Greymist Fair, page 1
Dedication
ANNABELLE DIRR
For Annabelle and Adalynn
and future generations
ADALYNN DIRR
Map
Epigraph
“I don’t have the heart to leave my children in the forest. The wild beasts would soon come and tear them apart.”
“And when the full moon had risen, Hansel took his little sister by the hand and followed the pebbles which shone like newly minted silver pieces and showed them the way.”
“Hansel and Gretel,”
The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Cast of Characters
The Children
Heike (tailor)
Wenzel (innkeeper)
Liesel
Katrina
Fritz
Hans
Villagers
Hilda (tailor)
Doctor Death (doctor)
Ulrich (carpenter) – Gabi (midwife)
Tomas (carpenter’s apprentice)
Gottfried (hunter) – Oswald
The Duke (dog)
Johanna (baker) – Dagny (baker)
Lord Greymist – Lady Greymist
Falk (fisherman)
Jürgen (butcher)
Elma Klein (farmer) – Norbert Klein
Ada Bosch
Oliver
Curt
Godric (blacksmith)
Albert Schafer (shepherd)
Travelers
Prince Altan
Evren (prince’s aide)
Jocasta (caravan leader)
Omar (caravan guide)
Others
Death
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Epigraph
Cast of Characters
Home
The Girl Who Outran Death
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
The Prince’s Riddle
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Wolf Children
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Katrina
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
The Secret of Grey Lake
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Doctor Death
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
The Wargs of Greymist
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Home Again
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Francesca Zappia
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Home
A road leads into a dark forest. It passes through a village some travelers never see. The village is not meant for everyone. To outsiders, it’s a place of darkness and whispers, threatened by bright-eyed creatures that live in the wood. Its people are friendly, but insular; its routines familiar, but not inclusive.
A tall man in a dark coat walks the road. Death follows on his heels. Greymist Fair is their home, but only one of them is welcome. The man is a doctor, a healer. Death can only ever be themself. Curious eyes and spiteful hearts follow them through the forest but do not touch them; the road is safe. The doctor and Death don’t waste any time; there are many who need the doctor’s help.
The village’s noble family.
The widowed fisherman and his son.
The orphans in the wind-slanted shack.
The butcher, inspecting his many knives.
The kind old innkeepers and the abandoned boy.
And the tailor. Always, the tailor. She is not ailing or hurt, and the doctor will make sure she stays that way.
As they walk, Death hums a tune. It’s a popular rhyme with the children of Greymist Fair. When they approach the outskirts of the village, Death stops while the doctor continues on. Gradually the village emerges from the mist. Cozy fires burn on cobbled hearths, walls and roofs thatched tight against the darkness. Neighbors trade wares and stories. They keep one another company in the long lulls between visitors, and on the nights when they are sure evil is real, and it lives in the forest.
The doctor wishes he could calm their fears, but he would have to lie to them. He, better than anyone else, knows that Death waits in the trees. That Death is patient. And that Death will do anything to return home.
The Girl Who Outran Death
One
Only one road led to Greymist Fair. It cut a winding path through the forest, wide enough for two horse-drawn carts to pass side by side, or for six men to walk comfortably without their shoulders touching. Large stones paved it all the way from one misty edge of the forest to the other, and on one side of the road iron lanterns hung on iron hooks, illuminating the path with a spectral blue light that never went out.
When Heike was very young, her mother had led her out of the village and down the west road. The heels of her mother’s boots made a solid thumping on the stones in time with the rustling of her bright skirts. Heike, her small hand sweating in her mother’s grasp, hurried to keep up. Mist crept from between the tree trunks on either side of the road but never moved past the glow of the lanterns.
As the last cottages of Greymist Fair disappeared behind them, Heike’s mother stopped and kneeled beside her.
“Listen to me, Henrike.” Hilda was calm and spoke softly. “It’s okay to come down the road. As long as you don’t stray from the path, you will always be able to find your way home, and nothing bad will happen to you.” She released Heike’s hands and began to retie the small red ribbon at the end of Heike’s braid. Her mother had quick, deft fingers, tailor’s fingers, and the ribbon went back in place without a strand of hair slipping free. “If you leave the road, there are creatures in the woods that would steal you away and eat you up,” her mother said, tugging the end of Heike’s braid just once, gentle but firm. “You must never go into the woods, Heike. Do you understand?”
“But you go into the woods,” Heike said, suddenly uncomfortable with her back to the trees.
“I do,” said her mother. “I go to speak to the witch, to make sure she and her wargs stay far away from you and everyone else in the village. I can run very fast, and that keeps me safe.”
Her mother had let Heike turn and peer between the tree trunks to see that there was nothing there, and then led her back to Greymist Fair.
