Greymist Fair, page 12
“Gottfried!” Fritz stumbled up to the fire. The Duke, tight against Gottfried’s side, bared his fangs and let out a warning growl. Gottfried’s dark eyes looked out from under his hat.
“Young Fritz,” said Gottfried. His voice was muffled by the thick scarf over his mouth. “Thought you were inside already. How’d you get out?”
“I—don’t know,” Fritz said, feeling out of his depth. Gottfried was never this subdued, and Fritz had never heard The Duke growl. “I’m looking for my father. Is he inside?”
“Everyone’s inside. You best be, too. Go on now.” Gottfried motioned his head toward the doors.
Fritz edged his way around the slight warmth of the fire and hurried toward the oak doors. The Duke watched him, hackles raised. Fritz had to use his entire body to shove one of the doors open, then fell onto the smooth stone floor of the entrance hall.
Walls stretched upward to a dark, arched ceiling. Tapestries hung along both sides told different stories. On the left: a beautiful girl longed to have magic and was chased through the forest by shadows and killed. On the right: a boy that resembled Hans also longed to have magic, but he made it out of the forest and obtained magic and became a king. Warmth and music came through the doors at the end of the entrance hall.
In the huge great hall, roaring fires blazed in pits at either end of long feasting tables. The villagers of Greymist Fair filled the seats, many wearing servant’s livery or the gray-washed winter garb of hunters and craftspeople. A small band played near the bonfire on the far side of the room, closest to the wide dais with its tall golden throne. On the throne sat Hans. A jewel-encrusted crown perched on his white-blond hair, and he scanned disinterestedly a plate of charred meat proffered by a servant. With a jolt, Fritz realized the servant was Wenzel.
Hans knocked the plate out of Wenzel’s hands and said, “Look how clumsy you are, Grub. Get on your knees and pick it up.”
Fritz couldn’t see Wenzel’s expression, but the set of his shoulders was stiff as he kneeled on the floor.
Fritz couldn’t breathe. He’d assumed, when he had made the wish, that the change would come gradually. Hans would be made king, then the villagers might start serving him, then he would probably move into the manor, but life would largely go on like it had before. But no—the world had changed instantly, yanked out from under Fritz’s feet. This was not the Greymist Fair he knew. This was not the way things were supposed to be.
He found his father skulking near the firepit closest to the door, spooning some kind of foul-looking mash into his mouth. Fritz hurried over to him, kneeled by his side.
“Father,” he said, “what happened to our home?”
Falk turned dull eyes on his son. “We sleep here now,” he grunted. “What were you doing at the lake? You’ll be whipped for fishing.”
“Whipped for fishing? But why—”
A heavy hand landed on Fritz’s shoulder. Ulrich, the carpenter, stood over him with a stony but sorry look on his face. “Enough talk, boy. Come along. The king wishes to speak with you.”
Ulrich gently helped Fritz to his feet—Fritz was taller, but Ulrich had easily sixty extra pounds of muscle—and marched him toward the throne. Hans, previously entertained watching Wenzel crawl around the floor for scraps of food, turned his attention to Fritz and smiled. He waved Ulrich off.
“Hello, friend,” Hans said. “Look at what we’ve accomplished!”
He gestured toward the great hall. Fritz looked over at the sunken-eyed villagers, their small and unappetizing portions of gray nameless mash. Several cast glances at him, but quickly looked away. If the scene had been told to Fritz in a story, he would have said it was unbelievable. It was almost comical, how downtrodden and miserable they seemed.
“Did you ban fishing?” Fritz asked, his mind blank of any other questions.
“Of course I did,” said Hans. “Couldn’t have anyone else finding our benefactor, could I? Don’t worry, you can still go out. I was thinking you should move the fish here, to the castle. It’s magical, so the move shouldn’t kill it. I’ll have Grub dig a little pool for it.” He shoved his heel into Wenzel’s side, catching Wenzel by surprise and knocking him off the dais, onto his back. Hans laughed. Wenzel flashed a dark look at him and rolled onto his side.
Fritz quickly scanned the room for Heike. If there was anyone who would know what to do, it would be her. She was brave enough to go into the forest alone, to speak to Death. She could handle Hans. But she was nowhere to be found.
