After The Forest E-Book

Kell Woods

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 597

Beschreibung

A lush fantasy retelling of Hansel and Gretel set in seventeenth-century Germany, perfect for fans of Brigid Kemmerer, Naomi Novik and Marissa Meyer. Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour. Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people starving in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, though: the witch's grimoire, secreted away and whispering in Greta's ear for the past two decades, and the recipe inside that makes the best gingerbread you've ever tasted. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat. But in a village full of superstition, Greta with her mysteriously addictive gingerbread, not to mention the rumours about her childhood misadventures, is a source of gossip and suspicion. And now, dark magic is returning to the woods, and Greta's magic – magic she is still trying to understand – may be the only thing that can save her. If it doesn't kill her first.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for After the Forest

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

1 Forest Fair

2 The Witch’s Book

3 Winter Apples

4 Wolf at the Door

5 A Little Blood, A Little Pain

6 Fire and Ice

7 Walpurgis Night

8 Lost Things

9 The Devil’s Colour

10 Bitter and Binding

11 Green, Wild, Moss, Storm

12 The Devil in the Woods

13 Windflowers

14 Of Spices and Stars

15 Gingerbread Hearts

16 Forbidden Fruit

17 I Wind, I Wind

18 My True Love to Find

19 Snow White, Blood Red

20 Hunting

21 The Depths of Winter

22 A Darker Shade of Magic

23 The Wolf’s Jaws

24 Gingerstruck

25 Baiting

26 The Truth of Things

27 Snow, Apple, Blood

28 Home

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise for After the Forest

‘This wonderful, well-woven story is so rich and affecting you can’t help but savour every single sentence. With characters that leap off the page, worldbuilding that immerses you completely, and a perfectly paced plot, Woods’s clever retelling of the popular Hansel and Gretel fairy tale succeeds in giving us something novel and authentic.’T.L. HUCHU, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OFTHE LIBRARY OF THE DEAD

‘A dark and wondrous tale. Utterly enchanting.’KATE FORSYTH, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OFTHE CRIMSON THREAD

‘With one foot in history, the other in folklore, After the Forest is a love song to fairy tales. Replete with secrets, magic, witches and wolves, bears and whispering books, Greta’s world is one where enchantment can become a curse on the turn of a tongue. At once sweet as gingerbread and bitterly dark as heart’s blood, After the Forest is reminiscent of Juliet Marillier at her finest.’ ANGELA SLATTER, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OFTHE PATH OF THORNS

‘Evocative, vivid and enchanting: historical fantasy at its best.’BELINDA ALEXANDRA, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OFTHE FRENCH AGENT

‘After the Forest is as deliciously irresistible as the gingerbread Greta bakes in the book. A touch of magic, a dash of mystery, a sprinkle of love and lashings of elegant writing make for a gorgeous debut novel that you’ll want to consume in one gulp. Kell Woods shows that she’s a born storyteller with a wonderful imagination and I, for one, am now a huge fan.’NATASHA LESTER, NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLING AUTHOR OFTHE THREE LIVES OF ALIX ST PIERRE

‘This is utterly captivating novel blends folklore and European history with themes of family discord, trauma and self-discovery… Dark as molasses and dripping with witchcraft, love and magic gingerbread, After the Forest is the fairytale retelling of the year.’LAUREN CHATER, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OFTHE WINTER DRESS

‘Kell Woods has a historian’s eye for detail, a born storyteller’s understanding of tropes, and a poet’s gift for description. Woods’ debut offers readers a fresh take on fairytale reimaginings, exploring women’s agency through a convergence of myth, magic and history. A sophisticated and intricately plotted debut with a compelling heroine.’JO RICCIONI, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OFTHE BRANDED

‘Kell Woods’ debut takes familiar stories and tropes from the vast corpus of the Brothers Grimm and smartly weaves them into an excellent historical fantasy novel. After the Forest is poetic, evocative, and most of all, addictive… high up on my list of best books of 2023. An author to watch and a powerhouse debut.’GRIMDARK MAGAZINE

‘Offer this lyrical, character-rich fantasy to fans of Mary McMyne’s The Book of Gothel (2022) and Genevieve Gornichec’s The Weaver and the Witch Queen (2023).’BOOKLIST, STARRED REVIEW

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After the Forest

Print edition ISBN: 9781803361352

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803361369

Illumicrate edition: 9781803367736

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: October 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2023 Kell Woods. All rights reserved. Kell Woods asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. Not for sale outside of the British Commonwealth (excluding Canada, Australia and New Zealand).

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Ellen Josephine (Nan), who wasalways kind to lost children—and who always knew.

A child lost in a village draws kindness like a swarm of bees: mothers young and old flock and fluster, their wombs tightening in sympathy. Cries are taken up and the child kept in safety until the mother arrives, face ashen, arms reaching.

The cries of a child lost in a vast forest are very different. There is no one there to hear, and the threat of the wild is there in every old tree’s creak, every scratch and scurry in the undergrowth. Alone in the forest there is real fear. Once felt, it is never forgotten.

  1  

FOREST FAIR

LINDENFELD, THE BLACK FOREST APRIL 1650

Once upon a time, in a land where the winter snows fall thick and deep, a young viscountess sat sewing by her window. She was content. She carried a child, her first, and her husband was home again after long years away at war. As she sewed, the lady pricked her finger with her needle. Three bright drops of blood, a deep and startling crimson, fell upon the snow lining the ebony window ledge. The three together – black, white, red – were such a pretty sight that the viscountess smiled and whispered a little spell to herself. A daughter, she charmed. With hair as black as the ebony frame, lips as red as blood, and skin as fair as winter snow.

*   *   *

It is a delicate thing, the smoking of a wild bee hive. There is a rhythm to it that cannot be rushed, a knowing: of the bees themselves, of flame and air, of the seasons. Greta Rosenthal had done it so often she had ceased to think upon it. She merely pressed a hand to the old beech tree in greeting – it was always wise to respect the elders of the forest – knotted her skirts, checked the satchel hanging at her shoulder and began to climb, her bare toes slipping easily into the notches cut into the smooth, silver-grey bark.

