She started at the feel of his skin.

  Her fingers might have been cold, but at least they still had warm blood coursing through them.

  Whereas the hunter’s skin had quite frosted over.

  Without warning, he jerked away, freeing her from the imminent threat of his blade.

  “I mean no disrespect,” Serilda said, “but I really must tend to my work. The moon will be gone soon and the straw will not be so compliant. I like to work with the best materials, when I can.”

  Without waiting for a response, Serilda picked up the shovel again, along with a bucket overflowing with snow, which she promptly dumped out. Head lifted high, she dared to walk past the hunter, past his horse, into the field. The rest of the hunting party backed away, giving her space, as Serilda began scooping away the top layer of snow to reveal the crushed grain underneath; the sad little stalks that had been left behind from the fall harvest.

  It looked nothing like gold.

  What a ridiculous lie this was turning into.

  But Serilda knew that full-hearted commitment was the only way to persuade someone of an untruth. So she kept her face placid as she began to pull the stalks up with her bare, freezing hands and toss them into the bucket.

  For a long while, there were only the sounds of her working, and the occasional shuffle of horse hooves, and the low growl of the hounds.

  Then a light, raspy voice said, “I have heard tales of gold-spinners, blessed by Hulda.”

  Serilda looked up at the nearest rider. A pale-skinned woman, hazy around the edges, hair in a braided crown atop her head. She wore riding breeches and leather armor accented by a deep red stain all down the front of the tunic. It was a sickening amount of blood—all, no doubt, from the deep gash across her throat.

  She held Serilda’s gaze a moment—emotionless—before glancing at their leader. “I believe she speaks true.”

  The hunter did not acknowledge her statement. Instead, Serilda heard his boots crunching lightly through the snow until he was standing behind her. She lowered her gaze, focused on her task, though the grain stalks were cutting her palms and mud was already caked beneath her fingernails. Why hadn’t she grabbed her mittens? As soon as she thought it, she remembered that she’d given them to Gerdrut. She must look like such a fool.

  Gathering straw to spin into gold. Honestly, Serilda. Of all the thoughtless, absurd things you might have said—

  “How pleasant to know that Hulda’s gift has not gone wasted,” drawled the hunter. “It is a rare treasure indeed.”

  She glanced over her shoulder, but he was already turning away. Lithe as a spotted lynx, he mounted his steed. His horse snorted.

  The hunter did not look at Serilda as he signaled to the other riders.

  As fast as they had arrived, they were gone again. Thundering hooves, a flurry of snow and ice, the renewed howls of the hellhounds. A storm cloud, ominous and crackling, racing across the field.

  Then, nothing but glistening snow and the round moon kissing the horizon.

  Serilda let out a shaken breath, hardly able to believe her good fortune.

  She had survived an encounter with the wild hunt.

  She had lied to the face of the Erlking himself.

  What a tragedy, she thought, that no one would ever believe her.

  She waited until the usual sounds of the night had begun to return. Frozen branches creaking. The river’s soothing burble. A distant hoot of an owl.

  Finally, she retrieved the lantern and dared to throw open the cellar door.

  The moss maidens emerged, staring at Serilda as if she had turned blue in the time since they’d last seen her.

  She was so cold, she wouldn’t have doubted it.

  She tried to smile, but it was difficult to do when her teeth were chattering. “Will you be all right now? Can you find your way back to the forest?”

  The taller maiden, Parsley, sneered, as if insulted by such a question. “It is you humans who regularly lose yourselves, not us.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend.” She glanced down at their immodest furs. “You must be so cold.”

  The maiden didn’t respond, just stared intently at Serilda, both curious and irritated. “You have saved our lives, and risked your own to do it. What for?”

  Serilda’s heart fluttered gleefully. It sounded so heroic, when put that way.

  But heroes were supposed to be humble, so she merely shrugged. “It hardly seemed right, chasing you down like that, as if you were wild animals. What did the hunt want with you, anyway?”

  It was Meadowsweet who spoke, seeming to overcome her shyness. “The Erlking has long hunted the forest folk, and all manner of magical kin besides.”

  “He sees it as sport,” said Parsley. “Suppose, when you’ve been hunting so long as he has, taking home the head of a common stag must not seem like much of a prize.”

  Serilda’s lips parted in shock. “He meant to kill you?”

  They both looked at her as if she were dense. But Serilda had assumed the hunt was chasing them to capture them. Which, perhaps, was worse in some ways. But to murder such graceful beings for the fun of it? The idea sickened her.

  “We typically have means of protecting ourselves from the hunt, and evading those hounds,” said Parsley. “They cannot find us when we stay under the protection of our Shrub Grandmother. But my sister and I were not able to make it back before nightfall.”

  “I am glad I could help,” said Serilda. “You are welcome to hide in my root cellar anytime you’d like.”

  “We owe you a debt,” said Meadowsweet.

  Serilda shook her head. “I won’t hear of it. Believe me. The adventure was well worth the risk.”

  The maidens exchanged a look, and whatever passed between them, Serilda could see they didn’t like it. But there was resignation in Parsley’s scowl as she stepped closer to Serilda and fidgeted with something on her finger.

  “All magic requires payment, to keep our worlds in balance. Will you accept this token in return for the aid you’ve given me this night?”