Fritz stayed where he was, pinned in place with uncertainty. He lowered his voice. “About the fish—after this last wish, he seemed tired. Very tired. I think this one took more out of him than usual. I don’t know how much more he’ll be able to do.”
“It’s magic,” Hans snapped. “A magic fish doesn’t just run out of magic. It was probably tricking you to keep you from making more wishes. Can’t you even see through a ruse as simple as that?”
I can’t see through much of anything, Fritz thought, hating himself. What had he done? What had he done?
Plate and food recovered, Wenzel stood and returned to Hans’s side. But Hans was visibly upset now, and Wenzel’s approach only redirected his anger. Hans twisted in his seat, grabbed the plate, and threw it down the middle aisle between the long tables. Then, standing, he rounded on Wenzel and slapped him so hard the sound made the musicians grind to a halt and all conversation in the hall cease. “Pig!” Hans yelled. “Useless grub! Now you’ve thrown food all over the room. Did it make you feel better? Do you feel like you have taught me some lesson?” Another slap, this one to the other cheek. Wenzel kept his eyes down, his face expressionless. His hands were balled into white-knuckled fists at his sides. “Ulrich! Godric! Come take him to the post. I think it’s been too long.”
The carpenter and the blacksmith lumbered to the dais to collect Wenzel, who shrugged off their light holds and stared, unblinking, at Hans as he stepped down to the floor. He held his head high as they passed between the tables and out of the hall.
Hans turned back to Fritz, grinning. “This is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me! I know the magic only just changed things, and yet I also remember always being king, I remember what I did as king yesterday and the day before. No one else has any idea that this is all new! Can you think of anything better?”
Fritz glanced at the tables, the villagers carefully bent over their bowls, their conversations quiet. It would be better if they didn’t all look like beaten animals. It would be better if the musicians weren’t sweating into their instruments, eyes haunted, like a wrong note might get them killed. If they had no memory of how things were before Fritz made the wish, then what did they remember?
“Come on, let’s not keep Grub waiting too long.” Hans hopped up from his seat, snatching his crown as it slid off his slick hair, and wheeled Fritz toward a door behind the throne. Beyond it was a stone hallway that led to a staircase that led them up and up, four or even five floors, Fritz wasn’t sure. Hans seemed to know where he was going. Did he know what kind of king he was? Did he know what he’d done to the villagers to make them act like that in his presence?
At the top of the staircase they passed down another, narrower hallway and came to an iron-banded door, standing open. Ulrich and Godric stood on either side, their faces impassive. Hans and Fritz walked between them and into the bedroom beyond, and the two large men looked down on them with coldness. Hans turned and said, “You may go now.” He waited until both men had disappeared down the hallway to close the door.
The bedroom was huge and ornate. There was a fireplace, lit, next to a plush sitting area where tea steamed in porcelain cups on a silver tray. There was a four-poster bed draped with dark silks, the sheets still rumpled. A stained-glass window looked out on the snowy night. Across the room, the bones of small animals were displayed in large shadowboxes on the wall, arranged so that they might form full skeletons. In the center of the room was a thick wooden beam running from floor to ceiling, and facing it, his hands bound just above his head, was Wenzel.
Fritz’s blood ran cold. He had never seen a whipping—there was no physical punishment for crimes in Greymist Fair—but he knew what the setup would look like. Wenzel’s forehead was pressed to the wooden post, the firelight glinting off the dark wave of his hair. He was still clothed, thankfully; maybe that meant the whipping wouldn’t be as bad as Fritz feared.
“Don’t look so dour,” Hans said. Fritz jumped, unaccustomed to Hans reading his expressions, but Hans wasn’t speaking to him. Or Wenzel.
Between two large shadowboxes, on a thin-legged chair, sat Heike.
Five
Heike was pale, her hands fisted in her skirts, gold eyes glowing with hatred. She had been so still and so quiet Fritz hadn’t seen her. Why was she here? Why had Hans known she was here?
Hans went to the bed and took down a short leather whip. A thin blade gleamed on its end. He stroked its length, smiling, and cracked it experimentally in the air. Wenzel’s hands tightened on his metal cuffs, the muscles in his forearms bulging.
