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Chapter 5

Lotte

It took about two weeks for the men to sow the fields in Gelde. And about two hours for Lotte to sow gossip among the women of the village.

To Sigrid Strauss she whispered that Estelle was seen kissing one of the seasonal workers behind the bakery. In Elsie Ghent’s ear she dropped a few words about the money Estelle had stolen from her parents to run away with. Gossip, the Sisters would preach, was an unvirtuous habit. But Lotte was doing this for Estelle’s own good.

Everyone knew the stories of what happened to girls from little towns who ran away to the cities. The lucky ones came back home with their tails between their legs. The unlucky ones…

Lotte knew the moment the gossip made it back to Estelle’s father. The whole town did. In the blink of an eye, Mr.Hehn was flying across the square toward where a gaggle of seasonal workers were sharing a cigarette. Mr.Hehn wasn’t an imposing man, but surprise and anger were a powerful combination. He had Konrad pinned against the glass of the bakery in one furious motion. Before the younger man could react, Mr.Hehn ripped the wallet out of Konrad’s pocket.

“Thief!” Mr.Hehn spat, brandishing the wallet high in the air, even as heads started to turn at the commotion. “Damned city rabble! They’re all swindlers and cheats!” It seemed Lotte and Estelle had been wrong about Mr.Hehn never having a bad word to say.

“I didn’t take that,” Konrad announced loudly, holding up his hands in a mockery of innocence, a smirk dancing around his mouth. “Your daughter gave it to me.”

This time when Mr.Hehn lunged toward him, more men from Gelde moved swiftly in between them, holding him back while keeping the outsider in place. “You shut your lying mouth. We’ll see what you have to say when we get some officers here!”

The nearest law enforcement was two hours away in the larger town of Lintzen. But mention of police was enough to get a real reaction out of Konrad. He jerked against the men holding him, and for a second Lotte caught the edge of a memory. Of strike lines being broken open by police and—

“What’s happening?”

Estelle emerged from the bakery, dusting flour from her hands, just as the men of Gelde were marching Konrad off to be locked in the mill while officers were summoned.

Everyone’s eyes were on Konrad, so it was only Lotte who saw Estelle’s face drop into panic. Distantly, through the cacophony of angry voices in her head, Lotte wondered if she should feel guilty. Knowing she was ripping her friend’s joy away from her. But the Sisters had been telling Lotte for sixteen years that she was a wicked, viceful girl. And maybe they were right, because there was no remorse in her.

Only satisfaction.

“What’s happening!” Estelle moved to follow Konrad, but the women of Gelde who had gathered to watch the disturbance caught her first. The frisson of scandalous delight in their thoughts was at odds with the concern on their faces. Stupid girl , they thought as they fussed over Estelle. Silly, slatternly girl.

Estelle fought them, calling out Konrad’s name, even as he struggled against his own captors. Estelle’s panic crashed into Lotte’s mind, leaving her cold. Where had her panic been all the times the Sisters had dragged Lotte away to lock her in the briar pit?

The scuffling was threatening to turn into a full-blown brawl.

Lotte drew to the back of the onlookers. And suddenly she became aware of another sound. As it grew louder, and more onlookers’ ears pricked up, Lotte realized it was an automobile.

One by one, people turned, torn between gawking at the fight and whatever new entertainment this was. Nothing interesting ever happened in Gelde, let alone two things at once.

Lotte had seen automobiles before. Obviously. There was the truck that brought the newspapers and the mail once a week, for starters. And the buses that brought the workers every season.

But the automobile slowing to a stop at the edge of the town square looked like a different monster altogether. It was bigger even than Lotte’s sleeping cell in the convent. Light quivered across its inky surface like oil on water. And everything that wasn’t black metal was silver: the door handles, the discs on the wheels, and a silver ornament on the hood—a man raising an ax, frozen seconds before he’d swing the blade down into the magimek engine.

When the automobile fell silent, the whole town seemed to fall silent with it. Though Lotte could still hear the murmur of fascination in their minds.

Two men emerged from the glistening black automobile. One was tall and broad, in his late thirties, wearing a gray doublet buttoned over a white shirt, and neatly pressed gray trousers. The sophisticated suit didn’t fully hide the fact that underneath it all, he was twice as broad as any man in Gelde. The other stranger, who was considerably more compact, was clutching a briefcase in one hand and a bowler hat in the other. The buttons of a loud paisley vest strained a little under his suit as he stepped into the mud of the square, wrinkling his nose as it caked onto his well-polished shoes.

