Outside the château, there were no real choices for me. I couldn’tgo back to the village where I had already died. I couldn’t go back to Death, whom I’d fled. I couldn’t go on to the next town, the next drudgery, the next thing that would attempt to kill me.
But there was Perchta’s hut, and the relief of her help.
I heard voices drifting toward me from the direction of Riquewihr. This didn’t surprise me, but I scampered off the road, into the wet brush, and crouched down, folding my naked body tight like a rabbit in the grass and clutching my knees as I waited for the group to pass.
They emerged from the bower of deep green trees, women’s voices, and as they came closer, I saw they wore black cloaks edged with mud from the road.
Only prostitutes wore black cloaks. My heart leapt; before I even saw her, I heard her dear voice.
I did not stop to consider what I should have done. I’d been buried as a witch. They’d seen my grave. I’d seriously hurt or even killed one of their soldiers. But instead of hiding, I ran from the forest, naked, as if none of that had ever occurred. Because it was her.
“Dacia!” I cried.
At my appearance, the group gasped and huddled together. A soldier in red livery on horseback sprang to block me. But a figure pushed her way to the front of the group and started running toward me. “Salomé?” Dacia cried.
We fell into each other’s arms as if not a moment had gone by. I buried my face in her curls, smelling her skin, the rain and lilies and musk that hadn’t changed even a bit, her warm hug holding me upright. I was so overcome that I simply burst into tears. In her arms, it felt as if I suddenly found myself utterly human in a way I had not known to miss, surrounded these last months by so much magic. I had imagined I’d been fully myself with Death, but in her arms I realized how careful and restrained I had been all these months. It felt like the first time I’d seen her all over again, sailing out of the cluster of people at Josef’s—a beacon of light, of love, ofsafety. I loved her in this moment. I loved her in every moment. I’d love her forever.
But as it always did with me and Dacia, reality made itself known, and I became aware that the rest of the girls kept their distance, terror written across their faces. I pulled away.
I supposed I was terrifying—naked, bruised, and my wet hair wild and full of leaves and sticks. I did not know what had happened to Maxime or what stories had been told about my disappearance. I needed to explain it in some way, and I immediately began blabbering. Dacia draped her cloak softly over my shoulders as I told her a story that barely made sense, even to me.
I did not tell the truth—how could I? I told a lie about Josef selling me, being in another village, and then accosted by bandits on the road. As I spoke, I became aware of the girls passing worried looks to one another. They thought me mad or possessed. No one believed me. But Dacia, my sweetest friend, betrayed no such suspicion. Her face was guileless and joyful, and she kept embracing me and picking litter out of my hair, murmuring sounds of shock as I explained.
“Josef said you were dead,” Christine finally said. “We saw your grave.”
“Josef sold me,” I lied again. I wondered if Josef had hidden that I’d escaped from said grave.
“You haven’t been arrested for Maxime’s death?” Odette asked.
I had not known he’d died, and it hit my stomach harder than I expected—I did not know who I should mourn more, me or him. For all my latent hatred of him, I had not wanted him to die. In a strange way, he’d been a solace. The first person with whom I had not had to fear myself—at least, not until the end.
“No,” I said. It was all I could say. “I … am on my way back to Comar,” I added, rather weakly.
“We will take you there. Or Louis will.” Dacia gestured to the man on horseback. “The Baron was so kind to give us a man for protection.”
“We are not going to Comar,” Christine corrected. “Louis must escort us to the altar and then home.”
“The altar?” I asked.
“We heard there was an altar to the old gods,” Dacia explained. “We are on our way to lay our offerings and ask for protection. Girls have continued to go missing. Two …” Dacia glanced at the others. “Three more since you disappeared. Lorraine disappeared two days ago.”
“Lorraine?” I echoed, regretting how stingy I’d been with my pink silk—a rag compared to what I wore in Death’s home.
“I know she didn’t run away,” Dacia said. “No one is finding their bodies. No one hears from them again. The old women in the village insist this is the work of Lord Death, but the priests and the Baron’s men think it’s the Bandits of Molsheim. We’re not going anywhere alone. Only together or in pairs. To keep from being taken.”
It had been profoundly silly, but for a time I had felt as if my own suffering were so profound that once I’d succumbed to it, all other suffering would somehow end. It surprised me to hear these tragedies beyond the confines of the wood continued the same. That any sacrifice I made meant nothing when poured down the throat of the all-consuming appetite of destruction.
With another pang, I realized I could no longer ask Death about these women—that I had never thought to ask him about them in the first place—if he saw them in their final moments.
A sick feeling moved through my stomach. Dacia picked another leaf out of my hair, and I felt like I was breaking in half.
“We can take you as far as the altar at least,” Dacia said. But I saw the looks the other girls gave each other.
I had enough sense to know I was in trouble, but in that moment, I would have been led through the gates of hell for Dacia, such profound, bone-deep relief it was to be in her company again. She tenderly tied the strings of her cloak and tucked her arm in mine, and I could not have left her for anything.
Ignoring Christine’s suspicious glances and the way the soldier eyed me and crossed himself, they resumed their journey, and I limped with them to be with Dacia.
It wasn’t far before the adrenaline began to ebb. The pain in thebacks of my legs and the bruises from my flight, as well as the general sickness of magic, all began to catch me. The chatter around me faded away. I focused on the push-pull of air in my lungs. On the steadiness of Dacia’s arm. And moving my legs forward. That was all.