“You’re going to have to get yourself a new shirt after this, Grub,” Hans said. “Didn’t Heike make that one for you? That’s too bad. She only works for me now.”
Fritz opened his mouth to protest at the same time Hans snapped his arm out. The whip flashed. Wenzel cried out in surprise and staggered against the post as a slash opened in the back of his shirt and crimson stained the white linen. Heike jolted to her feet but moved no further, her lips pressed white, her eyes wide with fury. Hans giggled. Giggled.
“It’s not a deep cut, but how effective!” he said, marveling at the whip. “How many lashes before there isn’t any skin left to cut? The line is so thin—surely it would be hundreds?”
“What for?” Fritz’s voice was high. “Hans, what is this for? What did he do? You can’t just—j-just whip people!”
Hans’s glee curdled into petulance. “Of course I can. I’m the king. Or did you think we were somewhere else?”
In some world that doesn’t exist anymore?
“Yes, b-but you hurt him, look at his back!”
“You hurt him,” Hans mocked. “You want to be next? I’ll tie you to that pole instead if you want to take his place. Shut up and let me have my fun. Grub has annoyed me for long enough. Why should he be happy? He has nothing. He is nothing. Hear that, Grub?” He flicked the whip lightly at the back of Wenzel’s legs, making Wenzel tense. Then Hans leaned to look around Wenzel at Heike. “Same goes for you. I’ll whip a friend of the old witch, don’t think I won’t. My magic is stronger than anything the witch ever had.”
Fritz, frozen in an unreality he couldn’t fathom, almost missed it when Hans lifted the whip a second time.
“Stop!” Fritz caught Hans’s arm and grabbed the whip. They struggled for possession, dragging each other across the floor. Hans smashed Fritz against the footboard of the bed, but Fritz kept his hold, and they both toppled over onto the sheets. Hans shoved his knees into Fritz’s stomach, crushing the air out of him, and released the whip with one hand to pound his fist into Fritz’s eye. Stunned, Fritz lost his grip. Hans reared back, whip raised, with a triumphant, “HA!”
The bed warmer, filled with hot coals from the fire, slammed into the side of Hans’s head. The force threw him over the edge of the bed. He thudded to the floor and began screaming.
Heike dropped the bed warmer with a clang and spun to Wenzel. She tore the red ribbon out of her hair, releasing her braid, and wound it through the manacle on Wenzel’s wrist. She started sawing back and forth.
“That’s a r-ribbon,” Fritz yelled, scrambling to his feet. “It’s useless.”
“Shut up,” Heike spat. “I’m not very good at this yet and it can be hard to make it work. This isn’t what you think, Fritz. I don’t know how, but Hans got into some magic and made himself king—”
“H-how?” Fritz moved around the pole to meet her eye.
“Because it’s magic that made everyone forget,” she said, “but I don’t think it can make me forget. And you?”
“I was the one who made the wish,” he said. “It’s my fault.”
She spared him a quick, cold glance, then returned to her task. “Can you fix it?”
He thought of the tired flounder. “M-maybe.”
“Then we have to try.” There was a soft clink, and Wenzel’s right wrist came free of the manacle. “Watch out. Move.” Heike came around to the other side of the post and wound her ribbon through the other manacle, sawing again. Fritz watched as the red silk wore away the iron in visible shavings, like scaling a fish. Magic. Heike had magic, somehow. There was another soft clink as the last bit of iron lost its hold, and Wenzel leaned against the pole and withdrew his hand.
“Can we get out of here, please?” he asked, grimacing and glancing at Hans, who was unconscious on the floor. A sheen of sweat covered his face. Heike gently took Wenzel’s arm and led him toward the door.
“Heike,” Wenzel said as they crossed the threshold, “they’ll be coming up soon—they’ll kill Fritz, too, if they think he’s Hans’s friend.”
“I’m not his friend,” Fritz said, taking Wenzel’s other arm. Then, backtracking, “W-wait, who will kill me?”
