Chapter 18 #2
“Now we can move on to mushrooms,” Perchta said, pleased.
I thumped to the ground and fell back, groaning.
Mushrooms. Nuts. Mosses. The nature of different salts and clays.
“Don’t burn the pine,” Perchta said, slapping my hand so I dropped the stick. “You’ll plunge the whole forest into flame!” She handed me another. “Hickory burns hotter and slower.”
In Death’s study, I drew star maps and calculated configurations, but Perchta dragged me through the dark, to a high, rocky peak, until it felt like I could see the edges of the world, and if I stood too fast, would fall off, hurtling up into the sky.
I stood on a mountain bald at midnight and saw them, cast in their milky haze that reminded me of the abyss.
In Death’s books I drew circles upon circles, but in Perchta’s groves I found them—in the ring that surrounded the grove, in the snail shells plucked from rich dirt, in the cones of the purple bells.
In Death’s book, scrying was a complex process and required the use of a silver mirror poured with casting spells.
Perchta brought me to a deep, dark pool under the willows and we laid on our stomachs on the bank and stared into our reflections on the water.
My dark hair was loosed, veil lost somewhere in the abyss or the forest, and the wild spring wind kept playing with the ends and trying to drop them into the water.
“When will I know if it worked?” I asked Perchta.
I felt as though I was growing cross-eyed, peering into the depths.
I was frustrated—with myself and with the task of walking the path between two masters.
The old woman did not answer, stretched out on the bank as if she were sound asleep. Was she dead? I eyed her back, but it moved slowly. I could hear her answer in the silence. Focus. So I leaned back over the bank.
It was my reflection that bothered me—I did not like to see myself, dark brow, dark hair, and eyes set so deeply into my face that they were just two black holes, as if they’d been gouged out and I was only a shell of a person, rotted inside-out from my curse.
It made me feel exposed, though I knew others couldn’t see it like I did.
Patrons did not immediately find me cursed.
Dacia never had. Until that day with Maxime, only I knew.
I stopped seeing my face, then, and thought of Dacia’s bright blue eyes watching me with that little smile at the corner of her mouth I found so bewildering. It was not a smile she’d given to other girls or even her patrons. It was mine.
Or had been.
In the dark water a flash of white stirred. I blinked. For a moment there was Dacia, spinning, with her dress flying and her curls loosened. But when I tried to look deeper, my heart racing, it was only a silvery trout swimming below the surface.
I pushed up from the bank with aching eyes and sat, refusing to look into the water again.
GODS AND MASTERS WERE NOT THE ONLY BEINGS IN THESE new, strange worlds I navigated.
For other things lived in the forest as well.
The wolves ran beside me unless Schneid was there—never getting close enough to strike, but always too close for comfort.
In the early spring, with the waters rushing from snowmelt and a dense fog rising from the cool ground, Perchta pointed out the silvery flash of nixie’s tails in the foam.
When the trees were in bud, I saw a huge, white horse thundering through the forest—awestruck, I told Perchta about it and she warned me never to accept a ride from the cheval mallet, for I would have to pay with my life.
Then, during one wet spring evening I was rushing on my way back to the chateau and came up over a knoll to find myself face-to-face with a giant.
I surprised him as much as he surprised me. He was as tall as a fir tree, with eyes that took up most of his face, bright as fire, horrifying. We both screamed and fell backward on our asses—him, shaking the forest as he landed. Quick as a wink, before I could even move, he transformed.
A human-size figure stood before me with a long white beard and eyebrows, dressed in a monk’s dark robes.
Several lanterns as tall as me were lit and placed on the ground beside him, and the path was scraped and worn around a dark opening in the hillside.
“Are you here to steal from my mine?” he demanded sharply, moving to block the entrance.
“Mine?” I asked, picking leaves out of my hair and rubbing dirt off my skirt. “I’m not a miner.”
“Well, why wouldn’t you want to steal from it? Do you think it’s inferior?” The figure seemed to grow with his anger.
“No!” I cried. “I don’t know anything about your mine. Or mining. I’m sure it’s very nice.”
“And now you mock me!” the monk cried, nearly back to his full size, towering over me as tall as a tree, his flaming eyes terrifying, shining as large as dinner plates.
What kind of ill-tempered creature was this?
If I ran or tried to escape, I’d anger him further.
His long arms would pluck me out of the trees before I made it over the hill.
“No! I swear it!” My back hit a tree. “I’m only passing through the forest,” Desperate to calm him, I dropped into a deep curtsey.
“It is an honor to meet you, brother. I am Salomé, an apprentice to Lord Death.”
The creature shrunk back to his monk size and began shoveling black silt between two large, wooden buckets. “I should kill you with my breath,” he muttered, but he was not so tall or so angry now that he was focused on his task.
