Andcold. That I had not expected, though it made sense that the ancient cold of the mountain would seep into a place so cut off from life. A pervasive smell of dank and mildew filled the air, the steps were slick with moss and algae growing in the ground water; the wall was wet under my bare hand, and so close I felt shut up in a tomb. The going was slow and terrifying. Occasionally my foot slipped, though I was wearing my sturdy mountain climbing boots, and my thoughts were filled with the image of my body tumbling down and down, neck cracking on stone to lie lifeless, hidden, where no one would look for me until I had rotted away to join the bones buried under the stifling earth.
The yarn ran out at some featureless point in my climb and I abandoned the thread reluctantly. I was determined not to regret my choice, but I could not deny the strong desire I had to turn around. Still, I climbed. I did not know what would be worse, continuing my ascent, or turning back and plunging into that black well of nothingness. It had been long enough since I last climbed a mountain that my thighs were protesting, but this was a discomfort I knew. In the cold and dark it made my body mine again, carved out something like a place that I belonged.
Finally, with a curse on my breath, the stairs evened out into a landing, where a door-shaped line of light was picked out in the wall. I kneeled, grateful for the rest, and peered through the locked keyhole. As I’d hoped, beyond was the corridor by the Witch’s rooms, dust motes dancing in a shaft of light and everywhere utter stillness and silence. Either I’d been climbing far longer than I’d thought, or the castle was up to its old tricks, because there was a strong midday sun shining through the windows.
The Tower still rose a good way further, but now at least the stairs and walls were dry, a well-worn divot in the centre of each step from years of passing feet. I thought of the Witch climbing the Tower every day, her feet where I now trod, her hand brushing the wall as mine did. I rested again soon, the lamp cradled on my lap. What was I really hoping to achieve doing this? What did I think I was going to find at the top? What did Iwantto find? If I was looking for the Witch, I was chasing her ghost.
Climbing was outside of conscious thought now. I found myself mounting the stairs again without realising, lost in the rhythm of my body, the burn in my thighs and my throat. When the top came it was without fanfare. Only the plateauing of the steps, an unlocked door, the narrow walls opening out to a small circular room with clean, polished boards, a vast fireplace banked with ash and on the far side, the square window I had seen from below. Rafters in the conical roof rose above, painted in royal blue and sprinkled with stars, all faded like the walls of my bedroom. Outside – another trick of the Schloss – dusk, or was it dawn, broke milky pink over the crest of the mountains. An in-between time, soft, pregnant with potential. Despite the stone, the open window, the hollow roof, the void beneath the floor, it was so warm, I pushed my sleeves back and unbuttoned my shirt collar.
The heat was coming from the only thing in the room: a spinning wheel taller than I was, its wheel as broad as the span of my arms. It was cruder than the one Frieda had used, an old-fashioned great wheel, the spinner turned by hand. Around the spindle was wound something golden and shimmering, like a candle flame, like fool’s gold, like sunlight in water. I had seen this before; when the Witch had bound me to her, something golden had risen from my skin, wrapped around our entwined fingers. I drew closer, pulled to its warmth like a magnet to true north. A great deal of thread had been spun, and now only a little carded fibre was left on the distaff – the spike set at the side of the wheel where raw fleece was skewered. If it could be called fleece; like a dusk cloud limned gold by the sunset, it mounded and blurred so that I could never look at it directly.
Drugged by the warmth, the fuzzing gold halo, I reached out one bare hand and touched the spindle.
XV
The world blinked out.
Like slipping beneath the water, I was dragged down yet buoyed up by something thicker than air, both weightless and like a stone, sinking slowly.
No,timeblinked out. The walls warped, sun boiling beyond the window, fire flared and died and the wheel turned. Time ran through the wheel like yarn being spun, owing its steady flow to the turn of the wheel.
I had stumbled upon the secret of the castle: the Witch’s work.
The light around the spindle and on the distaff was snuffed and I plunged into the cold and dark. I felt it not with my body – that was a lost, ephemeral thing, cobwebs and dandelion heads and milk foam – but with my soul. My body lay rooted innowand my soul flew through time untethered.
If I could have screamed I would have brought the stones crashing down.
At last the wheel’s spin slowed, and the tower walls came juddering into focus. It was early morning, cool blue light outside the window, the sense of things waking in the air. My head span, lapping waves of nausea rising and receding; I reached to touch the wheel again but nothing happened. I had a hand and I had nothing. I could feel the shape of it, fingertips and palm but when I moved it there was only a shadow. I was here, and I was not.
Slowly, it dawned on me just how terrible a mistake I had made. I had touched the white heart of the fire and disrupted the Witch’s careful work; now I meddled in time. I was lost.
Voices came up the stairs, and three people entered the room. A man, a woman, and a girl of perhaps sixteen, dressed finely but in garments more antiquated than anything I’d ever seen the Witch wear. Artichoke-patterned silk in black and gold, slashed all over to reveal ivory fabric beneath, sharply angled necklines plunging to a high, belted waist to reveal the kirtle underneath, voluminous bag sleeves and all richly adorned. They looked like something from a Renaissance painting. The man and woman circled the room, talking softly and the girl stepped forward to examine the wheel.
Now I understood exactly why the Witch didn’t want me here.
This girl was the Witch.
I was sure of it. The arch of her brow, the curve of her jaw, the fine cheekbones and hazel-flecked eyes. I would know that face anywhere.
The man looked like her, he had the same brow and chin, but the woman was different. Tall, graceful with chestnut hair and a fierce grey streak at her parting, she was nothing like the other two – and yet I saw the Witch in her too. In the way she held herself; alertness and caution dressed in nonchalance, expression guarded, eyes sharp and cunning, and afraid. And over it all, some deep, deep weariness.
I felt suddenly frightened for my Witch. Whatever sympathy the woman’s similarity roused in me was quashed immediately by the way she looked at the young girl.
A snake waiting to strike.
Desperate.
‘Holda, dear,’ said the man holding out an arm to tuck the girl, my Witch, to his side as they looked out of the window. ‘Is this not fine? Are you not pleased?’
‘Yes, Father,’ she mumbled.
‘I have kept you too long in the city; to see such beautiful land is a balm for the soul. Your stepmother’s residence will suit us both, don’t you think?’
My eyes snapped to the woman; stepmother. I understood this all too well.
Holda pulled out of his arms, avoiding his smile. ‘Yes, Father.’ Between the two adults, Holda seemed as small and ephemeral as a paper toy; something easily batted about. Easily crushed.
The man said, ‘Berchta, my love, will you give us a moment alone?’
