The Witch crouched in front of me, pale face frowning. A shadow made flesh, black dress, black cloak, black hair streaming behind her and gem-studded with snowflakes.
I blinked in drowsy confusion. A hallucination? Had I fallen asleep and was dreaming?
I reached out a numb finger and traced the plane of her porcelain cheek. Real.
‘It’s you.’ I broke into a delirious smile. ‘I’m terrible at lots of things.’
‘I see the cold has addled your mind no further than before.’
I looked at her bare feet, almost as pale as the snow. ‘Aren’t you freezing?’
Her lip curled. ‘Am I not a Witch?’
It was no sort of answer at all, but then she hooked an arm under my shoulders and hauled me up; unthinking, I let my weight fall on my bad ankle, and cried out.
‘I cannot carry you,’ she said.
After a moment with my eyes closed to let the nausea and pain wash back like the tide pulling out, I said, ‘I can manage.’
The Witch led us to the foot of a fallen oak, its trunk the height of a woodsman’s cottage. When it fell the root ball had ripped out of the earth, a tangle of grasping arms knotted and frozen in the air, and beneath it was a tree-cave, a temporary hollow with a root-roof waiting for us. The Witch lowered me in then made quick work of stacking branches around the hole to create a wall, packing it tight with snow. Night had almost swallowed us, and in the shelter it was darker still. Already, I felt a little warmer.
The Witch crawled in beside me and closed up the gap with more branches and snow until we were sealed in like babes in the womb. It was close quarters, so close I could feel the jig and jostle of her elbow as she worked, her bare foot rucked up against my calf and her skirts draped across my knees.
My initial happiness at seeing her had faded and now I realised the situation I was in. The Witch hadfoundme. Which meant she had been looking. Out in the dark and cold, for someone she despised so much she had ordered me out of her way. I had thought to make a nuisance of myself, but not likethis.
In the dark, she was little more than shifting body weight, the rustle of skirts and those glittering black eyes like beetles. I held my breath, waiting to see what was going to happen.
She slumped beside me, the line of her arm hot against mine, heavy and human; only her bare feet stood out, ice-pale flashes in the darkness. How she survived the cold I did not understand, but there was very little about her Ididunderstand so I left that thought along with all the other impossible things.
Something brushed against my fingers – at first I thought it was a spider, something long and sinuous – then I realised it was just her hand, falling limp at her side.
‘How did you find me?’ I whispered. ‘I didn’t think you’d notice me gone.’
No response, only the shallow rise and fall of breath. Then those eyes, flint-sparks in the darkness.
‘I notice you.’
I swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. A thread of tension drew taut between us; I felt every mote of air in the gap between our bodies, the radiating heat of her, the weight and shape of her so close we breathed the same air.
I flushed and turned away first.
The Witch threw her cloak around us. ‘It is a freezing night. We must share our warmth or you may not survive.’
Her arm snaked around my waist and tucked me against her, and I could hardly make my thoughts line up with any sense. The soft swell of her breasts pressed against my back, the line of her thigh matched up with mine. I became more acutely aware of my body than I had ever been in my life.
She hated me so thoroughly, found every moment of my company unbearable, every glance met with contempt. And yet she saved me. I couldn’t understand it.
Tentatively, I let my hand fall over hers, cold fingers slotting together.
She had bound us together that night in my father’s study.
To what end, I did not know.
VIII
Ihad little memory of how we came out of the forest and back to the Schloss. I woke in the white heat of fever, the world glittering and wild. Wolf tended to me; I was dimly aware of her comings and goings with wet cloths and willow-bark teas. Sitting always in the corner, never speaking, was a figure all in black. A month before this would have frightened me: an omen of something deathly. But now it was a comfort. My silent sentinel watching over me.
The morning my fever broke I opened my eyes to find the Witch sitting at my bedside. A large rocking chair had been pulled up close and beside it was a console table with a basin of water and a wrung-out cloth. The Witch was slouched low, brows furrowed as she read from a small volume with a cheap binding debossed with the title in English:The Woman in White– a novel, I realised, in groggy confusion. Her black outfit today was a loose Aesthetic gown with briar embroidery running down the front.
