Chapter 16
XVI.
To Burn
I froze, standing on nothing, hands outstretched in sudden panic.
The whole world had gone away, replaced now with the abyss.
Far from me, on some kind of horizon—if you could call it a horizon—stars trailed thick dust and strange light.
It reminded me of that place between the shards when Death had kissed me.
Except now I wasn’t falling. I stood firm.
Soundless. Airless. Was this what it was to die?
To see on the other side, without having crossed? Carefully, I took a step back.
That fathomless abyss disappeared. The rainy forest once again surrounded me. Ahead of me, the grove waited. The hellcat meowed at my feet, but even he sat at the edge and waited, the rain hissing into the flames of his back.
The old woman said to go inside and light a fire to call her. But if I took one more step the entire grove would disappear. How did I get to the hut I couldn’t even see through the abyss? If I walked forward into this endless night, lit only by the far stars, would I be entirely lost?
I could turn around, return to the chateau. I would likely recover in a few weeks. My apprenticeship would continue, and if I could never return here, the grove would become only a faint memory of my earliest days in Death’s home.
But I was desperate to be both strong and powerful.
I wanted Lord Death’s gaze on me with admiration, with surprise, with longing, even.
Maybe he’d one day show me places such as these, but I was already here, stepping into these mysteries without him.
I had started believing in who I might become, imagining myself beside him.
I clenched my fists tight. I tried to fix my gaze on the darkened windows, judging the distance through the rain as best I could. Turning my feet in the direction of the hut, I took a deep breath and stepped forward.
The forest once again was snuffed out like a candle.
The stars became the sky. The dark fell away under my feet.
My stomach dropped, seeming to fall endlessly even though I stayed, for all I could tell, in the same place I’d stepped.
Holding the fear tight inside my belly, I breathed out and took another step. Then another.
Out of the corner of my eye, the stars and their dust began to move.
I almost made the mistake of looking at the movement but caught myself in time.
I kept my gaze fixed on the empty spot in the dark where I thought the hut should be waiting, and as I focused, the stars swirled in earnest, blooming, traveling in hot waves across the dark.
This glimpse of the abyss terrified me, but it was a different kind of terror—one that soared through me and made me feel as if I could hold everything that wanted to tear me apart.
I knew nothing, but I knew enough to be here.
I was no one, but I walked with the gods.
I was a wretched woman, but hadn’t the whole world sprung from the womb?
I saw it now and was changed. The currents.
The movement. White heat and solid water and frozen clouds.
I could reach into that dust and pluck out a grain of life, and it would grow an entire world.
As I marveled, beyond the currents, the faint shadows of other things moved.
The gods and their creatures, backs turned, going on about the business of immortality and other worlds.
With my gaze never leaving the spot where the hut had been, I could see it all.
Even the hellcat who followed at my heels, flames tampered in the airless weight of the dark.
I forgot to fear oblivion, and that also changed me. When my feet stumbled onto an invisible step, I remembered what I had set out to find. I climbed the unseen steps of the hut and waited for the hellcat to come in behind me before closing the door on the strange dark world.
Inside, the hut was empty and untouched from the day before.
The rain pattered softly on the roof, and out the small window the grove lay peaceful under melting snow.
I squatted at the cold hearth and poked at the coals—they were wet from rain that had dropped into the chimney.
Sighing, I looked around the hut for anything to start the fire.
There was nothing but a few pieces of wood the old woman had brought in and never put on.
At least they were dry. I laid them in the hearth and turned to the hellcat, who was batting at the edge of a thread from a dusty spinning wheel in the corner.
“Pspspsp,” I called, wiping my hands on my skirts.
The hellcat looked at me as if it couldn’t believe I was asking, but after I repeated myself, it sniffed and slowly walked in my direction.
“Thank you, sir,” I said formally as it sat beside me.
Using my teeth, I ripped off the edge of my shift hem and held it to his flaming fur.
At first, nothing happened, and I felt rather foolish.
I had been able to pick him up after all—the flames had not burnt.
But what was an immortal hellcat without actual fire?
