“Henrike!” Hilda snapped, and the girl’s temper fled in the presence of her mother’s. “Apologize, now!”
“I won’t.” Heike wormed out of her chair, slipped around the doctor, and ran to the door. “I don’t like him, and I don’t want him here.”
He thought she would run out then and console herself outdoors, but she pushed open the door and stood by it, staring at him, waiting. Her anger had been quelled, but not her sense of duty.
“Henrike!”Hilda’s tone was dangerous, but Heike didn’t move.
“I’ll go,” said the doctor quietly, and he looked at neither Hilda’s face nor Heike’s as he gathered his things and left.
Hilda found him at the inn later and apologized—“She just doesn’t know... she’s so protective... she thinks someone will take me away from her”—but she didn’t have to. The doctor had spent enough time with jealous Death to understand. And now that Heike was getting older, loving her mother as much as she did, their world was closing its doors to him. His sun-dappled memories of the years he’d spent with Hilda in the home they’d made together began to fade.
When he left Greymist Fair after that visit, Death was in high spirits.
Death could be in many places at once, as was the nature of their being, but the doctor noticed their absence the moment he entered the forest heading toward Greymist Fair, and he did not see Death until a week later, when he had left the villageagain and exited the forest on the far side. Heike was fourteen now, a gangly girl who was already taller than her mother, and she kept a good distance between herself and the doctor, though Hilda said she had forgotten her dislike for him. It made him feel even more out of sorts, and he had felt like that often these days.
“You must be careful.” Death appeared at the doctor’s side, gliding along on the shadows cast by the blue-flame lanterns. “There is a witch in that village, and if she learns of your relation to me, she will kill you.”
“Witch?” the doctor said, trying to keep his face emotionless.
“The tailor,” said Death. “She visits my home in the forest to ensnare me, to keep me from entering the village in person. She thinks I should be alone, that I should have no companionship. She thinks I am not worthy of it.”
“You do kill the people who enter the forest,” the doctor pointed out.
“Only because they fear me!” Death’s placid expression twisted in fury. Needle teeth flashed against thin, pallid lips. Black eyes became empty pits. “If they did not fear me, I would have companionship, and none would have to die save for illness, injury, and age. I would not have to twist thewargs to my service. It is her fault, the witch! She poisons the town with her fear! But I see it in her... I’ve seen that same fear. I’ve seen that daughter of hers. When she came to see me this time, I knew she feared me, but I couldn’t catch her.”
The doctor’s heart pounded in his chest. He had to remind himself that he had just seen Hilda in the village; she was alive and well. “What do you mean? She outran you?”
“She put magic in her boots,” Death said. “And she ran for home. Only that allowed her to escape from me. But I am waiting for her, and it’s only a matter of time. You must be careful in the village. Don’t let her know who you are. She will kill you.”
The doctor clenched his hand at his side to stop himself from putting it over his heart, where he always kept the sprig of linden in his inner pocket. Being apart from Hilda was bad enough; knowing she had been in such danger, that she could be in danger again, was worse.
Death continued to complain about the witch of Greymist Fair, and the doctor allowed it. For while Death was angry about her, Hilda was still alive.
I am waiting for her, and it’s only a matter of time.
The time was two years. The doctor had been away from Greymist Fair for almost ten months, one of his longer trips,and he returned to news that made the world slide away from him.
Two of the village children, the butcher’s boy and Lord Greymist’s own daughter, had gone into the forest to find the witch. Hilda had followed to stop them. The boy had gotten out—that one was too self-important to fear Death, the doctor thought—but the girl, Katrina, had been killed by the wargs. Lady Greymist, distraught, had taken ill and not recovered. Now the once hale and hearty Lord Greymist was dying as well, and the village was in mourning.
Katrina had left no remains save her shoes and some scraps of her dress. That was the fate of all innocents who died in the forest and in Greymist Fair; they became wargs themselves.
So they assumed that was also what had happened to Hilda.
Delirious, the world shrinking around him, the doctor managed to ask only one question. He directed it at Wenzel, who had recounted the story, and who had taken over the inn after the old innkeepers passed away.
“The shoes they found,” the doctor said, “were they her boots, the ones with the long laces and the ribbons she liked to wind through them?”
“Oh no,” said Wenzel. “She was wearing an older pair whileshe made a second set for herself. She gave the ones with the ribbons to Heike.”
Of course you did, the doctor thought. He kept thinking it as he went up to his room, put his face in his hands, and began laughing and crying at the same time.
Of course you did, and now Heike has no one, because you are gone and I can never claim her.
Death never said a thing about finally besting the witch of Greymist Fair. The doctor wondered if it hadn’t been as sweet a victory as Death had hoped after all.
Six
Doctor Death stayed away from the village for a long time after that, figuring Heike would be safer if he returned only rarely and did not interact with her. He suffered bouts of fancy now and then, thinking that if he wandered into the forest he might be able to find Hilda. He knew he would love her spirit even in the body of a warg. But it was all make-believe. When he returned to reality, he carried on with his business. He saw his patients; he saw Death at the foot of many beds; he did what he could and helped where he was able.
