Page 105 of Night of the Witch
“Will you take me to Fritzi?” I ask the goddess.
“No,” she says simply.
“What have you done with her? With Liesel? I swore to protect them!”
“Ah,” the woman says, leaning forward. “Protect. Is that what you do? You are aprotector?” She looks faintly amused.
“I—yes—”
“Is that what you did with the others, for all those years? Protection?” The woman stands, her green dress trailing in the icy blue water without, I notice, getting wet. “Is that what you did for your stepmother? Did you protect her?”
Acid rises in my throat. “I was a child,” I start to say, but Holda’s bitter laugh cuts me off.
“A child? When is that no longer an excuse?”
“You weren’t there!” I shout.
She arches an eyebrow. “Wasn’t I?”
My blood runs cold.
“You gave me a sacrifice, Otto Ernst, just last night, and now you pretend not to know me?”
My eyes rake over the goddess. She looks like a simple maid, like any of a hundred different girls I have seen in my lifetime. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “You don’t know me,” she says, a statement, not a question. “What a fool you are, to offer a sacrifice without knowing to whom you sacrifice. Or,” she adds, cocking her head, “without knowing exactlywhatyou are sacrificing.”
She flicks her hands, and although nothing seems to change, my body is perfectly still. I try to yank my arms out, kick my legs forward, but it’s useless. I cannot move. I can barely breathe; it’s as if iron bands encircle my body.
“In the old days, we demanded sacrifices greater than a bottle of beer.” Her lips curl in disgust. My offering offended her, although I had meant it sincerely. “We demanded sacrifices of blood and flesh.”
She steps forward, and I see for the first time a blade in her hand, made of shining brass, the edge gleaming and sharp. She does not hesitate as she presses the tip of her blade right at the outer corner of my right eye. The thin skin parts easily, and blood makes my eye burn, mingling with a tear as she traces the tip of the blade in a curling line down the side of my face. The blade is so sharp that I do not feel the cut, only the pain after as my hot blood steams in the cold air. I cannot move; I cannot scream, not even with the blade tracing the edge of my jaw, down over my neck. I swallow, the movement enough to make the knife edge cut deeper.
“Don’t worry, Otto, I’m avoiding your arteries,” she says pleasantly. She leans back, inspecting her handiwork. I cannot see myself, but I can feel the cut she traced from my eye down to my clavicle. She cut deep, enough to make my mouth go slack on one side, the skin too loose to hold any expression even if the pain would allow it. Blood pours from my face. I will be scarred forever, if I do not die of infection.
“Is it enough?” I barely manage the words, blood spraying from my lips as I try to speak.
“Enough?” she asks.
“Is my blood enough of a sacrifice,” I say, carefully enunciating my words, “to protect Fritzi and Liesel from your knife?”
She smiles again, this time a little more sincere. “I never wanted your blood, Otto Ernst.”
In a blink, the pain is gone. I stumble. She’s released me from the invisible bonds. My hands go to my face—there is no cut, not even a scratch. I look at her hands. There is no knife.
“What do you want?” I ask. If not my blood, my pain, what?
“I want to know if you are truly a protector,” she says. “That’s what I am. I am the goddess of protection.” As she says those last words—goddess of protection—for a moment, her green gown brightens to glimmering white.
Maybe this test is only for me. Fritzi and Liesel know this goddess; perhaps they are already safe.
And then I remember something else Fritzi told me, about how her spell on my sister had been one of protection. “Hilde,” I say, my sister’s name escaping my lips. “Did you protect Hilde?”
Holda smiles fondly. “I did.” Her look turns ferocious. “Not for you, stupid boy. I found her worthy, and, despite her lack of magic, granted her entry to the Well. As a favor. To my champion.”
She means Fritzi,I think. Fritzi called to her goddess for protection, and Holda answered—perhaps a bit more enthusiastically than Fritzi had intended, but…
“Can I see her?” I ask.
“I haven’t decided yet,” Holda answers.