The hive nestled high in the tree’s heart. Greta propped herself between two branches and listened. The murmur of moving leaves, the ceaseless hum that signalled the bees’ contentedness. Satisfied, she drew a handful of green pine needles and an ember encased in river-damp moss from the satchel, breathed gentle life back into the latter, and lit the needles. The tang of burning pine filled her nose as she tucked the ember away and carefully, carefully, slid aside the board covering the hive’s entrance. Within, hundreds of bees coated swathes of golden comb in a warm, moving mass. Greta held the burning needles close. The spring air was warm and gentle, and it was not long before the bees succumbed to the smoke’s sleepy spell. She drew her knife from her belt and cut away a slab of comb, tucking it into her satchel. She raised the knife to cut more, then faltered as a wave of sudden faintness washed over her. Greta fumbled for the tree, balance lost, breath hissing as the blade sliced her hand.

Three bright drops of blood, a deep and startling crimson, fell onto her apron.

She stared at it, removed from the pain, fascinated by the sight of the blood mingling with the remnants of the morning’s baking – ginger and cinnamon, rosewater and cloves – upon the pale linen. A bitter taste rose in her mouth. Her throat burned and her gaze blurred, until it was not an apron she was seeing, but a spreading of winter snow. Not her blood, but someone else’s. Three drops, and more.

Much, much more.

She removed the coif from her hair and used it to bind her hand, then forced herself to cut the honeycomb she had come for, clumsily thrusting the sticky chunks into the satchel along with her knife. For a heart’s beat her eyes cleared and she glimpsed a shadow through the trees below.

A shadow in the shape of a woman.

Greta gasped, lost her footing and fell. The powdered crunch of snow beneath her, a surge of cold, the breath pushed from her lungs. Black branches above, and a winter-grey sky. Then nothing.

*   *   *

Spring-green leaves sharpened slowly against a blue sky. The scent of crushed larkspurs and the drowsy hum of the bees. Greta sat up gingerly, tested each of her limbs. Nothing damaged. Her satchel lay nearby. She slipped its strap over her shoulder and got to her feet, brushing the forest from her skirt.

When had the birds stopped singing? She had the distinct sensation that she was not alone. That someone, or something, was watching her. The air at the back of her neck turned to ice. Slow as winter, she turned.

The bear was enormous. Larger, surely, than any of God’s creatures had a right to be. The mound of muscle atop its sloping shoulders meant it reared tall as a common man. Its black fur gleamed. It gave a long, dusky breath then, horribly, swung towards her, enormous paws strangely silent on the forest floor. Closer and closer it came, until Greta felt its warm breath and smelled its earthy, animal scent. Her heart crashed against her ribs. Her body screamed at her to run, to get down the mountain and behind the safety of her own door. But she remembered tales from the hunt. Wolves, boars… any predator will attack when its prey flees. It is instinct; a command surging in the blood, nameless and ancient.

To run is to die.

The bear nosed Greta’s sticky-sweet hand, licking the honey away. It was gentle as a lamb. And yet one strike was all it would take. A single blow with one huge paw to kill her where she stood.

Fear crushed her in its claws. The world filled with muscle and fur as the bear shunted yet closer. Would it devour her now, or drag her, half-dead, into the woods? Wisdom failed. She staggered backwards, tripped, and sprawled on her rump in the ferns. Curled herself up and cowered against the earth. Words came to her, unbidden, tumbling from her mouth.

‘Leaf that’s green, earth and air,Protect me, forest fair.’

She took a rasping breath.

‘Darkness, devil, death and fearGet thee gone from here.’

They were old words, and strange, springing forth from the depths of her memory like startled birds, but they were good. Her mother had taught them to her, of that much she was certain, though Greta could not say when. She said the words again, faster.

‘Leaf that’s green, earth and air,Protect me, forest fair.Darkness, devil, death and fearGet thee gone from here.’

Again and again, each time waiting for the bear’s claws to rake her body, for its teeth to tear into the back of her neck. Hours passed, it seemed. Days, months, years. At last, when the flood of mother-prayer finally faded, Greta opened her eyes. She saw her own hand – a beetle crawling merrily across one knuckle – and strands of her hair, copper-bright. She raised her head. But for the lingering scent of pine smoke and the humming of the bees above, all was still. The bear was gone.

*   *   *

Greta did not wait for the beast’s return. Down the mountain she tore, bare feet slapping on pine needles and moss, satchel thudding against her hip. She scrabbled over a bank of twisted roots. Fell. Rose. Fell again. Thought fleetingly of her shoes, back at the base of the tree. There would be no returning for them now. With every step she heard the bear behind her, felt its hot breath between her shoulder blades. Vaulting over the mossy flank of a fallen oak she glimpsed – in the timeless, weightless eternity of flight – a child, tucked between wood and earth, its upturned eyes a violent blue. Then she was falling.

‘Oomph.’

The angle of the world was all wrong: uphill was down, the sky was not in its accustomed place, and there was dirt where air should have been. Greta coughed and wheezed, vaguely aware that the child was screaming.

‘S-stop,’ she spluttered into the dirt. ‘Be quiet.’

The child shrieked on. Greta shoved herself up. ‘Stop it, or you will bring the very Devil down upon us both!’

The girl’s mouth snapped shut.

‘Thank you.’ Greta took in the child’s face, the angry-looking scars marring her cheek and neck. This was Jochem Winter’s youngest daughter, Brigitta, her scars the result of a hearth-side accident when she was little more than a babe. Greta raised a warning hand in the child’s direction, then rose unsteadily. The mountainside was peaceful in her wake, fir and spruce, pine and beech standing to calm attention. A wren tittered and its mate answered. A child’s inquisitive voice drifted up from the fields far below, followed by a woman’s faint reply.

There was no sign of the black bear.

‘By all the stars.’ Greta slumped back against the tree. Her jaw trembled and her words jumped and stuttered, but she felt an unreasonable urge to laugh. Brigitta Winter looked on, blue eyes wide with fear. Greta did laugh then, a wild, incongruous cackle that, when echoed back to her by the forest, sounded unsettlingly like a sob. She glanced at the child and forced herself to calm.

‘What are you doing so far from the village, Brigitta? Are you lost?’

‘Yes. My father is down in his fields,’ the girl said, hugging herself. ‘He’ll miss me soon enough and come to find me.’

Brigitta was not the sort of child to wander the forest alone. Her family lived in a fine house near the Marktplatz, with two servants and a cook. At the same age, Greta could have skimmed lightly up a tree to see the shape of the land. She could build a fire and find water. She would never have left the house without her tinderbox and knife, and a cautionary store of nuts or berries in her pocket. You learn to be careful when you have been lost.

