Chapter Twelve
Twelve
The morning after the Feast Day of Saint Bruno, they set out at first light.
According to the old woman’s legend, the Ursprung lay high in the mountains that kept watch over the village: at the peak of the tallest one, which the villagers called Himmelstechen. A gamble, Lorelei supposed, to put all their faith in a fairy tale. But with no equipment—and no Ziegler—it was the only lead they had left.
Their host, Emilia, had all but begged them not to go. If the forest itself (which evidently had a tendency to rearrange itself after dark) did not drive them to madness or kill them, the wildeleute within it almost certainly would. It had become something of a tradition for the bravest and most virtuous in the region to summit Himmelstechen in search of the Ursprung. None had succeeded.
What a waste, Lorelei thought. At this point, surely they’d have adjusted their metric of virtue to account for all the pointless untimely deaths.
But without a doubt, Emilia had concluded, a descendant of the Saint himself will prove worthy.
Sylvia had smiled a thin, pained smile at that. The rest of them exchanged looks and were, however briefly, united in their exasperation.
A descendant of the Saint himself. Lorelei still could not fathom why Sylvia never mentioned it before. It seemed the type of thing she would find every occasion to mention. Lorelei could conjure her voice so clearly, full of pomp and undeserved pride. Why, yes, naturally the von Wolff line can trace its ancestry back to Albe’s most important folk hero. That is why I am such a gift to all humanity. Ha, ha!
Perhaps that last part was uncharitable. Still, her point stood. Humble, Sylvia von Wolff was not. But saintly? In that moment last night—gilded by firelight as she said, Stay close to me— Lorelei might have believed it.
No, no, no. Her intervention was nothing more than that hero complex of hers at work again. At any rate, it was far easier to be annoyed with her than to even touch this knot of emotion that had taken up residence inside Lorelei’s chest.
Sylvia had set a needlessly grueling pace for their hike. Johann and Adelheid easily kept up with her, but Lorelei—who had never stood in the shadow of a mountain before, much less climbed one—had fallen behind. At one point, Ludwig wandered off alone for upward of ten minutes. Lorelei eventually found him knee-deep and sopping wet in the middle of a stream, clutching a bundle of plant specimens. After that, she left him to his own devices. Heike, it seemed, had given up entirely. Some five kilometers ago, she muttered, “Fuck this,” and slowed to an ambling stroll. The rest of them stopped every now and again to let her catch up.
Lorelei glanced over her shoulder to see that Heike had all but collapsed onto the trunk of a downed tree. Once Lorelei had recovered from the shock of the festival last night, she could not stop turning Adelheid’s words over: Some of us, I fear, cannot set aside ambition for the greater good.
She’d meant Heike.
It made a terrible kind of sense. Heike had always been transparent about protecting her own interests—and the more Lorelei dwelled on it, the more her behavior made sense. She’d been trying to sabotage them from the beginning. They’d taken a detour that nearly killed them, then were stranded in that godforsaken village, all because they’d listened to her. She had been the first to bring up Lorelei’s ability to channel aether—almost as though she’d wanted to turn the others against her.
The only thing Lorelei needed to make certain of was her motive.
The thick layer of pine litter muffled the sound of Lorelei’s footsteps as she approached. Heike sat clutching her side, her face glistening with sweat and flushed with exertion. Her waterskin lay empty beside her, and her backpack was slumped beneath a tree a few meters back. When she noticed Lorelei, she startled. For just a moment, her eyes shone with alarm. Then, she arranged her features into a sneer and crossed her legs primly, as though she lounged on a throne of her own making.
The distant sounds of burbling water and birdsong filled the silence between them. A narrow stream streaked through the woods just beside them, its surface shining brilliant white beneath the sun. Through rasping breaths, Heike said, “Come to mock me, have you?”
“I’ve come to make sure you’re alive.” Lorelei offered her waterskin to Heike, but Heike stared at it as though it were a dead rat Lorelei had dropped at her feet. Lorelei shrugged and took a swig. “Suit yourself.”
Heike’s eyes flashed warily. “What do you really want?”
Heike did not like her or trust her; that much was abundantly clear. It suited Lorelei fine. She much preferred a direct approach. Now, how best to get her talking?
