Forest of Whispers Page 23

  If you love her, you will help her…

  Find it…

  Across the stream, Rune’s arms are at her side, and I know she waits for what I’ve been told to do. I begin searching the ground and the trees closest to where I stand. If I’m to look further than this, I will lose sight of Rune, and I have a feeling she will not be standing there when I return. My hand brushes the sweat from my forehead. I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to look for.

  Dig…

  I drop to my knees and pull at the earth with my bare hands, grabbing clumps of brush and stone, flinging them aside. The ground is soft and tender here, unlike the clay that lies beneath the rocks near the cliffs of Eltz. Here, my hand can do damage instead of the other way around. Rune screams, and I look up. For a second there is a vaporous image of a body tied to a tree, and then it is gone.

  The word comes to me again. Mother. And this time, it is my own voice that repeats it until my throat is dry.

  This is where my mother died.

  Not Rune’s, but mine.

  Chapter 46

  Rune

  We have run out of time.

  Hooves thud against the forest floor and they send my heart racing. Dark shadows move among the trees and flickering torches sway, forming a line of orange as flames bob in the breeze. The light pauses briefly, and I feel the fear that has lived deep within the villagers’ hearts. The hedge has always meant more than a simple border—it is the dividing line between their safety and the tormented forest. It is the thin armor that protects them from the haunts that live among the trees, the nightmares, the witches…and yet, the fire they bring lights their way, and soon feet cross the hedge, leaves crumpling beneath, and I know they’ve done the unthinkable. They’ve crossed to the other side to see the bishop finally capture his witch.

  Laurentz digs and digs as I watch helplessly from the opposite bank. Shouts close in on us—the bishop’s guards, from their livery—as one spots us and alerts the others.

  I cannot run without Laurentz. I will not leave him. Just as he finds his footing in the soft earth, he closes his hand around something small embedded in the ground. But it’s too late for us. A burly guard pulls him to his feet.

  A carriage comes to a stop and releases its footplate in a symphony of metal and wood. Straining, it moans beneath the weight of the bishop as he steps down. “I cannot believe my luck today.” He pauses, taking in the fear that fills our eyes. I wish for Laurentz to come back over the stream—certain the space we have placed between us has sealed our fate.

  Almost reflectively, the bishop walks toward the tree that is closest to the water, the very tree where the image of the hanged girl appeared, and he touches the bark, as if feeling the past beneath its peeling skin. “What is it about this spot that calls to a witch?” Then, without warning, he crosses the ground and grasps Laurentz’s chin in his hand, squeezing hard. “You play with fire, boy.”

  Fire…

  Laurentz struggles against the bishop’s grip. When he is released, he backs away, rubbing his chin, but I see his fist remains tight around what he has unearthed from the ground.

  The bishop arcs his arms wide and motions toward where I stand across the stream. His mouth twists in a cruel grimace. “Have you earned the love of this witch? Have you done her bidding?” He does not take his eyes off me, and every part of me shudders, feeling the enormity of his hatred. “It’s easy to become bewitched, isn’t it, my young lord? It’s easy to lose your heart, your mind, and become spellbound.”

  “Is that what happened to you?” Laurentz’s husky voice adds a fierce layer to the already thick forest air. “Were you under the spell of the Witch of Bavaria?”

  He is answered by the bishop’s chortle—a dark, grating noise. “Everyone was under her spell, boy.” A dark look passes between them. “Careful, Laurentz. Someone of your standing must watch where he treads.”

  The guards converge on Laurentz, and while I try to reach him with my eyes, he won’t look my way. If he pushes too hard, they will take him down, and I won’t be able to do anything but watch.

  The guards are ordered to step aside. Although I stand many feet away, I can hear perfectly what Laurentz and the bishop whisper, as if they are no farther than a footstep in front of me. I listen with my mother’s ears. She is everywhere and everything in this forest.

  Wait for it, daughter. Wait for him to say it…

  Say what, Mother? What must I wait for? I ask back to the voice in my mind, but she is quiet again, watching like I do.

  With a tilt of his head, the bishop inches closer to the boy across the stream. “Tell me what you know.”