‘Your father may not come for you,’ she said gently. ‘No doubt he’s busy with the planting. I can take you to him, though.’ She offered her hand. ‘Here, let me help you up—’

‘Don’t touch me!’ Brigitta cried.

Greta drew back as though she had been burned. She had known Brigitta her whole life. Could recall her as a baby, sweet and plump, eager for gingerbread on market days. Now her face was hard with mistrust.

‘I know it can be frightening here when you’re alone,’ Greta said warily. ‘But I promise you, Brigitta, no harm shall come to you.’ She glanced back up the slope, half expecting the bear to loom once more into sight. ‘That is, if you do exactly as I say.’

The child made no reply. She simply laid her head upon her knees and began to cry, great wretched sobs that shook her entire body.

‘Did you know,’ Greta said, casting another careful glance up the mountain, ‘that when I was a girl – not much younger than you are now – I became lost in the woods. I was so frightened. I would have given anything for someone kind to come along and help me.’

Brigitta stilled. She raised her head slightly, peeking at Greta over her tear-dampened skirt. ‘Is that – is that when you found the little house? Made of gingerbread?’

‘Brigitta? Where are you?’

‘That’s my sister,’ Brigitta said, scrambling to her feet and wiping her cheeks. ‘Papa must have sent her to look for me. I’m here, Ingrid!’

Part of Greta wanted to tell both Ingrid and Brigitta to quiet themselves, lest the bear hear. The rest of her was lost, adrift in memory. I will eat a piece of the roof, and you can eat thewindow…

Ingrid Winter appeared between the trees, her skirts held carefully off the ground, her golden hair neat beneath a spotless coif. Behind her, glimpses of the valley dozing below, the shining river, the tiny reddish blobs that were grazing cattle. And above them, the steep, forested face of the opposing mountain. ‘What are you doing up here, Brigitta? Papa said he told you not to leave the river!’

Brigitta hung her head. ‘I was looking for blue stars.’

‘Whatever were you thinking? You know it’s not safe.’

‘Not safe?’ Greta echoed, rising.

‘You haven’t heard, then?’ Ingrid’s sharp blue gaze flicked over Greta’s bare head and dishevelled clothes. ‘Everyone’s been talking about it. Two cutters were found dead in the forest near Hornberg, their chests laid open, their…’ She glanced at Brigitta. ‘There are soldiers about. On their way back to France, Papa says, or perhaps Bavaria. Brigitta knows better than to wander off.’

Greta could not help but throw another nervous glance over the slope. A year and a half had passed since the war finally ended. For thirty long years Württemberg had suffered along with the rest of the Empire. Armies had passed back and forth across the Black Forest from France and Bavaria, marauding, burning and looting. They were just one claw of the great armed beast wielded by the Catholic emperor as he warred against the Protestant allies, Württemberg among them. Lindenfeld, at the furthest corner of Württemberg, tucked away in the mountains, had avoided the worst of the chaos. Even so, bands of foraging soldiers had still found their way into the valley. Ragged and starving, they had attacked the villages, taking what they could carry and hurting or burning what they could not. Taxes had been raised and raised again to pay the war tax, to buy safety from the closest army or the French garrison in the next valley. The promised peace had been a blessing, but its coming was slow. Bands of soldiers, lone deserters, and those who had lost their own homes in the war were still known to raid villages like Lindenfeld.

‘I told you,’ Brigitta was saying, ‘I was looking for blue stars!’

‘All the way up here?’

‘I got lost,’ Brigitta admitted. ‘Fräulein Rosenthal found me.’

‘Luckily for you. But why were you shouting at her? I could hear you clear as day.’

‘I thought…’ Brigitta twisted one leather-clad toe in the pine needles.

‘Yes?’

‘I thought… she was going to eat me.’

‘What?’ Greta and Ingrid said, as one.

‘You frightened me so, when you flew over the log like that,’ Brigitta told Greta in a rush. ‘Your hair was wild and your face was white, and you said the Devil was coming…’

Ingrid sneered. ‘What a thing to say, Brigitta!’

‘What? Everyone knows witches eat children.’

Witch. The word betokened many things, none of them good.

‘They can change their shape, too,’ Brigitta said. ‘Bats, cats, owls, foxes… I don’t know why you’re laughing, Ingrid. It was you who said Fräulein Rosenthal cursed Herr Drescher’s field. And that—’

‘Hush, Brigitta!’

‘—she brought down a storm once and ruined the harvest.’

‘Brigitta!’ Ingrid’s cheeks burned.

‘I heard you speaking to Frau Lutz of it just last week,’ the girl continued. ‘She said that when Fräulein Rosenthal was a little girl, she killed an old woman.’ Brigitta squinted up at Greta, the scars on her cheek shining with the memory of long-ago flame. ‘Frau Lutz said you pushed that old woman into an oven full of fire and burnt her up. She said it made you strange.’

Greta had always suspected the village women spoke of her when she was not there to hear them. Gathered together like that, the shreds of her past were… worrying. Especially when the only real link to that time was at this moment laid open on her workbench, in plain sight of anyone who happened to peer through the window. The witch’s book, Hans called it, among other troubling names. Thoughtless to leave it lying there like that. She had seen women – good, kind women – accused of witchery for possessing far less.

‘Is it true?’ Brigitta asked.

Greta forced herself to meet the girl’s eyes. In truth, I cannot remember. It was a long time ago and I was very young. These were the words she would have uttered, were she a braver soul. The temptation to defend herself, to dispel the lies the village women shared like eggs and cabbages, burned her tongue. But there was nothing she could say. For all she knew she had killed the old woman. No, not just killed. Burned.

‘And was the house made of gingerbread?’ Brigitta asked. ‘Frau Lutz said the house was made of gingerbread.’

No. It was made of wood and stone, like any other.

‘I thought you were a sensible girl, Brigitta,’ Greta managed. ‘All this talk of storms and gingerbread houses and eating children. I didn’t know you believed in such nonsense.’

‘Everyone knows there are witches,’ Ingrid said, sharp. ‘And you cannot blame the child for saying such things when you roam the forest as you do, Greta, all alone and wild. You aren’t even wearing shoes.’

Greta scrunched her bare toes beneath her skirts.

