Forest of Whispers Read online

  We have reached Bamberg. From between the bars of the wagon, I count the seven hills that dot the city, using the steeples of the churches that sit atop each one as landmarks. I think of the stories Matilde told me. This is the city whose red rooftops cover the buildings like a sunset blazing across them at all hours of the day. It’s almost easy to forget what’s happening and see the beauty in it, but it’s as if this town mimics the one I’ve just come from and it has turned on itself overnight.

  Stores have been pillaged, and cries and screams leak out from the shadows, which seem to be everywhere. Those who stray from the safety of their homes walk along the street with quick steps and disappear as they retreat behind closed doors.

  “Is this it?” the girl beside me asks softly. She’s woken, probably because the cart moves differently along the cobbled road.

  I stare up at the large stone structure in front of us and watch the clock that hangs below the bell tower, waiting for a chance to see the hands move, but the wagon moves too quickly and we pass beneath the massive archway without giving me the chance.

  There are more guards than I have ever seen in one place before. Dressed in the regal red and gold of the Prince Bishop, they move like a giant wave from house to house. The stocks that line the street are full, which is something I’ve never seen in all the times I’ve visited my own village. From what I can see, the prisoners are mostly women.

  “Look at all of them,” the older girl says. “They are all being taken for something they haven’t done. Just like us.”

  I watch her closely, noting how she is angry while the others are silenced by shock and fear.

  “What have they taken you for?” I ask.

  She looks at me, and something in her eyes turns vile.

  “Because they think I’m just like you.”

  “Me? You don’t even know who I am.”

  She looks at me as if I am every bit as clueless as I feel at this moment. “If it weren’t for you and the old woman, I’d be safe in my bed right now. But no, now they accuse each and every woman, here, in Baden and Württemberg, as if we are all responsible for some means of sorcery. Those men came and broke into my home. They hit my mother and told her she was a witch, just like the old woman who lived in the woods, just like you.”

  I am frozen by the fierceness of her words. It seems all the efforts I’d spent staying quiet and invisible have been worthless. I want to ask what became of her mother, but I don’t dare. How can it be that absolute strangers seem to know me, and believe that this, all of this, is my fault? I turn away, unable to answer her, because it is my fault. Even though I was never taught to cast a circle or a single spell, or dance beneath the light of a full moon, as they say witches do…

  Even though I have never done any of those things, I am every bit a witch.

  What good did it do that Matilde tried to protect me, by teaching me the very basics of what I should know—how to survive, how to respect the Sacred Mother and all she gives to the world? I begged and begged for her to teach me the Old Ways, to learn what she learned at my age, and she refused. Her protection failed because I am still the one responsible. It is my veins that are tainted. The true blood of a spellcaster runs through my body. The whispers in my head remind me who I am. I cannot escape it, and now I fear I must face it, no matter what the price.

  My back presses tightly against the bars. I don’t wince as they dig into my shoulder blades when the wheels catch and rise along the uneven road. I can’t look beyond the interior of the wagon anymore. I close my eyes and picture the forest instead—the shelter of the shady branches, the coolness of the air that is trapped between the shadows, the moss-covered slopes that find their way down to the hum of the little stream. If I pretend I’m there, I can escape all this, because when we finally reach the Drudenhaus, the witch prison, I fear I never will.

  It looks like an ordinary building, with cream walls and timbered beams running the length of it; only what lies behind the doors, I am sure, is anything but commonplace. We are not slowing as we approach the massive front doors, but instead are taken around back, where the wagon heaves before finally coming to a rest. The hinge is released, and the metal door swings open. My first instinct is to leap through the little hinged gate of the car, throw myself out and run—run anywhere, with all the strength my legs can endure. But I cannot. As terrifying as the ride was, it’s the wagon that feels safe now, compared to the building that looms over us.

  We move inch by inch, pushing against one another to the edge, where we are grabbed by the wrists and yanked to the ground. The guards lead us through a larger gate, and I am surprised to find we are now in a little courtyard, contained by a high stone wall that surrounds it. But the prison casts its grim shadow across the moist, green grass as we approach, leaving me to stare up at its tall sides. I can’t help think how the cheery garden disguises what must be inside, waiting for me. Before I have the chance to glance up at the blue sky one last time, I am inside the witch house, submerged in darkness, watching with dread as the door closes, swallowing away the sun’s warmth.

  New faces look us over and grunt at us as if we are livestock headed for slaughter. We are sized up, poked, and prodded as if we were things, not people.

  “This has to go.” The guard grabs a long strand of hair belonging to the girl who slept beside me. He shoves her toward a much quieter man, who stands against the wall waiting for orders. “Shave it.”

  This makes her cry all over again, but the man nods, and soon he and the girl disappear down a hall too dark for me to see the end.

  My hair is still wrapped at the nape of my neck, and I pray no one wants to take it from me. Instead, we are separated and taken to individual rooms which are really tiny dungeons lined with crossed metal bars separating one from the other. Like the other prison, there is straw on the floor, and it smells of urine. The acidity burns my nostrils, and I choose to sit on the bare floor against the wall once I am locked in. I try to calm myself, but I am shaking too hard, trying to make sense of how this has all happened so quickly. Just when I’m allowed the littlest bit of peace today, the voices begin again, pestering me. I press my hands to my ears to shut them out, until I realize it is not whispering I hear, but an actual voice.