  “I know four girls gathered here, in this spot, sixteen years ago,” Laurentz’s eyes are cold as he meets the bishop’s gaze. “The coven held only three, but they needed a fourth.”

  Yes… Tell them…

  I thought the words would come from the bishop. My mother told me to wait for him to say it, only I had no idea it would come from Laurentz, and I am shaken by the fact that he knows more than I—and had not told me.

  “They needed my mother,” Laurentz says. “You remember, don’t you? After all, you were there.”

  Though I cannot see her, I can tell that my mother’s ghostly form stands protectively behind me and I feel her tremble with a strange energy, as if urging the ensuing argument to develop further.

  The bishop leans close to Laurentz’s tormented face and whispers softly, “She would have ruined everything for your father. I stepped in and prevented her from making that grave mistake.”

  “Yes, you silenced her, and killed the others as well.”

  “How dare you!”

  The guards are quick to surround Laurentz, but just as they draw their swords a rustling fills the air and the trees move. The villagers have found us. Their eyes jump from me to the group across the stream, and back again. They recognize me at long last, seeing the resemblance of my mother in me, knowing I am the girl who lived with Matilde. They refuse to step closer, murmuring amongst themselves—She is the one!… Witch!…— and several pull clothing over their noses and mouths in haste for fear of breathing something that will send them to their deaths. Some are so fearful they turn and run back toward the hedge, as if it will protect them once they return to the safety of the village.

  With a thick sway of his robe, the bishop turns to the crowd, his eyes wide and innocent. “I am a peaceful man of God,” he says to us all in a loud, convincing voice, “and I have just been accused of murder.” He shakes his head like this is a ridiculous notion, then turns back. “You, Laurentz, will watch what you say, if you want to be Electorate of Eltz one day. I am your greatest ally. Are you willing to allow a few poorly chosen words to ruin that?”

  But the crowd that has gathered is still and watchful, and the bishop adopts a newfound vigor to entertain his expectant audience.

  “Sorcery is at work here!” he says in a ferocious voice.

  “Yes, as it was sixteen years ago.” Laurentz challenges, and we all watch in curious silence as he reaches into his pocket to produce two small garnet chips.

  “And what are those?” the bishop asks, peering into Laurentz’s open hand. “Do you intend to stone me to death with ridiculous pebbles?”

  “Stone the witch instead!” cries an elderly woman from behind me, and soon the crowd that has gathered is in an uproar, ready to lay blame.

  “This I found in the chapel.” Laurentz holds up the tiny red chip for all to see, his voice rising above the others. “The ground just gave up this other. It’s from the setting of your ring,” he turns to the bishop. “Why don’t you explain why it was found where my mother took her last breath?” Laurentz squares his shoulders. “Admit it broke when you killed my mother and the other girl.”

  A guard steps closer, intending to inspect the ring for himself, but the bishop pushes him away. “Proof, boy.” The bishops laughs. “You’re going to need proof.”

  “Is this not enough? You�
��re the only one who wears such stones—a gift from the church that allows you to do what you please. To let the villages starve, to condemn the innocent.” Laurentz pauses to catch his breath. “Even to kill.”

  The bishop opens his mouth, but Laurentz presses on. “All the stories of the Black Forest—the nightmares fed to us as children, the dark tales of the horror that is here—were stories you used to your advantage so these poor people would live in fear. I will never forget the day I overheard you and my father. You told him of the unspeakable evil that supposedly lurks here; you told him how to instill fear in the villages so he would never lose his grip on them—and you told me, that day in the chapel, to fear the cunning woman in the woods. For unlike yours, her soul was not worth saving.”

  Like lightning, the bishop’s hand flies out, colliding with Laurentz’s open hand; the two gem chips are lost to the air.

  “Laurentz!” I cry out.

  No! You cannot… my mother hisses in my ear as I step into the water, wrestling with the fact that I cannot cross the stream to help him. Tiny bubbles erupt around my ankles, then still as if encasing me in hard stone.