‘Perhaps Greta’s hair frightened you, Brigitta,’ Ingrid said. ‘Red is the Devil’s colour, after all.’

Greta raised a hand to her hair. It had come loose from its pins, rambling down her back.

‘My hair isn’t red,’ she said, poking ineffectually at it. It had always been a curse, her hair. If she stood in the shade it seemed plain enough, innocent and brownish. But in the light, russet and bronze conspired to be noticed.

‘Yes, it is,’ Brigitta said, not unkindly.

Greta did not trust herself to speak. She had realised, with a sinking heart, that her hair ribbon, a fine strip of lavender linen embroidered with a trail of ivy, was also lost. It had belonged to her mother.

Ingrid led her sister away. ‘Come, Brigitta. We’d best get back to Papa.’

‘That wasn’t very kind.’ Brigitta’s voice floated back. ‘Especially when she’ll be leaving Lindenfeld soon.’

‘Leaving? Whatever do you mean?’

‘I heard Father say Hans Rosenthal lost all his money throwing bones. He will not be able to repay what he borrowed from Herr Hueber and will have to give up his holding. Look! Blue stars!’ She scampered through the trees, stopping before a carpet of violet-blue flowers, their petals bowed like wives at prayer. ‘Aren’t they lovely?’

Greta hurried after the sisters. ‘Wait… what did your father say, Brigitta?’

‘He said he will rent your land once your brother loses it.’

‘When did you hear this?’ Ingrid, too, was frowning. ‘There must be some mistake.’

‘See how upset my sister is?’ Brigitta smirked. ‘She thinks your brother handsome, you know. She sits in wait for him in the Marktplatz so he can happen upon her unexpectedly.’

‘Brigitta!’

Ordinarily Greta would have smiled at this; women had always admired Hans’s golden curls. ‘Did your father say anything else?’

‘Only that it’s to be settled on May Day.’

The tale had the clear shine of truth to it. It was no secret that others coveted the Rosenthals’ holding, and that of them all Jochem Winter had ever been the most persistent. And debts were often reckoned on May Day, struck over a cup of beer and a merry dance with another man’s wife. But May Day fell after Walpurgis Night – in three days’ time.

‘You’re certain it was May Day, Brigitta?’

‘Yes. That’s when Herr Hueber wants his money.’ Brigitta grasped a handful of blue stars and prepared to yank.

‘Don’t do it like that,’ Greta warned, distracted. ‘The juice is poisonous.’

‘Poisonous? But they’re so beautiful!’

‘That doesn’t mean they won’t hurt you.’ Greta sliced the stalks neatly with her knife, wincing at the pain in her wounded hand. ‘Some of the loveliest flowers in the forest are the most dangerous. Here; try not to touch the stems.’

‘What about those white ones there?’

‘They’re just snowdrops. How much does Hans owe Herr Hueber, Brigitta? Did your father say?’

‘No. Can you cut me some snowdrops, please?’

Ingrid stamped her foot. ‘Brigitta, come along!’

Greta cut the snowdrops, her mind already back at the house, counting the baskets of gingerbread stacked neatly for Walpurgis. She hated the festival, always had. There had been years during the war when the festival had not gone ahead, and though she had pretended disappointment, she had secretly been relieved. The crowds, the noise, the costumed witches hideous in the alleyways, and everywhere fire. But there was no avoiding it – not with the coin her gingerbread made there. She had hoped the festival would earn enough to pay her taxes and part of the year’s rent, with a little left over. She had planned to buy linen for a new shift; both of hers were wearing thin. Hans needed a new coat, too, despite Greta’s careful patching.

‘Brigitta? Are you sure your father didn’t say how much?’

‘Yes. But he did say it will be for the best. He’s going to run pigs on your land, he says, when the baron signs the holding over to him. Better that than wasting like it is now.’ She plucked the snowdrops from Greta’s grasp and stroked one sad, white petal. ‘Perhaps it would be different if you had a husband, but he says you’ll never have one because you have no dowry. Not that it matters. After all, no one wants to marry a witch.’

  2  

THE WITCH’S BOOK

It was an innocent enough spell, a harmless cast to bestow beauty upon a longed-for child. But the viscountess was young and innocent. She did not see that the wind that day was ill-omened, or that the moon was deep into its waning turn. No sooner had the words left her lips than the little spell twisted and thrummed in her blood-red womb.

*   *   *

Witches always have red hair. It’s the Devil’s colour.

Greta’s coif was ruined, the linen stained a watery crimson as though her hair had seeped into the cloth. Dirt smeared her bodice. Her overskirt had ripped during her flight down the mountain, and there was blood on her apron. She knelt in the shallows near the falls in her shift and petticoat, scrubbing at her clothes with crushed soapwort until her fingers were red with cold. It was only when the cut on her hand began to bleed again, threatening to undo her hard work, that she stopped to hang her clothes on the rocks.

The Wolf River fell no less than seven times as it cascaded down to join the Schnee. Water grumbled and rushed above and below, the heavy roar of it reverberating through the forest. There were pools tucked beneath pools, secret places where one could float on one’s back and watch the clouds, or wash one’s hair with only the birds for company. Greta had done just that countless times and yet now, as she regarded her reflection in the pool, she felt far from peaceful. Or clean. She unlaced her stays and threw them onto the rocks, then seized the soapy leaves and plunged into the pool, skin goosing with cold, shift and petticoat foaming around her. She scoured the last of the blood and dirt from her skin, soaped her hair and rinsed it clean. Soaped it again and again, combing the lengths with her fingers until she was out of breath. Still her reflection wavered back at her, unchanged.

Blood. Dirt. Tears. If only other things could scrub away as easily.

At last she waded back to the bank, reaching it in time to see her stays slip from their rocky moorings and – buoyed by the stiffened reeds giving them their shape – sail gracefully over the falls.

‘For the stars’ sake…’

She slid down the steep path, only to see the stays reach the edge of the pool below and drop tantalisingly out of sight. Greta slipped after them, soaking and shivering, damp ferns tugging at her ankles. She twisted through a narrow fall of rocks – and slithered to an abrupt halt.

There was a man climbing the path from the pool below.