When her mother was still alive, Heike had no reason to leave the village. After her mother’s death, she went only as far down the road as necessary. It had been two years. Heike was eighteen now, and she still wondered, sometimes, if she would ever see a glimpse of her mother between the trees. Either the ghost of who she had been, or the shadow of the warg she’d become.
The afternoon was cool. Heike marched along the west road at a brisk pace, her berry basket swinging in one hand and her satchel slung across her chest and slapping against her thigh. It was early enough in the day that the light of the lanterns was unnecessary, but still they stood lit along the road, keeping the mist off the stones. Though sunlight never breached the canopy of the trees, the forest had its own kind of light, a muted brightness. Cries of mysterious animals echoed from deep in the wood. Heike focused on the swishing of her skirts and the thump-thump-thump of her boots. She’d inherited most of her clothes from her mother, including the bright skirts and the boots that never seemed to wear thin, and having them made her feel safe.
She’d heard some travelers say that the road to Greymist Fair took only hours to traverse, while others said days. Some said they’d met merchants and adventurers who had walked the entire length of the road and never found the village, despite that the road ran straight through it. For Heike, the trip out of the village to the bridge over the Idle River took an hour and a half if she walked quickly, and the trip back the same time.
Not ten paces to the left of the bridge, partially cloaked in the dense underbrush of the forest, was a large redberry bush. A week ago she’d found the bushes along the road bearing fruit, though it was nearing winter now and they only bore fruit in spring. There had been a bush on the right side of the bridge as well, even closer to the road, that she’d tried to dig up and replant near her cottage. But the bush had grown small and sickly, never producing any fruit, as if taking it from the forest had drained the life from it.
Today the Idle River flowed lazily under the stone bridge, like it could feel winter approaching and was preparing to hibernate. Heike stepped off the road and hurried to the redberry bush, flicking her basket open and plucking berries the size of her thumb with trembling fingers. Her legs shook, her stomach twitched, and she pressed her lips together to hold in her nervous giggles. A bird fluttered off a branch overhead. Heike snapped the basket shut and jumped back on the road, where she started to laugh, bracing her hands on her knees to keep herself from collapsing.
When she righted herself again, she peeked inside the basket. It was only half full. It would barely be enough to make the rich red dye her mother had loved so much; she needed more if she wanted a darker color. The skin on the back of Heike’s neck prickled. She looked down the road in the direction of Greymist Fair, where the lanterns cast the forest in blue and silver. Then she looked the other way, over the crest of the Idle River Bridge. The creeping sensation worked its way over her shoulders and down her arms. There were more bushes on the other side of the bridge, full of berries that hadn’t spoiled even after a week, and some were close to the road. It wouldn’t hurt to check.
Heike started over the bridge. The Idle River lolled cold and deep beneath it, its banks overhung with moss and tree roots. Here, the canopy of trees overhead disappeared to expose a strip of gray sky. Even the harsh depths of winter wouldn’t freeze the Idle, and Heike had heard more than one story from Falk the fisherman about the bodies of unlucky travelers who had fallen into the Idle and turned up in Grey Lake. They usually caught on the roots on the banks or washed up on shore, bloated and pale, eyes chewed out by the fishes, and they smelled as rotten as they looked.
The smell of rotten flesh reached Heike now as she crested the bridge. Her imagination was good, but not that good, not even when her nerves were already standing on end. The road stretched out past the bridge, lined with lanterns, and the trees arched overhead again until their branches twisted together. A dark shape sprawled beneath the lantern closest to the bridge. Heike descended carefully, hugging the opposite side of the road as she crept closer.
The shape was clothing, arranged in the shape of a man, as if he’d leaped from the bridge and landed badly. Thick dark wool pants and the scraps of a torn linen shirt, and blood and viscera leaking into the cracks between the stones. Empty boots. There was no body.
Heike pressed her hand to her mouth as she gagged. She knew those shoes; she’d finished making them just last week. They belonged to Tomas, apprentice to the carpenter, and he was two years younger than her. Several days before, he had installed a new sign for Heike’s tailoring business outside her cottage. He’d carved it himself.
There was only one thing in the woods that killed and left clothing behind: the witch’s evil creatures, the wargs.
Heike wiped her mouth and searched the trees nearby. The stillness of the forest betrayed no stalkers, but her mother had not raised a fool. So when Heike turned back for Greymist Fair, she ran.
Two
The houses and cottages of Greymist Fair clustered in a shallow valley, stitched together by cobblestone streets and warm lamps on crooked posts. Firelight spilled from dusty windows. Wildflowers grew in planters outside doors, lovingly tended and allowed to twirl and twist up along the faces of the cottages.
Heike sprinted up the west road, past the sign welcoming travelers to Greymist Fair, past the first homes. Behind one, a large, happy cow chewed cud. Atop the next perched a row of blackbirds that watched Heike pass with disgruntled croaks. She entered the town proper, flying past Ada Bosch and the seven children she led, hand in hand; past Gottfried, carrying his polished hunting rifle and followed by his loping Great Dane, The Duke; then into the village square, where Heike’s friend, Wenzel, stood sweeping the stone steps of the inn and singing songs they’d learned together as children, when things were simpler and Wenzel was known by a different name.