  “You helped invent stories of darkness and magick to keep people from venturing into the forest. Tell me, bishop, what were you afraid they would find?” Laurentz asks. “Would they find the stones from your ring and wonder why you had been here? Would the good people of this village realize they’d been fooled?”

  “Milk curdling in winter! Explain that!” shouts a man who dares to hobble closer.

  Laurentz breathes heavily, his forehead knotted, “An unfortunate circumstance for you, but not the work of a witch. Perhaps you left the milk too close to your hearth?”

  A trembling old woman steps forward, wringing her hands. “My poor son and his wife were afflicted years ago. The witch painted his skin the color of tar, and when he tried to escape her, his fingers stiffened and fell off. His wife died soon after, her flesh burned with St. Anthony’s Fire even as they laid her in the ground. Now their children tend the bishop’s fields.”

  “The baker’s son had a fit once,” says another. “His neck twisted as if unseen hands were breaking it clear off his body.”

  “The miller and his wife! They both have red burns on their faces, like they’ve been slapped by demons.”

  Laurentz takes a step toward the crowd. “So it seems all who fell sick had been exposed to rye from the bishop’s fields.”

  Rye grows in the bishop’s fields. My brain whirls around something familiar, and then I remember the servant girl who brought the tray to Angeline. Could the bishop have poisoned the rye himself in order to strike fear into the people? Could he have done this to place blame upon my mother?

  The bishop turns his attention to the stream. “You!” he points to me. “You put him up to this! To blame me for the horror that happened here years ago!”

  “My mother was blamed for those deaths,” I whisper and my heart twists in pain at what that day has brought not only myself but for others.

  “I remember!” an old man cries out. His eyes are clouded with a thick white film, but he speaks as if the past plays out before him. “I was with the men who went into the forest. I remember the bloodstained ground, the icy wind that blew through the trees as we came to this very stream and found the bodies of those poor dead girls.”

  A frail woman hobbles up to him and places her hand upon his arm. “I can still recall the day the girl came screaming into the village. May God have mercy on their souls.”

  They think that day is gone, but the dead still linger, whispering secrets few ears are capable of hearing. I try not to look, for out of the corner of my eye a dead girl still hangs from the tree, her blouson bloodied where her heart used to beat. A whimper floats to me from across the stream, and at first I believe it is Laurentz, but it is not, and I am too afraid to look at the ground he stands upon, for I know I will see an image so ghastly I might scream forever.

  “But something is not right here.” The woman squints her eyes and stares ahead at the streambank. She takes a daring step forward and I begin to fear she sees and hears what I do. “The stone from your ring was found across the stream.”

  “The witch killed them!” the bishop screams in fury.

  “No, you’re wrong. My mother could not have killed them. You seem to have forgotten that witches can’t cross water,” I whisper.

  All eyes are on me now, watching as my skirt floats across the surface of the all-too-still stream. The water, though crystal clear, does not flow as it normally does, but instead has become an invisible, ice-like vice to trap me, preventing me from moving toward the opposite side of the bank. For a moment the forest blurs, and my head fills with the whispers of my long-dead mother. I feel her icy hand upon my shoulder, feel how her presence creeps around me like the water at my feet, only her movement is fluid and crackles with an energy unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Her ghostly fingers cover my eyes, as if intending to shield me, but instead, she murmurs in my ear.

  See, my child… See what the others cannot…

  Chapter 47

  Liese

  Bottles line the stone table, filled with strange yellow and green fluids. He mixes them, fails, then tries again—almost… A feminine laugh tugs at his attention. Her finger reaches across, points to an open bottle and summons a swirling purple haze to billow up from the narrow neck. The room is suddenly filled with birdsong.

  “Ahh, you are a clever thing,” he whispers against her ear—his eyes full of wonder at the magick her slender fingers produce.

  Her hand grazes his and places a cold dagger into his open palm, then she whispers something delicate, something dangerous, into his ear. He repeats her words, though they are unlike anything he’s ever allowed his lips to say out loud—they are foreign upon his tongue and twist uncomfortably in his mouth, yet he tries to imitate exactly as she’d spoken. The dagger swipes through the purple mist and then, to his wonder, coins of gold clatter to the table before him.

