And yet—how could it be too late? I had just seen Dacia. I could still learn if only she told me what to do. I knew Renaud would be angry with me, but his anger was a price I would pay for this. “I’ll keep coming, I promise.”
“No,” she shook her head. “Your promises are not enough. The reaping has arrived. And you do not even know yourself, child.” She said it with such sorrow, such weight.
The wind stirred the tops of the beech trees in the silence that followed. I thought of Dacia’s scream, the whispers of the shadows, my dreams, my attempts to conjure Rochelle. Maybe the forest resisted me because it had always known what I had only begun to see. “Am I cursed?” I asked, desperation bleeding into my voice.
She lifted her head, something flickering in her eyes. “Of course. You were born a woman and gifted as a witch.”
“Could … could I have brought that curse onto others?”
Perchta sighed. “You mean your sisters, your lovers, your mothers? Don’t be a fool, they were also born women and cursed. It is the curse of women to always bear the prejudice of man’s fear. Are you asking if you’ve created this darkness that comes to devour everything you love? No. But have you courted it? Have you fed it? Have you left it unchecked? Have you put power into it, including your own? Have you run away from your responsibility to break it? Yes, all that, you have done.”
Somehow, this crushed my chest worse than if she’d said yes. “No,” I said backing up. I stared into her dark, knowing eyes. “I have never wanted this. I want tobreakit. I want this to end.”
Perchta gave me a look and suddenly light exploded around me,piercing the darkened grove. She had transformed, bright and shining, with white hair and smooth skin and a gown of white.
I was so frightened I couldn’t even scream. The goddess wore my face.
In a flash she returned to her bent-over self—gray streaks and rags and face folded deeply into lines.
“Yes, child.” She nodded, leaning against the pitch of the hut. “You would.”
“Are you me?” I breathed, terrified, frozen.
“I am you and you are me and I am Hecate and Hecate is you. We are not the same person, the same magic even, but we are the three faces. Maiden, Mother, and Crone.”
“How?” I breathed. But I already knew. “That place between the worlds.”
She nodded. “If you manage to survive him, you will learn that all worlds have their own time. You will call Hecate and she will answer. You will find a maiden witch who believes she is cursed and frustrate her about mushrooms, just as I have with you.”
“What if I cannot survive?”
“Then another maiden will become us.”
“I haven’t been able to find that place anymore.”
“It’s still there,” she said. “It’s been there all along. Go to the border. Remember, I’ve beentellingyou that you must mind your borders.”
“But what do Ido?” I pleaded.
“You must live,” she said. “The time for learning has passed. The reaping has come. But you must live, young one. Before you can save anyone, you must save yourself.”
THE FOREST WAS QUIET ON MY RETURN, NIGHT CREEPINGslowly over the far mountain ridges. The smell of frost was in the air, and I stepped into to the château just as Renaud’s horse sounded in thecourtyard. My heart raced at the familiar ring of his stallions’ hooves, and I darted through my little stone gate, slipped off my shoes, and immediately tossed them behind a tapestry. I did not want him to discover I’d gone into the wood.
Thankfully, I had left a basket of a few herbs I’d collected before the frost at the door and threw them on my arm. He would not question me if he thought I’d only been in the garden. Still, I crept up toward my room, hoping that I might escape his notice altogether.
But he met me in the hall and his gaze flicked over me. “Did you go into the forest?”
“I was in the garden,” I said, showing him my basket. Perhaps too hastily; his gaze narrowed in suspicion.
I didn’t understand why I felt like I had done something wrong. I hadn’t. He had never forbidden me from going, only told me it was dangerous, only encouraged me not to.
His expression was unreadable, but he didn’t ask me anymore, only kept walking. After a moment he called back over his shoulder. “Go clean yourself up.”
Feeling like a chastised child, I turned and headed for my room.
I made sure to wash all the forest earth and sweat off me and dress carefully in the shift and woolen hose laid out for me. There was still light left in the clear sky, that chilled pink-tinged autumn light, and I ran down the hall to catch him before sunset. But when I tried Renaud’s door, it was locked. I slunk back to my room, unsettled.
No matter how many times I proved myself and he showed me favor, I could never be certain of his patience with me. It still felt as if any moment he might throw me out. As if all this had only been a test—the one he swore I could not pass. I paced before the fire, my arms tight around myself as night fell over the château. My ears kept straining, tilted toward the door. My gaze kept falling to the giant’s lantern on the mantel, as if it were the hourglass from my arrival. I was waiting for something—Dacia to scream again, the house to trickme, Death to come in my door and tell me I had passed … and then suddenly, I stopped.
