‘It took him what?’ I could not understand her meaning. Only half the bed had been slept in, but his top hat was dangling from the back of a chair and his shoes were all lined up by his case. If he had gone somewhere, it would have been barefoot.
The window sash hung at an odd angle, as though it had been wrenched within its frame, and one pane was cracked. The rug by it was scuffed up, and an unlit lamp was overturned from the bedside table.
I frowned, thinking of the cry I had heard in the night. ‘Does he have any friends he might visit or business to attend to?’
Maria didn’t reply to me, only pacing, muttering to herself. The girl was in shock. I rang the bell for someone to bring tea, but there was no response to that either.
Anxiety swelled into fear.
I took myself to the kitchens to see why no one had responded to the bell. It was as though a hush had fallen over the palace. No birds sang outside, no breeze stirred the curtains. The kitchen was steaming hot with breakfast preparations, moving like gears and cogs in a machine, a great repetitive working of kettles hissing, knives chopping, plates clattering. The cook stood at the range, stirring a pot that had long since boiled dry. A scullery maid stacked and restacked the same dish. Another wiped a mop over the same shining flagstone.
I knew what I was looking at: a loop.
I stumbled into the scullery and vomited into a sink.
No. Please, no.
This was my fault.
I had fled from the wheel, and the Witch had no life to spin. Again I had shut my eyes to the truth: the Witch must have a sacrifice and I had denied her one. She had not been able to take another. I was the one she had bound, it was my life destined to feed the wheel.
Time was unravelling, and it was my fault.
I scrubbed my eyes dry, took long slow breaths until I felt like my arms and legs were my own again, my body something I could move, and then I set to.
Klaus was the piece here that didn’t fit, but I had a suspicion.
It took him.
I had heard it as the start of a sentence, but it was complete.
It took him.
Shetook him.
Maria still paced the bedroom, unseeing. The loop had caught her entirely. I studied the room, the windowsill, the doorknob, the carpet, his shoes. And I found what I was looking for. Dirty footprints beneath the rucked-up rug could have many owners, but these came from bare feet not shoes. By the windowsill where a nail stood proud of the casement, a snag of black lace.
She had been here. The Witch.
I wondered if she had come here to take me back, and changed her mind. Or perhaps she wanted me to know what I had made her do. My heart felt like a stone, a heavy, jagged lump of basalt pinning me down. I could not let someone else go in my place. Not Klaus with his bright future and distraught young wife.
And not my Witch.
I would not let her stain her hands with blood again. She had been a child tricked into this duty, shackled to the wheel alone for too long.
If there was a chance I could save her, I would take it.
I sat another moment more, working the scrap of lace between my fingers, reckoning with my fear. Something of her to hold on to. I was alone here at the palace, but that was not new. That loneliness I feared, the meaninglessness, the unwantedness, it had already happened. I could try to fight and hold it away forever, or I could grieve what my life had been, see it for what it was, and stop being controlled by the fear of it.
The Witch had given me good memories to hold alongside the bad.
She was worth saving.
I felt light. Certain.
The worst had already happened. Nothing I did now could undo everything that had come to pass. All that I had felt – all there was, was to accept it. Mourn it.
And leave it behind.