“I’ve found myself curious as to why you came on this expedition.” Lorelei examined the mud-stained hem of Heike’s finely woven walking skirt, then the fat gemstone—one she hadn’t grown bored of, evidently—glistering on her thumb. “You rarely went on your own research trips—and the ones you did undertake, you relied on assistants for data collection. Why put yourself through this?”
Heike lifted one elegant shoulder. “Can’t a girl do an old friend a favor?”
Evasive, Lorelei noted. Perhaps she’d respond better to provocation. “I find it hard to believe you’d do something without expecting anything in return.”
“Ouch, Lori.” She touched a hand to her heart. “That hurts my feelings. I do have them, you know.”
“I do know. I sympathize with them, as a matter of fact.”
Heike made a derisive noise. “Oh, do you?”
“Or perhaps I’ve misread you,” Lorelei said, “and you’re as selfish and sad as you seem, harboring a lifetime of resentment because of a little wound to your pride. Did von Wolff’s rejection sting that badly?”
“Excuse me?” Heike bristled, rising to her feet. “I don’t know where you heard that or what game you’re playing, you snake, but you don’t know the first thing about my situation. You don’t get to judge me.”
At last, she’d struck a nerve.
She has always wanted to leave home—by whatever means possible, Ludwig had told her. Sylvia knew that. We all did.
Lorelei retrieved Heike’s backpack from the ground, then held it out to her by the strap. “That’s what I thought. She abandoned you.”
Heike watched her apprehensively, her shoulders coiling tight with tension. Lorelei could practically see the gears whirring in Heike’s mind as the cornered-prey gleam in her eyes dulled to calculating certainty. Scheming the best way to twist Lorelei’s sympathies in her favor, no doubt.
Good, Lorelei thought. Better for Heike to believe that she could be manipulated.
“If you must know, I am here because Wilhelm doesn’t trust anyone but us.” Heike snatched the backpack from her and reluctantly slung it over her shoulders. “However, I have been sitting on a marriage proposal from the prince of Gansland for many years. He expects an answer when I return.”
The prince of Gansland, from what Lorelei understood, was twice Heike’s age—and a widower twice over, at that. After rumors began swirling about what exactly had happened to his young, pretty wives, some had taken to calling him the Prince of Black Doves. A reference, of course, to one of Brunnestaad’s crueler tales.
Back in the days when wishes still held power, a peasant girl married a rich and handsome man. As a wedding gift, her mother gave her three messenger doves: a red one to send word she was happy, a white one for when she was ill, and a black one if she ever ran afoul of her husband. Her husband gave her a ring of keys—and free rein of all the rooms in his home, save one. Naturally, when he left on a hunting trip, the intrepid maiden opened the forbidden door—and found eight dead women hanging from his rafters.
Side by side, they began to hike again. Dead leaves crunched underfoot with every step, and overhead, the canopy swayed in the wind. Jagged shadows stirred to life around them.
“Surely, you can decline,” said Lorelei.
“I was forbidden from turning him down unless I had a more attractive offer in hand. Mother dearest wouldn’t dream of offending him. You know how thorny the relationship between Sorvig and Gansland can be.”
Over the centuries, Sorvig had won its independence from Gansland time and time again. Sorvig culture owed a great deal to Gansland: its seafaring, its appreciation for the arts, its cuisine of bread and things atop bread alone. If they wanted to seize Sorvig again, they would have to go to war with Brunnestaad. “Why should that matter?”
“Because my mother must always have an escape route. Besides, many believe Sorvig was better off under Ganish rule,” Heike said flatly. “If Wilhelm cannot maintain control of the kingdom, we can run into their arms again. As for me, I am to want nothing. If this pleases her, who am I to disobey?”
Despite herself, Lorelei almost felt a pang of disgust on her behalf.
“After Sylvia turned me down, I begged Mother to let me attend university with the others. They like their girls educated in Gansland, after all.” Heike scoffed. “I thought I could find another suitable match by the time I finished my degree. I took as long as I possibly could. Alas.”
Lorelei refrained from inquiring about Adelheid. She supposed there was little favor to gain in Heike’s mother’s eyes from the heiress of a crumbling province.
