Page 67 of Night of the Witch
The warding spells that Mama kept around Birresborn started a few paces outside the village and lapped the town in a circle. She was famed among other covens for her warding abilities.
It was why we lasted so long, when other covens fell or ran to the Black Forest.
It was why we alone still stood so close to Trier.
I went with her every full moon and helped her reinforce them; I knew the wards as well as I knew her face.
So all I had to do was sneak out while she was asleep the morning of my eighteenth birthday.
Our small kitchen was still flour-dusted from her cooking frenzy—the finished schupfnudeln sat in a bowl under a towel, ready to be fried the next day; the Gaisburger Marsch was still simmering low over smoldering coals; there was even half a bottle of the sweet apfelwein left on the table, only because Mama forbade me from drinking all of it in one sitting.
I pulled a cloak around my shoulders, slipped past the table illuminated by the haze of almost dawn, and slinked outside.
The path to the warding wall led just down from our cottage. My heart twisted, anticipatory joy, anxiety, dread, everything all at once. This was agoodthing, what I was doing. I was reuniting my mother and her son. It was just the sort of act Mama encouraged all in our coven to do. Good deeds fed the Well; bad deeds fed wild magic. So much goodness—healing a broken relationship, returning love lost—would make the Well overflow.
And maybe it was for myself a little too. To see my brother again.
I reached a small bundle of trees at the edge of the forest around Birresborn, and I jogged up to the tallest one. A mighty yew.
The moment I drew near, a shadow peeled off from a tree farther into the forest.
Dieter uncovered a lantern, casting yellow light onto his face, and grinned at me. It was a grin I couldn’t help but return, as if this was just some dumb prank we were pulling on Mama like when we were younger.
He’d smiled at me like that when we’d snuck into Mama’s room and read the book on wild magic. Mischief and fun and an air ofTrust me, Fritzichen—have I ever let you down before?
Breathless, I fumbled for the potion to lower the warding spell. The way Mama cast it, no witch could pass unless they were a part of our coven.
Dieter hadn’t been a part of our coven for five years.
My chest ached, being this close to him after so long without him and not even knowingwhy. All I knew was that a week before Dieter’s eighteenth birthday, Mama and the elder witches had a meeting. Their shouts had carried through the whole village.
“He’s a threat, Astrid! You are blinded by your maternal love when youshould be thinking like our leader. Perchta spoke to you. You must heed the Mother goddess.”
The next day, Dieter was gone.
Mama said that the coven had voted to banish him and that was all I needed to know. I had sobbed for weeks. Did he evenknowhe’d done something wrong—and could I do something similar without being aware of it?
When I’d confessed these fears, Mama had wrapped me in her arms and kissed my forehead. “No, mein Schatz. They will never take you from me. I promise.”
That hadn’t answered my question. Why had she allowed Dieter to be taken from her, but she’d fight for me?
The years passed, and our coven moved on—but I hadn’t, and I knew Mama hadn’t either. She ached for Dieter. She never spoke of him, but she grew solemn on his birthday or whenever we found one of his belongings. His affinity had been in healing, in the body, wounds, and blood—whenever someone fell injured or sick, Mama would take it upon herself to heal them now, as if trying to prove that we did not need my brother’s gifts.
I missed him too. I’d been nearly thirteen when they’d cast him out—I’d idolized him, my fearless, quick-witted brother.
And after five years without him, just shy of my eighteenth birthday, I’d asked my little cousin, Liesel, to track him—her affinity in pyromancy let her find anything, anyone, by reading flames. She’d thought the whole thing great fun, this secret between us.
I got a message to him. He wrote back.
This meeting at dawn on my birthday was arranged. He’d said he was eager to come home and make things right with Mama. He’d said he missed me more than I could believe.
Surely enough time had passed that he had atoned for whatever had made the coven banish him. Any threat he once posed had long passed.
I shook the potion over the warding spell line as he smiled at me now. “Are you ready?”
“You have no idea,” Dieter said with a wink.
The potion crackled and hissed as it poured through the air, disintegrating the invisible line Mama wove with her own hands. I felt the moment it snapped—a wash of electricity, like lightning striking nearby, and then—