Heike blew a lock of hair out of her face. “The villagers. They’re planning a coup. They’re going to throw Hans out into the snow. They saw you with him in the great hall, and Ulrich and Godric saw you come here with Wenzel. They might listen to us if we tell them you helped us escape, but they’re all very angry, and I don’t know if we can convince them.” She didn’t say the rest, but Fritz understood. Or if we want to try.
Fritz didn’t blame her; he didn’t entirely feel like he deserved to get out of the mess he’d made. All he’d wanted was to escape Hans’s lies, and he’d gotten tangled up in them anyway.
“Do either of you know how to get out of here?” Heike asked. “Everyone except me seems to know where things are around here.”
“N-no idea,” Fritz said, feeling even worse about himself.
“Door on the third-floor landing,” Wenzel said. “There’s a corridor and a back staircase that leads down to the servant’s quarters. But where are we going?”
“First, we’re getting out of here,” Heike said. The murmur of angry voices and the scrape of leather and metal on stone was echoing up the stairs. “And on the way, Fritz is going to tell us how he made this happen, and how he can change things back to the way they were.”
They crept down the stairs and pushed through the door on the third-floor landing. In a low voice, Fritz told them the story of finding the flounder and testing its magic, and making Hans’s wish and returning to the village to find it as it was now. By that point they were several flights down a narrow servant’s stair and coming to the ground floor.
“You’re saying none of this is real,” Wenzel said, staring hard at Fritz while Heike peeked around the corner to make sure their way was clear, “and it’s all because you answered a riddle from a fish in the lake and made a wish?”
“It’s real; it’s just not right. If I can get back to the fish, I can wish it back to normal.”
Heike motioned to them. They emerged in a guardroom, dark but dry, lit only by the torch at the door. They found a heavy coat and hat, which Heike immediately pulled on, though they were too big for her.
“I can’t find any others,” Wenzel said. “We’ll have to go look somewhere else.”
“No.” Heike pulled her hood up and arranged the scarf over her face. “You’re hurt. Go find Doctor Death, or even Gabi. They’ll fix you up. You can’t go running around out in the cold with your back cut open.”
Wenzel turned a hurt look on her. “But you can’t go, either. It’s too dangerous. The cold could—or the forest—”
Heike, scanning him, hesitated and then reached out to take his hand. “We won’t be in the forest; we’ll be on the lake. You’re hurt. You can barely stand. We have to do this, or the town is going to destroy itself. I know you don’t remember, but there is something better than this.” Her hand moved up to his cheek and Fritz looked away, very conscious of his own presence. “You never like it when I go, but I always come back to you. I promise this time won’t be different. Okay?”
Wenzel muttered, “Okay.”
Heike was grabbing Fritz’s arm and yanking him toward the guardhouse door. “Let’s go,” she said. “And I hope you’re ready to run.”
They were halfway down the rise to the castle when fresh screaming pierced the air.
“Hans woke up,” Heike said over the wind. They slouched close together as they jogged through snowdrifts.
Fritz glanced back at the castle, terrified. The torch in his hand wavered. “What will they do with him? They clearly hate him. Will they really—really k-kill him?”
Heike thought for a moment, then said, “No. I think they’ll send him into the forest.”
“Isn’t that killing him?”
“Only if he fears Death.”
Fritz didn’t understand this, but his teeth were freezing and it was making his head pound, so he closed his mouth and stopped talking. Something about Heike had changed since her journey into the woods. She’d gotten older, somehow. She saw things the rest of them didn’t.
The snow was already piled high, turning Greymist Fair into a field of white hills that glimmered faintly under a bright moon, visible now in a gap between the clouds. Fritz and Heike ran when they could, taking awkward, bowlegged leaps, but by the time they made it to the road to the lake, they were both panting. It didn’t feel quite so cold anymore, which Fritz found worrying. His father had always told him that was the time to be afraid, when the cold stopped being cold.
Finally they reached Grey Lake. Clouds had again obscured the moon, and the lake was a dark abyss before them. Fritz kicked his way to the snow-laden dock and found his little boat, flipped over on the shore, covered.
“We’ll have to clear this off,” he said, holding out the torch to Heike. “I can push most of it off the hull, then we can row to the inlet—”
