18 Fritzi

18

Fritzi

A scream rips out of me, the noise cut off by the jarring impact of my body slamming into something dense and moist. Darkness permeates the space, the single hole above giving only barest gray-white light, and I scramble to my feet, immediately swinging around, terrified that losing my grip on Otto's hand means we're separated now.

But he's there, picking himself up from the fall. A spongy layer of moss coats the ground, pieces of it sticking to our clothes, and Otto bats chunks of it off as he looks up at the hole above our heads. It's at least twice my height over us, too far to jump, but the distance tells me we haven't fallen all the way through the barrow.

I start to shout for Cornelia, for Alois, when shapes appear over the hole.

Perchta's creatures.

I lurch back into the shadows instinctively. A dozen grotesque faces gather around the hole, backlit by the lowlight so they become horned silhouettes peering down at us. I can feel their empty eyes on my skin, but they make no move to pursue us; they simply stare, standing watch. Standing guard.

"Does this mean Perchta wants us to be here," Otto whispers, "or is this her way of killing and entombing us?"

"I don't give a damn what Perchta wants," I say. "There has to be another way out of this barrow. If there isn't, we'll make one."

"The stone could be here," Otto notes. "In which case, she led us to it. Or her guardians did."

I turn around, trying to get a better look at where we are, and I prod the connection with Holda in my mind.

Unsurprisingly, there is resistance. Like I have fallen not only into a barrow, but into a cage that bars me from her. Panic flares in me, and I look down at the moss beneath my feet, using one quick pull at wild magic to make a bundle of wildflowers grow. They launch up without hesitation, and I exhale.

I'm cut off from Holda, but not wild magic. Perchta can control access to her sister in this space, but that is all.

Resolve settles over me, and I squint, willing my eyes to adjust. We're in a circular space, moss spreading out across the floor and up over the walls, a muted green blanket that cakes the air in smells of earthiness and sealed growth.

"There." Otto points. In the far part of this space is a darker shadow—an opening.

He takes a step forward, but I stop him with a hand on his arm. "This is a tomb."

Otto's brows go up. "Yes. We knew that."

"No, I—" I spin again, looking at what I can see of this chamber, willfully ignoring the masked creatures still looming over us. "This isn't how barrows are laid out. We don't bury our dead this way anymore, but barrows are only one chamber, not—"

I wave at the doorway.

Otto's face screws up in thought. "This could not be a tomb. It could have been made to look like one to keep out interlopers. But if this is where she hid the stone, maybe it is laid out differently."

Something scratches at me. A creeping, shuddering sense of wrong.

Perchta is the goddess of rules and tradition.

She wouldn't create a barrow that didn't follow the norm. Would she?

I take a breath, fighting to level my concern. Otto is right. If this is the stone's hiding place, she could have had her champion build it in a unique way.

I rub at my temple, glaring at the doorway. The anger and certainty that swells in my chest stuns me. I'd gotten so used to feeling afraid, exhausted. But this kick of surety and righteous fury temporarily yanks me away from the reality of what we're facing. This is invigorating, and I feel more in control than I have in weeks. Months, maybe.

A quick rummage in my satchel reveals a small jar half-empty of balm. I make a witchlight of it, and the steady glow creates a bubble of light around Otto and me.

"Stay behind me," I tell him as I walk forward.

His arm swings out, his sword already bare in his other hand. "I don't think—"

"Otto, this place is steeped in Perchta's magic. There may be things you can slice at, but for now, let me go first in case there are spells to counter."

His face sets. He wants to argue, and I love him for it, but he relents and falls in step behind me.

I enter the doorway, and a long hall twists downward, the floor giving way from moss to smooth dirt. The walls change, too, becoming stacked stones, man-made, and the hall twists, down and down, each bend making my chest wrench tighter.

How far beneath the ground are we now? And what happened to Brigitta, Cornelia, and our group? Perchta wouldn't let her guardians harm them, would she?

I shake my head. We'll find out if the stone is here. We'll get the damn thing and make our way out of this accursed place, and I'll deal with whatever Perchta did to my friends.

The hall continues down, and one more turn shows the floor leveling. I come up short, back to the wall, and peer around the corner.

I let the witchlight go out.

Otto starts to hiss, "Why—" but he stops when a yellow glow takes the space of the witchlight, coming from farther down the hall.

"There's a wider chamber," I whisper. "Lit torches. It looks like a burial room."

"So this is a tomb?"