“I thought I couldn’t stave him off any longer. Then, the opportunity for this expedition arose. I simply couldn’t refuse a request from our king.”
The Ursprung being found in Sorvig was her final gambit. And now her options had officially run out. “And if you went against her wishes?”
“I would surrender my inheritance.” Heike looked at Lorelei as though she’d well and truly lost her mind. “I would sooner die.”
“Is status truly worth more than your life?”
“You wouldn’t understand. It is my life,” Heike said lowly. A wash of sunlight had set her auburn hair ablaze. “I am a princess. Outside my mother’s home, that is the only thing that protects me.”
But Lorelei did understand.
As Heike stormed ahead of her, all Lorelei could think of was the tale of “The Girl in the Tower”—the story of a beautiful girl locked away in a tower by her cruel, controlling mother. Every evening, the girl let down her long hair, allowing her mother to climb up to her lonely window. It was a wretched, isolated existence—until, of course, a prince happened upon her.
But no prince had come to rescue Heike.
Heike was beautiful, and she had suffered. If the tales her nursemaids told her had any truth to them, that should have been enough. But life was far crueler than stories, and so she’d hatched a plan to rescue herself: sabotage the expedition—and prevent Sylvia from stealing what was rightfully hers.
Now Lorelei had to prove it.
After five days of hiking, morale was low.
The first three days of their efforts had been rewarded with steady upward progress. Over the next two, however, it became clear that they were wandering in circles. No matter how far they walked—even if they walked in one direction, according to Heike’s compass—they inevitably found themselves back where they began: a clearing surrounded by a grove of firs.
Lorelei expected to see it again soon enough.
She trudged along at the rear of their grim, single-file line. Everything ached, and at this point in their ascent, the air almost hurt to breathe. Frigid mist poured steadily down the mountainside, and frost glittered in the long shadows the trees cast over the earth. She’d never experienced cold like this before. She could feel it in her nose.
The sound of Ludwig’s desperate laughter filtered back to her. “Home sweet home!”
“Are you joking?” Heike groused. Then, a few seconds later: “I’m going to scream.”
“Have we gone in a circle again?” Apparently, Sylvia’s optimism had not yet been crushed; she sounded equally disappointed and surprised. “This is an extraordinarily powerful enchantment. I have never seen anything quite like it.”
Johann and Adelheid only exchanged a weary look. Lorelei followed close behind them, ducking beneath a low-hanging branch. Lo and behold, she found herself standing on the edge of their clearing.
Adelheid reached up to pluck a bramble out of Johann’s hair. She sighed thinly. “Well, I suppose I’ll prepare dinner.”
At this rate, they’d run out of food before they reached the summit.
As Johann and Adelheid made a fire, Sylvia set to work warding the area, nailing iron into the ground around the perimeter and hanging bells from the low-hanging branches. Ludwig began unpacking his tent and their cooking supplies. Heike dropped her backpack on the ground and laid her head atop it. Content, as always, to do nothing useful for anyone but herself.
Wind gusted through the clearing, carrying with it the cold, bright scent of sap and evergreen. As it died down, Lorelei could smell woodsmoke wafting from the cooking fire. It might have been pleasant, if not for the unsettling cast of the sky. For days, no matter what time it was, it was dusk-purple and lit with strange stars that sparkled like crushed glass. If Lorelei’s pocket watch was to be believed, it was early evening.
She settled herself on a flat stretch of stone and pulled out her notebook. She had checked every night for some detail in a folktale she might have missed, some trick that would free them from this endless loop, but nothing new revealed itself.
Perhaps it was frustration, or perhaps it was despair. But out of some long-forgotten impulse, she began to write to her sister.
Rahel, the youngest of them, had been a sickly child. When Lorelei ran out of books to read to her, she had made up stories to keep her occupied on the days she could not rise from bed. Little tales of adventure and danger, most of them heavily inspired by Ziegler’s travelogues—whatever captured the imagination of an antsy, eager child. It did not require much creativity now to describe the exploits of the Ruhigburg Expedition. And yet, the more she wrote, the more certain she grew that she could never send this letter.
At sixteen, the cruelty of this world had not yet touched Rahel. She was too young to remember Aaron, and it wasn’t as though Lorelei was in the habit of confiding in her family about the treatment she endured at university.
