Chapter 35 #2
I took out the flame, the fire that could not be expunged, and carefully I held it to the Baron’s wretched book. He screamed for me to stop and managed to pull himself up and lunge at me, trying to save his precious tome.
But it was too late. He clutched the burning book to himself, trying to smother the flames, but the flames would not go out.
I stood too long, watching in numbness as the fire spread quickly, eagerly, up his arms and engulfing his shoulders, and still he did not seem to know to run.
He screamed his last breaths for power, for demons, and to curse me.
And then the fire poured down his throat and his curses were cut off in a thick choke.
The chapel was silent, but for the crackling flame. I stood, in shock. In some way I had still underestimated his humanity, his fragility. That he could die so easily and so stupidly.
The fire spread, fueled by magic, across the altar to the pews, and I was jolted from my stupor. Dacia. If we did not run now, we would be swallowed in this inferno. Just when I thought to despair, Schneid appeared, all aflame, eyeing me with chastisement, as if I’d missed an appointed meeting.
“I’m coming!” I said to him. I transformed again and hoisted her over my shoulders as the fire eagerly engulfed the broken cross. Even the spirits drew back in terror as they watched. As fast as I could, I dragged Dacia out the chapel doors and commanded them to follow. Schneid led the way.
We went out through the ruined house, the inferno building past the holes in the roof, the mouse nests, the leaf litter, the broken and blackened stones, finally to my little garden.
That, at least, had not been an illusion.
I dropped Dacia into my plants, tinged with the burn of frost and purple with death.
Falling to my knees beside her, I began to weep.
He had taken her. He had taken her because of my love for her.
To hurt me. Because he could. In some way, it felt as if I were responsible for this.
Not in some way, I corrected myself. I was.
I might have also been his victim, but I was still responsible.
Through my tears, I picked the last of my vervain, my thyme, my wolfsbane.
Everything I had grown I had grown for this moment—only I hadn’t known until now.
I burnt some, covering Dacia’s body with a soft smoke, and pounded the others on rocks into a mash of wet green that I applied to every wound I could find.
The fire devoured the roof and I heard the crack of timbers and stone. I would have to move her soon. Thick waves of smoke filled the valley, making it hard to breathe, and the sun sank lower, the air turned blue and heavy. The forest watched, dark and silent.
Dacia stirred, the herbs doing their work. Finally, we could wait no longer—the smoke was too strong and the heat radiated through the stones, even here in the garden. Soon the fire would reach this side of the chateau and engulf it all.
“I have to finish it,” I said, gathering all my strength and lifting her into my arms. “I have to break the curse of this place.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said. “I will never be parted from you again.”
“I will come back,” I assured her. I kissed her bloodied forehead tenderly and carried her through my stone gate, into the forest, just deep enough that the bower of the trees closed over us. I saw her fear and I assured her. “They are friends. You will be safe, I promise. Just wait for me.”
She sank into the curve of an enormous root, and it felt as if the tree molded around her, cradling her. Her hands reached for me, trembling, I clutched them. Kissed her fingers. And then grimly turned to the spirits that had been following us since we left.
They filled the forest with an eerie glow, huddled together.
I realized as I led them into the trees, trees that were quiet in witness, that it was not a curse—to see what others could not.
It was my work, my attention. The offering that I had for the mystery that opened inside me.
I could not have saved them. But my attention and care now could set them free.
I longed to find that spring again and wash myself clean under the sharp scent of spruce and the moon. I longed to crawl in bed beside Dacia and simply watch her breathe. But I had much more ahead of me before I could rest.
I led them through the forest, into Perchta’s grove under a full moon.
I thought I might say words, or a blessing, or something profound.
But in the end, I simply felt the cool wind of the stirring forest graze my body, and looked into each of their faces as they must have been in life—women, girls, who were more than their deaths, more than their broken spirits.
They were laughter and pleasure and joy.
Girls like Rochelle. Odette. Women like Dacia.