  “Will you speak to me?” The thin tone comes from between the bars at the far end of my cell.

  I raise my head and see that I am not as alone as I thought, that there is a girl on the other side of the partition.

  “You want to speak with me?” After the accusations from the brown-haired girl in the wagon earlier, why would anyone wish to even be near me?

  She doesn’t seem to be much older than me, but she is horribly weak and sickly looking. If it weren’t for my enormous dinner the night before last, I suspect I’d be as frail as her.

  “You’re the girl from the market. The one with the mushrooms, aren’t you?”

  I flinch.

  “You sold them to my mother,” she says, and I feel my legs turn to jelly. It’s her, the girl with the broken heart. My eyes automatically fall to her abdomen, where, despite her state, I can see the swelling of what she holds inside her.

  “I told my mother that perhaps you didn’t know the mushrooms were toxic. It’s an easy mistake to make. Even she didn’t catch that they weren’t Chanterelles.”

  I’ve lived my whole life in the forest, and still I couldn’t tell the difference between a mushroom that is safe to eat and one that could end a person’s life with one nibble. I am at a loss for words to tell her how relieved I am—the idea of causing such harm to her and her baby was almost too much to bear. And yet, I can’t help feel the crushing weight of what it means that she’s alive, while Matilde is dead.

  “I’m so sorry.” I want to say more, but can’t find the words. So much has happened today, and the relief that this girl is speaking with me is overwhelming.

  “My name is Anna.”

  “And mine is Rune,” I answer back, so pleased that not
only is she alive, but she has offered her name.

  Anna ponders for a minute, “Rune. That’s an unusual name. My mother once visited Matilde for a reading. Is that how your mother named you, from those tiny little stones?”

  I hesitate, feeling the effects of her question catching me off-guard. “Matilde wasn’t my mother. My real mother is dead.”

  “Oh,” she whispers. “I have no idea what’s happened to my own mother. I have no idea if she is alive or dead.”

  I haven’t the heart to divulge how her mother helped lead me to the courthouse with the others. That she was partly to blame for my arrest. Instead, I squeeze my hand between the little openings that divide our cells and feel her place her cold, clammy hand in mine.

  I’m about to ask why she’s here in this dreadful place when a shrill scream comes coursing down the hall outside the door. Anna closes her eyes tight, as if she can block it out of her head.

  “Every now and then the screams come,” she says. “They must be doing horrible things.”

  The image of the table full of tools in the bishop’s courthouse flashes through my mind.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask her. She speaks as if she’s been here for days. I wonder how many other wagons have come and gone, bringing girls and women to this terrible place.

  “Since last night,” she answers. “They’ve taken most of the girls from our village, said we were all witches. I didn’t realize they would move me so early.”

  I look at her questioningly. “Because of your condition?”

  After I say it, I realize she hadn’t known I was aware of the state she is in. She turns away from me and fiddles with the ratty hem of her dress. I’m certain I’ve upset her, but it doesn’t matter much. I’m not here to make friends. My eyes follow the stones that cover the wall, using the mortar between them like a tiny road that eventually leads to a small window, strangely placed where the metal bars divide my side from hers. There is barely enough room to place one’s head to peer outside, let alone manage to squeeze a body through. But all I can think of is escape, and because of that, I feel as if someone is pressing my lungs together.

  “I shared a cell with another girl from our village. She, too, was with child.” Anna’s voice is small and vacant. “After they took her baby, they told me I would be moved here.”

  Matilde’s ghostly words assault me—how the baby of the girl who knew my mother was taken.

  “They took the baby?”

  Her eyes are wide and wet, and there is a slight nod of her head. I watch as her fingers stretch protectively across her stomach. I cannot help but stare, and yes, I am certain she appears thick around the middle, though slightly. When is her time? All those wonderful days in the cottage with Matilde come rushing back to me—the days when a knock would come and a woman ready to become a mother would be taken to Matilde’s bed to rest, while I boiled the water in the kettle and fetched buckets more from the stream until my legs burned.

  “Did they at least allow her a midwife?”

  I’m a foolish girl to think that. Why would the same men who thought it nothing to kill an innocent woman in an icy stream come to the aid of a woman giving birth?

  “They told us midwives are the devil’s handmaidens, and the guards waited outside the door while she delivered. They laughed while she screamed, and then, when the baby cried, the door flew open. She barely had time to see it was a daughter before they took her out of her arms.”

  We are both driven to an almost unbearable silence.

  I try to place myself in the moment she’d just described and feel sick. How agonizing to be alone during such a time as giving birth. And then afterwards, to have your child taken from you, as if your very soul is being ripped from your being. My own mother gave me away, but it was by choice, not by the hands of vicious men. Or was it her choice? Had she known others would take me away?

  “Have they no respect for women?” I whisper out loud. Her empty eyes answer me.

