17 Otto

17

Otto

When she starts to pull away, I follow her, my lips unwilling to part from hers. She giggles, swatting at me, but I do not relent until we've shifted positions. Her hair splays on the bed, golden curls unfurling over white linens as my arms frame her shoulders. She watches me languidly, eyelids hooded, mouth slightly parted, as if she is merely waiting for me to draw a gasp from her lips. The heady aroma of the salve she used weaves around us, drawing us together.

I drop my face closer to hers, the end of my hair tickling her upturned cheeks. When I lift my hand to her face, my fingers tremble.

There is fear in love.

That was something I knew from an early age, because love can always be lost. It can be twisted, bent until it's broken. It can sour, or poison, or kill.

There is fear in love, because love is so deeply powerful, and anything powerful can hurt. It's like a flame, casting light even as it burns.

And our love is worth burning for.

She looks up at me through her lashes, and I know she can feel what I feel, understand me even without words. And it's not because of magic.

Only love.

I lower my lips to hers. We have kissed with passion, with urgency. On the night before we bonded, when Fritzi made the meadow burst in blooms, there was a frantic nature to our mutual claiming, a desire to drown out all the noise and exist only within each other. But now, even though the world is chaos and turmoil, even though we don't know what tomorrow will bring, or the next day, or the next, even though nothing is settled—

I take my time.

I savor the taste of her. The softness. I draw the gasps from her lips, and I make her eyes widen with desire, and I relish in the warmth of her wrapped around me.

Even when she begs, her body and her lips both calling for release, I take my time. My eyes don't leave hers, and when she falls, shattering, I am there to cradle her in my arms and make her whole again.

We avoided the city of Frankfurt as we traveled, but there's no denying that the deeper we go into the state of Hesse, the fewer people we see. We near the ancient Roman fortification limes and skirt the town of Altenstadt. Literally named "old city," this area was built upon Roman ruins.

On the other side there's…nothing. Open fields—some plowed, some fallow—give way to groves of trees, the forests thickening as we venture farther past the limes. These verdant lands are bursting with the promise of spring, the trees young and nothing at all like the ancient wonders of the Black Forest so many days away to the south.

"The Roman campaigns against the Germanic tribes happened in the decade or so before and after Christ's birth," I tell Fritzi as our horses weave through the trees. "This was the dawn of Christianity, really, but also the dawn of Germany as a nation. The two are linked."

"Mmhm," she mumbles, only half paying attention.

"It was all strategy. The Romans wanted to hold Gaul—which is basically France, now—but the Germanic tribes were pressing in from the east, helping Gallic tribes. But the thing about the Romans is, they didn't just try to conquer. They tried to convert."

"Sounds familiar," Fritzi mutters, and I give her a little nod of acknowledgment. The way the Romans worked was insidious and ingenious. Converting former tribe members to Roman citizenship and giving them a stake in the Empire meant that the conquered had a reason to not rebel and establish a new status quo.

"But they couldn't get much past the Rhine," I continue. "Romans didn't expect the Germanic tribes to team up. They'd been used to dividing and conquering, but they couldn't divide the Germanic tribes. So they set up forts and towns and invented a border so they could pretend they weren't defeated. Just consider for a moment the Battle of Teutoburg Forest!" I laugh, despite myself. "It took the Romans more than a hundred years before they dared try to attack again after that battle!"

I glance up and meet Fritzi's eyes. I can tell she has no idea what battle I'm speaking of and could care less what I'm saying, but it's still sweet to see her endearing smile as I ramble.

"My point is, it's not just that the Romans stopped invading the Celtic lands here," I say, waving my hand toward this new forest. "It's as if all of civilization vanished."

She frowns, thinking, her brow furrowing in little lines under the shadow of her hood. "If the ancient tribes couldn't hold the land, perhaps Perchta is ensuring that no one does."

