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Aroad leads into a dark forest. It passes through a village some travelers never see. The village is not meant for everyone. To outsiders, it’s a place of darkness and whispers, threatened by bright-eyed creatures that live in the wood. Its people are friendly, but insular; its routines familiar, but not inclusive.
A tall man in a dark coat walks the road. Death follows on his heels. Greymist Fair is their home, but only one of them is welcome. The man is a doctor, a healer. Death can only ever be themself. Curious eyes and spiteful hearts follow them through the forest but do not touch them; the road is safe. The doctor and Death don’t waste any time; there are many who need the doctor’s help.
The village’s noble family.
The widowed fisherman and his son.
The orphans in the wind-slanted shack.
The butcher, inspecting his many knives.
The kind old innkeepers and the abandoned boy.
And the tailor. Always, the tailor. She is not ailing or hurt, and the doctor will make sure she stays that way.
As they walk, Death hums a tune. It’s a popular rhyme with the children of Greymist Fair. When they approach the outskirts of the village, Death stops while the doctor continues on. Gradually the village emerges from the mist. Cozy fires burn on cobbled hearths, walls and roofs thatched tight against the darkness. Neighbors trade wares and stories. They keep one another company in the long lulls between visitors, and on the nights when they are sure evil is real, and it lives in the forest.
The doctor wishes he could calm their fears, but he would have to lie to them. He, better than anyone else, knows that Death waits in the trees. That Death is patient. And that Death will do anything to return home.
The Girl Who Outran Death
One
Only one road led to Greymist Fair. It cut a winding path through the forest, wide enough for two horse-drawn carts to pass side by side, or for six men to walk comfortably without their shoulders touching. Large stones paved it all the way from one misty edge of the forest to the other, and on one side of the road iron lanterns hung on iron hooks, illuminating the path with a spectral blue light that never went out.
When Heike was very young, her mother had led her out of the village and down the west road. The heels of her mother’s boots made a solid thumping on the stones in time with the rustling of her bright skirts. Heike, her small hand sweating in her mother’s grasp, hurried to keep up. Mist crept from between the tree trunks on either side of the road but never moved past the glow of the lanterns.
As the last cottages of Greymist Fair disappeared behind them, Heike’s mother stopped and kneeled beside her.
“Listen to me, Henrike.” Hilda was calm and spoke softly.“It’s okay to come down the road. As long as you don’t stray from the path, you will always be able to find your way home, and nothing bad will happen to you.” She released Heike’s hands and began to retie the small red ribbon at the end of Heike’s braid. Her mother had quick, deft fingers, tailor’s fingers, and the ribbon went back in place without a strand of hair slipping free. “If you leave the road, there are creatures in the woods that would steal you away and eat you up,” her mother said, tugging the end of Heike’s braid just once, gentle but firm. “You must never go into the woods, Heike. Do you understand?”
“But you go into the woods,” Heike said, suddenly uncomfortable with her back to the trees.
“I do,” said her mother. “I go to speak to the witch, to make sure she and her wargs stay far away from you and everyone else in the village. I can run very fast, and that keeps me safe.”
Her mother had let Heike turn and peer between the tree trunks to see that there was nothing there, and then led her back to Greymist Fair.
When her mother was still alive, Heike had no reason to leave the village. After her mother’s death, she went only as far down the road as necessary. It had been two years. Heike was eighteen now, and she still wondered, sometimes, if she would ever see a glimpse of her mother between the trees. Either the ghost of whoshe had been, or the shadow of the warg she’d become.
The afternoon was cool. Heike marched along the west road at a brisk pace, her berry basket swinging in one hand and her satchel slung across her chest and slapping against her thigh. It was early enough in the day that the light of the lanterns was unnecessary, but still they stood lit along the road, keeping the mist off the stones. Though sunlight never breached the canopy of the trees, the forest had its own kind of light, a muted brightness. Cries of mysterious animals echoed from deep in the wood. Heike focused on the swishing of her skirts and thethump-thump-thumpof her boots. She’d inherited most of her clothes from her mother, including the bright skirts and the boots that never seemed to wear thin, and having them made her feel safe.
She’d heard some travelers say that the road to Greymist Fair took only hours to traverse, while others said days. Some said they’d met merchants and adventurers who had walked the entire length of the road and never found the village, despite that the road ran straight through it. For Heike, the trip out of the village to the bridge over the Idle River took an hour and a half if she walked quickly, and the trip back the same time.
Not ten paces to the left of the bridge, partially cloaked in the dense underbrush of the forest, was a large redberry bush. A week ago she’d found the bushes along the road bearing fruit,though it was nearing winter now and they only bore fruit in spring. There had been a bush on the right side of the bridge as well, even closer to the road, that she’d tried to dig up and replant near her cottage. But the bush had grown small and sickly, never producing any fruit, as if taking it from the forest had drained the life from it.
Today the Idle River flowed lazily under the stone bridge, like it could feel winter approaching and was preparing to hibernate. Heike stepped off the road and hurried to the redberry bush, flicking her basket open and plucking berries the size of her thumb with trembling fingers. Her legs shook, her stomach twitched, and she pressed her lips together to hold in her nervous giggles. A bird fluttered off a branch overhead. Heike snapped the basket shut and jumped back on the road, where she started to laugh, bracing her hands on her knees to keep herself from collapsing.
When she righted herself again, she peeked inside the basket. It was only half full. It would barely be enough to make the rich red dye her mother had loved so much; she needed more if she wanted a darker color. The skin on the back of Heike’s neck prickled. She looked down the road in the direction of Greymist Fair, where the lanterns cast the forest in blue and silver. Then she looked the other way, over the crest of the Idle River Bridge.The creeping sensation worked its way over her shoulders and down her arms. There were more bushes on the other side of the bridge, full of berries that hadn’t spoiled even after a week, and some were close to the road. It wouldn’t hurt to check.
Heike started over the bridge. The Idle River lolled cold and deep beneath it, its banks overhung with moss and tree roots. Here, the canopy of trees overhead disappeared to expose a strip of gray sky. Even the harsh depths of winter wouldn’t freeze the Idle, and Heike had heard more than one story from Falk the fisherman about the bodies of unlucky travelers who had fallen into the Idle and turned up in Grey Lake. They usually caught on the roots on the banks or washed up on shore, bloated and pale, eyes chewed out by the fishes, and they smelled as rotten as they looked.
The smell of rotten flesh reached Heike now as she crested the bridge. Her imagination was good, but not that good, not even when her nerves were already standing on end. The road stretched out past the bridge, lined with lanterns, and the trees arched overhead again until their branches twisted together. A dark shape sprawled beneath the lantern closest to the bridge. Heike descended carefully, hugging the opposite side of the road as she crept closer.
The shape was clothing, arranged in the shape of a man, asif he’d leaped from the bridge and landed badly. Thick dark wool pants and the scraps of a torn linen shirt, and blood and viscera leaking into the cracks between the stones. Empty boots. There was no body.
Heike pressed her hand to her mouth as she gagged. She knew those shoes; she’d finished making them just last week. They belonged to Tomas, apprentice to the carpenter, and he was two years younger than her. Several days before, he had installed a new sign for Heike’s tailoring business outside her cottage. He’d carved it himself.
