Four weeks had passed.
Tonight, the hunt would ride again.
With a shaky breath, Serilda slammed the door shut.
Chapter 7
She had been trying not to think of the night raven as dusk slid away to darkness, but the chilling visitor maintained a hold over her thoughts. Serilda shivered each time she pictured those empty sockets where glossy black eyes should have been. The missing patches of feathers on its wings when it had taken to the air. Like a dead thing. A forsaken thing.
It felt like a bad omen.
Despite her efforts to appear jolly as she prepared the evening bread for her and Papa, she could feel his suspicions frosting the air of their small cabin. He could surely tell that something was bothering her, but he hadn’t asked. Probably he knew he wouldn’t get an honest answer if he did.
Serilda considered telling him about the bird, but what was the point? He would only shake his head at her wild imagination again. Or worse—get that distant, shadowed look, like his worst nightmare had come to call.
Instead, their talk was empty as they each sipped at their parsnip stew flavored with marjoram and veal sausage. He told her that he had been given a job laying bricks on the new town hall that was being built in Mondbrück, a small city to the south, which would pay enough to last them until the spring. Work was always slow in the winter, when parts of the river froze over and the water flowed too slowly to create enough force for the waterwheel to power the millstones. Papa used the time to sharpen the stones and make any repairs to the equipment, but this late in the season, there was little to do until the snow thawed, and he was usually forced to find work elsewhere.
At least Zelig would appreciate the exercise, she said. Traveling to and from Mondbrück every day was sure to help keep the old horse agile for a little longer.
Then Serilda told him how excited little Gerdrut was over a wiggly milk tooth—her first. She’d already picked out a space in the garden where she would plant it, but was worried that the soil would be too hard in the winter and it wouldn’t allow her new tooth to grow in nice and strong. Papa snickered and told Serilda that when she’d lost her first milk tooth, she’d refused to plant it in the garden, instead leaving it out on the front step alongside a plate of biscuits, in hopes that a tooth witch would come and steal both the tooth and Serilda away on a night of adventure.
“I must have been so disappointed when she didn’t come.”
Her father shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. The next morning, you told me the wildest tale of your journeys with the witch. Took you all the way to the great palaces of Ottelien, if I remember right.”
And on and on, each of them saying nothing at all, and her father’s gaze becoming more speculative as he watched her over the rim of his bowl.
He had just opened his mouth, and Serilda was certain he was preparing to ask her what was the matter, when a knock sounded at the door.
Serilda jumped. Her stew would have sloshed over the sides of her bowl if she hadn’t been nearly finished. She and her father both glanced at the closed door, then at each other, bewildered. Out here, in the dead of winter, when the world was quiet and still, one always heard when a visitor was approaching. But they had heard no footsteps, no galloping horses, no carriage wheels in the snow.
They both stood, but Serilda was quicker on her feet.
“Serilda—”
“I’ll get it, Papa,” she said. “You finish your meal.”
She tipped up the bowl, slurping at the last dregs of stew, then dropped it onto her chair as she crossed the room.
She opened the door, and promptly drew in an icy breath.
The man was broad-shouldered and smartly dressed, and he had an iron chisel jutting from his left eye socket.
Serilda had barely registered the sight when a hand grabbed her shoulder, pulling her back. The door slammed shut. She was swung around to face her father, his eyes wild.
“That was—what—tell me that man wasn’t a … a …” Papa had gone ghostly white. Whiter, actually, than the ghost on their doorstep, who had been rather dark-skinned.
“Father,” Serilda whispered. “Calm yourself. We must see what he wants.”
She started to pull away, but he held tight to her arms. “What he wants?” he hissed, as if the idea were ludicrous. “He is a dead man! Standing at our door! What if he is … is one of his?”
One of his. The Erlking’s.
Serilda swallowed, knowing, without being able to explain how she knew, that the ghost was indeed a servant of the Erlking’s. Or, a confidant of sorts, if not a servant. She knew little about the inner workings of the dark ones’ court.
“We must be civil,” she said firmly, proud when her voice sounded not only brave, but practical. “Even to the dead. Especially to the dead.”
Prying away his fingers, she squared her shoulders and turned back to the door. When she opened it, the man had not moved and his expression was unchanged from its calm indifference. It was difficult not to stare at the chisel or the line of dark blood that soaked into his gray-streaked beard, but Serilda forced herself to meet his good eye, which did not catch the light of the fire as one would expect. She did not think he was an old man, despite the flecks of gray. Perhaps only a few years older than her father. Again she couldn’t help but notice his clothing, which, though fine, was also a century or two outdated. A flat black cap ornamented with golden plumes perfectly coordinated with a velvet cape over an ivory jerkin. If he weren’t dead, he might have been a nobleman—but what would a nobleman be doing with a woodcarver’s tool lodged in his eye?
Serilda desperately wanted to ask.
Instead, she curtsied as well as she could. “Good evening, sir. How may we be of service?”
“The honor of your presence has been requested by His Grim, Erlk?nig, the Alder King.”
“No!” said her father, once again taking her arm, but this time Serilda refused to be pulled back into the house. “Serilda, the Erlking!”
She glanced at him, and watched his disbelief turn swiftly to understanding.
He knew.
He knew her story had been the truth.
Serilda puffed up her chest, vindicated. “Yes, Papa. I truly did meet the Erlking on New Year’s night. But I cannot imagine …” She turned back to the ghost. “What can he possibly want with me now?”
“At the moment?” drawled the apparition. “Obedience.” He stepped back, gesturing into the night, and Serilda saw that he had brought a carriage.
Or—a cage.