Page 97 of A Dark and Wild Wood
I turned, confused. She stood on the edge of the forest, not quite real and not quite spirit. Her brow pale under a glimmering crown.
Rochelle.
My throat caught, unsure if what I saw was truly real.
“You made it,” she said. “I kept trying to find my way through again, to warn you somehow, but he blocked me …” She lifted her hand to the inferno. It burned so hot the forest had pulled back, its branchessinged and blackened. The sweet hot scent of burning spruce filled the air, but nothing else lit—the fire was confined only to the château.
“Can I come closer to you?” I asked, my voice thick.
She gestured me forward, the motion so regal and mature. I approached her, but I knew without asking I could not hug her.
“I sent my husband,” she said. “To warn you. We both kept trying to warn you.”
“Your husband?” I asked confused. And then it clicked. The writing when I tried to conjure her.The demon prince.That’s who had taken her after all. But … her husband? There was so much to Rochelle’s story and her world I might never know.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” I said, for it was the thing I had needed to say for so long. Tears spilled from my eyes and my throat ached.
“Oh, my sister. I am sorry I couldn’t saveyou.”
And it wasn’t until that moment that I understood that all this time, I had not been alone. We had longed and feared and grown together. Just not beside each other like when we were children.
The great walls of the house fell and a burst of sparks rose into the darkest part of night. The chapel cross over the altar still stood, a black relief against the flames.
“They didn’t prepare us for this in the convent, did they?” I said.
She laughed, the firelight glimmering against her crown, her dress, as if it had been woven to pick up the light in the darkest places. “They tried?”
“You look like a queen,” I said.
“I am one, dear sister.” She smiled at me, and it was her old familiar smile, so dear to me. “And you look like a witch.”
“I am one.” I smiled in return. We looked at each other, and in her face I could see the journey she had undergone. I wished I could have been there with her. But at least we had this.
“I love you, Salomé,” she said softly.
“I love you too,” I said, the words vanishing with her as she disappeared.
As the sun rose, the cross finally collapsed, setting the last of the fall leaves aglow.
DACIA HAD FALLEN ASLEEP,CURLED IN THE PROTECTIVEcurve of the tree root with Schneid, a round ball with horns growing out the middle, asleep in her tattered skirts. I picked her up, cradling her like a child in my arms. She was much too light, but I was also severely weakened. I didn’t think I could make it all the way to the hut like that, but somehow, I did. Schneid went ahead, his flames rippling like a beacon. In that moment, I finally understood what Perchta had said all those months ago—Schneid was hers, and thus he was mine. Maybe Hecate had once made him. Your guts, she’d said, oh-so-long ago. Out of the magic of the forest swam all kinds of creatures, one that went like a light before me.Our guts.We were in this great, ancient world, and the magic held us all.
In the morning light the grove looked like the most beautiful place in all the world, and when I staggered inside the little hut, I felt like I could finally breathe.
Perchta had prepared it all for us. Everything was neat and tidy, waiting—water in the kettle, fresh bandages, fragrant herbs. I said a prayer of thanks to her and the other gods who listened and immediately put the water on the fire and plucked up a bundle of rags to clean Dacia’s wounds.
As I did, I wept again. For it was clear he had tormented and brutalized her, and I wasn’t sure what of Dacia would be left once her body healed. But I burnt vervain in the fire and poured some broth down her throat, which she managed to swallow, even in her sleep. While she slept, I dug in my shift pocket, taking out the spelled ringof rosemary, somehow unharmed and fresh still. A ring of rosemary magic seemed so silly and small compared to what she had faced, but I slid it on her finger. “You have to live for me,” I said. “Please.”
“He didn’t take it,” she whispered, her voice raw and cracked. Her eyes still closed, but her fingers twitched, as if curling around the ring. “He never found it.”
My heart raced and rejoiced and tumbled over itself with agony all at once. “Found what, my love?” I asked, smoothing her hair back.
She touched a trembling finger to her waist. I fumbled with the edge of her skirt, finding a small pocket sewn into the band. Opening it, I pulled out the medallion she’d had made for me.
“For protection,” she whispered faintly, pushing my fingers closed over it. Her hand held mine. “For my love.”
“I have loved you with all the love I could not find for myself,” I told her, putting the medallion around my neck, not caring that I was covered in dirt and soaked in blood. It hung, silver and weighty on my throat. “I am sorry I brought this curse onto you.”
I didn’t expect her to respond, she was so weak. But she touched the ring on her finger and forced her eyes open to meet mine. My heart squeezed, seeing the effort it cost, the toll of pain on her body, swimming in her blue eyes, which reflected the boundless evening sky. “Salomé, you are not a curse. You are the love I didn’t know existed in this world.”
“But I am a witch,” I said. “I can no longer deny that.”
“You are a witch,” she affirmed, eyes closing. “And your magic, your love, was like seeing a reflection of the face of God.”
I thought of Hecate’s faces and the threads running through all the world. Of how easily the verses leapt into the spell on Dacia’s finger. I thought too of the Mother Superior and her longing to see the world broken open and revealed in all its reflected glory. For Hildegard’s visions and the pain they brought her. For Valerie and her steady presence in my life, a legacy that even death could not take. For Rochelle and the strange way our paths had diverged. For that’s what it was tobe mortal—cursed and glorified, loved and rejected, strong and vulnerable. It felt suddenly as if I had always been in one story, one journey, one ancient forest, the gods with an eye half cast to my path, that I might come to this moment and overcome a darkness deeper than even the Baron himself.
My curse had become a blessing.
The ring around her finger still held its protection, and she stirred closer to me, pressing her face to my chest. I wrapped my arms around her.
I had lived.