  “They don’t know about me,” she says quietly, leaning wearily against the cold metal. Anna wraps her arms over her stomach and looks at me with worry etched in her face. I can’t process the fact that she’s managed to hide her condition from the guards, or from the men who sat at the long table back home in the bishop’s courthouse.

  “You won’t tell them, will you?” she asks again. I motion that I’ll keep her secret, and then I stare at the hole in the wall, knowing our freedom is just beyond it, laughing at us. If there is no hope for us, then surely, there is no hope for the child that sleeps innocently inside her.

  I realize what a terrible position I am in. Not only am I female, I am the daughter of someone who, supposedly, was much worse. The longer I can keep that to myself, the better my chances of buying time to find a way out of here.

  Chapter 24

  Rune

  Anna and I wake stiffly to a thin wedge of sunlight pushing its way into the chamber.

  “Do you suppose this is on purpose? That they give us a glimpse of a freedom they don’t intend for us to ever enjoy?” Anna’s pale face is pressed against the black metal bars that divide our areas. She peers between the thin opening in the mortar, while the lush patch of green I admired yesterday lies on the other side, teasing us. It’s so close we can smell the grass, and it makes me angry and frightened—angry at how they taunt us this way, and frightened I will never get out of here.

  “Of course it is. It’s just another form of torture.” I sigh heavily. “Like dangling a meaty bone in front of a dog that hasn’t eaten for days.”

  Already the few hours I’ve been here have been full of indescribable terror. We were woken in the middle of the night and taken to confession. I’m not sure what Anna went through, but I was nearly drowned. Over and over, buckets of water were poured down my throat while the men demanded I admit my crimes. All I could think of was Matilde—as if they chose this particular punishment on purpose. As if it were not meant to garner a confession out of me, but to deeply instill something else. My throat and lungs burn from choking for nearly half the night, and I’m chilled to the bone in my wet dress. The funny thing is, after all that water, I’m dying of thirst, and there is nothing to drink.

  Anna won’t talk about what happened. She was already in her cell when I returned, curled up in a tight little ball. She tries to hide the way her arm dangles limply behind her as she attempts to catch a warm ray of sunlight on her face. After last night, a strange word is stuck in my head—strappado. I can only imagine what it means, because whenever it was mentioned by the guards, a short while later I would hear agonizing screams.

  “What was it like growing up in the forest, Rune? Weren’t you scared?” She asks this quietly, turning her head away from the scant sunlight to face me.

  “I never had anything to be scared of, really. Not until now. Matilde told me stories, but I always thought of them as fairy tales. The forest I knew was nothing like the dark tales the others told about it.”

  Her eyes are large, glassy orbs as she focuses on me now instead of the elusive courtyard outside the window. “You didn’t hear noises at night, then? You never heard the banshees screaming, or the witches flying through the treetops?”

  I nearly choke at how ridiculous she sounds. If it weren’t for the searing pain in my throat, I would laugh. “Of course not,” I say to her, smiling. “I’m sure the wind or a wild animal was someone’s way of preventing their child from running off where they couldn’t be seen. The forest was a wonderland; the pines were giant castle towers and the moss-covered hills were the soft waves of a deep green ocean. I could be who I wanted, when I wanted, with no one to stop me.”

  She gives me this moment, and then asks, “Were you lonely?”

  The pit of my stomach gives way and plummets through the ground. I’ve never missed anything so deeply in all my life. I never had the reason to. Before the emptiness has the chance to take me under, I hear Anna’s voice. It buffers my heart against revisiting the
past.

  “I was always lonely,” she admits.

  “In the village, with tons of children to keep you company?”

  “Children in the village don’t play like the ones from landed gentry. We’re too busy helping our families put food on the table.”

  All along I’d assumed the ones from the other side of the hedge lived better than the meager life Matilde and I had. While I ran through the forest and waded in the cool stream, just beyond the line of green in the bustling village, children my age were already experienced at manual labor.

  “You never had a close friend, someone to talk to, or share secrets with?” I ask her.

  She meets me with a tired expression, and shakes her head. “This is the closest I’ve ever gotten.” She gives a little laugh. “I’m a fool to think of this now, under these circumstances, aren’t I? But, at least, I think we could be friends.”

  There is something bittersweet in how she tentatively tests the waters between us.

  “But Anna,” I whisper. “I almost killed you.”

  “I know you didn’t mean it.”

  She says it with such certainty that I believe her.

  “I didn’t, and I’d like to be friends. I’d like that very much.”

  Soon enough, her attention is back at the little window. The light fades as the sun moves higher and the angle of our little window can no longer catch the rays.

  “Do you think we’ll die here?”

  “Don’t speak of such things, of course not,” I tell her, although I’ve begun to wonder that myself. I can’t imagine living in this tiny room any longer, feeling this sentence stretch for weeks, or months. I’ve heard people can been imprisoned for years. Here I imagine we could die, depending on how long it takes for us to tell them the words they want us to say. I doubt very much that even confessing to witchcraft would help us. They would find that reason enough to put an end to us. Why say we are guilty and expect to live? Even a fool knows it won’t work that way.