“I feel … wrong.” Now that I tried to explain, I felt silly and confused. The hellcat reappeared and pressed against my side, and I paused to pet his back. He bared his teeth and hissed at me before bolting away.
“I see Schneid found you.”
“Oh! This is Schneid. Is he yours?” I asked.
She smiled. “He’s yours. Your guts. Keep him close. Now, go on.”
Lord Death’s words came back to me, and I explained to her how I’d woken up and the strange sickness I felt.
She drilled a quick rhythm with her fingers, watching me as I spoke. “When did this begin?”
“Last night. Yesterday. I mean, I woke up this morning, but I think it’s from yesterday.”
“What happened yesterday?”
Quick images flashed through my head—crystals popping off the scarlet threads and tinkling onto dinner plates, the Emperor’s mask as he leaned in with the knife, Death’s eyes as he pulled the ribbon laced on my wrist up my back and watched my pain. I felt the crone’s eyes onme, and I did not know how to explain. Not even if she was a witch. “I …” But no words came. “I did not do any magic, that I can recall. But he said …” The feeling of his hands, lifting my head to pour the bitter liquid down my throat, came to me. But that had not been magic either—he’d only been trying to heal me of my wounds. And my ribs were much better. Magically better.
“Were you hurt?”
“No,” I answered honestly.
She busied herself with the kettle. “Some stew for us both, I think.”
As she said it, it seemed to me stew was just what I needed, scraped hollow as I felt. She worked, and I watched, trying to remember what had happened after the rooms. But aside from the hazy flashes of Death healing me—and even those memories now seemed to slip through my fingers like sand—I recalled nothing. Had it been a dream?
The firelight wavered on the walls of the small hut and the rain continued quiet and steady.
The old woman stirred the contents of her iron pot, sunk directly into the glowing coals.
“Grandmother, what is your name?” I asked.
“I have many names, child. But you may call me Perchta.”
“Are you a witch?”
“The nature of what I am is still something you must discover. As well whether you should trust me or not. Whether you will believe me. More important than who I am—do you know who you are?”
“I’m not sure,” I finally managed. “I think a woman.”
“The most cursed of all God’s creatures.”
I suddenly felt as if I were quite close to death. But then I remembered he was not here. “Grandmother Perchta,” I forced out, sitting weakly on the floor. “Can you help me?”
“You need some rue and lovage for your strength,” Perchta said to me. “And if you are looking for more protection against such a bloodletting of magic, you will need some vervain.”
The rue and lovage, I knew I could find. But the vervain, I did not. I did not have it in me to go back outside into the abyss of stars and swirling gods, nor did I have it in me to forage. But I did not know what else to say except a weary “Where would I find those?”
“The forest will have both.”
Perchta tore a crust of bread into tiny pieces and tossed them into the pot, as if feeding a small sparrow she had trapped at its iron bottom. I was lost in my head, sick from so much shifting of the world. It seemed everything fell and rose again in an explosion, and I watched it ripple out and surge through my body, gold and pink and flaming stardust.
And then I woke, having fallen asleep where I sat curled over the fire. The soft crackle of flames was the only sound. And outside the window night had fallen, a bright moon peeking out between the trees. My head cleared of dreams and illusions, and I felt, somehow, a little more myself. “I must have fallen asleep,” I said. “Such strange dreams.”
“Would that we never dream such things again,” Perchta said, removing some small thing from her furs and pouring it into the pot. “Here, this will help.” She held out a small stone cup of steaming stew.
I took the rough stone, and its warmth melted into my hands, golden and luscious all the way to my bones, pushing against something brittle and fiercely cold that had settled there without me noticing. I wondered again if I might be dying.
“You will be unless you drink it,” Perchta ordered. “And do not be fooled, youcandie in his home.”
