Page 106 of Night of the Witch
“You require a sacrifice,” I guess.
“I require only the knowledge that you are worthy.” Holda paces in front of me, and it’s then that I realize the barrier of mist around us has grown smaller. There’s only room for her to pace a few steps before she must turn around and go the other direction. The mist is thicker, utterly opaque but still glimmering with the same sharp edges. My right eye twinges.
“You say you are a protector,” Holda continues, “yet there were dozens, hundreds of innocent people you did not protect.”
She means those burned in the witch trials. “I tried, I—”
My voice stops working. My mouth moves, but no sound comes out.
“I didn’t say that youcouldnot protect them,” she snarls. “I said that youdidnot protect them.”
The weight of my failures falls upon my shoulders. I stagger back, and I hit the white mist. Fire erupts along my skin, and although there are no flames, I feel my skin cracking, my flesh burning. The deaths I did not prevent. Screams filter through the sound of sizzling, and I recognize every voice of every victim I did not save.
I tried—I think again, but did I tryenough? I used the excuse of working in the background, of seeding chaos and attempting to help without being detected, but was it enough? People still burned. I did not help enough to save them all. I could have done more, been more, worked more—I could have killed Dieter. I could have killed the archbishop. I could have burned Trier to the ground. I could have—
The burning sensation evaporates, but my sobs do not stop. I fall to my knees. I am not begging forgiveness; I do not deserve any. But my sins are too heavy for me to bear.
“Tell me why you started working as a hexenjäger,” Holda says coldly.
“To try to help others—”
“Do not lie, mortal.”
I force my sobs to stop. I force myself to look at what I have done, and what I have not. “I became a hexenjäger to spit upon my father’s grave,” I say, my words strong because they are true. I hated my father. I hated what he had done. I wanted to become the exact opposite of him. I joined not to save others, but because I knew nothing would have enraged him more than to know I made a mockery of his beloved religion, that I spent my life undercutting the beliefs he had built his life erecting.
I look up into the goddess’s eyes. Her expression is unreadable, but I suspect that she has found me lacking. “I became a hexenjäger for revenge against my father. I didn’t care that he was dead; I hope his soul burns in hell, and that it’s tormented by the knowledge of the man I have become. And I do not regret that action.” I take a deep, shaking breath,the air rattling in my throat, reminding me of how easily the goddess had made me believe my neck was cut. “But I remained a hexenjäger because I wanted to help as many as I could. And I failed so many more than I saved. I know that. That is the sin I live with. I am not a protector.”
“You’re not,” Holda says, repeating my words. “You are not a protector.” She kneels down before me, so that we are eye to eye. “But fortunately for you, Fritzi does not need a protector. She needs a warrior.”
33
FRITZI
“It’s rude to keep a goddess waiting.”
I heave in a breath, lungs screaming, and a spasm of coughing grabs me. It sends me hacking onto my side, in the cold, wet dirt, coughing up iron-tanged river water.
The coughing spell passes. I’m on my hands and knees, and I spit the last of the water from my mouth, my hair hanging in knotted wet tendrils around me. My hat is gone, my clothes and cloak soaked; in this weather, I’ll freeze quickly.
I need to get up. I need to—
My whole body stiffens.
Who spoke to me?
My head lifts, increment by increment, until I blink at the space before me. The river next to me is completely silent, still, as if all the world stopped spinning except for me, crouched here.
Me and—a woman.
She sits on a tree stump, back rod-straight, a thick braid of tangledgray and brown hair hefted over one shoulder, stretching down to rest across her lap. Her gown swoops over her legs and across the forest floor, a gleaming, iridescent blue, and when I blink, it might be water, it might be snow.
Her head tips. Her bright eyes match her gown, her crooked nose and wrinkled face curling in my silence. “You seek entrance to the Well. All who come to us for aid must be tested for worthiness, to ensure our haven remains intact. What will I find when I test your worthiness, Friederike Kirch?”
I’m shaking now. The cold and the sight of her rattles me like a quake. The test. The test of our worthiness, which keeps Dieter out—
“Otto.” I shove to my feet. “Otto!” I scream and turn, scanning the forest. Distantly, the mist encapsulates us, but it’s far enough back that I can see trees. No wind blows, the trees eerily still, their branches arched defiantly against any movement. My eyes snag on those branches, impossibly high up, stretching and stretching into a white sort of nothingness that stabs my eyes, and I wince and shrink away.
“You call out for the hexenjäger, but not your cousin?” asks the goddess.