A glance was all it took for Greta to know that he was not of Lindenfeld, nor any other village in the valley. Ingrid Winter’s talk of passing soldiers flared in her mind. She had lived through the war. Had seen what careless violence soldiers could inflict when they had a mind to. She wondered how far she would get were she to run. There was an old hut not far from where she stood. Her father used to shelter there when he was out cutting and got caught in bad weather. It was rough, but it had a door.

The man saw her, stopped. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said, raising a palm. ‘I mean you no harm.’

His voice hinted of Tyrol, the land of mountains to the south. No soldier she had ever known had hailed from there. Even so she scanned the forest, the rocks below, the water. He might not be alone. Soldiers, even those whose regiments had been disbanded, rarely were. She saw nothing but a puddle of belongings in the ferns: some clothes, a bow and a sword, a rolled blanket. A little cook-pot, pitted and scratched with age, and a hunting horn of gleaming bone. No telltale soldier’s buff coat, no bandolier or musket.

‘You see?’ the man said. ‘No harm, I swear. I came only to give you this.’

He was holding her stays.

A burst of heat rose in Greta’s cheeks. She hugged herself, horribly aware of her dripping hair, her damp skin beneath clinging linen. He was aware of them, too. She knew it by the way he did not look at her.

‘I— thank you.’ She took the sodden garment from him, wondering if it was possible to die of shame. The whit whit of a wood lark was loud against the mutter of the falls.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘It was not my intention to…’ He gestured vaguely, encompassing the awkwardness of the moment and his lamentable part in it. Water gleamed in his dark hair. His feet, beneath damp black hose, were bare. Like her, he had been bathing. Like her, he had thought himself alone.

Greta risked a longer glance. He was taller than most; as tall as her uncle, Rob Mueller. His complexion was the bronze of one who spends much of his time out of doors, and his jaw looked as though it had not seen a razor for many days. But he was straight of nose, and his eyes, beneath rather heavy black brows, were blue. Or green. They were creased with worry. Despite her embarrassment, Greta was sorry for him.

‘I won’t speak of this to anyone,’ she said, ‘if you will do the same.’

The corner of his mouth rose. ‘Agreed.’ His shirt was torn beneath his ribs, the edges of the cloth washed through with pinkish blood.

‘You’re hurt,’ she said, pointing.

His gaze flicked over the cut on her hand, bleeding again after her scrabble down the falls, and back to her face. ‘So are you.’

She should turn, go, be away. Instead she lingered, her stays dripping mournfully on the path.

‘Wait here,’ he said, and slipped lithely down to where his belongings lay. He returned a moment later with a cloak. ‘Please take it.’

‘I couldn’t—’

‘Please.’

Grateful, Greta bundled herself into the thick, greenish-grey wool. ‘My brother’s house lies along that path,’ she said, gesturing to the slope above. ‘I will keep it for you there.’

He nodded. ‘Good day, then.’

Were they green, or blue, his eyes?

‘Good day.’

When he was gone, Greta collected her wet clothes and sopped her way homeward. The stranger’s cloak was thick and fine. It carried his scent: pine needles, wood smoke and the not-unpleasant saltiness of his skin. She wondered where he had come from. Not Freiburg or Tübingen, surely – he was of the woods; he carried it with him, moss and water and earth.

He was still in her thoughts when she arrived at the house. Unlike the dwellings in the village, which stood in ordered rows, the Rosenthal home was a settling of centuries-old oak that seemed to have sprouted into existence, then rambled across the clearing like ground ivy. In winter, snow coated the quirks in the sloping shingled roof, while in the spring the ancient apple tree near the garden frothed with blossoms. Greta hung her wet clothes from the tree’s gnarled branches. Could it really be true? Could Hans have gambled, lost, and borrowed so much that he had risked their home?

Inside, she hung the stranger’s cloak and her satchel near the door and set the honeycomb to drain, then gazed around the open room, trying to see it as her brother might. It was furnished sparsely: her father’s old chair, two long benches at the table. A scuffed clothes chest, a wide workbench lined with resting dough, baking trays and gingerbread moulds. Aside from the moulds, there was nothing of particular worth there. But Greta’s mother had woven the rugs covering the floor, and her father had crafted the workbench. Generations of Rosenthal women had scrubbed the table to a comforting gloss, while the squat stone oven – the heart of the house – had delivered hundreds, no, thousands of pieces of gingerbread over the years. Many times, the sweet golden bread had been all that stood between Hans and Greta, and starvation.

Was it all truly lost on the roll of a carved knucklebone?

…youtook your time.

The voice was the barest whisper in the back of Greta’s mind, lisping and female, so soft she might have missed hearing it altogether had she not expected it. She crossed the room. The book lay where she had left it that morning on the workbench, surrounded by the debris of a half-finished bake.

…howlong does it take to cut honeycomb? it asked.

‘I’m sorry,’ Greta said. She thought of the strange sickness that had come over her in the beech tree. The bear, and the old rhyme her fear had awoken. How to explain it all?

‘I had some trouble,’ she said simply. The book would ask questions – it always did – and there was no time for that. The possibility that Brigitta’s final words were true – that Hans had indeed gone and lost their home, as she had always feared he would – filled her with a hurrying fear. She needed to speak to her brother.

…Ican see that, the book said. Fall in the river, did you?

‘You could say that.’

…noshoes? You look like a hedge-whore, dearie.

Ordinarily, Greta paid no mind to the book when it said such things. But today, with the memory of her meeting with Ingrid and Brigitta still fresh in her mind, the barb stung.

‘At least I have feet,’ she said, passing beneath the ladder leading to the sleeping loft. Hans had draped a shirt carelessly over a rung and its sleeve brushed her cheek. She swiped it away irritably and pushed aside the curtain separating her own small space from the rest of the house. A cracked washbasin, a little pot filled with wilting snowdrops, a bunch of dried lavender hanging above the narrow bed.

She shrugged out of her wet things and reached for the fresh clothes – dry shift and stays, nut-brown skirt and undyed bodice and sleeves – hanging neatly on a row of hooks. She dressed quickly, coiling up her wet hair and pinning it beneath a clean coif. Less like a hedge-whore, though still shoeless. She would have to take small steps and hope her skirts hid her bare feet.

…you’renot going out again, are you? the book asked peevishly as Greta emerged.

‘I have to go down to the mill.’

…we’vework to do. Or did you fail to notice the mess you’ve left? Pages fluttered as though touched by a breeze.

