“Give up,” Brigitta says good-naturedly, tossing the other spell pouch in her gloved hand.
“Never going to happen,” I say. I roll, grabbing the red marker that I’d hit Theodar with.
I stagger, limping—but my injured leg and the red marker in my right hand distracts Brigitta enough that she doesn’t notice that I have a rock in my left hand.
I slam the stone into Brigitta’s knuckles.
Stunned, she drops the spell pouch to the ground. I raise my hand to throw the red marker at the same time that Brigitta grabs up two more spell pouches from her belt.
I could duck.
But then I’d miss the shot.
I lunge for her, the red marker in my palm slapping against her chest at the same time Brigitta slams both spell pouches on either side of my head.
The hunt is over, I think as I drop like a stone to the forest floor.
2
Fritzi
Morning light cuts through the council room’s high wide windows, searing the headache behind my left eye; tension or sleeplessness, I’m not sure. And though I could easily grab a remedy from the shelves that rim this meeting room, vials of herbs and potions, I stay planted on the chair at the table, hands demurely on the beaten wood, focus pinned on Liesel, across from me.
She busies herself going over a worn piece of parchment, dragging her finger down, back up, down again, lips moving in soundless recitation of notes and lines and details.
I silently try to get my ten-year-old cousin to look at me. I want her to remember that I’m here, that I won’t let the council be cruel to her; I want her to remember that Cornelia, at my right, is also here for her and is just as unwilling to let Rochus and Philomena get away with any of their usual combative comments.
Rochus clears his throat from his seat at the head of the table. “Liesel,dear, if you are unprepared to give us this information, we can seek it elsewhere.”
“She’s fine—” I start.
At the same moment, Cornelia cuts in with, “Give her a chance to—”
Liesel flies to her feet, slams her palms against the table, and hooks Rochus with a glare so sharp that he drops back down into his seat, brows to his receding gray hairline.
“It began,” Liesel says, her voice pitched purposefully low, like a growl, “in Birresborn.”
I bite my bottom lip. Hard.
All my fears of her being nervous for this recitation were unfounded, it seems. She wasn’t quiet to hide her anxiety.
She was…preparing.
Philomena sighs, a quill poised in one hand over a blank sheet. “Yes, we know quite well where you are from—what we need are the details of your journey to the Well, so we might have a record of the things that transpired. We need the detailsonly, so you do not have to—”
Liesel sweeps her arms wide, face going gaunt and tragic. “The day was cool. Cold.Frigid. The air not yet fully winter, not yet autumn. Oh! Thechill—”
Cornelia puts a hand over her mouth. Fighting a smile.
I’m not even fighting mine. I grin, wider still, headache forgotten, as Liesel puts a hand to her chest and sways.
“A morning like any other! Until my deranged cousin attacked our village and kidnapped me.”
Her voice falters, and she consults her notes, but my chest squeezes, smile dropping off my face.
It is good, though, that she is able to make light of what we went through. This is her way of dealing with what happened to her, and I’mmore grateful than I can say that Brigitta has been encouraging Liesel to create this story. And while I had thought it would be more…direct…than what the council needs to put in their records, I can’t deny the part of me that’s softening and melting at the sight of Liesel so obviously enjoying the act of storytelling.
“Ah,” she restarts. “I mean—oh! The horror of his vile hexenjäger brigade as it did descend upon our unsuspecting coven! The barriers had fallen, brought low by—” she stutters. Glances at me, once; I almost miss it, but she flurries her hands around in an approximation of something intangible. “Byforces! Mysterious forces—”
