‘We’ll need to clean this, and bind it. Moss will do until we can get you home.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You should take better care of yourself. I know you have been on your own a long while but that doesn’t mean you should neglect yourself. Let me—’
‘I saidno.’ She yanked her foot so hard out of my grasp I lost my balance and landed on my behind. ‘Stop interfering.’
I lost my temper. ‘I try to look after you and you act like I’ve committed some heinous crime. What is wrong with you?’
‘I do not need someone likeyouto look after me.’
‘Someone who cares about you?’
That silenced her.
‘You’re worth caring about,’ I said. ‘That is what I think, and you cannot change my mind, however nasty you are about it.’
‘Stop it. Stop being so nice to me.’ She scrubbed at her face with her hands, as though trying to scrub the expression from her features. ‘You have no idea who I am or what I have done, so you cannot have the first idea what I do or do not deserve.’
I took a step closer, hands held out and open. ‘Then tell me. What did Wolf mean? What is it I’m doing that hurts you?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. You’re not doing anything. It’s all me. I make my own misery.’
‘If you tell me, maybe I can help.’
The way she looked at me then, I saw all four hundred of her years. ‘Mina...’
‘I mean it. I would do anything for you.’
The Witch looked at me darkly. ‘Promise?’
I placed her hand across my heart. ‘I promise.’
XX
Ablizzard blew in, shocking and wild for June, freezing my pea shoots and smothering my strawberries. The road was quickly swallowed up, a white line snaking from Schloss to town; the forest lasted longer, the rich valley of green slipping leaf by leaf into white.
Time was losing its grip on the seasons.
The Witch watched the snow from the window, a deep line of worry between her brows. I would do anything to take that misery away from her but she would not tell me how. She spent less time spinning now; I wondered if she had run out of fleece on the distaff entirely. I thought of what the Witch had said: time was everywhere, in everything. The loops were only the start of how it could unravel.
I banked the fire and brought us up a hot pot of coffee, a jug of cream and a tray of springerle biscuits and Lübeck marzipan stamped with the towers of the Holstentor city gates. I pulled the Witch from the window and pressed a cup of coffee into her hands, stroked her hair back from her face and kissed her temple.
Dusk came quickly with the snow cloud smothering the sun. I took my regular route through the castle, noting the shivering ebb and flow of time. I confess I was growing anxious. I had faith that the Witch knew well how to tend the wheel, but the more the world began to fracture the more I felt doubt creep in. I did not understand the problem she faced, and for the first time I began to think that perhaps it was one she could not solve. I bolted doors and closed shutters against the icy wind, then returned to the study, face stinging with the warmth and feet numb in my boots. The coffee was still on the tray, undrunk, the biscuits untouched. A feeling of trepidation came over me.
‘Witch?’
I couldn’t see her in the study, or through the open doors to her bedroom.
I pulled off my gloves and scarf. ‘The coffee’s getting cold.’
Slowly, I walked the length of the room, even checking the half-hidden door that corresponded to the door to next Tuesday, but nothing. One window in her bedroom had blown open, and a shower of snow covered her dressing table. I latched it hastily, closing the shutter and brushing as much snow clear of her things as I could. I had only been in her bedroom to wake her when Frieda had set the fire. I had pried into too many things; I had meant to at least leave her this.
Her dressing table was as curious a collection of things as I would have expected. Exquisite modern settings with delicately cut jewels, fat paste gems on thick rings, ornate, baroque necklaces, earrings so heavy I would be afraid they would rip my earlobe, old pieces in desperate need of polishing, dull pearls and fleur-de-lis curls losing their shape. Combs and brushes, empty pots of rouge, creams, eau de toilette. And amongst it, a small box half open, inside a small collection of rings, too large for her hand. Some simple bands, some ornate. Men’s pieces.
Rings from the fingers of dead men.
I shut the lid firmly.
