My Witch opened her eyes.
MyWitch was gone.
She rose as her mask slipped into place, the mask of the monster the world thought she was, the wicked witch who held time like a whip she could wield. The cruel curl of her lip, the sharpness of her teeth.
‘Oh, Mina. Dear stupid girl. Now you see it. I would say I was surprised it took you this long to work it out, but that would be to call you intelligent. You spent so much time prying into my business, but you had invented a fairy tale for yourself: a lonely Witch who would love you if only you broke through her defences. If no one was coming to rescue you from your dismal, small life, then at least you could imagine yourself to be the rescuer.’
I stumbled back, palms sweaty. This was more than the caustic, cold Witch I had first known. For the first time in too long, I remembered why I was frightened of her.
‘Stop it,’ I said, voice shaky. ‘Stop being cruel. This is not who you are. I won’t believe it.’
She crossed to the fireplace and rested her hand on the sheath of the hunting knife, ignoring me. ‘Do you really think I could love you back? You are a stupid, plain, mortal girl who collects rocks like a child and understands more about trees than people. What is there in you to love, tell me?’
I tried to ignore the sting of the blow. I knew this was a front, the story she had to tell so she could steel herself to do what she had done seven times before. I knew she met pain with anger, lashed out like a cornered animal.
‘You don’t mean that,’ I said. ‘I read your journal; I know you don’t want to hurt me. You would have done it already if you did.’
I thought, for a moment, I saw her falter. A look of pain flashing across her face.
Then she snarled, ‘You don’t know the first thing about what I want. You think I haven’t tried to find another way? You think I haven’t spent four hundred years in this castledesperateto find a way out? The world doesn’t care what wewant. You’re stupid and trusting and you still haven’t learned the truth of the world. It is cold and brutal and love is a word that is hollow.’
The knife hummed as she pulled it free.
‘What will it take?’ Her voice broke. ‘Do I have to kill you for you to believe me a monster?’
It might have been a trick of the light, but for a moment I thought I saw her eyes glimmer, wet with tears.
‘Let me help,’ I whispered.
‘The only way you can help is by feeding yourself to the wheel and saving me a fight,’ she sobbed. ‘I am the evil Witch in the castle. Your mistake was forgetting that.’
‘Please. Holda. I love you.’
Blade flashing, she raised her arm and bared her teeth. I stumbled towards the door, keeping a chair, a sofa, a cabinet between us, and she mirrored my movements, circling me like prey.
‘You arenothing. You are meat and I am the butcher.’
She bounded forward, hurdling a couch and I scrambled back, wrenching the doorknob and flying into the hall. Behind me the Witch gave a yell of frustration.
I ran full pelt, feet slapping on the boards, going nowhere but down, down, towards the great hall and the grand doors to the courtyard and the gatehouse and the bridge over the chasm into the forest, waiting every moment for that knife to bite into my side, her breath as hot on the back of my neck as it had been last night.
I knew she didn’t mean a word of her cruelty, but I also knew she had faced the same dilemma seven times before and there was only one choice she could make. She could love me, and it would not be enough.
But no hand closed around my nightdress. I reached fresh air, bare feet on flagstones and the last of the sudden snow; I stopped only once, on the other side of the bridge to look back at the Schloss. It was as cold and bleak as it had seemed the first day I arrived. The Witch’s Tower loomed above it all, and squinting I saw something move in the window. The flutter of dark hair around a pale face.
My stomach lurched and I threw myself headlong down the winding road to the village.
As frightened as I was, a thought lodged in me and I carried it away: she had let me go. The world hung in the balance, and she had let me go.
SUMMER
XXII
Something, somewhere, crunched, and I opened my eyes.
A hedgerow blocked out the sun, behind its leaves a brilliant blue June sky. Cursing, I heaved myself out of the ditch I had bedded down in for the night. The noise had been an approaching cart rolling over a dead branch on the valley road to Blumwald.
I ached. I ached all over as though I had been beaten with a poker, and now was stiff with too many hours asleep in the wrong position. My stolen clogs had rubbed a blister down the sides of both feet, and my stolen dress pinched under the arms. I fled in only a nightdress, and had to make do with whatever I could steal from laundry lines.
