Forest of Whispers (13 page)

I suppose I invited these thoughts, for I did not heed my father’s request. I did not pray. It isn’t that I didn’t believe God would hear my petition, but that my father told me to do it. As punishment, I’d spent the entire night looking for answers to the strange healing, seeing Rune’s haunting eyes every time I tried.

When I awoke and ventured downstairs, Cook could barely speak. A timid boy, elbow-deep in brick dust as he scoured the stove irons, was the only person who could tell me what had happened. He’d just come from Pyrmont an hour before, sent to ask if all was well, but no one had answered the hail. Through her sobs, I caught enough to understand that Cook’s last remaining family, a cousin, had been a servant there. Last night she had not been weeping for my stepmother, who still clings to life this morning.

This is why I am here, saddled atop my horse overlooking the river at the foot of Eltz’s land. My back is to the forest, something I have been told not to allow. I know I must go into the forest again, that I must make my way through the shadows and eerie pockets of cold, damp air to the village surrounded by the fence of green.

Let my father think I do this to honor his wish and appease the bishop, that I will warn this humble village of an imminent threat. The real reason is simple. I want to find Rune. I want answers. I want to see her do something else that will send chills up my spine and astound me. I want to look deep into her eyes and know that she holds something over me, a spell perhaps, and that what she is capable of isn’t a figment of my imagination. Then, I want to bring her back to Eltz with me, her basket overflowing with herbs and stalks and a great big pile of spongy green moss. I will ask her to heal my stepmother. I will prove that the bishop is wrong, that what cannot be explained is not always a sign of evil. Eltz will have its protection against the Plague, and in the end, I will have won the respect of my father.

Chapter 18
Rune

T
he night did not swallow me whole, much to my disappointment.

My face aches from crying. My jaw is stiff from clenching my teeth together. I do not need to peer into the flowing stream beneath the tree to see how red and swollen my eyes are. Last night was a nightmare, but still, I made it through. I am here. I am whole. The villagers did not follow me into the forest, and after all the terrible things I’d done, the Sacred Mother watched over me, and for that I am grateful.

I climb down from my woodland shelter and look around. It didn’t rain during the night, yet the stream has indeed grown larger, making me wonder if magick forces were at work while I slept. Had I been purposely led to this spot to prevent me from wandering further away? The Black Forest is so disorienting, even during the day, that I surely would have walked in circles, perhaps even finding my way back to the village and into the arms of my enemies.

Strange, too, is that the ground is void of my footprints. The circle is gone, and I shudder, knowing well that which I do not understand is at work here. I feel it in the air, hear it in the trees. It waits for me to understand it, to welcome it, to beckon it. For the first time I wonder how long it will take me…or if I have, in fact, already begun to do so.

I drop to my knees and lean over the cool, glistening water, avoiding my reflection. The water is cold and satisfying on my parched tongue and it fills me so that I don’t feel the empty space in my stomach. But I do make a mistake. It is one I cannot help. I open my eyes. Instead of looking at my face, I am staring back at another over my shoulder. She is gray and ghostlike, and the trees behind her show through her skin, as if she is nothing but a pane of glass.

I react, slipping from the loose pebbles that line the narrow bank and into the icy water up to my knees. When I look again,
he
is standing there. Not her.

“It’s seems I am pulling you out of trouble again,” Laurentz says to me.

He waits for an answer, and the pit of my stomach flutters. I cannot believe he is here. I am glad he is, yet I can’t help feeling something else, and I stare at his hand, unsure if it is wise to take it and allow myself to be pulled from the stream. I don’t like needing someone else’s help, and honestly, I’m afraid. If he was able to find me so easily, will others come as well?

“You’re far from home this morning,” he tells me, ignoring the stretch of uncomfortable silence that pressures me to answer him. I bite the inside of my cheek. I don’t have to tell him anything. I don’t know him. I can’t trust him, or anyone.

I nod toward the gold braid cording that adorns his uniform. “And you’re dressed far too elegantly for a jaunt through the woods,” I say in return.