Wind whistles through the trees, early daffodils poking up through the undergrowth, but little else. Brigitta calls us to a halt when we crest a small hill, the trees clearing out to more open land. She points silently as I draw my horse up to hers.

Scattered at the base of another hill are the remains of houses and other small buildings. Crumbling stone foundations support a few rotting timbers, and there's clearly a worn path connecting the homes in the small village to one another, but it's been abandoned for at least a century, I suspect.

"Looks like someone tried to live here," Fritzi says, her voice hushed.

"What happened to them?"

Cornelia, on the other side of Brigitta, shrugs. "Could have been a plague. Could have just been a small village that died out. It happens."

"Could have been the goddess," Brigitta growls.

"Or ghosts," Alois chimes in cheerily.

Cornelia rolls her eyes. "It's not ghosts."

"You don't know that. It could be." Alois tilts his chin defiantly.

I glance at Fritzi, who shares my concerned look. There's a feeling to this area that reminds me of the first time we entered the Black Forest together. The goddesses tested us then, ultimately granting us entry to their domain.

This land feels the same. A goddess's chosen land, one we are not yet proven worthy to enter.

"Give me a moment," Fritzi says, wheeling her horse around and heading back to the trees nearby. She has to stand up in her stirrups to reach the low-hanging mistletoe adorning the oaks, but she grabs several bunches and tosses them to me to hold before she dismounts.

"Good idea," Cornelia says. "Let's break here."

Everyone gathers, hobbling the horses. Alois and I share some dried meat while Fritzi and Cornelia weave mistletoe crowns for us all. Cornelia recites a blessing as she crowns Brigitta, but Fritzi tucks the mistletoe on my head silently. She doesn't need spells to tap into wild magic, and while none of the others know this, I do. She leans closer to me, standing on her tiptoes, and it must look like she's chanting the poem into my ear, but her lips remain silent as she brushes the tip of her tongue along the shell of my ear, nearly undoing me right there among the trees in front of them all.

My body stiffens, and she huffs a little laugh at me, her breath warm and sweet and deliciously cascading over my skin, and I have to bite back a growl, bunch my fingers into fists so that I don't grab her and carry her into the dark forest and do things I'm certain none of our gods would approve of.

Once everyone has the protection of mistletoe in their hair, we remount and head past the abandoned village and toward the hill beyond, the area Cornelia and Brigitta agree has to be where the ancient tribal people rebuked the Romans. We stop at a low round hill at the base of a ridgeline.

"There's nothing here," Fritzi says. "I thought…"

I nod, agreeing with her. I'd expected ruins. Living in Trier, I was surrounded by the mark of the Romans—the Porta Nigra and the basilica both were centuries old, built when Christianity was still new. Builders occasionally found stores of Roman coins in the earth—immediately donated to the church, of course, unless no one saw—and there were still a few Latin graffiti marks on stones that had been pilfered from the baths and reused to build new homes.

But this?

This is nothing. Just a hill.

A perfectly circular hill rising from the flat meadow before it.

I lean back on my horse, looking up at the enormous mound of dirt. There is a higher ridge behind the mound, but this hill is separate, too evenly shaped compared to the natural chaos of the nearby plateau. I dismount, digging my boot into the soil. Packed earth but not rocky.

"This is man-made," I say, peering up at the hill. Even though it's nearly noon, there doesn't seem to be any warmth from the sun in the cloudless sky.

"It's not man-made; it's too big," Brigitta starts, but Cornelia grabs her arm, staring at the hill.

"It is ," she mutters. "It's a barrow."

"A grave?" Alois snorts. "That hill is big enough to build a house on. It's huge. That's not a grave, it's—"

"It's a grave," Fritzi says, eyeing me and then looking back up the hill. "That's all that remains of the ancient tribes. A grave. A huge barrow mound marking the deaths of the people who stood against all of the Roman Empire."

"But…" Alois's voice dies off.

Once we've said it, there's no denying it. All around are softly rolling hills, but this one is too perfect, too tall, too round.