I shrug.

"Who lit the torches?" Otto asks.

Another shrug. I meet his gaze and mimic throwing spells.

Ready? I mouth.

He adjusts his grip on his sword and nods.

I don't count down, don't warn him further; I dive around the corner and hurl myself into the burial chamber.

Torches rim the stacked stone walls, flames dancing orange and yellow off the piles of goods around me. Tables are strewn with gold jewelry, pieces of armor, fine leather and wool clothes. Another table is set for a banquet feast, platters and serving trays holding long-rotted food and herbs kept almost preserved by the moisture of the tomb, wine flagons and drinking horns and goblets set at places like guests are moments from coming. At the back of the room, lit by the largest torches in the space, is a bronze couch attached to a gold-plated wagon. The wall behind it has four concave dips each taller than I am, alcoves that nestle around four identical clay statues. The wagon, the torches, the statues all stand guard over a body wrapped in white linen laid in repose on the couch.

I stop, eyes waiting for any stray movement, but the only motion comes from the snapping of the torch flames. I can feel Otto next to me, just as wound, and after a beat of nothing, we both straighten.

He doesn't sheath his sword, but he takes a step toward the closest table, the one piled with jewelry. He lets out a low whistle. "How this place hasn't been robbed is a testament to Perchta's guardians."

"Don't touch anything," I say quickly.

Otto gives me a look that says, Do you think I'm that foolish?

I wave my hand. "Sorry. This place just has me on edge. We're at Perchta's mercy. And I—"

No. I won't panic.

Otto puts his hand on my shoulder. "Let's do a survey of the room—without touching anything." He smiles. "We need to know what we're dealing with."

I nod. Nod again. "All right. I'll go—"

A shout jerks me around.

Something's rushing at us, fast.

I scramble to grow a plant, or even grab at stone, but the shape moving at me is quick and determined and so I settle for flinging my hands forward.

Wind answers my call, grabs onto my wild magic surge and pushes —

—just as I realize who is flinging himself at me.

"Alois?"

But he goes hurtling through the air on my gust of wind and slams into the stones across from me with a startled cry.

He sinks to the floor, eyes wide on me—not in pain. In mixed fear and confusion and awe .

"What spell was that ?" he chirps.

"I—" My hands are still out.

I used wild magic. In front of Alois. No attempt at murmuring a spell to cover me, no way to explain it off. And it wasn't something I'm known for using, not plants or herbs.

Uncertainty and dread pin me in place.

Otto takes one of my outstretched wrists in his hand and looks at Alois. "A bonded ability we've been working on. For use against an enemy who tries to attack my witch ."

His last words end in an accusatory, expectant glare. It redirects the focus, and Alois rolls his eyes.

"To be fair," Alois says, "I thought you were one of those goddess-damned horned monsters. Not that I'm not glad you're alive, but how in the Three goddesses did you get down here?"

I lower my hands and grip them into fists against the relieved tremble that rushes through me. Otto throws me a quick reassuring look, and I smile gratefully at him.

He ducks around me and helps Alois to his feet. "How did you get down here? We were corralled down a hole by Perchta's terrors."

Alois pulls back, scowling in confusion. "So were we. I didn't see you—"

"We?" I cut in.

"We," comes another voice. Cornelia moves in from the hall, a knife in one hand. She throws me a relieved you're alive smile. "We got separated from you and the rest. Those masked creatures pushed us up the barrow hill, and we fell into a room—"

"—covered in moss?" I finish.

Cornelia's frown deepens.

Alois groans. "Perchta's messing with us. Fantastic." He sheaths the knife he'd tried to attack me with, and I start to say something about it when Otto juts his chin at the weapon.

"Don't put it away."

Alois takes it back out, but he gives Otto a searching look. "We haven't seen any of those creatures down here. No one else, really, except you."

And in an instant, his confusion turns to suspicion.

"How do we know you are you?" he asks.

Alois's usual banter makes me want to dismiss it as a joke, but his question grows roots and settles in my brain, and I clench my jaw tight.

"How do we know you're you?" I return. "And not some figment of Perchta meant to stick a blade in our backs? You already tried to attack me."

Alois's suspicion holds on me. "Say something only Fritzi would know." He blanches. " Not about Otto, I beg of you."

I can't help it. I snort. It draws a smile across Alois's face, and Otto shakes his head, but one corner of his mouth lifts.

" He has to be himself, at least," Otto says. Alois bows.

