Hilda’s voice echoed through the branches, an incantation that dropped leaves from the trees and made Katrina’s legs go numb. She could no longer remember why she had come here, or where she was trying to go. She no longer had ethereal beautyshe hadn’t asked for, no longer had coveted grace of movement. She was no longer friendless. She no longer had parents, a home, or a name.
She had fear. She had a body and a pulse inside that body that told her she must run. There was only survival or death.
The wargs laughed. They were in front of her, behind her, around her. Spirits of those the forest had claimed. They surrounded her, a ring of gaping teeth and corpse-fire eyes. She tripped, screamed, scraped herself up from the ground and kept going. The ring tightened. Her legs were so tired. Her knees burned. Tears blurred her vision. Where was she going? Wherecouldshe go? She remembered safety and warmth, but they seemed so far away now. She was no longer running but stumbling from tree to tree, hands bloodied, hair hanging in tangles around her face. She screamed for help and listened to her own voice echo endlessly, only to return as laughter.
At last, when her legs could no longer hold her, she skidded to her knees on the forest floor. Her fingers splayed in the hard-packed earth. Her nails were torn, her knuckles caked red. She knew she would not get up again, so she did the only thing left to her, and curled into herself, crying, allowing herself to be the small and weak thing she was.
This is all a dream,she thought wildly, in the last shred of herrational mind.If I surrender to it, I will wake up. I only have to give in, and everything will be okay.
She shut her eyes tight and put her arms over her head. Her ears rang with the laughter of the lost.
Six
Hilda almost tripped over the body. The beautiful face was gone. The dress was torn, strewn about in the foliage. The ribcage spread like spiked petals of a gruesome flower. They liked doing that, the wargs—they liked prying the ribcage open. They didn’t eat any part of the body, because they didn’t need to. It was the fear they fed on.
There would be a new warg soon, and the only evidence that Katrina had been in the woods would be the scraps of her dress and her shoes.
Hilda backed up. Scanned the woods. The wargs had ignored her when there was ripe prey on the run, but they were coming back now, scenting her fear on the air. Because she did have fear. Even when she knew how to get home, she couldn’t make it if she couldn’t run fast enough. She didn’t regret giving Heike her boots. She only wished she had waited a little longer, so she could tell Heike the other things she would need to know.
Her fear wasn’t all-consuming. She had known Death wouldcatch her eventually. In the parts of her fear could not reach, there lived a deep, final annoyance:
Thiswas how she went? After all this time, after everything, because a stupid boy had almost unwittingly unleashed Death on himself and Katrina? And poor Katrina had died anyway. There was no way to get a message back to town. Not to Heike, but to Luther. He was visiting Falk the fisherman and making his rounds of the village. She wished she could tell him what happened, tell him how little Heike knew. He wouldn’t be able to teach her much, but he could do something. He could tell her the truth.
Well, she thought grimly,I can’t let myself die without having even tried to get home.So she squared a thought of Heike in her mind and started running.
The laughter began again.
The Secret of Grey Lake
One
“Iwant to be king of Greymist Fair. I want to live in the manor, except I want the manor to be a castle. I want Dagny and Johanna as my cooks. I want a feast every night. I want a dancing bear dressed in purple and gold as entertainment for my court. I want all the villagers to serve me in some fashion. I want—hm—I want that dirty innkeep as my whipping boy. And I want Heike as my personal tailor. Did you get all that? I told you to write it down!”
Fritz had written down most of it, but his hair had been in his eyes, making his strokes uneven and wobbly and, besides that, he couldn’t write or read all that well in the first place. If he didn’t keep looking at the oil-stained parchment he’d scribbled on, he would soon forget what he’d put there. The words looked silly. A king? Hans was really going to make good on that old wish? It had been ridiculous when they were fifteen, and it was even more ridiculous now.
“I c-can’t ask for this,” Fritz said. “Greymist Fair d-doesn’thavea king.”
“Are you refusing to do it?”
“I just... it seems like a bad idea. The other things were strange enough, but this changes everything. A-a-and a w-whipping boy? You can’t keep the villagers as slaves.”
“I suppose I also can’t tell the village that you saw my father follow Tomas down the west road, and you did nothing to stop him,” Hans said. Fritz’s heart flopped in his chest. “They’d have some questions about that, wouldn’t they? I suppose I also couldn’t tell them that you went with my father. That you helped him catch Tomas.”
“That’s a l-lie!”
“They won’t know that,” Hans said.
Fritzhadseen Jürgen follow Tomas down the west road that day, but he hadn’t thought anything of it. And he certainly hadn’thelpedJürgen with his vile schemes. Fritz had been coming home from the village square with an empty fish cart and had squatted discreetly behind a bush to relieve himself when he saw first Tomas trot by, then Jürgen wrapped in a cloak. They’d been far enough apart that it seemed like coincidence. Only later had he realized what he’d seen.
“Th-they won’t believe you,” Fritz warbled.
“Do you want to take that chance?” Hans stared at him.
No, he didn’t. What would the town do to him if theythought he’d helped Jürgen kill Tomas, or cage all those other children? What would his father do? What would Heike or Wenzel think of him? Now that both Katrina and Liesel were gone, Heike, Wenzel, and Hans were the only three his age left. They were all supposed to grow old together.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” Fritz asked, pleading now. “Y-you could get your parents back. Or you could just be rich. Or—”
“If I wanted you to decide my wishes for me, I would’ve said so.” Hans bared his teeth, his eyes flashing. “Justdo it.”