"Are we supposed to dig it up and hope we find the stone?" Alois grumbles.

Fritzi slips her hand in mine as I walk back to her. "Does Holda" I start.

She shakes her head. "This is Perchta's stone to hide. And Perchta will not make this easy."

Brigitta's voice carries as she speaks with Cornelia. "I think past this mound—that was the city proper. Up on the ridge. The maps showed it expanding that way, using the plateau for defense."

"And then this grave here, on the southern end." Cornelia frowns at the hill. "Outside the city."

"Protecting the city," Fritzi mutters.

I cast an evaluating eye at the topography. Barrows are graves of important people, the earth mounded high over bodies and treasure. It is a mark of Perchta's protection that this obvious mound has not been looted—much like the abandoned village to the west, I can only assume that grave robbers looking for treasure have been dissuaded from digging the earth up. And that certainly gives me hope that we're in the right place.

If that plateau ahead was the location of the city, then this slope along the edge could be trace remains of what may have been an ancient road. And to reach it, we have to cross by the imposing barrow.

This isn't just a settlement. There's purpose here. This is a city, and it was designed to point us to this barrow.

"I think you're right," I tell Fritzi. "This barrow is not just a grave. The location has to mean something—a warning, perhaps, to invaders, or…"

Fritzi shivers, and I wrap my arm around her, still puzzling through the odd geography. If the ditches nearby really do indicate a road, is there such a clear route southeast from this city? Glauberg once took up the entire plateau, a massive city. And a road southeast would lead to…

The Black Forest.

I shake my head. No, that's unlikely. The Black Forest is a long way from here. But…

"Why is it so misty?" Fritzi mutters, taking a few steps forward.

I turn, following her line of sight. Rather than burn away the morning mists, the rising sun is even more obscured now than it was minutes ago.

Fritzi and I instinctively reach for each other. "Cornelia!" Fritzi's voice is a sharp crack as she shouts for the priestess. Already, the mist is so thick that we can barely see the outlines of the others. When did they wander so far away?

"Don't let go," Fritzi murmurs, her grip tightening.

"Brigitta!" I call. One of the forms seems to turn, but I hear nothing. Is no one else shouting for us?

Fritzi pulls me closer to her. "This remind you of the Black Forest?" she asks.

The mists that separated us, the trials the goddesses gave us.

Our grip on one another is iron strong.

In the fog, a figure runs toward us, fast. A man, I think, with broad shoulders. Tall. Too tall to be Alois—

The gait is off. Loping, the head bobbing in the thick fog, an unnatural pace, as if the creature in the mist runs on four legs instead of two, despite the humanlike outline.

I reach for my short sword, drawing it out silently. I feel a crackle in my skin, starting at the hand that grips Fritzi's, and I know she's calling up her magic.

The creature races through the mist, swirls of dense, cloudy air rippling around it.

It passes in a blur, and I catch only the barest hints of a humanoid face, of darkness, of streaming white hair. Fritzi and I circle, keeping the racing creature in sight. Why didn't it attack us? It's almost like the… thing , whatever it is, ignored us entirely.

Fritzi moves so that she's at my back, facing the mound, and I look down the path, our hands gripped tight. We may have a better chance at fighting if we let go, but neither of us is willing to do that.

The mists roil, surge forward. The creature is racing back toward us. Ah, I think. It scouted around before it picked us as its target.

"Something coming down," Fritzi chokes out, her voice tight. I glance over my shoulder, past her head, and see something else, bobbing and weaving through the fog, as if it were on a sailboat in rocky water.

I turn and stagger back, choking on my own horror . The fast-moving too-large shape of the creature that had been racing toward me is here. Right in front of me.

What I thought was hair is fur, white and tawny, cascading in a long frame over a monstrous skull. The creature watches me through yellow eyes speckled with black pupils. Its lower jaw is wider than its upper face, as if someone removed the creature's bottom teeth, stretched them disproportionately, and then jammed the bloody jaw back onto its skull. A long orange and black tongue flops out of the uneven mouth, stinking drool hot enough to steam, mingling with the heavy mist.