‘We’ll finish when I get back,’ Greta told it. ‘I’m sorry. Something has happened. I have to find Hans—’

…ah,Hans, is it? What’s the useless fool done now, then?

‘I’ll explain everything when I get back.’ She bit her lip. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to put you away before I go. We can’t risk anyone seeing you.’

…you’vejust realised? The book cackled, and for an instant Greta saw the forest crone bent low over its pages, her face harsh with oven-glow as she bickered with someone who was not there. At the memory the scrawling and ink splotches covering the book’s open pages – take a quart of honey and sethe it and skime it clene… beat finely also the whitest Sugar you can get… strewe fine ginger both above and beneathe – took on a more sinister cast.

She closed the book with a floury whump; she had learnt long ago not to think upon its origins, or of the person who had taught her to decipher its pages. After all, the book could not help who had once owned it, could it? It was just a book: bound in the usual way, in soft leather, greyish-smooth with age. It was, however, slightly warm, in the way a person is warm; a disconcerting quality in a book, and one Greta managed, with much practice, to ignore. On this day, however – everyone knows there are witches – she could not help but shiver with distaste as she slid it into an empty garner.

…noneed to be so rough!

‘I’m sorry,’ she said guiltily. ‘It’s just… we can’t be too careful.’ She slapped the lid into place and left the house, the book’s indignant voice – …afterall I’ve done for you! – trailing behind her. There would be a reckoning later, she had no doubt – the book hated to be shut away – but she couldn’t help that. She had to find Hans. And, she knew from experience, it was not likely to be easy.

*   *   *

Ordinarily, there were no bears in the Black Forest. They had been hunted away long ago, banished to higher mountains and deeper forests than the ones surrounding Lindenfeld. Before the black bear Greta had seen only one other, or its head at least, mounted beside the hearth in the Rose and Thorn. A brown she-bear, fur greased by years of fire smoke and the fug – tinged with sweat or snow, depending on the season – that came always with drinking men.

The she-bear looked on as Greta hovered in the pothouse’s doorway, hoping for a glimpse of her brother in the Thorn’s murky innards. The beast’s mouth had been forced into a snarl that should have been fearsome, but instead seemed pained. Not for the first time, Greta wondered which long-ago hunter had killed it and basked in its deathly glory. Had it fought for its life before the end?

There was a shout of surprise and spluttered laughter from a nearby table: someone had spilled their drink. Greta watched the man’s companions serve him a ribbing and merrily order more beer. What would these cheery men say if they knew another bear had come to the valley, far larger and grander than the poor, scrawny beast above their heads? One word from her would see them guzzle their drinks and rush out to kill it. Would they nail its head beside the she-bear’s?

Two merchants had settled at a table beneath the bear. Herr Tritten, the taverner, was serving them.

‘They say the new wife is young,’ one of the merchants said with a smirk. ‘Young enough to be his granddaughter.’

‘And uncommonly beautiful,’ his companion added.

They could only be speaking of old Baron von Hornberg and his bride, Elisabeth. Greta had seen the baroness but once, in Hornberg. The young woman had been in an open carriage and heavily veiled, her shoulders wrapped with furs against the winter chill. A glimpse of dark lashes against one smooth cheek. A fall of ringlets, shining black.

Herr Tritten poured beer smoothly. ‘Mayhap she is.’

‘Someone so young and beautiful will long to surround herself with pretty things,’ the first merchant continued. ‘We passed a trader on the Waldstrasse. He told us the lady bought everything in his wagon when he called at Schloss Hornberg. And for a goodly sum, too.’ He clapped his companion’s shoulder. ‘I told you, Friedrich! We shall make our fortunes here. Embroidered velvet, Venetian lace and silver-gilt thread… the baron’s bride will buy it all!’

‘No doubt she will,’ Herr Tritten said. ‘With the baron so very ill the Lady Elisabeth may do as she pleases.’

‘Ill?’

‘He is weak, they say, and failing.’

‘Well, of course he is,’ the first merchant brayed. ‘That filly of his must be exhausting!’ Both men laughed, but Herr Tritten frowned as he wiped a splash of beer from the merchants’ table. The baron was a kindly lord, as far as lords went, and his ill health begat real sorrow among the people. He had done his best to heal his lands in the months since the fighting had ended, supporting the villagers in their efforts to restore fields that had lain neglected and rebuild what had been destroyed. Now, however, it was whispered that the young baroness had taken charge. There were already rumours of raised taxes. No doubt Herr Tritten wondered who would really pay for the lady’s embroidered velvet, Venetian lace and silver-gilt thread. His frown deepened when he noticed Greta.

‘Can I help you, fräulein?’ He bunched his polishing rag in his fist and strode across the greasy boards, glaring at Greta as he would a rat come to nibble his customers’ boots.

Greta set her chin. ‘Is my brother here?’

‘Maybe he is and maybe he isn’t.’

Rob Mueller’s saw-mill, where Hans worked, had been empty when she passed it. No water sluiced down the channel to feed the wheel, no saw knocked and clattered. If Hans was not at the mill he would be at the Thorn. Herr Tritten knew it as well as she.

‘I must speak with him.’

‘In here? Not likely.’

‘Perhaps you can fetch him for me…?’

‘You think I have time for that?’

‘Then let me in and I shall find him.’

‘A woman, alone, in my tavern? I think not. Come back when you have a husband to accompany you, fräulein. I won’t have any trouble here.’

Greta narrowed her eyes. ‘Trouble?’

‘Trouble.’ His gaze scraped over Greta’s bare toes, peeping out from beneath her skirts, then flicked to an old horseshoe beaten into the tavern door. ‘And more, besides.’

Hans had once laughingly told Greta there were more horseshoes hidden beneath the doormat. Witches cannot step over iron, Greta. I thought everyone knew that! They had both forced an uneasy laugh, aware that Herr Tritten’s wife, Barbara, who was born in Bamberg, had been a young girl during its infamous witch trials. Hundreds of people had burned in a terrifying wave of suspicion that had lasted years, only stopping when Swedish troops had marched on the town. Barbara Tritten had fled southwards with her family and started a new life in the Black Forest. But judgement and suspicion had come with her. Indeed, Greta’s father used to wryly say that when Barbara Tritten married she had given mistrust to her husband as a wedding gift.