Witches like me. I looked at them and called for Hecate.
She appeared in the same terrifying form—facing the forest, facing me, facing the spirits. The wind swept cold and strange, and I was filled with an exquisite terror I now understood was what you felt in the presence of a true god.
All I had ever felt in the presence of men was a fear of domination. This was the fear of dominion, of being so small and the abyss being so massive, and suddenly understanding how much more there was in the world and in time—and how little of it I could understand.
But I took heart that she had appeared, that she waited now, patient and stern, at the border of the grove. I bowed my head to her in respect and then turned to the spirits, blessing each one and leading them across the sacred grove to her.
She took each into her embrace, said something only the spirit could hear, and then each spirit’s anchor to the world was dissolved.
Gently, peacefully, they lifted their arms to the moon, to the stars, and were freed into the great dust beyond.
When the last one disappeared into the stars, I looked back to Hecate, and she too was gone. I stood alone.
It was true dark now, but the moon was bright. I picked my way through the forest back to the chateau.
It was an inferno.
I stood past the hawthorns to watch it burn, arms crossed over myself.
It was not the vindication I’d wanted—I’d wanted to be proved righteous, to be recognized as powerful, to have everything restored.
I wanted to be able to point to this cursed place and say I am not mad, look at your villain.
I wanted to be redeemed in the sight of the village and be able to return.
With the Baron’s death and the destruction of this place, those things would never happen.
I would always be a witch, a monster, at best a madwoman.
While I knew his end was fitting, it felt like a meal from my childhood at the convent—several bites short of satisfying.
Anger and grief mixed tightly in my throat.
A spire collapsed in a roar and a rush of sparks, and I thought of all those books and scrolls, all the magical knowledge lost. I thought of how gentle the Baron had sometimes been.
I remembered how I’d felt alive with his stories and our discussions.
Those memories lived alongside my disgust—alongside the unbearable revulsion of his true nature.
I hoped, for the first time, that there was a hell so that he might continue to burn in it.
“Salomé,” I heard behind me, faintly. It was a voice so far away and so familiar. “Sister.”
I turned, confused. She stood on the edge of the forest, not quite real and not quite spirit. Her brow pale under a glimmering crown.
Rochelle.
My throat caught, unsure if what I saw was truly real.
“You made it,” she said. “I kept trying to find my way through again, to warn you somehow, but he blocked me …” She lifted her hand to the inferno.
It burned so hot the forest had pulled back, its branches singed and blackened.
The sweet hot scent of burning spruce filled the air, but nothing else lit—the fire was confined only to the chateau.
“Can I come closer to you?” I asked, my voice thick.
She gestured me forward, the motion so regal and mature. I approached her, but I knew without asking I could not hug her.
“I sent my husband,” she said. “To warn you. We both kept trying to warn you.”
“Your husband?” I asked confused. And then it clicked. The writing when I tried to conjure her. The demon prince. That’s who had taken her after all. But … her husband? There was so much to Rochelle’s story and her world I might never know.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” I said, for it was the thing I had needed to say for so long. Tears spilled from my eyes and my throat ached.
“Oh, my sister. I am sorry I couldn’t save you.”
And it wasn’t until that moment that I understood that all this time, I had not been alone. We had longed and feared and grown together. Just not beside each other like when we were children.
The great walls of the house fell and a burst of sparks rose into the darkest part of night. The chapel cross over the altar still stood, a black relief against the flames.
“They didn’t prepare us for this in the convent, did they?” I said.
She laughed, the firelight glimmering against her crown, her dress, as if it had been woven to pick up the light in the darkest places. “They tried?”
“You look like a queen,” I said.
“I am one, dear sister.” She smiled at me, and it was her old familiar smile, so dear to me. “And you look like a witch.”
“I am one.” I smiled in return. We looked at each other, and in her face I could see the journey she had undergone. I wished I could have been there with her. But at least we had this.