The creature pants, watching me, its yellow eyes narrowed. Its whole chest heaves, and that's when I notice the horns—six of them. Two are long and straight, like a young roe deer's antlers protruding from its ridged and furry forehead. Two more curl like rams' horns around each floppy ear, and then there is another set, sharp as scythe blades, sticking out of the back of the monster's head.

The front arms of the creature point out and down, like two sharp walking sticks that help the odd beast remain upright. The creature watches me, panting heavily, its body rocking, the sharp ends of its forearms tapping so they don't sink into the ground.

What is strangest of all, though, is that the creature's teeth look human. Teeth on a monster should be fanged like a bear's or pointed like a goat's. They should be black or bloody; they should foam; they shouldn't be so normal . The creature's protruding lower jaw is lined with teeth that are straight and white and boxy. Unbidden, I run my tongue over my own teeth.

The creature mimics me, its long, snakelike orange tongue whipping out, slithering over the white molars as if to emphasize how alien the creature is in all ways except its teeth.

The monster slobbers, its tongue lolling as it makes some sort of gurgling sound, some attempt at speech through such a mismatched jaw.

"What do we do?" I gasp at Fritzi, unable to take my eyes off the monster standing in the fog in front of us.

"I've got two in front of me; how many do you have?" she asks, her voice tight.

"One, but it's big. And fast."

I can feel her magic seething around us, through us, but the creatures do not attack. And we are not willing to make the first blow.

"What are they doing?" I hiss through clenched teeth. I dare a glance behind me. There are two creatures in front of Fritzi, one of which seems to be nothing more than a floating head, pale, ghostly, and almost beautiful, with exaggerated feminine features, white-blond hair that disappears into the fog. The other is short and stubby, with one set of horns that would seem large except they sit atop a face that seems to have been melted and stretched grotesquely long, a sharp chin sticking out at a curve like a crescent moon.

"I think…" Fritzi swallows. "I think these are Perchta's guardians."

I turn back, eyeing the one facing me. It vibrates in constant short motions, like a fighter ready to throw a punch, but it doesn't move closer to me.

"At the end of the year, some of the old covens celebrate Perchtenlauf," she tells me, her voice coming out strangled. "My mother told me about it. Villagers wear masks to scare off winter."

"These are more than masks."

"I know ." Stress makes her snap. "And we are not in winter."

I've never heard of such a tradition, but as a Christian, there are Karneval masks worn during Lent, wooden things that are meant to scare away the devil. And despite the archbishop decrying the tradition, some mothers still tell their children about Krampus, and some fathers don scary masks and pretend to steal their misbehaving children while Saint Nicholas gives gifts to the good ones.

I have a feeling that no mask could compare to these monsters.

And while these beings are terrifying, they still aren't attacking. I tug Fritzi's hand, and she takes my meaning, stepping with me as we shift left. The creatures watch us, but do not attack. They do, however, close ranks, the three of them forming a semicircle with the mound behind us.

"Do they want us to go up the barrow hill?" Fritzi asks.

"I think so." We take another step closer. The circle of monsters tightens. We take a tentative step away, to the south, and the large one with the uneven jaw growls until we are another step nearer the barrow.

"The mistletoe," Fritzi says, leaning against me. "They don't attack us because of the protection of the mistletoe."

I wonder if Fritzi's crown of green leaves and white berries is different from the ones Cornelia made. Perhaps Fritzi using wild magic did something to separate us from the others, or perhaps they are all being herded by monsters toward the barrow.

We take several steps away from the monsters. The ground underfoot is uneven now as we are herded sideways up the hill.

More monsters join, all of them pushing us higher, higher…

We reach the top of the barrow, Fritzi and I at the very apex, surrounded by more than a dozen monsters, each more hideous than the last.

And then the ground gives way, and we fall straight down into the grave.