Page 48 of Untethering Dark

Cupping the underside of her chin, Gudariks tilted her head, drinking in the sight of her unique eyes. “If you didn’t have work to do...” He brushed his thumb lightly across her lips.

Her tattered sigh warmed his skin. “Tomorrow evening?”

“Tomorrow evening,” he agreed, though he’d not venture far from her side in the time between. He’d a promise to keep.

That night he kept vigil outside Astrid’s home.

And the mountains were silent.

Chapter Seventeen

In the gray hour before sunrise, Astrid stood at the base of a gigantic tree, her recently doffed skis leaning against a root as wide as she was tall. The trunk’s circumference put her little river-rock cottage to shame, the span of its twisted branches vining their way above the surrounding canopy, at least one hundred meters wide.

At one point in its history, the tree competed with others for sunlight. Now it as good as stood alone. The nearest trees stood just beyond its long reach.

It was an ancient tree, at least a thousand years old, but probably more, since Perchta never spoke of residing anywhere in der Schwarzwald outside its hollowed-out spaces.

Astrid laid a mittened hand to its gnarled bark—bark that bore not just the scars of time but of acid rain. And yet it was strong. It had always been strong.

She’d grown up here, sheltered beneath its branches.

A gentle vibration thrummed beneath her palm, and were it not for her mittens, it would have tickled. “Hello to you, too,” she whispered, fondly patting the bark.

A round, arched door covered in frosted green lichen opened to her right, and Mutter Perchta emerged, arms outstretched in welcome. “Tochter!” she cried, too cheerfully for the early hour. Or for Mutter in general. Perchta didn’t do perky, much less at the break of dawn, but the unusual excitement was infectious, and yesterday’s break-in did nothing to dim it.

Smiling, Astrid fell into her arms and hugged tight.

Situational necessity aside, it was a big day—the first of the final steps in her journey to becoming a hag. A cause for celebration.

“Come inside, my dear,” Perchta said, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Let’s get started.”

Roots formed pillars and natural beams inside. It was a cozy space overstuffed with sturdy hand-carved furniture, most notably a wide span of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and Perchta’s hefty worktable where she crafted all manner of spells and potions.

On the far wall hung a traditional cuckoo clock, the most modern contraption Perchta possessed, and beneath it a rocking chair made of living vines, which with gentle nudging, unfurled and pushed off from the ground, as if on stilts, allowing Perchta to reach even her highest shelves.

A small iron cauldron hung in the hearth, the brew inside steaming from a steady simmer.

Crouching, Perchta stoked the fire, keeping it at the perfect height. Not too low, not too high. Smoke vented out through an iron pipe, spelled with mundane, household magic that kept it from harming the tree and didn’t require concentration to control. It was no small thing for the tree to host Perchta and her hearth fires without distress. Or to drop its dead and dying limbs neatly at its base so that she had plenty of wood for fuel.

In return, Perchta drove away loggers and the invasive parasitic insects that would burrow into its trunk if left unchecked, and she nursed it back to health many, many times over from the ravages of pollution. It was a symbiotic relationship built on acts of service and trust. How Mutter showed love best.

With creaking knees, Perchta stood, brushing soot off her palms.

It was a lot of physical work to maintain a natural fire, but the ancient Hexe insisted upon abstaining from modern appliances, preferring the “simple” life she’d always known. Clockwork she found charming and whimsical, but the Industrial Revolution, its emergence two-to-three hundred years ago, and all that followed, was a blip in Mutter’s lifespan and she barely paid any attention to it.

Tenderly cupping her cheek, Perchta’s wolfish, yellow eyes grew misty. “Are you ready?”

“More than.” Astrid swallowed, not from fear, but from the emotion welling in her chest and tears pricking her eyes.

Perchta ladled a spoonful of brew into a tin cup. “Only take a little at a time, that’s important. Let your body adjust to the changes. Too much, too fast will kill you, so you will need to come every day for a new dose.”

Astrid nodded.

“The first dose is unpleasant,” Perchta continued with a warning, handing her the potion. “But it should get easier the more you take it. Best to shoot it all back at once, and if you want to purge, don’t. Trust me, if you can’t keep it down, you’ll have to start over, and you don’t want to start over.”

“Tastes that bad?” Astrid joked dryly, lifting the tin cup to her nose. The cloudy turquoise liquid within didn’t smell alarming. Just bitter herbs and...she sniffed again. Something sickly sweet.

“It’s more of a texture thing.” Perchta squeezed lemon into a steaming earthenware mug of hot water, followed by shavings of gingerroot. “But I had a weak stomach. Might not be so bad for you.”

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