Fritz found out what he’d done as soon as he reached the shore.
The wind was bitingly cold and thick flakes of snow had begun to fall, turning the world hazy white. He stumbled up the hill from the dock, hoping to get inside and start a fire before his fingers were too numb to hold the flint, but where he should have seen the hut huddled against the trees, there were only a few tumbled walls disappearing beneath a veil of frost. He stepped carefully closer, trying to find his bed beneath the walls, trying to find their cook pots, their tools, but the remains of the structure was a blackened heap, long since ruined.
His father had been inside the hut when Fritz set out on the lake. Where was he now? Fritz pulled his coat tighter, his hat farther down on his head, and hurried up the road toward the village.
He saw the turrets of the castle rising over the treetops long before he reached the village square. There was no castlein Greymist Fair, had neverbeena castle in Greymist Fair, yet here one was, a small castle for a small king. It sat on the eastern overlook where Greymist Manor had been all Fritz’s life, roosting like a dank gray gargoyle. A flag fluttered from its towers, a black eagle on a gold field. Lights danced in its slitted windows; torches dotted its battlements.
The village was silent. The snow made it eerily so. Fritz passed deserted cottages, many collapsed, decaying, as if they had been abandoned for years. He forgot he was looking for his father and began looking foranyone, anyone at all, to ask what had happened here. Where was everyone? The swirling snow made any unfamiliar shape appear to be a person until Fritz looked a little closer, and then it was only the open door of Johanna and Dagny’s bakery, or the lonely well, or the tumbled stone wall outside the inn. The inn itself was a black husk; it had clearly burned down. Fritz froze when he saw it. The chill seemed to seep into his lungs. Someone had torched the inn.
I want that dirty innkeep as my whipping boy.
Fritz spun and squinted up through the snow at the looming castle. Hans had wanted all the villagers as his servants. What would they need their own homes for if they were all serving the king?
The air seemed to get colder as Fritz, huddled against thesnow, made his way up the rise to the castle. His toes were long since numb, and he could hardly keep his eyes open. He needed to get warm.
Up close, the castle wasn’t much larger than the manor had been, nor did it look much like Fritz thought a castle should; it was as if the manor house had simply been altered. There was no castle wall, no moat, no drawbridge, no courtyard, nothing that other castles had in all the stories. There was the facade of the manor house, and the house itself had been extended back, given an extra two stories, and grown towers that cleared the treetops. Fritz couldn’t see anyone walking the battlements. The manor’s front doors had been extended upward, and a man with a very large dog sat in front of them, tending a small fire.
“Gottfried!” Fritz stumbled up to the fire. The Duke, tight against Gottfried’s side, bared his fangs and let out a warning growl. Gottfried’s dark eyes looked out from under his hat.
“Young Fritz,” said Gottfried. His voice was muffled by the thick scarf over his mouth. “Thought you were inside already. How’d you get out?”
“I—don’t know,” Fritz said, feeling out of his depth. Gottfried was never this subdued, and Fritz had never heard The Duke growl. “I’m looking for my father. Is he inside?”
“Everyone’s inside. You best be, too. Go on now.” Gottfried motioned his head toward the doors.
Fritz edged his way around the slight warmth of the fire and hurried toward the oak doors. The Duke watched him, hackles raised. Fritz had to use his entire body to shove one of the doors open, then fell onto the smooth stone floor of the entrance hall.
Walls stretched upward to a dark, arched ceiling. Tapestries hung along both sides told different stories. On the left: a beautiful girl longed to have magic and was chased through the forest by shadows and killed. On the right: a boy that resembled Hans also longed to have magic, but he made it out of the forest and obtained magic and became a king. Warmth and music came through the doors at the end of the entrance hall.
In the huge great hall, roaring fires blazed in pits at either end of long feasting tables. The villagers of Greymist Fair filled the seats, many wearing servant’s livery or the gray-washed winter garb of hunters and craftspeople. A small band played near the bonfire on the far side of the room, closest to the wide dais with its tall golden throne. On the throne sat Hans. A jewel-encrusted crown perched on his white-blond hair, and he scanned disinterestedly a plate of charred meat proffered by a servant. With a jolt, Fritz realized the servant was Wenzel.
Hans knocked the plate out of Wenzel’s hands and said,“Look how clumsy you are, Grub. Get on your knees and pick it up.”
Fritz couldn’t see Wenzel’s expression, but the set of his shoulders was stiff as he kneeled on the floor.
Fritz couldn’t breathe. He’d assumed, when he had made the wish, that the change would come gradually. Hans would be made king, then the villagers might start serving him, then he would probably move into the manor, but life would largely go on like it had before. But no—the world had changed instantly, yanked out from under Fritz’s feet. This was not the Greymist Fair he knew. This was not the way things were supposed to be.
He found his father skulking near the firepit closest to the door, spooning some kind of foul-looking mash into his mouth. Fritz hurried over to him, kneeled by his side.
“Father,” he said, “what happened to our home?”
Falk turned dull eyes on his son. “We sleep here now,” he grunted. “What wereyoudoing at the lake? You’ll be whipped for fishing.”
“Whipped for fishing? But why—”
A heavy hand landed on Fritz’s shoulder. Ulrich, the carpenter, stood over him with a stony but sorry look on his face. “Enough talk, boy. Come along. The king wishes to speak with you.”
Ulrich gently helped Fritz to his feet—Fritz was taller, but Ulrich had easily sixty extra pounds of muscle—and marched him toward the throne. Hans, previously entertained watching Wenzel crawl around the floor for scraps of food, turned his attention to Fritz and smiled. He waved Ulrich off.
“Hello, friend,” Hans said. “Look at what we’ve accomplished!”
He gestured toward the great hall. Fritz looked over at the sunken-eyed villagers, their small and unappetizing portions of gray nameless mash. Several cast glances at him, but quickly looked away. If the scene had been told to Fritz in a story, he would have said it was unbelievable. It was almost comical, how downtrodden and miserable they seemed.
“Did you ban fishing?” Fritz asked, his mind blank of any other questions.
“Of course I did,” said Hans. “Couldn’t have anyone else finding our benefactor, could I? Don’t worry, you can still go out. I was thinking you should move the fish here, to the castle. It’s magical, so the move shouldn’t kill it. I’ll have Grub dig a little pool for it.” He shoved his heel into Wenzel’s side, catching Wenzel by surprise and knocking him off the dais, onto his back. Hans laughed. Wenzel flashed a dark look at him and rolled onto his side.
Fritz quickly scanned the room for Heike. If there was anyone who would know what to do, it would be her. She was brave enough to go into the forest alone, to speak to Death. She could handle Hans. But she was nowhere to be found.
