A trick question, and Wolf skirted around answering.
‘I have been here most my life.’
‘Who lived in the castle before the Witch? It seems a grand place for one person.’
‘Things don’t change so much around here, you’ll find.’
‘I thought there might be a family mausoleum connected to the church but I didn’t see anything. Does the Witch’s family have their own chapel in the castle?’
Wolf didn’t reply.
My mind snagged on thoughts of the Witch: the burned loaves in the bakery had reminded me of her awful un-shod feet. Dirt-encrusted and bare to the world. Like an animal. Something beyond the boundaries of society.
A mist had rolled in, half obscuring the bridge over to the spur of rock and we walked on in faith alone. I tried one more time.
‘I thought I might see the names of the previous companions,’ I pressed my question.
‘They have no grave, my lady.’
A crow burst from the tree line in a flurry of glossy black feathers and claws.
Wolf continued. ‘Will you be wanting something to warm you up? I will have tea sent to your room.’
‘I am quite warm, I only want to know what I’m doing here,’ I snapped. I was shocked at my own boldness. Day by day I had felt myself changing; being snatched from familiar surroundings had left my outline ragged and unformed, as though I could unravel into someone entirely different. ‘The Witch won’t tell me, you won’t either and the people in the village think I’m some bad omen come to curse them. The Witch doesn’t even seem towantme here, so I don’t understand why she was so insistent on bringing someone. Is it me? Am I doing something wrong?’ My voice faltered.
Curls of mist lingered on the cobbles of the courtyard and the castle rose up above me, silent and cold and impossible.
‘The mistress will make it clear to you when you’re needed.’ For a fraction of a second, Wolf softened, something human came into her face. ‘Take my advice, stop rushing for something that will come soon enough. Enjoy your time.’
She went inside and I lingered by the door. Wolf had given me a series of frustrating non-answers, but the more she spoke the more an idea had coalesced: something dark lurked in that castle, beyond the darkness of the Witch. I had suspected it from the strangeness of the building, the decay, the shadows deep despite the midday sun, and the Witch’s own peculiar behaviour, fossilised in years alone under some great pressure of which she would not speak.
Perhaps I should do as both Wolf and the Witch had said, and leave the past alone. I had no interest in digging into my own, so perhaps I had to leave the Witch’s alone too.
But something else had stayed with me.
Wolf had said:enjoy your time.
My mind supplied the rest of the sentence:while you can.
VII
Ilearned to avoid the Witch like scenting an oncoming storm. She swept around the castle, barefoot and brutal, a cloud of poison staining the walls black. The door to her Tower remained locked, and she swept out of it at unexpected moments, wood slamming against stone. Her clothes were always black: black silk, bombazine, crepe and cotton, a confused mixture of modern and ancient. For three days straight she wore a flimsy dress with an empire-waist that looked so like the gown my grandmother wore in a youthful portrait, I was struck dumb with shock; that ghost arising here, the perfect memory of my grandmother who had died many years since. Was the Witch in mourning? I wondered. I dared not ask her.
I slept poorly. Wolves came down from the mountain each night to howl a protest beyond the castle walls and I woke often to check the oil lamp by my bedside had not gone out. In the dark I felt unmoored, a castaway in the middle of a vast, cruel ocean. In the days I kept myself to the castle grounds instead; the Witch was rarely found too far from her Tower. There was the cliff edge, falling away to the fast-moving river below, the path winding down to the village, a well. When I drew water from it, the water was mineral-stained, spilling over my hands red like blood and I recoiled in horror. Whatever was wrong with this place, it had spread its poison. The forest was as strange as the rest; ancient wild wood, untouched by people. Below was a stretch of deciduous beech, above, a conifer forest weaved a deep thicket of branches and needles so dense that at times I had to walk backwards to force myself through their prickling barriers. Vast tangles of bramble clogged the clearings, snaring my skirts and forcing me to move slow and stork-like, lifting each foot high before lowering it slowly to flatten the thorns. And everywhere, wildness. I saw fox and wildcat tracks in the dirt, great badgers’ sets, birds’ nests and spiderwebs, and bark alive with insects, woodpeckers gathered to pick out grubs. Wolf had been right, at least in part. This was a forest too old and alien for me to find my place.
But there was so much beauty too: frost turning webs to filigree, ragged blooms of fungus on the underside of fallen trees, frills of moss like lace. It was a palace, a fairyland, a solitary kingdom I moved through like an awe-struck traveller.
Tucked in a sunny patch of ground abutting the Witch’s tower I discovered an overgrown kitchen garden. At first I thought it was nothing but a weed-strewn patch of ground, then I recognised the shape of planting beds, of a low, crumbled wall ringing them and here and there wild sproutings of herbs that had been tended once.
I asked Wolf about it when she brought me my dinner.
‘Not in use for many years, Fräulein.’
‘Does no one have the inclination for the work?’
‘We can bring up all that’s needful from the village.’
I meant to ask Wolf something more, to extend a hand of friendship to the only other person who shared my world. But she left swiftly, keeping her back to me as though I was an ugly sight she didn’t want to be reminded of.
