“Anything! Anything!”
“Hexegot hides her cursed items here, and they pain us so. Sadly, my daughters and I are bound to this lake.” She turns and raises her hand.
The little nixie’s sprout wings and fly above the water, only to be yanked back by watery chains that appear out of nowhere.
“We wish to escape this cursed lake and be free. If I help this human, will you promise to release our chains after you defeat Hexegot?”
“How? Please, just help him.”
Brahm’s pulse stops beating against my fingers pressed against his neck. Dread sets in, and I scream, cry, and shake all at the same time.
“You will know how to free us, my goddess, I’m sure of it.” The nixie extends her hand. “Do we have a deal?”
“Yes!” Trembling, I take her hand. “Please!”
I sit back and let the nixie wrap her webbed hands around Brahm’s neck. She sings a song in a language I’ve never heard, and a warm light protrudes from Brahm’s wound. The bleeding slows to a stop, and his skin grows back together. I press my fingers against my cheeks as I watch with wide eyes, hoping it works. Brahm’s face even fills with color once more as he draws in a deep breath.
The mother nixie nods at me and dives back into the water. I spring to place my hand on his chest, which rises and falls. I release a sob of joy and kiss his forehead.
“Thank you!” I shout and then turn back to Brahm.
His eyes blink open, and he gasps. Overcome with happiness, I collapse and wail against his shoulder. Brahm wraps his arms around me.
“Did it work? Are you alright?” I ask, leaning back to touch the smooth brown skin of his neck.
He nods and grins. “I’m beyond alright. You’re naked on top of me.”
A choir of giggles erupts from the nixies.
“We’ll leave you two,” the lead nixie says. “If it helps, we believe in you, Gisela. Good luck.”
“Thank you.”
The water-nixies descend into the cursed lake.
“I should hit you.” I turn back to Brahm to pat his cheek with little fake slaps. “Scaring me like that.”
I lean down for a kiss. Brahm holds me close, letting his hands wander down my backside.
“Freckles, you’re freezing,” he says when I stop kissing. “Let’s get you dressed and warmed by a fire. We’ll come up with a plan to get into the castle.”
I slip on my dress and boots. We fill up our canteens, and I help Brahm rinse the blood off his face and neck. I scrub his skin, attempting to erase the memories of him almost dying.
“Hey.” He grabs my hand and kisses it. “In the midst of all that, did you say you love me?”
A smile spreads across my face as I grow warm inside. “I did. I do. I think I always have.”
Brahm wraps his arms around me and nuzzles my neck. “You don’t know how happy that makes me.”
I giggle and kiss his cheek. “Let’s find somewhere to rest. You lost a lot of blood.” I stand and help him toward the path of ashes. “Come on.”
The Weaver’s House
I GRIP BRAHM’S ARM AS WE hike the mountain and return to the path of ashes. Through another expanse of woods, it leads us up the Glass Mountain. The air gets cooler the higher we go, and flurries of snow fill the air. I make Brahm eat some more of the fruit and nuts from his satchel to regain strength.
We cleaned Brahm’s neck and face, but the front of his green shirt is soaked in dark crimson. The image of blood gushing from his throat flashes in my mind.
Brahm catches me staring at his neck and rubs my hand. “I’m fine. I’m here.”
The sun is getting low, dropping the temperature even further. We search for a clearing to rest and build a fire. We haven’t seen the fog in a while, just the path and thick woods.
“It makes me more nervous to not know where it is.”
“Look.” Brahm points to a structure in the forest.
Low, stone walls covered with ivy stand amongst the trees. A crumbling brick chimney protrudes at the center.
“Ruins,” Brahm says as we approach them. “Of a house?”
We step over what was once a threshold and wander through the ancient building. Trees appear to have burst through the brick floor while ivy and moss course along the low walls. An ornate iron table still sits in what was once a hallway, down which are the remains of rooms.
Most are nothing but crumbled stones and overgrown plants. In the farthest room, a large object entangled in vines sits under a fallen tree. It nearly takes up the entire space. Wooden planks form the frame of the structure with a harness, reed, and beams.
Brahm and I crouch to lift branches, letting the remainder of sunlight illuminate the wooden object.
“What is it?”
I lift a few more blankets of ivy. “It’s a loom. A large one for making tapestries.”
My mind races with the Sanctuary tapestries and the otherworld.
“It’s amazing it survived this long.” Brahm comes closer to look and takes my hands, rubbing them in his. “Your hands are cold, Freckles. Let’s make a fire.”
We amble down the hallway, and I trip over something sticking out of the floor.
“Are you alright?” Brahm kneels next to me.
A rim of light reflects on a wide copper ring sticking up from the vines. Brahm pats and knocks on the floor, creating a hollow, wooden sound.
“It’s a door,” he says.
I help him clear away the vines and debris. We both tug on the cold, metal handle, and the trapdoor creaks open. Inside is a storage area for the weaver who lived here. Extra spools and shuttles of thread, bobbins, and weaving forks rest neatly near a pile of tapestries.
Brahm lifts and files through a few of the fabric artworks. “They look exactly like those in the Sanctuary,” he says, raising his eyes to me.
He’s right. I flip through the tapestries myself and gasp. They contain the fairy tale stories we grew up with: Snow White, Briar Rose, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, and more. One stands out. One I’ve never seen before.
“This one’s different.” I gesture to one depicting a man with bright red hair and a white staff leading a woman and child through a snowy mountain pass.
“You’re right. I don’t know what story that is. How’d they all get here?”
“I think they were made here.” I gesture to the room. “The loom, the tools…the weaver lived here. The question is, how did the others end up in the valley?”
“I always heard they were hung there by Bergot herself,” Brahm says with a shrug.
“Yeah.” I flip through the tapestries once more. “I never told anyone, but when I was young, I thought I saw the images moving as if they were showing me a story. I would close my eyes and tell myself I was crazy. Then, when I was in the otherworld, it was like a tapestry come to life.”
Brahm touches my shoulder. “What does it all mean?”
“I’m not sure. Mother Holle said something about their stories—the Offerings’ stories—being woven into eternity. There must be a connection to this place.” I rummage my hand through the weaving tools once more. “Hmm.”
“What?”