“I would hope you not kill me at all. But how does your breath kill, that sounds very impressive?” I wanted to ask what he was doing—for he bent again to scoop dirt between the buckets, but there didn’t seem to be a point to his work.
“It is deathly poisonous. I should use it on you for interrupting me.” He paused, as if waiting for me to challenge him. When I didn’t, he turned back to his dirt.
“Since you are very busy, I shall leave you be and continue on my way.”
“No!” he roared, halting me before I could take a step. “You will tell thieves about my mine. Sit down, I will bury you in it tomorrow when I’m finished with my work.”
A sweat broke out on the back of my neck. “I don’t think that is necessary.” I eased one careful step back.
“You are distracting me from my work,” he snapped, still shoveling. “I shall breathe on you and bury your body later.”
“Why kill me when you could let me help you with your task instead?”
“Help? You are but a slight woman, you cannot lift my shovel.”
“You could let me try.”
“A waste of time,” he spat. But he looked at me and then he put the shovel in the ground and gestured for me to take it.
I grasped the handle and yanked. It didn’t budge. The shovel was so heavy I couldn’t imagine anyone moving it, not even a giant.
He lifted it up as if weighed no more than a spoon. “I told you, and now you’ve wasted even more of my time,” he said, his brow furrowed. “But because you offered to help, I’ll let you continue your way without killing you. Don’t tell anyone about my mine!”
“No, I will not,” I said with relief. “But, brother, what is the difference between one bucket and the other?” I asked.
“It’s very important!” he sputtered, his movements near frantic and trembling. “I cannot explain.”
I felt bad for him, fixated on this task.
He was working so hard. He seemed almost fearful.
I did not understand what could be important about moving the silt from one bucket to the next, but I felt as if I understood his fear somehow.
His defensiveness. Instead of leaving, I got to my knees and between his shovelfuls, scooped up the silt with my hands and added it to the bucket.
He accepted my help without a word, and I rushed to keep up with his frantic pace.
The silt was near the bottom of the bucket, but not quite empty, when night began to fall in earnest and I needed to leave.
I stood, stretching my cramped back. “I’m sorry, brother, I must go.
It is getting dark and it’s dangerous for me to be out. ”
He paused, sweat trickling down his brow. “Yes, you are right. Take this to light your way.” He picked up one of his lanterns and offered it to me. “Bergmonch’s oil never burns out.”
I did not know how I could carry such a thing, but when I reached for it, it transformed just like he did, to the size of a regular lantern in my hand. I curtsied again. “Thank you.” Taking the lantern, I left him to finish his task, hurrying back to the chateau.
In my room, I put the lantern on the mantel above the fire, and its cheery flame did much to push against the dark—and he was right, it never even flickered.
I FELL INTO SOMETHING LIKE A ROUTINE AROUND THE CHTEAU and the forest. Shrouds of rain came, wrapping themselves around the mountains and thickening in the valleys.
My little garden outside the chateau bloomed from little shoots to lush plants.
I stole away as often as I could to check on it, through the narrow stone gate, rushing back with my cheeks red and my fingers still buzzing from the touch of magic. My magic.
I was truly intoxicated with my evenings spent discussing some bit of magical theory or alchemical process over wine in the chateau with Death.
I was drunk on his smiles, his laughs, the furrow in his brow when he was thoughtfully considering my words, and the smell of frankincense and parchment and burnt beeswax in my fine clothes.
I could imagine life stretching forever like this and the thought was a delight.
But then too, I was something else, something equally but differently affected by my time in the old woman’s grove, which grew high and verdant, buzzing with bees, thick with the smell of pure magic that seemed to cling to my clothes.
At times I thought Death could smell it on me.
He would get close to me, humming over my translation of Latin in his books and his breath would stir my hair and he’d freeze.
I could feel the tension in his body. Every time, I waited to see if he would remark on it.
Could he smell the wild herbs and streaked lightning smell?
Could he smell the familiar scent of darkness and the stardust and the shadows of gods?
I could. It persisted on my skin, even when I changed my clothes and bathed in the water of his sanctum.
My heart would beat in my chest, waiting for him to say something.
I did not want to tell him; I wanted him to know.
To wonder. But then he would move away, and I would swallow the tightness in my throat and be careful not to press too hard on my quill.
I was learning different things with each of my masters—and at times it felt like I lived in this strange liminal space that held two of me.
In one I slowly grew green and lush and held pockets of simmering sunshine in my darkness and pockets of endless night in my day.
In the other I became as dark and as strange as the moon and cold as the stars, everything cast in blue light.
I thought I could hold both lives in my two hands forever. But of course, those halcyon days did not last.