Page 59 of Night of the Witch
She laughs at my unease, pushing against my shoulder. And while we just spent the evening gathering ingredients on the last night before I must arrest Fritzi and we risk everything, there’s a lightness in the way she walks now.
Hope, I think.
She walks as if she has hope.
Hope that this plan will work. Hope that what I’ve done is not in vain.
Hope…and maybe something else.
17
FRITZI
I am humming spells I know by heart, their words tumbling from my lips, half song, half prayer. I am grinding herbs and packing them into little vials. I am covered in the smells of earth and life and magic. My belly is full, and though this house fort is still freezing, I’m protected from the worst of the chill.
For the first time in little less than a week, I am, if not happy, then content.
My mind shies away from any thoughts aboutwhyI am doing this, any ruminations over the coming day or memories of the past, and I lose myself in the repetition of these tasks, the familiarity so comforting that my chest stops aching.
The kapitän intersperses my work with explanations of the aqueducts. He draws a map on the floor and goes over the routes with me, over and over again, making me recite them back to him between potion spells.
Even just a few hours ago, I would have snapped at him and hisinsistence that I say it “again, just once more. And what if they go left instead of right? Which path? Again, Fritzi.”
But now, I can’t ignore the fear on his face. The tension in his shoulders, his hands. The way he points at his crude map and his finger shakes.
It’s fear mixed with eagerness mixed with hope, powerful, dangerous hope, and any retort I might have given falls flat in my throat.
It still amazes me that a hexenjäger is capable of pure emotion this strong. It’s…hypnotizing.
He really means to save everyone.
He really believes we won’t be found out, caught, and executed; he really believes we can show the people of Trier that they don’t have to live under the fear they’ve become all too used to.
I don’t know if I’m capable of the conviction he has. Every inch of him is saturated in belief of some kind—faith or hope or certainty—and here I am, mixing potions, humming to keep my mind off of all my failures and betrayals and—
You aren’t telling him everything, says the voice.
I channel my jolt of alarm into mixing another healing potion.There’s nothing to tell, I cut back.My past won’t affect this.
Won’t it? You’re a fool. Watch as you destroy his plan even further.
My jaw sets.No. No, that won’t happen—
There is a way still to avoid any mistakes at all. There is a way to avoid having to tell him everything. You know it. It will be here, waiting for you, when you are finally ready to give in.
“Fritzi?”
I shiver, blinking through my fog.
The kapitän leans forward. He’d taken the chair while I spread my potion-making supplies around the floor, the diagram of the aqueducts sketched in dust between remnants of herbs and mushrooms.
After a pause, he stands. “It’s getting late. We should sleep. We’ll need rest just as much as any potion.”
As if in response, I yawn, and there is my exhaustion, rearing high and strong. I’d been so distracted by getting to make potions again that I’d almost forgotten I haven’t really slept in days.
“You’ll take the bed,” he says.
I’m too tired to protest. I’ve finished what I can make, and the potions are all now tucked in little vials that I’ll carry in the leather pouches on my belt. I lay the bulging pocket on the table and stretch, my body aching at having spent the past few hours crouched over my work.