Sylvia’s question haunted her even now. Where is your sense of wonder?
Perhaps she had crushed it long ago. The world as she saw it was too ugly and painful to share. Loneliness opened within her chest, too quickly for her to suppress. She could not help thinking of her least favorite of the Ursprung tales, one she had collected from an old Ebulisch woman.
Back in the days when wishes still held power, there was a thief who, while running from his troubles, stumbled and fell into a hole. When he came to, he found himself in total darkness—and face-to-face with a lindworm’s glowing eyes. The thief expected to be devoured outright, but to his shock, the beast led him deeper into its lair.
At the heart of an underground cavern was a spring filled with water that shone as bright and golden as the sun. The man feared he would starve before anyone came to rescue him, but as the days went by, he realized that so long as he drank of the spring, he never knew hunger or thirst. For three long years, the thief lived in darkness with no one but his lindworm for company.
Now, there came a day when an earthquake caused the roof of their prison—their home, really, as he’d come to think of it—to collapse. The lindworm stretched toward the sunlight, and the thief climbed the spines along its back to freedom. When they reached the surface, they lay down beneath a copse of trees to rest.
It so happened that a solider came passing by at that very moment. She had long dreamed of being a hero, and so, seizing her opportunity, she strung heavy iron chains around the sleeping lindworm’s neck. The thief awoke at the racket, just in time to see the soldier draw her sword. He considered escaping, for if he was recognized, the soldier might arrest him. But he felt a tender sentiment for the lindworm who had saved his life, and so, he struck down the solider with a rock and freed the beast from its chains. The lindworm regarded him for only the space of a breath before it crawled back into its cavern. The thief washed the blood from his hands and made the long journey back to his village.
He did not stop even once, for he never grew hungry or tired. But when he arrived at his mother’s house, she did not recognize him. His neighbors claimed they’d never seen his face before. His name slipped through their minds like water through their open hands. Distraught, he returned to the one place he knew he still belonged, but the ground over the lindworm’s lair had sealed itself shut once more.
Power, even given freely to the worthy, still came at too high a price. Wilhelm was such a fool to want it.
“Lorelei?”
Her pen dragged across the page, bleeding ink all over the illustration she’d absentmindedly begun. The lindworm emerging from its pool of gold now drowned in a sea of black. Perfect.
“Don’t sneak up on me,” she groused. “What did you say?”
She looked up to find Ludwig perched beside her. He held two bowls in his hands, filled to the brim with a thin stew Adelheid had made of their dwindling supplies: peas and slivers of jerky, from the looks of it. A piece of hardtack rose from its surface like a gravestone. Lorelei was too famished to care.
He passed a bowl to her. “I’ve been thinking.”
Lorelei accepted it and reluctantly closed her notebook. The heat unfurled through her hands, and the steam wafting from its surface warmed her cold-stung cheeks. “That’s not good.”
“I think I know how to get us out of here.”
“Oh?” Lorelei glanced up at him. “And how do you propose to do that?”
“I want to see if it works first before I tell you. It will be so embarrassing if I’m wrong,” he said. “Just trust me.”
“You saying that makes me trust you considerably less.”
“Wilhelm promised me land.”
The confession knocked her off guard. “Pardon?”
“I didn’t really want to go on this expedition, to be honest, but he bribed me.” Ludwig watched her with those clever-fox eyes of his. They were heavy with exhaustion and washed almost red in the firelight. “I’m not self-sabotaging enough to lead us astray. I have too much to lose.”
“That,” she said, “is exactly why I shouldn’t trust you.”
He smiled at that.
So Wilhelm intended to follow in his father’s footsteps. If anyone challenged him, he would seize the lands of those who turned against him and elevate those who remained loyal. Ludwig had lived among the nobility his entire life, held close but never equal. But at the end of this, he wouldn’t just have a courtesy title. He’d have the real thing.
“I cannot believe you’d become one of them,” she said, feeling strangely disappointed that he felt the need to—what, demonstrate his loyalty to her? “But I do trust you. You didn’t need to convince me.”
“I’m touched,” he said. “And quite surprised, to be honest. I’d expected some judgment. At least an insult or two.”