"Where's everyone else?" I ask. "Brigitta, Ignatz, the rest of—"

Alois shrugs. His face goes a bit gray, and he settles, humor sliding off. His silence hangs, and my own uncertainty wells up in it.

We don't know. The creatures could have corralled them elsewhere, or—

No. Thoughts like that won't help.

But why are the four of us down here, then? Why not the rest?

"If you're quite finished," Cornelia says, "I'd rather like to get out of here."

"Were there any teachings about how to escape a goddess-created barrow in your journey to become a priestess?" I ask.

She grunts. "If only. I'm beginning to wonder what in my teachings and position was actually useful, outside of falling in line."

My eyebrows smooth out. She's always been the closest to believing the things Holda speaks of, but I haven't heard Cornelia outright say anything of that sort before.

I manage a shaky smile. You have no idea , I want to say.

"Any god that expects obedience may do well to not be so damned obscure," Otto mutters, which makes my eyebrows shoot up.

Cornelia steps deeper into the room, moving gracefully around the tables, her focus set on the back wall.

I cross with her and stare up at the four statues.

"They're unsettling," I say.

She folds her arms. "There's something…off about them. Isn't there?"

I cock my head as Otto and Alois join us, and we stand in stillness for a moment, mimicking the statues in front of us. Each one is massive, at least six feet tall, with mistletoe headdresses, armor, a sword, and a shield all carved of the same stone. They look identical, scowling faces set for all eternity—but it isn't that there's something off about all of them. It's that there's something off about one of them.

I take a step closer. Three of the statues are a terracotta orange-red, and their texture looks rough, like sand. But one is not quite orange, not quite red. And the texture is broken up by almost minuscule pieces of something lighter, strips of—is that straw?

The moment I think that, I'm hit with memories. Mama threatening my brother and me that if we didn't behave, Perchta would come and slice open our bellies and stuff us full of straw. She threatened Dieter far more than me, but those were the tales always, haunted whispers that the goddess of rules exacted her punishment with a knife and straw. That was how Perchta threatened me, too, when she was testing me in the Black Forest before I gained entry to the Well.

"This statue," I point at the one second from the left. "The stone is in this statue."

Cornelia comes closer. "Are you sure?"

I laugh. It's humorless. "No. But there's straw in this one. It could be intentional. It has to be intentional. Right?"

No one responds. I glance at Otto, who has his sword in one hand, his eyes scanning the room, and I can see his brain working hard to figure out something else, anything else.

We don't know what the game is here. What Perchta wants with us, if the stone is even in this statue, or if this one is stuffed full of straw for another reason. It could be important to Perchta for some other purpose, something to do with this barrow, this chamber, whoever's final resting place this is.

I wish I could talk with Holda. And that thought has me grateful that she was the goddess who chose me, not the manic, unhelpful, rule-obsessed Mother.

Rules.

Perchta is the goddess of rules.

What will happen if I use wild magic on her statue? Had she planned for that in whatever traps she's set down here? I used it to fend off Alois, and nothing happened.

I can't keep speculating. Indecision could cost lives , Brigitta had said.

I shake out my hands and take a step back.

"Give me space," I say.

Cornelia and Alois back up.

They're here. They'll see me use wild magic.

I'm not sure I care anymore.

Unlike Cornelia and Alois, Otto comes closer.

I cock an eyebrow at him, and he readies his sword, but he makes no move to obey me, and I nudge him with my shoulder.

"All right, Perchta," I snarl as I face the statue. "Let's see what's so special about this statue."

I grab for the same thing I used to push away Alois: air. This is—hopefully—the resting place of the air stone, so it's only fitting. I can feel particles dancing through this space, stagnant for too long in this locked-away tomb. Air winds around the statue—it isn't set into the wall, merely cradled in this alcove, and there's enough space between the body on the couch and this wall that I can knock the statue out onto the floor.

Hands clenched, I tug, harnessing the air to pull the statue forward.

It rocks and resettles against the alcove.

Again. Again. The statue teeters in wider arcs, and part of me unwinds when it doesn't leap out to fight us like the masked creatures had. It just wobbles like any stone statue would, and sweat beads down my face with every tug, but finally, finally , the statue pitches all the way forward.

I back up as it falls. Otto plants his hand on my back and steps with me, the two of us braced for a shatter, a crack at least.

What we are not braced for is the statue's arm snapping out and catching itself before it crashes to the ground.