When he saw her go by, he yelled, “Heike? Heike!”
She continued past the great stone well that stood in the center of Greymist Fair and out to the opposite side of the village, where the cottages dotted the northern hills. The home of Ulrich the carpenter was largest, and the farthest north, up against a small swath of cleared forest. Ulrich himself stood outside at the top of his hill, splitting logs. A burly man with dark skin, a thick beard, and a healthy respect for the forest, Ulrich was one of the few people in Greymist Fair who ventured into the woods. He lowered his axe when he saw her climbing toward him.
“It’s Tomas!” she gasped as soon as she knew he’d hear. Her hair hung in sweaty tangles around her face, and the ribbon had nearly slipped off the end of her braid. “Tomas is . . . on the west road . . . he’s . . .” She put her hands on her knees as her torso cramped. The image of the blood floated before her. She was used to seeing blood and smelling rotten meat, but not from a human. She couldn’t stop herself from vomiting straight onto the scuffed toes of Ulrich’s boots. Ulrich dropped his axe and put a large, warm hand on her shoulder.
“Henrike. Speak slower. What happened to Tomas?”
She told him what she’d found. As soon as she’d finished, he was off, dropping his axe and rushing behind his cottage. Heike slumped next to his pile of wood. Numbness filled her from her hips to her feet. She pulled the ribbon from her hair with cold fingers and combed through her braid. Ulrich came back moments later on his horse, with his wood cart hitched behind, and started down the hill and into the village.
From where she sat, Heike could now see people emerging into the streets, talking, pointing the way she’d gone and up toward Ulrich’s. Ulrich disappeared between the buildings. A moment later he reappeared as a dark speck on the west road before he disappeared again between the trees, followed by several other men.
“Heike!”
Wenzel’s long legs brought him swiftly up the hillside. His brown skin had turned wan with worry, his dark eyebrows pushed together over his warm brown eyes.
“Don’t come too near,” Heike called. “I might vomit on you as well.”
“What happened? Ulrich said something about a murder when he passed by, told me to call Doctor Death.” Wenzel took in her sweaty face, her muddy boots, her tousled hair. “On second thought, let’s get to the inn, and then you can tell me.”
“I don’t know if I can walk,” she said.
Wenzel turned, kneeled, and motioned to his back. “Hop on.”
They had done this when they were younger, but as children it had been Heike carrying the smaller Wenzel on her back. Taking his shoulders, she pulled herself up. She relaxed to the bounce of his stride and his arms holding her legs. Her berry basket jolted against his stomach. Johanna and Dagny, the baker wives, gave them strange looks as they passed, first at Heike’s bunched-up skirts and then at Heike herself. The apothecary startled and dropped his armful of herbs when he saw them.
Heike hid her face in Wenzel’s shoulder. She hadn’t expected anything less. Her mother had gone so often into the forest to appease the witch, the villagers had kept their distance from her. Heike had never gone into the woods and had never seen the witch, but her mother’s reputation had passed right down to her, just like her clothes, her profession, and the color of her eyes. To the villagers, the witch was a servant of death, and anyone who associated with her was just as bad.
They reached the front steps of the inn. Heike said, “Put me down.”
Wenzel shouldered his way through the front door. “Not yet.”
“I can walk.”
“I know you can.”
Without any travelers, the inn sat empty and unused, Wenzel its only occupant. A draft cut through the darkened great room. Wenzel carried Heike past the log desk, past the staircase that led to the second floor, past the empty chairs and tables. Papers full of scrawled handwriting were scattered across one table, Wenzel’s jotted notes of stories he’d collected over the years. He set her down in an armchair by the hearth, and she dropped her berry basket. In a minute Wenzel had a small fire crackling at her feet. He hurried off again, behind the staircase to the kitchen, and returned a moment later with a mug of warm milk. Several times Heike began to tell him to sit still, but the words never escaped her. She was not prepared to deny Wenzel his nurturing tendencies.
“Don’t call Doctor Death,” she said. “I’ll be fine soon.”
Wenzel shook his head and pulled up a second armchair. “Now, what happened?”
She explained as she sipped, considerably calmer. As Wenzel listened, his face turned greener and greener, and he covered his mouth with his hand. Heike kept the details to a minimum, but Wenzel had always been squeamish at the mention of violence.
The more Heike talked, the less real the scene on the road felt. She must have looked at the boots only for a second or two, long enough to confirm they belonged to Tomas. The memory felt like a berry dying on the vine; even now its innards were rotting away, leaving only a husk. It felt like someone else’s memory from another time.
