Page 134 of Night of the Witch
I pass out again.
The forest folk are around the Origin Tree.
This is what I wanted you to know, Fritzi.Holda’s voice is different here. Clearer, less restrained, and something in this liminal space of unconsciousness and pain must finally be breaking through her layers of magic-kept secrecy, where the other goddesses can’t see what she’s showing me.
The forest folk protect the Origin Tree, she says,but it was not always the source of magic. Magic used to be all wild. It used to run and flow freely.
She shows me the world, the wide world of witches casting spells and their warriors guarding them, and none of the spells they generate follow our rules.
But there has always been threats to our kind. The hexenjägers are thelatest iteration. The ones before them, the Romans, all but wiped us out just the same. And so my sisters and I gathered as much wild magic as we could and trapped it in the Origin Tree.
I see the forest folk again, creating the barrier, guarding the tree.
We set up rules to access the Origin Tree’s magic and created the tale that wild magic is corrupting. We bestowed the responsibility of enforcing those rules on priestesses and Elders. We thought, if we made accessing magic more controlled, and convinced witches and normal people alike that the only evil magic was wild, that it would make good witches less feared. Less of a target.
We were wrong.
Wild magic is still in the world, though less of it, with what we took to fill the Origin Tree. My sisters do not agree with what I know to be true—that capping our witches’ powers was never the solution. Controlling magic was never going to be enough to convince the world not to fear us.
You must fight back now.
You must break your connection to the Well and open up to wild magic. It is the same power. It will not harm you.
I am so sorry, Fritzi.
Dieter rips me into consciousness again.
I come, gasping this time under both pain and realization.
Clarity is startling and vile and a relief.
There is too much she wants me to do. Too much beyond this moment, and my brain retracts to onlythis moment, because I am all body and flesh under my brother’s insanity.
Dieter didn’t get this far in Holda’s crusade, or he wouldn’t be doing—doingthis.He doesn’t need to do this to me. He doesn’t need to doany of this—this brand may act as a focus for his intent, but he doesn’t realize how limitless his own power really is.
I try to tell him. If only to get him to stop.
I remember Liesel saying that.I just wanted to make him stop.
He reheats the brand, moves it to the spot on my collarbone.
Adds a new one, on my thigh, singeing through my skirt.
The air hangs heavy with the stench of burning flesh. I am screaming at a pitch I have never heard before, twisting against the chains, my wrists chafing, my toes scrambling against the floorboards slick from my sweat and tears, and I cannot escape this, cannotthink—
On this day and from this hour. I need to say those words. I need to think them. I need, I need, I am all need, need to stop this pain, to getaway—
Otto, Otto,help me—
Sever from the Well. Wild magic is the same as the Well’s power, all along. The goddesses thought they were keeping us safe. They lied. They lied, they lied—
Dieter steps back, his head cocked appraisingly.
“Beg me to heal you.” He says it so calmly, so straightforward, that I anchor to his words for their cold oddness. “Beg me, and I will consider it.”
I whine, throat bruised and blistered, sweat and tears drenching me, but when I look into his eyes, I glare at him, utter, rooted hatred.
Dieter shrugs. “I did try to be merciful, over and over. What will your kapitän whore think? You, all damaged like this.”
