CHAPTER THREE #2
She glanced at the stuffed bird on the wall. “You’re quite right, Goose. We do have a bit of butter.”
She turned to the egg. “You’re outnumbered. Fried.”
Johanna would scold her for wasting the butter, but if she was at the lodge, she would celebrate, boast all night of her success.
Johanna had never understood it, the boasting, the self-congratulation.
Meat is for eating, hide is for selling, and pride is for fools, she always said, using or selling every scrap of each of their kills, with the exception of the trophy of Anya’s first kill mounted onto the wall.
But Anya lived for those winter nights. The others would jeer, cast doubt on every inch of her story – some of which would be fluffed up, of course, but only the details – and then pour her a beer anyway.
“I do think there’s a bit of beer left in the cellar,” she mumbled, feeling around her nearly empty cabinet. “If the mice haven’t gotten into it, little topers.”
Still holding the egg, she pulled out the plain white butter dish. She lifted the lid. Completely empty. Not even a smear of grease on the chipped porcelain.
“Oh.” Carefully, she set the lid back in place. “Maybe there’s some in the cellar. But…no, that’s right. I used the last in my oats the other morning.”
That had been her first mistake. If you had fine things at all, you didn’t waste them on ordinary occasions. You saved them for when it counted. Otherwise, when it counted, you were left with less than nothing – a lack.
You oughtn’t worry for fine things at all, really. Fine things made you soft, dulled your edge. Or, like a fox’s pretty pelt gleaming in the twilight, made you a target for something sharper.
“But you do get tired of dreary oats,” she rationalized dully to the stuffed bird on her wall.
The bird did not answer.
For some reason, this caused a lump to form in her throat.
“Bite and beetle, it’s only butter.” She forced a laugh at her foolishness, wiped at her dry, burning eyes. “What’s wrong with me?”
As if in answer, a soft wind tickled the back of her neck.
Wind? Frowning, she turned. The door had swung open. “Am I to pay for a new door, then, as well?” she grumbled as she went to close it.
Someone sniffled. “Did that stingy farmer pay you enough for that?”
The egg shattered with a wet, sickening splat on her floor. Automatically, Anya reached for the knife kept strapped to her belt and spun around.
A young woman stood at her table. Anya nearly gasped.
Aside from her sudden appearance, she was stunningly beautiful.
Her smooth, autumn-gold hair was braided down her back.
Her sleeveless dress was midnight blue, almost black, and it clung to her every smooth contour elegantly, particularly where the deep neckline plunged.
Her shoulders were wrapped in ermine. Dusty rose lips pouted beneath shining blue eyes.
She may have been the most beautiful woman Anya had ever seen.
And beautiful women were just about the last thing you wanted to see in the Lichtenwald.
She looked pitifully sad. She held a fox skin, still wet and red inside, in her hands. An uncommonly pretty fox skin.
Her own skin prickling in warning, Anya brandished her knife. “Get out of my house.”
The woman fell dramatically into one of Anya’s kitchen chairs. “Don’t you want to know why I came? Or even my name?”
But Anya had a gnawing suspicion she already knew this woman’s name. She wondered if she would have time to grab and load her shotgun – and knew, if her suspicion was correct, she would not.
Mira, the witch of Bosquet Mire. Evil things befell those who stumbled too close to her hidden estate.
Eyes turned to bulging egg sacs. Skin purpled with spreading rot that corrupted all it touched.
Skulls sucked hollow as a decaying hornet nest, yet somehow left alive.
Teeth turned to writhing maggots that couldn’t be plucked out.
Those who simply vanished without a trace.
Some, it was said, she kept as her servants.
But none had yet returned to tell their tale.
Anya tightened her grip on her knife. “What I want is for you to spirit yourself out of here the way you spirited yourself in.”
“He told me how much he paid you,” said the woman, sniffling pitifully. “He should have paid you more. My lovely fox was worth a thousand of his pathetic hens. A million of your ugly, shit-patched huts. The greedy pig. Don’t worry; I gave him a form more befitting his character.”
As the words took shape, Anya’s breath quickened. She knew of only one creature in the Lichtenwald who could alter another’s form. A woman. A witch.
And she was sitting in Anya’s kitchen.
Almost imperceptibly, Anya’s hand wavered. “He…that man had a family.”
“They still have each other, and more, the poor skinny things. Why, I’ve provided them with a feast to last the winter, if they’ve the gumption.”
Ignoring the way her stomach dropped, Anya jerked her knife toward the door. “I said you need to leave.”
The witch did not move. “I know your name, Anya.” She smiled sweetly, dabbing her wet eyes. “He told me before I changed him.”
Anya’s grip tightened. She swallowed. “Why have you come?”
She spread the pelt flat on the table. “I loved my dear familiar very much.”
Her familiar. Anya had killed the witch of Bosquet Mire’s familiar for a basket of eggs.
“I didn’t know,” Anya swore, dropping her arm. “I would never–”
“He is dead all the same.” Her voice cut through the air, belying her mournful demeanor. “He ran away from me, and you killed him. My only companion, killed by a forest rat with shit on her roof and dirt in her hair.”
“Then you should’ve kept better care of him,” Anya said, taking an involuntary step back. But despite her fear, she stood up straighter. Witch or no witch, she had done nothing wrong, and she wasn’t about to quaver like a kicked dog.
Mira’s posture relaxed; so did her voice. Her moods seemed to fluctuate like a cloud in the wind. “Would you have me keep him caged? Tethered to a leash?”
“If that’s what it takes. Someone was bound to kill him, feasting himself on people’s livelihoods like that.”
“Not someone.” Mira rose, glided across the floor, placed a hand on Anya’s chest. Anya’s heart hammered as the witch flicked an idle finger at the lacing of her jerkin.
“Only you.” Mira plucked her long fingers along Anya’s shoulders.
Anya shivered. “I thought I might tie you naked to a tree, make you a cloak of him, sewn into your shoulders to keep you warm. Let you rot together.”
Anya jerked backward, hitting wood. She’d backed herself into the wall. The knife at her hip was utterly useless, but she clung tight to it nevertheless.
“But now that I see how pretty you are, I see what a shame that would be.” Her blue eyes met Anya’s.
Mira leaned closer. “Perhaps I’ll make you into my new familiar,” she said, her breath warm in Anya’s face.
It smelled of magic. She stroked Anya’s cheek.
“You’re a clever girl. Would you like to be a fox? Or perhaps a little cat?”
“No.” Anya’s voice was low around her pounding heart, all bluster blown away with the witch’s breath. “I swear, I swear I didn’t know.”
“It doesn’t matter what you knew or did not,” said Mira, sadly. Then, her voice brightened. “But there is something else you do not know.”
Mira grabbed Anya’s shoulders and steered her to her table, then sat across from her, as if they were about to share supper. From nowhere, Mira produced a newspaper, folded open to the advertisements.
One was circled. Wanted: skilled tracker to aid in finding an uncommon beast.
“Only an expert hunter could catch my fox. And lucky for you, I have need of one.”
Eyes on the advert, Anya’s heart sped; in hope, this time. A way out. “I can kill any beast in these woods.”
“I do not want you to kill it, stupid girl,” Mira sniffed.
“My ears in the capital tell me King Edgard has announced a contest. He wants to become a phoenix. He thinks it will let him live forever, and he isn’t wrong.
The phoenix’s magic is incredibly powerful – more even than mine.
He does not deserve the phoenix. He is stupid and cruel. ”
Anya couldn’t help it; her eyes snapped up to Mira’s.