Greta considered stepping boldly across the threshold and past Herr Tritten, or pressing her palm against one of the horseshoes, then raising it, unscathed, for him to behold. It would almost be worth it to see the look on his face. Almost. The zealous judgements of the Trittens were one thing, the whisperings of witchery and fire divulged by Ingrid and Brigitta that morning quite another. Bamberg was not the only place that innocent women had been arrested and burned. Greta had seen it herself, right there in the now-peaceful Marktplatz. And so, instead of doing what she very much wanted, Greta turned away and hurried down the street, dodging rough stones and puddles of muck, silently cursing her brother with every step. Why couldn’t he, just this once, be where he was supposed to?

She crossed one of the village’s three stone bridges and entered the heart of Lindenfeld, the Marktplatz, a large, cobbled square bordered by the Rathaus – where the Council had their brightly polished rooms and the watchmen their shadowy dungeon – Lindenfeld’s only inn, and the steeply roofed, half-timbered homes of the wealthiest villagers. Behind them, the church’s spire rose against the blue sky and the mountains.

An ancient linden tree, the village’s namesake, stood guard before the Rathaus, its branches spring green. Greta trailed her fingertips through the lowest leaves as she passed beneath it. Three children played in the fountain nearby, scooping cool water from old stone and flicking it, shining, into the air. They laughed as it rained down on them, skidding and sliding on the wet cobbles. She and Hans had used to do the same when they were children. Before…

She shifted, flicked her eyes to the church, stately and surrounded by its congregation of yew trees. There was, of course, another person who could tell her how much her brother owed. Herr Hueber, as the village’s bürgermeister, would doubtless be aware of not only every pfennig that Hans was yet to pay, but every coin that was owed in Lindenfeld, down to the poorest labourer. He had managed the village’s assets and accounts, including its lands, for over thirty years. It was Herr Hueber who would, when the time came, collect the village taxes for the Baron, as well as for the Baron’s lord, the Duke of Württemberg himself. When it came to numbers there was no one who could match Herr Hueber’s scythe-like mind. Surely, then, a man with such knowledge and experience would know better than to lend coin to Hans?

The bürgermeister’s house lay on the far side of the square, its shutters freshly painted, its timber embellishments standing stark against whitewashed wattle-and-daub. It was a perfectly respectable, even welcoming, home. And yet Greta hesitated, unwilling to leave the linden’s shade. When it came to it she would very much rather not speak to Herr Hueber, and not only because she dreaded to learn the true depth of her brother’s poor choices. Keen-minded and esteemed Herr Hueber might be, but where others saw wisdom and generosity, Greta saw only greed. He also had a way of looking at a woman that was not entirely different to the way Herr Kalbfleisch, the butcher, regarded a cow on slaughter day: from every angle, top to bottom.

Curse Hans. It had been so long since he had owed anyone money. Not since he had sold their father’s axes, and he had promised her then – he had promised her – it would not happen again. And then to seek help from Herr Hueber, of allpeople…

There was nothing for it. She must know the truth. Greta took a deep breath, marched across the square, and knocked upon Herr Hueber’s finely made door.

‘Good day, Anna,’ she said as the door swung open and a thin, anxious-looking maidservant peered out. ‘I need to speak with your master. Is he here?’

The girl smiled wearily as she swung wide the door. ‘I’m afraid not, Greta. He went to Hornberg this morning.’

‘Do you know when he will be back?’

‘I couldn’t say.’ Anna’s gaze flicked over Greta with interest. ‘Is anything amiss?’

‘Not at all,’ Greta muttered, forcing a weary smile of her own. ‘Not at all.’

  3  

WINTER APPLES

The viscount was soon after blessed with not one daughter, but two. One was fair as snow, her hair black as the ebony window frame, while the other’s hair was red as blood. The first was named Liliane for the pale flower, and the second Rosabell, the rose.

*   *   *

Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour.

The words kept rhythm with Greta’s feet on the road home, a litany against the dread that had seized her heart the moment Brigitta Winter first spoke of Hans’s debt. Her brother was fickle and, she thought regretfully, rather selfish. But with ginger, honey, cinnamon and flour she could bake, and protect herself from fickleness and selfishness alike.

Ginger, honey, cinnamon and flour.

It was clear what must be done. What Greta had always done to solve a problem.

Bake.

It had begun with hunger. The years directly after the battle at Nördlingen, when Württemberg was occupied by Imperial armies, had been the hardest. There had never been enough to eat. She had foraged for acorns and beechnuts, mushrooms and berries, and climbed trees to find nests. How sorry she had been to steal the birds’ babies away. But hunger, gnawing and relentless, had her in its thrall. She had resolved to bring her mother’s vegetable garden back to life, clearing the weeds and tending the tired earth. One market day she pilfered a handful of her father’s pfennigs from beneath a loose hearthstone and stole down to the village to buy seed.

The smell of freshly baked bread had smacked into her as she stepped through the village gates, leading her, a donkey with a carrot dangled cruelly before its nose, to the Marktplatz. She had stood before the baker’s stall, inhaling and inhaling and inhaling, near losing balance with the beauty and the hunger of it. Those loaves, plump and golden against the worn linen covering the board, were all but magical; a reminder of a time before the brutal defeat at Nördlingen, before raids and war taxes and neglected fields. A time when butter cakes and apple cakes and biscuits sprinkled with sugar as fine as new-fallen snow would lie thick on the baker’s board. A time before her mother had died. But then Greta spied the three gingerbread hearts, precious beyond measure in that season of wanting. And everything changed.

She had known exactly how those hearts would taste. Soft with honey, rich with spices. In the witch’s house Greta had tasted gingerbread to make the heavens sigh and the heart sing. It was not until that moment, as she stood starving before the baker’s stall, that she realised how her soul had longed for it.

She had considered thieving one. Snatching it from right under the baker’s soft, floury hands. Stealing away to the old churchyard where she might savour every crumble of spice, every sprinkle of cinnamon. But she realised, then, that she knew gingerbread. She had made it before, and even more beautiful than the hearts on the baker’s table. And if she went even further into her memories – the ones she tried her best to forget – she could picture other things, too. A tiny house made entirely of gingerbread and set in its own pretty glade. An oven, fiery hot. A cage.

And a book.