  In a breathless tangle they embrace, intertwine… He kisses her shoulder…and the sky opens with a crack of thunder. But the storm does not come from the window, it comes from the chamber door, and soon she is yanked from the happy arms of her beloved and back into the angry grip of her betrothed. She must never allow the other man to touch her again—and he is angered, convinced this game was hers all along.

  In the thin morning light of the forest, he watches, hidden by branches, as four young women prepare gifts for their unseen queen, the one they call Mother. Offerings are made—wildflowers from the earth, a tin of water from the nearby stream, a kiss blown into the air from the mistress of Pyrmont… He emerges from his hiding place and strikes, his rage too much to bear. One is thrown across the water and her head splits against a large stone with the help of his fist. To a tree he binds another. When he sees that the others have fled, he cuts out her heart so that she may never love, not even in death. Had he paid more attention to his lessons, he would not have needed to use brute force, but he does not possess the magick of his love, and now she has run away, fearing for her own life. He does not see her hiding among the trees, unable to look away.

  The weeks that follow find her lonely and sick, and while the man she thought owned her heart has been removed from the castle, he is a constant stain within its walls. Her husband curses her, then points his sword to her swelling stomach, for he has his suspicions.

  Through the forest she runs, her feet stumbling upon the uneven ground until at last the small cottage with the sagging roof peeks through the thick trees. She knocks upon the door and is greeted by an old woman, bent and frail. Thrusting a handful of coins into the woman’s bony hands, she begs for the herbs that will rid her of the child growing in her womb… for the man she loved has told her husband she has been unfaithful, and the lie is far more convincing than her pleas for forgiveness.

  But the old woman tells her the herbs will not expel the infant—it has grown too large for such medici
ne to work. “The magick inside you is strong,” the old fortuneteller Matilde tells Liese. “For it wants to live! You must not ruin what the Sacred Mother has planned. You must bring the child forth into the world.” Beneath the light of the full moon, in a clearing just past the cottage and the stream, the baby draws its first breath and the Sacred Mother vows she will possess a power greater than the witch who has birthed her. Matilde will raise it as her own, and none will be the wiser.

  At sunrise the baby is handed over, nameless save for the swaddling wrapped around its tiny limbs. With the infant’s cries at her back, Liese walks toward the village and steps silently into the square. The hamlet’s guards seize her almost immediately. Her body is strapped to the stake and the straw beneath her feet is lit. She screams with pain as the fire gnaws at her skin, but it is her child’s cries she hears, not her own. Her eyes search the sky for the Mother, and she tries to smile, for the offering of fire has finally been given—only the Mother will not end her pain.

  Chapter 48

  Rune

  Careful, my daughter… My mother’s words shake me.

  “I didn’t believe it until I looked into your eyes in Bamberg. They are her eyes. The witch’s eyes!” Hate flies from his lips. “I demand you take her immediately!” he orders his guards. “Burn her!”

  “Do you still see her when you look at me?” I ask as I struggle to inch closer to the stream’s edge. “She’s everywhere.” I tell him. “You see her, just as I hear her.”

  Growing hysteria laces his too-high laugh, “Voices! She hears the voice of a witch, and you won’t take her away! Tell me, girl, did she tell you I am a murderous liar?” He leans toward me with a threatening grimace.

  My eyes drop to the muddy edge of the stream. There is only a foot between us—a foot of water and moss and hatred.

  “You loved her once.”

  “I loved what she could do for me. Do you think I wanted this?” he hisses, pulling at his heavy brocaded robe. “Pyrmont was to be ours. My brother’s love for the military and territory balanced my obsession for science, physics…alchemy. He would rule the villages of Germany while I ruled the air it breathed.” He stares up at the sky and inhales deeply, as if remembering a time when all was simple. “And then she came into our lives. My brother knew nothing of what she was capable of, but I did. He had no idea that it was I she shared her secrets with…that together, Pyrmont would be a force to be reckoned with. But she chose him. And he rid himself of me, ordering my vows, choosing her, a witch, over his own flesh and blood.”