The cemetery was acres and acres of gray headstones as far as she could see. Clusters of blue and white wildflowers were scattered among the stones and tucked among the roots of mature chestnut trees, their spring blossoms like white candlesticks among the boughs. Serilda scanned the engravings, saddened, though not surprised, to see how many of the gravestones belonged to children and newborns. She knew such was common, even in a town as prosperous as Adalheid, where disease could so easily take root in a small body. She knew of a number of women in M?rchenfeld who spoke openly about their miscarriages and babes being stillborn. But knowing the realities of life and death did not make it any easier to see.
In the distance, closer to the road, she noticed a small hill where the gravestones were not tall and exquisitely carved, but nothing more than large plain stones laid out in a tidy grid. Hundreds of them.
“What are those?” she asked, pointing.
Frieda’s expression was sorrowful as she answered. “That’s where we bury the bodies left behind by the hunt.”
Serilda’s feet stuttered and came to a stop. “What?”
“It doesn’t happen after every full moon,” said Frieda, “but it happens often enough that … well. There have been so many. We usually find them by the forest, but sometimes they’ll have been left right outside the city gates. We wait a week or so to see if anyone comes to claim them, but that’s unusual. And of course, we have no way of knowing who they are or where they came from, so … we bury them there, and hope they find their way to Verloren.”
Serilda’s hands shook. Those victims of the hunt were forever lost to their loved ones. Forever without a name or history, with no one to place flowers upon their grave or leave a drop of ale when they honored their ancestors beneath the Mourning Moon.
Was her mother among them?
“Do you … do you happen to recall if there was a young woman found about sixteen years ago?”
Frieda looked at her with obvious curiosity. “Do you know someone who was taken by the hunt? I mean, other than yourself, of course.”
“My mother was. When I was only two years old.”
“Oh, dear. I am so sorry.” Frieda took her hand and offered a sympathetic squeeze. “That, at least, is something I might be able to help with. We keep a record of every body we find. The date they were found and any distinguishing characteristics, any items that were found on their person, that sort of thing.”
Serilda’s heart lifted with hope. “You do?”
“There, see?” said Frieda, her eyes brightening. “I knew there would be something in my library that you would find useful.”
“Look,” said Leyna, pointing to a shared tombstone for Gerard and Brunhilde De Ven. There’s my great-grandparents.” She walked a bit farther, before pausing. “And my papa. I don’t normally come to visit him except during the Mourning Moon.”
Ernest De Ven. Beloved husband and father.
Stooping, Leyna plucked some butterbloom flowers and arranged them neatly on her father’s stone.
Serilda’s heart tugged. In part because she knew the sorrow of losing a parent so young, and in part because she could not lay flowers on her father’s grave.
The Erlking had stolen that from her, too.
But maybe the records of bodies would hold at least one answer for her.
Frieda gave Leyna a side squeeze as they started walking down the rows again. “There,” she said, pointing as they crested a short hill. “You can see them.”
Shoving aside thoughts of her parents, Serilda felt excitement clawing at her insides. Even from here she could tell that the stones in this back corner of the cemetery were different. Larger, older, more resplendent, shaded beneath enormous oak trees. Some were carved into statues of Velos with their lantern, or Freydon holding aloft a tree sapling. Some were covered by pillared monuments. Some stood taller than Serilda.
The closer they got, the more the age of the stones became apparent. Though the marble still shone white beneath the sun, many of the corners were crumbling and worn. The plants in this distant corner were overgrown, as if there was no one alive who cared to maintain the area around these markers.
From the way that Frieda had described them, Serilda had suspected there to be no inscriptions at all, but she saw that wasn’t true. She stepped closer, rubbing her fingers over the face of one of the stones. The death date was nearly four hundred years ago. The size of the marker suggested that whoever was buried here had been wealthy or respected or both.
But their name was missing. It was the same on the second stone. And, as Serilda made her way to each marker, she saw it was the same on them all. Birth years, death years, an occasional heartfelt benediction or a poetic verse.
But their names were absent.
If these were the resting places of royalty—perhaps even generations of kings and queens, princes and princesses—how could there be no record of them? It was as if they had vanished. From memory, from the pages of history, from their own gravestones.
“Look,” said Leyna. “This one has a crown.”
Serilda and Frieda went to stand beside her. The gravestone before Leyna did indeed have what looked to be a monarch’s crown carved into the top of the stone.
But it was not this that made Serilda suck in a startled gasp.
Leyna glanced at her. “What is it?”
Crouching before the stone, Serilda peeled away some of the ivy that had started to claim it, revealing the etching underneath.
A tatzelwurm entwined around the letter R.
“Does that mean something?” asked Leyna.
“The R could be the first initial of a name?” suggested Frieda.
Serilda tugged off more of the ivy until she could see all the stone’s face, but where the name of the deceased should have been, there was only stone, polished and smooth.
“How odd,” murmured Frieda, leaning closer and feeling the stone for herself. “It’s as smooth as glass.”
“Is it possible that—” started Leyna, before hesitating. “I mean, could the names have been erased? Perhaps someone came through and polished them away?”
Frieda shook her head. “That would mean sanding down the material, which would leave grooves where the words had been. These look like they were never engraved at all.”
“Unless they were erased with magic?” said Leyna. She spoke hesitantly, like she was afraid Serilda and Frieda might laugh at the thought.
But Serilda just looked up, meeting the librarian’s shadowed gaze.
No one spoke for a long time, considering the possibility. In the end, nobody laughed.
Chapter 36