The shingled rooftops of Rob Mueller’s mill and outbuildings came into view across the meadow, half-hidden by the lindens lining the road. Greta barely saw them. She was thinking of the village’s erstwhile healer, Frau Elma, who had not seemed to notice Greta’s poorly hemmed skirt or her bare feet as she stood before her market board that long-ago morning, thoughts hungry and ginger-blazed. Frau Elma did not treat her as though she were too young to understand, or too poor to matter. She had listened carefully to Greta’s plans for the garden, her lovely, wrinkly hands tying the little packs of seeds with string, and had not stopped listening when Greta asked about the cost of her board. Perceiving it was too great for a ten-year-old to manage, she had offered up terms for sharing it – a pfennig for a third – and smiled as Greta nodded solemnly in agreement. A pfennig was well within the generosity of the jar beneath the hearthstones.

‘We’ll do fine together, I think,’ Frau Elma had said. ‘Do you mind me asking what it is you’ll sell?’

Greta took a breath, unable to believe that the tiny beginnings of her plan, as small and insignificant as the seeds in her apron pocket, were beginning to unfurl.

‘Gingerbread.’

Greta left the road and veered onto the bridge, distracting herself from the pain that always came with thoughts of Frau Elma by looking over the supplies back at the house with her mind’s eye. The sacks of flour and garners of spices were, thankfully, nearly full. She had replenished her stocks the last time she had sold at the market at Hornberg, loading the little cart Rob Mueller had lent her with enough ingredients to see her through till autumn. It had seemed foolish at the time, to hoard so much away; the war was over, after all. Now she was grateful for her caution.

‘Täubchen!’

Greta, halfway over the bridge, paused and peered over the railing. Christoph Mueller stood thigh-deep in the river, a stalk of grass between his teeth and a fishing pole in his hands.

‘Will you fish with me?’ he called.

Christoph’s father, Rob Mueller, had been Greta’s father’s truest friend. His mill perched prettily on the bank of a smaller channel adjoining the Schnee, surrounded by a modest house and outbuildings, including the saw mill where Hans (occasionally) found employ. Greta loved the mill – the haze of willows along its banks, the old waterwheel and the steady flow of its industry. She had grown up playing in Rob’s fields, holding his large, dusty hand when she was very small, then doing the same for his son.

‘You do realise that some of us must work, don’t you, Christie?’ She smiled as he clambered up the bank, breeches soaking, grass sticking to his bare feet.

‘Of course. Haven’t I been out in the fields all day?’ He pulled himself up onto the bridge, dripping and grinning. ‘But you know what they say: if you’re too busy to fish, you’re too busy.’

At eighteen, Christoph still bore traces of youth: a smattering of spots on his forehead, a loping awkwardness to his long limbs. He had widened through the shoulders of late and gained his father’s prodigious height, but even so he still seemed the sweet little boy who once toddled in Greta’s wake.

‘Walpurgis is two days away,’ she said, flicking at a piece of grass stuck to his shoulder. ‘Believe me, I’m too busy.’

‘Nonsense.’ He drew a kerchief from his pocket and unwrapped it, revealing three dried apples. ‘I found these in the cellar. Last of the winter. Sit down a moment and share them.’

He held the apples out to her. They were small and rather wrinkled, their skins red against the whiteness of the kerchief. At once Greta was back in the beech tree. The slice of the knife and three drops of crimson blood. Snow, and a wash of sickness and fear.

‘Are you not well, Täubchen?’

The name – as a child Christoph had stumbled over Margareta, adopting instead Peter’s sweet-name for Greta, little dove, as his father had – brought her back to herself. ‘I’m fine, Christie. It’s been a long day, that’s all.’

‘All the more reason to rest, then.’

The fruit did look tempting. Remarkable, really, that they had lasted so well. Greta’s own small store had dwindled weeks ago. And she was hungry. Tired, too. Tired of her own thoughts, which burbled on, insistent as the river, and at the thought of baking all night alone with nothing to still them.

‘Very well.’ She followed Christoph along the bridge and sank down beside him, their feet dangling companionably over the water.

‘It’s not like you to leave your oven so close to Walpurgis,’ Christoph observed, cracking an apple between his teeth and handing her the rest. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Looking for Hans.’ She took a careful bite and found the flesh still firm and juicy.

‘Aye? What’s he done now, then?’

Greta gave him a pointed look.

‘Da always says he keeps Hans on for your father’s sake. And for yours. If not for that he would have seized your brother by the seat of his britches and thrown him into the river long ago.’ Christoph took another smacking bite and grin-chewed. ‘What’s he done?’

Greta found she was tired, too, of hiding her brother’s mistakes. ‘He owes Herr Hueber money.’

‘How much?’

‘I don’t yet know,’ she said miserably. ‘But I’m hoping I can bake enough to pay it back.’

He gave her a playful nudge. ‘Chin up, Täubchen. Your baking’s the best in Württemberg, after all.’

Greta looked out over the river. ‘Perhaps I should do nothing. Let Hans give up the holding and leave.’

‘Nonsense. This is your home.’

‘Is it, though? I found Brigitta Winter in the woods this morning. She was afraid of me, Christie. Afraid. She’s heard the stories about the storm and Herr Drescher’s spelt. Ingrid said Brigitta’s fear was entirely reasonable, on account of my hair being red.’

Christoph managed not to laugh. ‘Your hair’s not really red.’ He held what remained of his apple against her hair. ‘I’d say it’s more brown…’

She shoved him away. ‘It’s red enough. I was a fool to think they would forget. Even after all these years… I should have left after Papa died. There was no reason to stay. I have no family but Hans and I never shall—’

‘That’s a little dire, don’t you think?’

She looked sideways at him. ‘I’m twenty-two, Christie, and I have no dowry. Even a child like Brigitta understands no one is ever going to ask for me.’

‘Then why did you stay?’

‘Because… because the mountain is the only home I know. Sometimes I feel it is all that holds my feet to the earth.’

Christoph finished the apple and tossed the core into the river. It bobbed sadly away.

‘Well, if we’re being all dreary and hopeless,’ he said, ‘I suppose I should tell you that things aren’t so pleasant on the other side of the river, either.’

Greta frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s Da,’ he said gloomily. ‘He’s not himself at all. Just yesterday I overheard him arguing with some men at the mill.’

‘Arguing? Rob?’ Greta tried to imagine the man she called ‘uncle’, who smelled comfortingly of linseed oil and clean linen and who was quite possibly the calmest person she had ever met, arguing like a labourer at harvest time. ‘Who were the men?’