The stew tasted like rabbit and rosemary and some earthy, fragrant herb I could not name. “Thank you, Perchta,” I said.
“Listen to me. You should return to the village,” she said. “Leave his home and forget your memories of that place.”
I shook my head. “I am dead in the village.”
“You will be dead in his house. You will be dead out here.”
I spoke into the bowl, tipping it again to savor the last bit of the cooling stew. “Death does not scare me.”
The old woman made a soft snort. “Once again, you’re a wounded doe leaving a blood trail everywhere you go in this forest. Before you come again, you must learn not to bleed, for the gods will drain you.”
“How do I stop it?”
“You’ve done no magic. That does not mean magic wasn’t taken from you. A body can be a vessel, not just to fill, but to drain.” She gave me a wry look, as if to chide me for my maidenly naivety.
I sighed. “So, vervain?”
“Steep and spell it long.” Perchta nodded. “I’ll give you seeds to plant.”
The stew had given me strength and life, and I felt like I’d found my way back to my body. I glanced out of the tiny window at the silver moon sinking into its darkness, and I did not want to leave. “I’ve been out too long. It’s dark.” The idea of having to go through that forest for anything filled me with dread, but I could not disappoint Death again. The House of Blue Sleep waited for me. I was supposed to be in my room already.
“Are you afraid, my child?” Perchta asked.
“The forest,” I said. “It’s watching.”
“It is watching,” she agreed. “It can be a friend or an enemy, that is true.”
“How do I make it a friend?”
She tilted her head. “Or how do you become one?” She called the hellcat. It appeared at her side instantly. “Schneid will show you.” She scratched behind his ear. “Follow him.”
“I don’t think he likes me,” I said, eyeing the beast. He pointedly ignored me, rubbing the small, curved horns on Perchta’s hip.
“Oh, give yourself a chance,” she said with a smile. “You just need to get to know him.”
Perchta stroked along Schneid’s neck, her fingers gnarled and wornin the gray light. They reminded me of Valerie’s, and I looked at my own white hands and fingers, unmarked and unworn. I hoped, one day, I might also have capable hands. “He said I feel like this because I’m not strong,” I admitted to her.
Thankfully, she did not ask questions about him. “It feels like this because you are not mindful of your borders,” Perchta said tartly. But then she sighed. “He is not entirely wrong, and that is often the most dangerous part about men like him. Take the seeds and grow the vervain. I’ll show you how to use it. Remember the poultice. You need to find a way to end the working so that it does not drain you.”
“But what if I didn’t start the working?”
“What indeed?” she asked.
“What did I walk through to get here? That other world?”
“That is the place between and beneath and above and below. The place in all places and beyond all places. It is where pure magic and instinct and life and death live.”
“Death lives there?”
“Death is that place. Not a man.”
She told me, even then. But I did not understand. Or I didn’t want to. I pulled my cloak hood up against the night and followed Schneid through the abyss.
The old woman spoke true—Schneid led me like a lamp, into the dark forest and its unnerving silence, all the way to the courtyard of the château. There he stopped, his back arched, clearly intent on going no farther. I didn’t want to leave him in the woods, but then, he was no tabby.
I turned to the black stones. Its faint outline stood in the night, so dark it reminded me of the coffin where even the spirits were swallowed.
Death was waiting for me inside. Death my teacher, my ruler. I pictured his eyes, as dark as the world between worlds. He was the oarsman rowing souls across that terrifying expanse of darkness, across the rivers that cut through that midnight plain to find theirplace in the surging stars. I had seen a bit of his soul in the place that was both life and death and had begun to think of myself in that world, far beyond the fear that had ruled me all my life.