How could she possibly judge him? She’d clawed her way onto this expedition in some desperate attempt to protect herself. If she were offered a title and land, she would be a fool to decline it. “Don’t tempt me.”
“No, no. Let’s hear it.”
“Have some self-respect, you traitor,” she said without bite. “Et cetera.”
“A little late for that.” He folded one knee into his chest and draped his arm over it. “I know you won’t like to hear it, but if it helps your investigation, I’m certain Sylvia is innocent.”
“I am not—” At his cutting look, she huffed out a sigh. “Fine. Why is that?”
“She wrote to me fairly often during the war. The first letters she sent were about what you’d expect, but toward the end, there was something about them that troubled me. They were…” He thumbed his lip pensively, as though the word escaped him or none seemed sufficient. At last, he shrugged. “I was worried about her, so I asked her to stay with me for a few weeks when the fighting ended. I was shocked when she arrived in the state she did. I hadn’t seen her in years, but it was like she was a completely different person. Haunted, I suppose.”
Lorelei did not need to ask for more details. Although it surprised her, she could imagine it with perfect, horrible clarity. Her moonlit hair disheveled. Her pale silver eyes as empty as her own had been. All of her indefatigable enthusiasm quashed.
Hollowed out by ghosts.
“The only thing that seemed to cheer her up was this pack of kornhunds that lived in the cornfields on my property. She would go outside and watch them for hours after sunset.”
Kornhunds were wildeleute who took the form of sight hounds. They ran atop gusts of wind with lightning sparking at their paws, bringing bad luck to anyone who gazed into their eyes. They were driven out of the fields when they were threshed, but during the growing season, they were menaces. They picked off children hunting for cornflowers and tore apart anyone who imitated their howls.
“One night, I looked out my window. It was pitch-dark, so all I could see was her hair and a spark of lightning. One of the hounds had come out of the corn, and Sylvia was crouched there on the edge of the field, waiting for it.”
None of this sounded remotely surprising. But she supposed this was Sylvia before she was Sylvia. “What happened then?”
He laughed breathlessly. “Well, I grabbed my musket and ran outside, but by the time I got there, she was gone. That’s likely for the best. Johann has tried to teach me a thousand times, but I’m a terrible shot.
“I looked for her for hours. And then, come morning, she stumbled out of the corn. Her eyes were wild, and she was practically shouting in my ear from excitement. I couldn’t understand a single thing she said. Because I was so…angry.”
Lorelei couldn’t picture Ludwig angry, but she could picture Sylvia with perfect clarity: tearing barefoot through the fields with a pack of wild dogs at her heels, lightning dancing around her, her hair unfurling into the dark like a war banner Lorelei would follow to her own death.
“I told her she was completely mad. I told her she could’ve died.”
“And what did she say to that?”
“Nothing! She just laughed at me. And when she was finished, she said, Isn’t it beautiful, Ludwig? Isn’t life incredible? ”
Lorelei stared straight ahead, unable to meet his eyes. Those infernal creatures had saved Sylvia’s life. It brought to mind a lonely young girl in the Yevanverte, collecting bugs from the neighbors’ garden and thinking it something like magic.
“And this,” she said, “proves her innocence?”
“She isn’t capable of killing. Not anymore—and not like that. She refuses to use magic. It upsets her too much.”
Lorelei frowned. She supposed now that she thought about it, she had never seen Sylvia wield magic. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Consider it my parting gift,” he said lightly. “Someone ought to figure this mess out, and it certainly won’t be me.”
I have figured it out. She trusted Ludwig, yes—even considered him a friend. But he liked Heike. She refused to drive a wedge between them without proof. Instead, she said, “Don’t say things like that.”
“Right. Morbid. Sorry,” he said. “But really, if I don’t come back, you should have that coat of mine you like so much. You remember which one I’m talking about?”
“Yes, yes.” Lorelei scowled. “How generous.”
For all their sakes, she prayed that his plan—whatever it was—worked.
Later that night, Lorelei slipped into her tent and watched the shadows draw long fingers across the canvas roof. The forest was eerily completely still. She heard no nighttime birds, no insects, no skitter of creatures in the dark. And yet, she could not shake the feeling that someone—or something—was watching them with malicious intent.