I tried to reach into the other world, the place where the hellcat existed as itself.
Then, the cloth caught so fiercely it burnt my fingers.
With a screech, I threw it into the coals.
It fell upon the branches and immediately began to burn.
The fire leapt bright and crackling warm. My fingers were blistered and stung but I tried to pet the hellcat in thanks. It bit me and walked off.
I winced and rubbed my hand. Night was falling outside. How long would it take the old woman to arrive? I stayed on the floor near the fire, exhausted and fighting the ever-present nausea as the gray light dimmed and the rain came harder onto the roof.
It was the whisper of the spinning wheel that made me turn.
A queer feeling moved through the bottom of my stomach. “Grandmother?” I asked.
The old woman sat at the wheel, head tipped back, and her great mane of gray-streaked hair wild and loose, pulling at thread that wasn’t there.
She turned at my words, her eyes rolled back into her head, only the whites visible, and her hands in the shape of taloned claws pulled away from the spinning wheel.
It must have been my head, but I could not make sense of her features.
The lines of her face kept moving between a raven and crone. Bird or woman. Woman or bird.
“I’ve come for your help,” I said, my voice firmer than my trembling knees.
Her eyes rolled forward and scanned the room, finding me standing there looking dumbstruck.
“You have found my hut.” Her gaze gleamed with a sharpness that had not been there before.
“No, no. Don’t fuss, I am all right. There was nothing wrong in the first place, child, though I know it looks dramatic.
” As if nothing more out of the ordinary than a sneeze had occurred, she shuffled around the hut and put a kettle into the fire.
“Why did you seek me out this dreary day?”
“I feel … wrong.” Now that I tried to explain, I felt silly and confused. The hellcat reappeared and pressed against my side, and I paused to pet his back. He bared his teeth and hissed at me before bolting away.
“I see Schneid found you.”
“Oh! This is Schneid. Is he yours?” I asked.
She smiled. “He’s yours. Your guts. Keep him close. Now, go on.”
Lord Death’s words came back to me, and I explained to her how I’d woken up and the strange sickness I felt.
She drilled a quick rhythm with her fingers, watching me as I spoke. “When did this begin?”
“Last night. Yesterday. I mean, I woke up this morning, but I think it’s from yesterday.”
“What happened yesterday?”
Quick images flashed through my head—crystals popping off the scarlet threads and tinkling onto dinner plates, the Emperor’s mask as he leaned in with the knife, Death’s eyes as he pulled the ribbon laced on my wrist up my back and watched my pain.
I felt the crone’s eyes on me, and I did not know how to explain.
Not even if she was a witch. “I …” But no words came.
“I did not do any magic, that I can recall. But he said …” The feeling of his hands, lifting my head to pour the bitter liquid down my throat, came to me.
But that had not been magic either—he’d only been trying to heal me of my wounds.
And my ribs were much better. Magically better.
“Were you hurt?”
“No,” I answered honestly.
She busied herself with the kettle. “Some stew for us both, I think.”
As she said it, it seemed to me stew was just what I needed, scraped hollow as I felt.
She worked, and I watched, trying to remember what had happened after the rooms. But aside from the hazy flashes of Death healing me—and even those memories now seemed to slip through my fingers like sand—I recalled nothing. Had it been a dream?
The firelight wavered on the walls of the small hut and the rain continued quiet and steady.
The old woman stirred the contents of her iron pot, sunk directly into the glowing coals.
“Grandmother, what is your name?” I asked.
“I have many names, child. But you may call me Perchta.”
“Are you a witch?”
“The nature of what I am is still something you must discover. As well whether you should trust me or not. Whether you will believe me. More important than who I am—do you know who you are?”
“I’m not sure,” I finally managed. “I think a woman.”
“The most cursed of all God’s creatures.”
I suddenly felt as if I were quite close to death. But then I remembered he was not here. “Grandmother Perchta,” I forced out, sitting weakly on the floor. “Can you help me?”
“You need some rue and lovage for your strength,” Perchta said to me. “And if you are looking for more protection against such a bloodletting of magic, you will need some vervain.”