What secret was so terrible a Witch would fear it coming out?
b
The day after my unnerving encounter with the Witch in the kitchens, I went walking after breakfast. It had been a tense affair, and I had left it with a compulsion to try and understand a little better what I had seen. After bandaging my feet and stuffing them into thick socks, I limped out side.
A grey blanket of cloud hung low over the mountains and the castle seemed so tall its towers scraped their base, the off-white stone another bank of snow between the trees. I could not turn my mind from the image of the maid stood mute in the corner in that strange room. I traced a path around the foundations, trying to map the interior to the walls and windows I could see. I found at last the staved-in windows of the room banked with snow, but that was as far as I could improve my understanding. The harder I tried to understand my new home, the more it evaded me. Strange, unnerving things occurred within its walls, and no power of observation or academic study could elucidate the problem.
I came home damp up to my thighs with grey slush and harbouring a deep need to scrub myself raw. I stripped off, dropping my dress, corset, bustle, petticoats and bloomers across the floor like wrapping torn from a present. A team of maids brought the wooden bath to my room and water from the kitchens; I watched each face closely but I could not tell if any had been the girl from last night. I had never seen her face.
Once the bath was full I sunk into the hot water like a stone, weariness tethering me down.
What secret was so terrible a Witch would fear it coming out?
I could not shake the question from my mind.
In my long walk I had turned the events of the night before over in my mind: the maid in the corner, the Witch at my back. The strange summer room. With the crunch of snow beneath my boots and the bright blue of the winter sky above me, it had felt a little foolish to have been so frightened and I berated myself for it. But now as I tested out explanations, I came up short. It would make enough sense for a maid to be in the kitchens, except when I first arrived Wolf had told me no one else stayed overnight in the castle. Perhaps whatever emergency Wolf had summoned the Witch to yesterday afternoon had involved the maid and she had stayed?
I frowned, picking at the skin around my nails.
Another memory came back to me: the woman in the village bakery had said that people went up to work in the castle for a day and lost a whole month.
A knot of dread had settled in the pit of my stomach. I had decided to return to the Witch because I was needed here, and the joy I had found in our growing intimacy had confirmed my choice.
And yet.
There was so much I didn’t know, and I found myself unable to ignore it.
Perhaps I had made a terrible mistake, and I might not understand exactly why until too late.
As if summoned by my thoughts, the door opened without a knock and the Witch came into my room.
Flushed with shock, I struggled up, groping for the towel. My fingers touched the edge of the cloth – then my sore foot slipped and I went crashing down, face first into the metal edge.
Before I met its sharp blade, I was caught, a body bracing me.
The Witch had moved impossibly fast, and I clung to her, trembling. I wore my shift to bathe as most women did, and I was acutely aware of only a thin, translucent barrier between us. Her grip was powerful; I could not have freed myself if I wanted to.
I was not sure I wanted to.
‘That’s the second time I’ve had to save you,’ she said.
I felt it, the fragile weight of my life in her hands.
So much rested on her regard for me. My happiness. My future.
‘You startled me,’ I breathed.
This close I could see every black lash against her cheek, the full curve of her lip. The impenetrable hollow of her pupils.
I swallowed.
The memory came to me of Frau Hässler grasping my wrist and demanding to know why. Why had the Witch let me go? Was I special?
‘Put me down,’ I whispered.
‘As you wish.’
She released me. My shift clung to my breasts and hips, and water ran down my body, hair sticking to my shoulders and chest in wet coils. Her eyes lingered on the shape of me a moment too long, and a blush crept across my cheeks. We were both women and there was nothing I had that she hadn’t seen before; she had nursed me when I was sick and who knew what state of undress she’d seen me in then. And yet I was flush with embarrassment, acutely aware of every inch of me exposed to her gaze.