He looks down at his chest, then back at me. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

I’ve never seen these colors, nor the crest emblazoned upon his sash. It is a golden stag, and I wonder what it means. He looks devastatingly handsome, but in an official sort of way, and I wonder if he has anything to do with the men who took Matilde to the village square the night before. With all my heart, I don’t want him to be. I want him to be the nice boy who helped me escape the clutches of the hedge, not a part of something so cruel.

I wring out the hem of my dress. It will take a while to dry. The sun doesn’t seem to last very long over the forest, but it is something I’m used to.

“What did you say?” I ask, continuing to watch the steady trickle that falls from my skirt to the ground.

Laurentz has been looking around, but turns to me with a confused expression on his face. “I didn’t speak.”

“Yes, you did. You were wondering what I’m gathering today.”

He takes a slow step in my direction, then pauses. “I’ve been quiet this entire time. I was…”

“You were what?” I ask him. My hand swipes at a loose hair that has fallen across my eye. I stand upright and look at him questioningly.

“I was wondering to myself what could have brought you so far away from the village. That perhaps the moss you used on my arm grows here. But I didn’t say it. I
thought
it.”

A strange smile creeps to the corner of my mouth, and I laugh a little at this. But my laugh is a nervous one, and he knows it. I can’t pretend this into something else. What can I say to make him believe I made a mistake, that I heard a bird call and not his thoughts?

But I did. I must have. It was as clear as all the other times he’s spoken to me; his voice has a silken quality to it. Nothing in the forest can replicate it. I shrug my shoulders convincingly. “Then it must have been my own thoughts I heard.”

But I hear him again, and now, I watch him out of the corner of my eye because I am alarmed to the point of shaking. His lips don’t move. They don’t open; they don’t even twitch so that he might be projecting his voice out to me, pretending not to speak when he really is. He must wonder why I am here. I have no basket, and the ground does not appear to be very fruitful.

I take a deep breath, astonished at what is happening between us. I can’t help staring at his uniform because I am too afraid to look into his eyes. All I can think of is how he doesn’t fit here. He is too formal to be standing in the forest with me. He is too perfect to blend in with the wild while I stand in a dirty, damp dress, my eyes swollen from my tears. We are as different as two worlds. But what is stranger still is how he doesn’t appear to notice it as I do. In fact, he appears to be amused, even curious.

“You can hear me, can’t you?”

His eyes light up at this preposterous, impossible idea, as he walks toward me. “Tell me you can hear what I’m thinking.” It is clear this is amazing to him, while to me, it is practically horrifying. How will I talk my way out of it? Is this what he came for—proof that I am different? Proof that I am a witch’s daughter, and maybe even a witch myself? Instantly my heart clenches.

Instead of grasping my wrists like I expect, he cautiously reaches out and lets his fingertips slide gently across my cheek. The eyes I look up into are soft, and then he asks, “Who are you?”

Who am I? Who am I?
Echoes in my head. Do I even know? His mind is quiet while he waits, letting in another familiar voice, my mother’s.

You know who you are…

I know my name is Rune. I grew up in the Black Forest, beyond the border of Württemberg. I was raised by Matilde, an old healing woman who peddled fortunes. I am the daughter of a woman who gave me away, who was then burned at the stake for being a witch.

Do I tell him this? Is there more to my story? Isn’t this enough?

There is one thing I know for certain, and that is I feel so very alive at this moment as he touches my face and looks into my eyes. I am real. I am alive. My heartbeat tells me so, and it is beating so fast right now that I can’t think straight.

Laurentz drops his hand and rolls up his sleeve without taking his eyes from mine. I break the gaze and look down, seeing the skin I healed with the moss is exposed.

“I’ve tried over and over again to come up with a logical explanation, and I simply can’t,” he whispers. “How did you do this? How can you hear what I’m thinking?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper back.

His face is so close to mine that it is nearly impossible to breathe. It seems the forest is covered in a veil that muffles the usual woodland sounds, as if it too waits for something magickal to happen. I have never felt my knees go weak before, except for when Rolf told me what the mushrooms had done to his horse, and when Matilde was taken away. Never have I felt this way because of someone
looking
at me.

“It’s true then,” Laurentz says softly. “You’ve bewitched me.”

