Page 10 of Untethering Dark

They shared two more cups together, before Johanna rose from the table, stiffened joints cracking. “Welp, duty calls. I’ve got to do my rounds, then get everyone off the mountain I can before nightfall.”

As the forest ranger donned her boots and outerwear, Astrid packed pouches of loose-leaf tea for her to take home.

“Good seeing you as always.” Johanna tipped her head, hiking poles in hand. “And thank you for the tea.”

“Don’t be a stranger.”

“Never am.”

Johanna opened the front door to leave but hovered at the threshold. Something had given her pause. When she looked back, her expression was grim again. “Be careful, will you? The poachers...”

If poachers dared drop this way, they’d pay for their greed. Astrid would make sure of it.

Her knives and ax could use some sharpening though...

Should probably break out the whetstone.

“I’ll keep a lookout for them,” she promised. “And let you know if I see or hear anything.”

That wasn’t exactly a lie. She would tell Johanna if the poachers came. But the rest...well.

Altes Geweih wasn’t the only one in this forest who could make people disappear.

While her fourth attempt at Springerle set out on the table to cool, and Hasenpfeffer simmered on the stove, Astrid poured out an offering to Altes Geweih. She saved the blood from the hare used in the stew, wasting nothing.

Nightly offerings were harder to secure during the winter when the forest critters burrowed and nestled, but Astrid had years of practice, and she knew where to look. A little tracking magic helped, too.

Cradling the cup in her hands, she said over the offering:

Flesh from flesh,

Sinew from sinew,

Bone from bone,

Blood from blood.

I give another’s.

Spare me mine.

And then she thanked the hare, her voice pitched low and reverent, grateful for the sustenance and safety it provided her.

There was a time, when she was very small, that she shed tears over the blood staining her hands. But she’d soon become a hag, just like Mutter, and between her Hexe training and the drive for survival, she steeled her heart to it. Yet it never became thoughtless. Astrid hunted abundant animal populations whenever possible, the ones that could afford a cull, so as not to upset the balance of the forest.

Hexe Mutter always commented on her choice of small game. “Tochter,” she’d tut. “Tourists flock all year round like lambs to slaughter. Use them.”

A whole human every single day?

Seemed an excessive waste of life, considering an offering the size of a squirrel appeased Altes Geweih just fine. And as much as Astrid grumbled about the ones who mistreated the forest, most visitors weren’tthatbad. They didn’t deserve to be gobbled up just for trying to enjoy nature. That, and even creatures as oblivious as the humans would notice daily disappearances. Astrid might have magic, but the humans had numbers, and that sounded like more trouble than it was worth.

Incantation finished, she took the cup outside, placing it on the old tree stump just beyond her gate.

The sun hung low in the sky.

Stretching out a hand to arm’s length, bent at the wrist with her palm facing inward, Astrid measured the amount of remaining daylight. Four fingers between the sun and the horizon—about an hour left until sunset.

She went back inside, plucking a Springerle from the cooling rack, one with an owl imprint, and bit.

---