“I love you, Salomé,” she said softly.
“I love you too,” I said, the words vanishing with her as she disappeared.
As the sun rose, the cross finally collapsed, setting the last of the fall leaves aglow.
DACIA HAD FALLEN ASLEEP, CURLED IN THE PROTECTIVE curve of the tree root with Schneid, a round ball with horns growing out the middle, asleep in her tattered skirts.
I picked her up, cradling her like a child in my arms. She was much too light, but I was also severely weakened.
I didn’t think I could make it all the way to the hut like that, but somehow, I did.
Schneid went ahead, his flames rippling like a beacon.
In that moment, I finally understood what Perchta had said all those months ago—Schneid was hers, and thus he was mine.
Maybe Hecate had once made him. Your guts, she’d said, oh-so-long ago.
Out of the magic of the forest swam all kinds of creatures, one that went like a light before me.
Our guts. We were in this great, ancient world, and the magic held us all.
In the morning light the grove looked like the most beautiful place in all the world, and when I staggered inside the little hut, I felt like I could finally breathe.
Perchta had prepared it all for us. Everything was neat and tidy, waiting—water in the kettle, fresh bandages, fragrant herbs. I said a prayer of thanks to her and the other gods who listened and immediately put the water on the fire and plucked up a bundle of rags to clean Dacia’s wounds.
As I did, I wept again. For it was clear he had tormented and brutalized her, and I wasn’t sure what of Dacia would be left once her body healed.
But I burnt vervain in the fire and poured some broth down her throat, which she managed to swallow, even in her sleep.
While she slept, I dug in my shift pocket, taking out the spelled ring of rosemary, somehow unharmed and fresh still.
A ring of rosemary magic seemed so silly and small compared to what she had faced, but I slid it on her finger.
“You have to live for me,” I said. “Please.”
“He didn’t take it,” she whispered, her voice raw and cracked. Her eyes still closed, but her fingers twitched, as if curling around the ring. “He never found it.”
My heart raced and rejoiced and tumbled over itself with agony all at once. “Found what, my love?” I asked, smoothing her hair back.
She touched a trembling finger to her waist. I fumbled with the edge of her skirt, finding a small pocket sewn into the band. Opening it, I pulled out the medallion she’d had made for me.
“For protection,” she whispered faintly, pushing my fingers closed over it. Her hand held mine. “For my love.”
“I have loved you with all the love I could not find for myself,” I told her, putting the medallion around my neck, not caring that I was covered in dirt and soaked in blood. It hung, silver and weighty on my throat. “I am sorry I brought this curse onto you.”
I didn’t expect her to respond, she was so weak.
But she touched the ring on her finger and forced her eyes open to meet mine.
My heart squeezed, seeing the effort it cost, the toll of pain on her body, swimming in her blue eyes, which reflected the boundless evening sky.
“Salomé, you are not a curse. You are the love I didn’t know existed in this world. ”
“But I am a witch,” I said. “I can no longer deny that.”
“You are a witch,” she affirmed, eyes closing. “And your magic, your love, was like seeing a reflection of the face of God.”
I thought of Hecate’s faces and the threads running through all the world.
Of how easily the verses leapt into the spell on Dacia’s finger.
I thought too of the Mother Superior and her longing to see the world broken open and revealed in all its reflected glory.
For Hildegard’s visions and the pain they brought her.
For Valerie and her steady presence in my life, a legacy that even death could not take.
For Rochelle and the strange way our paths had diverged.
For that’s what it was to be mortal—cursed and glorified, loved and rejected, strong and vulnerable.
It felt suddenly as if I had always been in one story, one journey, one ancient forest, the gods with an eye half cast to my path, that I might come to this moment and overcome a darkness deeper than even the Baron himself.
My curse had become a blessing.
The ring around her finger still held its protection, and she stirred closer to me, pressing her face to my chest. I wrapped my arms around her.
I had lived.