And then the spell is broken. I back away tensely, disturbed by what he has just said.

“I haven’t bewitched you. I haven’t bewitched anyone. You don’t know who I am,” I whisper back defensively, and then ask, “Why are you here?”

I look at his face, and for a moment I feel terrible for destroying the unexplainable magick felt between us. But I won’t allow myself be blinded by a feeling I don’t understand, not when it’s crucial that I keep myself safe. I don’t know who to trust. I want to trust Laurentz. I want to feel what I just did moments ago, again and again. It was so beautiful, so warm. I felt happy. But I don’t know what the future holds for me. I am not a part of the world he belongs to. I am not even sure how I fit into the world that is meant to be mine.

He too seems to feel something is changed now. He holds himself straighter, stiffer, as if I’ve offended him. I watch as he rolls his sleeve back over his strong forearm, and I wish I had the courage to tell him what he wants to know. I wish I could tell him who my mother was, who I think I am. What would he say if I told him I hear her voice? That she wants to help me become like her? That the reason she’s come back for me is because she wants me to destroy the village for what they did to her? Oh, yes, that would make him stay with me forever, wouldn’t it?

“I’m on my way to the village. A favor to the bishop,” Laurentz tells me.

My heart sinks. Now I know I must be careful around him. I can’t help seeing the bishop in my mind, as he watched from the arched bridge and ordered the men to dunk Matilde over and over until she drowned.

“It’s all right, Rune. I’m not contagious. I’ve only come to warn the others about the Plague.”

He’s mistaken my step back as indication that I know something terrible is possible. He still believes I live in the village, that he’s doing me a favor by warning me, not that I am putting distance between us because he has anything to do with the terrible man who took Matilde away from me.

“Plague?” The word is foreign on my tongue.

“Have you and Matilde ever treated anyone with Plague before?” he asks, and it’s like a knife thrusts into my heart.

“You know about Matilde?” I whisper so low that he moves toward me, bending his head to hear better.

“I know you and she help people—treat them for illness, as well as…other things.”

Beneath his voice, I hear what he dares not say out loud. I hear his thoughts, and they twist and battle with themselves as he wonders if he should tell me what he really thinks. That I might be a witch. That I might be able to do the impossible and protect others from this illness he speaks of. That he wants me to trust him.

I take one more look at the uniform he wears, and all I can feel is fear. I turn and run as fast as my legs will carry me, deep into the forest where I know he will not follow. Even from this distance his thoughts reach me, and I know he is standing there watching me. I’ve hurt him, but he doesn’t understand that I cannot be hurt. Not now. I’ve no more room for it. My lungs burn; when I feel I am far away enough, I force myself to slow down, leaning my back against the rough bark of a tree. I peer around the side, searching for Laurentz. His thoughts are quiet. It shouldn’t surprise me that he is no longer there.

Chapter 19
Laurentz

M
y horse whinnies when we come to the hedge. I am sure she remembers nearly trampling Rune, and is worried we will attempt to jump over someone else today. I pat her neck and lead her along the border to where it splits open to a proper road stretching into the village.

Letting out an exhale of regret, I look over my shoulder toward the dense darkness behind me. I should have followed Rune when she ran off. She’s out there somewhere, among the trees where no one will dare wander. I’ve upset her by mentioning Matilde’s name and now I am here, while she is still out there, alone.

Now I am certain Rune is the girl who sold the mushrooms to the old woman. Perhaps that is why she ran away. She’s afraid of being accused of a mistake. Or perhaps she is afraid of what I will think if her name is associated with Matilde’s? If I settle things, Rune might understand I only meant to help her, that I was only trying to convince her to put whatever she and the old woman do for a living to good use and keep the sickness of the Plague at bay. That I would pay her back with kindness like that she had shown me.

Pleased with my idea, I strain to see the roof of the little cottage among the trees, knowing the height from my horse should make it easier than from the ground. But it isn’t visible from here. Like the witch’s house in a fairy tale, it has disappeared, swallowed whole by the evil forest. I laugh to myself and pull the reins to the left, venturing back into the trees, determined to find it. I will straighten this out with Matilde and put Rune’s mind at ease.