Page 14 of Night of the Witch
The broom is a sign all the women in the diocese use—putting one outside the door indicates that the brewer has surplus to sell. Most people can’t read, but the signal is common enough, an invitation to come up to the house and buy homemade goods.
I can feel the men behind me shifting uneasily. Every man with amother has a home with a cauldron and broom inside it. Hennins are old and out of fashion, but common enough in the towns with markets.
At that exact moment, a ginger cat streaks across the floor.
“A familiar!” Bertram says, pointing.
Hilde growls in frustration. “I brew with hops! Mice love hops, but the cat loves mice.”
I shake my head. “Witches hide in plain sight,” I say. “But the little details add up. You seem to have an excuse for everything.”
“There is nothing to excuse.” Hilde’s voice is fierce. “My only crime is not yet marrying. I am a maid who dares to live by herself, and—”
“Do you?” I let the words drop easily from my mouth, as if they do not matter, but they still Hilde’s rant. “Or do you reside with the devil? Does your coven visit often?”
She cringes before me, finally aware that there’s nothing to make this—me—go away.
“Your mother burned as a witch,” I say without inflection or emotion. I speak as if she were not a mother to me too. “I had hoped, Hilde, that you would not follow in her cursed footsteps.”
“Bruder—” Hilde’s voice cracks with fear.
“I am no brother to you,” I say, glaring at my sister.
That is what breaks her. Her rash responses and spitfire curses die on her lips. She is reduced to the little girl who used to come to me after skinning her knee or burning her fingers. Her eyes plead with me, her whole body seems to shrink with the dawning realization that I will not save her.
Not this time.
“Hilde Ernst,” I announce, “I hereby arrest you for the heinous crime of witchcraft. You will stand trial in Trier, and then you will be condemned to die in fire here on Earth before God sends your soul to burn in hell.”
5
FRITZI
“Are you excited for tonight, mein Schatz?”
Mama kneads dough at the table, flour coating her arms to her elbows. Sunlight slants through the kitchen window, pillars of light that catch on the white dust in the air, the wave of excess flour that comes when she tosses a handful onto the dough mound. Her schupfnudeln is my favorite dish in the world—potato dumplings that are buttery and crispy and eye-rollinglygood.
She also has my favorite stew—Gaisburger Marsch—simmering in a huge cauldron over the fire, which makes our cottage smell like savory broth, and she had Aunt Catrin buy my favorite apfelwein at the market.
A girl only turns eighteen once, after all.
I hold a glass of that wine and force a smile at Mama.
“Of course,” I say and take a sip. It washes over my tongue, liquid golden honey with a sharp tang at the back of my throat.
The smoothness of the alcohol almost makes me tell her. The words are on my tongue, nestled beside the wine’s sweetness.
I almost say it.Mama, I invited him. He’s coming back.
Mama pauses to swipe hair out of her face. It leaves a trail of flour across her forehead.
“Soon enough, you’ll be an elder with me,” she says with a proud grin. “You grow up so quickly. I can hardly believe it.”
I give her a sardonic smile. “I’m hardlyelder-old yet.”
“Old?You think I’mold?”
I laugh as she does, giggling into my wine.
