She pulled him closer and kissed his cheek, sending a chill down his neck. “I know why you did it, though,” she said. “If you get into any trouble, run straight ahead and think of home.”
Firelight, bright smiles, contentment, and warmth. This was what he thought of as he saddled his horse and set out. He had consented to waiting until the sun was rising, so at least the daylight—even if the sun was hidden behind clouds—wouldhelp ease any fear. The horses had calmed, too, as had the villagers in the inn. The village itself had settled into stillness. Wenzel did not look up at Greymist Manor as he passed through the town square and headed for the road into the forest.
Warm mugs. Spring berries. The roses blooming on the face of the inn.
He had first made this journey when he was only seven or eight. He had wanted to go so badly, but had known better than to ask, and the innkeepers—his adoptive mother and father—had finally relented. His father had taken him along for the ride and taught him why it was such an important duty. He hadn’t really needed to be told, though. He already knew why it was important to bring Yule to the village. Everyone needed a place and reason to celebrate, and people to celebrate with.
Before they had adopted him, he had only seen holidays from afar, either the holidays celebrated by traveling caravans or by the people in the villages and towns the caravans visited. His father—rather, the man who had been responsible for him—had never celebrated anything.
Johanna, the baker, had once asked Wenzel why he never seemed angry or unhappy. “Because there’s nothing so bad here to be angry or unhappy about,” he’d told her with a smile. It was the truth, but only part of it; he couldn’t bring himself tobe angry or unhappy about anything that happened to him in Greymist Fair, because if he hadn’t been abandoned there, his life probably would have been miserable. If he’d had a life at all. His parents had saved him. The village had given him purpose. He was happy the day he chose a new name for himself, a name that had never been screamed at him, and he was happy every day he got to use it.
He hunkered into his scarf and coat. Heike’s boots rocked rhythmically against his chest. The road was obscured by snow, only visible because of the lampposts poking out of the drifts like crooked iron fingers. He told himself the road was as always: winding but safe. He told himself he didn’t feel the eyes of the forest following him, its fingers trailing over his neck and shoulders, through his hair. Every so often he glanced sideways into the trees, pretending that he was just curious and didn’t care if he saw a warg there.
There was nothing. He wondered how such a thick layer of snow had found its way down between the boughs of the evergreens.
What most people disliked about the road was that it always seemed to take a different amount of time to traverse it. Wenzel had never noticed this. He spent the time thinking about projects around the inn he had completed and what still needed to be done. He thought about things his neighbors had done forhim, and how they could be repaid. He went through his mental catalogue of stories he’d collected from people who had visited Greymist Fair. In his mind, the world beyond the forest was huge and beautiful, with towering cities and sweeping oceans, mountain ranges that pierced the sky and opened gateways to the gods, magic that was even wilder and stranger than the magic that lived in Greymist Fair. Heike had long encouraged him to write these stories down, to make a book of them, and not so long ago he’d been sweeping the inn’s front walk, thinking he should do just that. He’d jotted down a few, but a whole book? Who would care about a book of his stories?
His horse huffed as it clattered over the Idle River Bridge. The river beneath, normally powerful and relentless even in the winter, was frozen solid. Wenzel noted this and looked away.
The singing of orioles. Cold, clear water on a hot summer day. The feeling of being clean after a long time being dirty.
He hadn’t even realized how dirty he was until his parents had taken him in. Sometimes one of the caravan members would dunk him in a river or stream when they said he smelled too bad, but he’d never had a proper bath until he was found on Elma Klein’s farm. The water had been cold, the soap rough on his skin, and he’d cried when they’d cut his matted hair off, but when it was over, he was dressed in a clean nightshirt andplopped in front of the fire with a meat pie and mead. He’d devoured the meat pie and chased it with mead, which he hadn’t recognized until he was almost done. He lasted only a short time after that. He slept for a whole day and woke up in a bed much bigger than him.
His life before waking up in that bed now seemed like a nightmare he’d had as a child, vividly real but at the same time nothing that could hurt him any longer. He didn’t want to be that scared little boy again.
When he reached the far edge of the forest, the trees dropped away suddenly, as if they had hit an invisible barrier they couldn’t cross. Foothills rolled away into the foggy distance. There was not another living soul as far as he could see, neither animal nor human, and the effect was what he imagined being a ghost might feel like. This was his favorite part of the trip, always. Standing on the edge of the forest, looking out into a world unknown.
Standing here, it seemed that the terror that gripped Greymist Fair was a world away. No one beyond the borders of their forest knew what was happening in the village. No one knew their fear, and no one would come to help them. There was only Wenzel.
The clouds cracked and parted; the sun was already highabove, though Wenzel hadn’t felt like he’d been traveling all that long. Even his legs and back didn’t protest when he swung himself off his horse. He stretched a bit, testing his bandages, but all seemed well.
He began to hunt for the sack of gifts. It was the same every year: a tough, green-dyed sack nearly as big as Wenzel, tucked into the curling roots of a massive old oak that stood to one side of the road. The sack would be invisible to anyone who wasn’t expecting it to be there. No one in the village knew who left it, or when they had started riding down the road to retrieve it, but it came every year and every year they accepted it.
He tromped along the line of trees to the old oak. The snow covered everything, so at first he didn’t think much of not seeing the sack. But it was over half his size, and if there was anything buried beneath the snow at the foot of the oak, it wasn’t very big. In fact, as he drew closer, there was a noticeable disturbance in the snow. There had been something large sitting there, but now there was only a pit. And there were other footprints leading around the trees from inside the forest.
Wenzel tensed. The prints were his size. Booted. Fresh.
A voice spoke behind him.
“I was waiting, Grub.”
Three
Hans held the handles of the green-dyed sack in swollen red fingers. He watched Wenzel with dark, exhausted eyes. Frostbite had set in on his nose, ears, and lips. The right side of his face blistered where Heike had hit him with the bed warmer. He wore the clothes he had been wearing when the villagers had chased him from his castle, though his golden crown was gone. In his free hand he held one of his father’s long carving knives.
“Let’s go, Grub,” he said. “You’re helping me get back to the village.”
“Helping you?” Wenzel replied. “You can get there yourself. Follow the road. But I can’t promise you’ll be welcomed when you arrive.” The villagers still remembered what Hans had done to them; they would leave him outside for Death and the wargs.
“That’s what you’re for.” Hans flicked the knife toward the horse and the road. “We’re going to say that you nearly died trying to get the village gifts, and I saved you and brought you back.They’ll see that I’ve repented, and they’ll welcome me.”
“Why do you want to return? There’s nothing there for you. Go somewhere else.” Wenzel extended an arm to the misty foothills. “Goanywhere.”
Hans bared his teeth. “Greymist Fair is my home.”
“You would return to a home that doesn’t want you?”
“It’s the only one I have.”