When he looked up, he seemed to realize the entirety of Gelde was watching him and tried to smooth out his features into something other than distaste. “Good morning,” he said. “We are here looking for—”

Whatever he was about to say was lost as a cry came from behind Lotte. Konrad had taken advantage of the distraction, wrenching free from the men holding him, snatching the money out of Mr.Hehn’s hand, and making a run for freedom.

He didn’t make it far.

Lotte didn’t even see the man in gray move. She just saw what happened next. As Konrad broke through the crowd, he went to shove past him. And a heartbeat later, Konrad was on the ground, unconscious. The large man was holding the wallet.

“Nicely done, Benedict.” The man in the bowler hat cleared his throat. “As I was saying, we’re looking for—”

“Give that here.” Mr.Hehn barreled forward, interrupting the bowler hat man again. “That’s mine.” The man in the gray doublet, Benedict, extended the wallet toward Mr.Hehn wordlessly. Estelle was pushing forward behind him, but her father caught her, even as she cried out protests that Konrad was innocent. That she loved him.

“As I was saying.” The bowler hat man raised his voice as Estelle struggled against her father. Lotte stepped forward swiftly, to draw Estelle back with her. If the bowler hat man was interrupted again, he looked like he might actually burst. “We’re looking for—”

“Her.” This time it was Benedict who cut the man off, his voice deep and sure, and his eyes were fixed on her. “We’re here for her.”

Lotte released Estelle swiftly. Sure that her meant Estelle.

But Benedict’s eyes followed Lotte.

“I didn’t do anything,” Lotte burst out swiftly. More eyes were turning toward her now. Both men ignored her words.

“Are you sure, Benedict?” The man in the bowler hat was looking at her with the same vaguely averse expression he’d given the mud on his shoes. Lotte knew what he was seeing. She was in badly worn clothes that barely fit anymore, with muddy bare feet and welts on her legs, and she had no business being singled out by a man who drove a car like that.

“I’m sure.” Benedict’s eyes never left her. “She’s the spitting image of her mother at that age.”

Her mother.

Just the mention of her made everything else drop away. The pain of the lashes on her legs. The cold that had crawled into her bones. The mud that stuck to her bruises.

In the tales, mothers who were forced to leave their children always gave them a token. Something to let them know they were loved, and so that they could find them again later in the story. Lotte had nothing to prove her mother had even existed, but she had still prodded at the idea over and over again, like a tongue at a missing tooth, until it ached too much to bear.

Finally, when she was old enough for the last of her baby teeth to be gone, she had admitted the truth to herself. Her mother hadn’t been forced to give her up by some wicked king or jealous immortal; she was just a woman who hadn’t wanted a daughter.

And unlike the mothers in the stories, she was never coming back for Lotte.

“You knew my mother?” Lotte took a step toward Benedict, Estelle and Konrad forgotten.

“I know your mother.” Benedict dropped to one knee in front of her, like a knight in front of a lady. Her mother was alive. The wound she had prodded at so many times as a child suddenly yawned open. “She sent me to get you.”

Benedict’s hand dropped to her shoulder. He must have said something else, because she could see his mouth moving. But Lotte didn’t hear it. The only thing she could hear was his mind. And it was filled with a girl with blonde hair who looked identical to Lotte. Except instead of ill-fitting convent clothing, she was wrapped in furs and pearls. And with that image came a wave of protectiveness fiercer than anything she had ever known. A desperation to keep her safe. Agony that he hadn’t been able to. But sureness that he would protect her daughter. It was so powerful that Lotte felt herself being dragged under by it.

And then Benedict’s hand dropped away, and his thoughts vanished.

It was like a door had suddenly closed on a conversation, cutting it off. Leaving only the murmuring, confused thoughts of the crowd around her. She felt scraped out, empty, like she’d been shoved back out into the cold.

“Lotte.” Sister Brigitta’s shrill tone shocked Lotte out of her daze. It carried over the crowd as she pushed her way to the front. “Get away from those men! Now!”

