Our responsibility.
My stomach spasms with that responsibility, toxic and consuming as I scramble down the ladder.
We cannot give up.
Icannot give up.
I tear down the stacks of crates and barrels in front of the window, our stores of food dumping at my feet, beets and radishes and rolling potatoes.
“Maid, Mother, Crone,” I pray out loud as I heave the last barrel away. But I don’t know what I’m even praying for. Salvation? Strength? Comfort? Everything, I needeverything, and no prayer is sufficient.
I leave a single crate to use as a stepladder and leap up onto it. The window is barely the size and width of my head—will I be able to crawl through? Did Mama’s spell extend to this exit?
We didn’t waste money on glass for this window, just a series of iron bars shoved into the dirt. A better witch would stop and form a spell to break the bars, but I’m not my cousin, skilled with controlling lit flames; I’m not even my mother, who can call animals as easily as she breathes. What do I use? Herbs. Useless, stupid herbs, and how will they help me now? I have none left, anyway—we had pulled the last of our herbs up to the kitchen when Mama told me to hide, so in this moment all I have is myself and empty potion vials.
I work faster, fingers bleeding as I free clumps of earth and rock. Thank the Three that Mama and I aren’t exactly skilled architects. I’d joked about it then, how this window would one day collapse, but schiesse, I never thought I’d be grateful for our shoddy craftsmanship.
One of the bars breaks free.
The shouts outside heighten.
I look up before I can think not to. My eyes lock on a group not four paces from this hidden window: two hexenjägers are fiercely locked in battle with two witches. Their fight is a mimic of others happening allover the town square, witches embroiled in extricating these intruders from our coven.
The jägers use swords, hacking and slashing.
Witches fight back the only way we know how: with magic. We have physical weapons as well, some of us, but a well-placed spell can be as effective as a blade.
One of the witches is Agathe, whose affinity is in weaving. Her loom makes our fabrics, threading spells into our wool. The blue kirtle I wear now has a hem embroidered with green in a repeating pattern of an ash tree, for protection.
Now, she swings a net in a mighty arch, ensnaring one jäger. He screams, and I hear sizzling, his skin boiling against the magic Agathe wove into the fibers.
Next to her is Gottfried, whose affinity is with animals, like Mama. He whistles, and a dozen ravens break from a tree line, making a sharp dive for the other jäger. He shrieks in tandem with his comrade, and for a moment, hope wells—how can simple humans stand against us? We’ll push them back; surely Mama’s worries were misplaced—
Then the jäger in Agathe’s net twists. No warning cry.
He impales Agathe on his sword.
Head to toe, I go utterly immobile, a horror I’ve never known pinning me in place.
Gottfried wails. His distraction is enough—the other jäger frees himself from the ravens and hurls his body at Gottfried, tackling him to the ground. I see the flash of metal, the bite of blade scraping the air between them, and then Gottfried’s wail plummets into silence.
The two jägers leap to their feet and race off, throwing themselves into the next fight with furious, single-minded drive.
I am a body without thought too.
I use the freed iron bar to hack away at the dirt beneath the remaining two bars, heart bruising on my ribs. If I can get this window open wider, I can get out there—I’ll get out there and—and—
More screams float into the cellar, more garbled shrieks as battles are lost, as jägers slaughter my family, and with them drifts a single thought. A single, shattering question.
Where is my mother?
I should have seen jägers drag her across the square. Shouldn’t I have? Where did they take her?
“Keep that one!”
The voice—Kommandant Kirch.
My eyes seek out the source. There, across the square—the kommandant stomps toward a prison wagon. He points at a girl one of his hexenjägers is dragging away.
