Forest of Whispers (29 page)

But Rune has another agenda. She pulls her hand from mine and rushes away without me.

I run through a forest of nightmares that are vividly real, of darkened trees that obliterate the dawn, of howling calls and whispers that jump out from around every bend. I am scraped and sore. I bleed. We must have moved back toward the village, because the green of the hedge rises to my right. Rune continues into the forest and I follow without question. She stands at the edge of a small stream and points. When she doesn’t cross, I step into the freezing water and up to the other side, facing her.

“What now?” I hold my hands up at my sides, waiting.

Words hit me. They are inside my head, but they are not mine.

They are not Rune’s, either.

They are
hers.

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

W
e 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

B
ottles 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
.