun, the sky and trees trading places over and over. I screamed, but the storm ate the sound.
I tried to stand, but the leg would not hold. I tried again, and this time managed to lever myself upright, but only by bracing against a birch and sobbing like a child. Each step was an agony, fire and ice radiating up the calf and across the hip, but I moved anyway, hopping at first, then limping, then dragging the useless foot behind me. I lost the bundle in the fall, and for a desperate minute, I scrabbled at the snow, hoping to find it. My hands were numb, and the cold made everything look the same, but finally I spotted the cloth, torn and half-buried. I pressed it to my breast, as if it could shield me from what was coming.
By then, the storm was everywhere. The light was the color of drowning, the sky a ceiling of iron hammered close to the trees. I could barely see my own hands, let alone the path. I knew only that I had to move, to keep going, because if I stopped, the men would find me, or the cold would finish what they’d started. It occurred to me, once or twice, that dying here might be preferable to being dragged back to Aldric or Tomas or whatever hell they’d built for girls like me, but the body is a stubborn thing, and mine was not ready to quit. Not yet.
Time lost its edges. Sometimes I found myself standing still, teeth chattering, not knowing how I’d come there. Sometimes I hallucinated voices, sweet and cajoling, urging me to lie down, to rest, to let the storm wrap me in sleep. Other times I saw faces inthe trees, twisted and feral, and one of them looked like the girl I’d been before all this, the one who could still laugh, who still believed in love or in safety or in a future with windows and a warm bed.
I slipped and fell again, this time landing on my hands. The skin split, and I left streaks of blood across the snow. I tried to crawl, but the ankle sent up such a protest I nearly blacked out. I bit down on the pain, literally, sinking my teeth into my own wrist, willing myself forward another inch, then another. The bundle was gone, lost somewhere in the fall, but I barely noticed. All that mattered was forward, toward some shape I’d glimpsed in the white—a line of trees, darker than the rest, standing shoulder to shoulder like a jury.
I knew the place before I reached it. The oaks. The circle. I had not meant to come here, not truly, but the forest had guided me, or maybe the old magic had, or maybe it was just the way all lost things find their own level. I belly-crawled to the edge and lay there, breath pluming weak and irregular, head pillowed on my arms.
The pain receded, replaced by a floating, woolen warmth that I recognized as the first step toward dying. I welcomed it, even as I cursed the body for betraying me so completely. I tried to remember the prayer Mother had taught me for dying, but the words scattered, outpaced by the snow.
Lightning split the sky, close enough to show the whole world in blue and black. I saw the oaks, saw their roots writhe and twist through the earth like veins. I saw, too, the place at the center of the ring, a small hollow in the snow where the ground seemed to pulse with light. The wind whipped around me, and I felt myself lifted, not by strength but by the storm’s own arms.
I crawled. Or maybe I was dragged, but either way, I crossed the ring. Every breath burned, but the cold could not touch menow; I was past the reach of that pain. I collapsed at the center, rolling onto my back, eyes open to the sky.
Another flash, and this time I saw him.
He was there, standing over me, just as he’d been in the dream. The man in black, his arms tattooed with snarling wolves, his eyes the impossible gold of firelight. He knelt beside me, one hand outstretched, fingers tipped with claws or maybe just dirty from the road. He smelled of leather and tobacco, of blood and rain.
“Come through,” he said, the words slurred by distance or by magic or by my own ebbing sense. “You’re almost there.”
I reached for him, but my hand was clumsy, useless. Still, he took it, and the warmth of his grip shocked me, made the heart stutter and then pound. The world tilted, the snow turning to water, the water to sky, and then everything collapsed into a pinprick of light.
He smiled, and it was not a kind smile, but it was real.
“Don’t let them catch you,” he whispered. “Not when you’re so close.”
I wanted to answer, wanted to ask who he was, or what he wanted from me, but the light swallowed the words.
In the darkness, I heard the trumpets again, but this time they sounded not like hunters but like angels, calling something home.