The holy woman was moving toward Lotte, but before she could reach her, the man in the bowler hat stepped between them. “Good Sister,” he said, “I regret that I have come armed with some paperwork this time. If you continue to keep Ottoline from us as you have done the past six days, this is a series of lawsuits we will happily bring against you and the Convent of the Blessed Briar.” He started listing them, holding out various pieces of paper toward Sister Brigitta, even as she tried to move past him.

Ottoline . It took Lotte a second to realize that he meant her.

“It’s not Ottoline .” Estelle seemed to understand at the same moment. “It’s just Lotte.”

Just.

Lotte’s anger and hurt at Estelle had been almost forgotten in the confusion, but it reared its head back up now. Just , she said. Like Lotte was nothing. Just an appendage of Estelle.

“Lotte.” The man in gray smiled ruefully. “Your mother will hate that nickname.”

Her mother. A woman who wore pearls and hated nicknames. In a few moments she was taking a clearer shape in Lotte’s mind than in sixteen years of imagining.

“Ottoline, Lotte,” the man in gray addressed Lotte in a low voice that was only for her. “Your mother sent us for you, and if we’re going to have any chance of— Well, we need to get you back to Walstad by dusk. But…” He hesitated. “If you don’t want to come with us…if you are happy with the life you have here, then we will leave. And I will tell your mother you’re better off left in peace. Away from your family.”

Your family.

Even when she was younger, and more na?ve, Lotte had never dreamed of a whole family. Only a mother.

When she had understood that her mother was never coming back for her, instead she’d dreamed of repenting enough to end her curse and being released from the convent. She’d imagined asking Mrs.Hehn for a job at the bakery. When she’d understood that she might never break her curse, her dreams had narrowed again. To simply being punished less, and allowed out more often. To having spare hours to come down and share sweet rolls with Estelle.

Now even those dreams had proved childish.

“Lotte.” Sister Brigitta’s voice rose to a screech as she finally shoved her way through the crowd. “You have shown yourself to be many wicked things while in our care, but you have never been stupid.” Her voice was shaking, Lotte realized, surprised. Anger, now, that she had seen plenty of from Sister Brigitta over the years. But not this quivering panic that was making the woman’s hand shake as her eyes darted between the two strangers. “Surely you aren’t foolish enough to follow two strange men into the unknown!”

The unknown.

Everything in Gelde was known to Lotte. Every person’s pettiest, nastiest thoughts. The shape of the briar pit where she was forced to sleep. The feel of a switch on her legs as punishment.

What her life had looked like so far. And what it would always look like here. Narrowing and narrowing until all she saw when she closed her eyes was darkness.

Whatever the unknown of the city was, it couldn’t be worse than what she already knew.

Lotte drew away from Sister Brigitta. “Surely you can’t think I’d stay?”

The color draining from Sister Brigitta’s face was as satisfying as any pastry from Hehn’s Bakery.

Benedict rose from where he’d been kneeling, nodding his understanding as he led Lotte toward the automobile.

“Lotte!” Estelle broke from the crowd, rushing toward her, her face suddenly alight. “After all our years dreaming of Walstad! We’re finally going!” She clasped Lotte’s arm in hers, moving with her as if they were both heading for the automobile, but Lotte pulled her arm free, shaking away the tendrils of opportunism in Estelle’s mind.

A day ago, Lotte might have bent to her will. Might have believed that she and Estelle still belonged to each other. Might have cared to rescue Estelle from Gelde like Estelle had rescued her from the convent.

“No,” she said, coolly drawing her arm away from Estelle’s, relishing the shock in her face. In seeing Estelle, who had had everything Lotte hadn’t her whole life, see this slip away. In taking something Estelle wanted for herself for once. “I’m going, not you.”

Lotte watched understanding break across Estelle’s face, her glee shattering into understanding.

Lotte didn’t look back as she walked toward the automobile. But she was keenly aware of every mind in the square on her, of the mud clinging to her bare feet, the cold air nipping at her welts as she slid into the back seat of the glistening automobile.

She was barely in her seat when the magimek engine sparked to life. The man in the bowler hat had taken a seat across from her in the back of the automobile, and the man in gray was behind the steering wheel.

“I can barely wait to get back to the city.” The man in the bowler hat sighed as Gelde drew away behind them. “That village is no place for a Holtzfall.”