  Struck speechless, Serilda opened her palm. The maiden dropped a ring onto it. “This isn’t necessary … and I certainly didn’t do any magic.”

  Parsley tilted her head, a rather birdlike gesture. “Are you certain?”

  Before Serilda could respond, Meadowsweet had stepped closer and removed a thin chain from her neck.

  “And will you accept this token,” she said, “in return for the aid you’ve given me?”

  She looped the necklace around Serilda’s outstretched palm. It bore a small oval locket.

  Both pieces of jewelry shone gold in the moonlight.

  Actual gold.

  They must be worth a great deal.

  But what were forest folk doing with them? She had always believed that they had no use for material riches. That they saw humankind’s obsession with gold and gems as something unsavory, even repulsive.

  Perhaps that was why it was so easy for them to give these gifts to Serilda. Whereas, for her and her father, these were a treasure like nothing she’d ever held.

  And yet—

  She shook her head and held her hand out toward them. “I can’t take these. Thank you, but … anyone would have helped you. You don’t need to pay me.”

  Parsley chuckled mildly. “You must not know much of humans, to believe that,” she said sourly. She tilted her chin toward the gifts. “If you do not accept these tokens, then our debt has not been paid and we must be in your service until it is.” Her gaze darkened warningly. “We would much prefer that you take the gifts.”

  Pressing her lips together, Serilda nodded and closed her hand around the jewelry. “Thank you, then,” she said. “Consider the debt paid.”

  They nodded, and it felt as if a bargain had been struck and signed in blood for all the loftiness the moment carried.

  Desperate to break the tension, Serilda held her arms out toward them. “I feel so close to you both. Shall we embrace?”

  Meadowsweet gaped at her. Parsley outright snarled.

  The tension did not break.

  Serilda drew her arms quickly back. “No. That would be odd.”

  “Come,” said Parsley. “Grandmother will be worried.”

  And just like skittish deer, they ran off, disappearing down the riverbank.

  “By the old gods,” muttered Serilda. “What a night.”

  She banged her boots on the side of the house to rid them of snow before going inside. Snores greeted her. Her father was still sleeping like a groundhog, utterly oblivious.

  Serilda slipped off her cloak and sat with a sigh before the hearth. She added a block of bog peat to keep the fire smoldering. In the light of the embers, she tilted forward and peered down at her rewards.

  One golden ring.

  One golden locket.

  When they caught the light, she saw that the ring bore a mark. A crest, like something a noble family might put on their fancy wax seals. Serilda had to squint to make it out. The design appeared to be of a tatzelwurm, a great mythical beast that was mostly serpentine with a feline head. Its body was wrapped elegantly around the letter R. Serilda had never seen anything quite like it before.

  Digging her thumbnails into the locket’s clasp, she pried it open with a snap.

  Her breath caught with delight.

  She’d expected the locket to be empty, but inside there was a portrait—the tiniest, most delicate painting she’d ever seen—showing the resemblance of a most lovely little girl. She was but a child, Anna’s age if not a little younger, but clearly a princess or duchess or someone of much importance. Strings of pearls decorated her golden curls and a collar of lace framed her porcelain cheeks.

  The regal lift of her chin was somehow completely at odds with the impish glint in her eyes.

  Serilda shut the locket and slipped the chain over her head. She slid the ring onto her finger. With a sigh, she crawled back beneath her covers.

  It was little comfort that she now had proof about what had transpired this night. Probably, if she showed anyone, they would think these things were stolen. Bad enough to be a liar. Becoming a thief was the logical progression.

  Serilda lay sleepless, staring up at the golden patterns and creeping shadows on the ceiling rafters, gripping the locket in her fist.

  Chapter 6

  Sometimes Serilda would spend hours thinking about evidence. Those little clues left behind in a story that bridged the gap between fantasy and reality.

  What evidence did she have that she’d been cursed by Wyrdith, the god of stories and fortune? The bedtime tales her father had told her, though she’d never dared to ask if they were real or not. The golden wheels over her black irises. Her uncontrollable tongue. A mother who had no interest in watching her grow up, who left without so much as a goodbye.

  What evidence was there that the Erlking murdered the children who got lost in the woods? Not much. Mostly hearsay. Rumors of a haunting figure that stalked through the trees, listening for a child’s frightened cries. And long ago, once every generation or so, a small body discovered at the forest’s edge. Barely familiar, oft picked clean by the crows. But parents always recognized their own missing child, even a decade later. Even when all that was left was a corpse.

  But that had not happened in recent memory, and it was hardly proof.

  Superstitious nonsense.

  This, however, was different.

  Quite different.

  What evidence did Serilda have that she had rescued two moss maidens who were being chased by the wild hunt? That she had outwitted the Erlking himself?

  A golden ring and a necklace, warm against her skin when she awoke.

  Outside—a square of dead grass revealed where she had shoveled away the snow.

  An open cellar door, left unlocked, the wood still smelling of raw onion.

  But not, she noted with bewilderment, hoofprints or tracks left in the fields. The snow was as pristine as it had been when she’d come trekking home the night before. The only footprints she saw were her own. There had been no mark left behind of her midnight visitors, not the delicate feet of the moss maidens nor the clomping hooves of the horses nor the lupine tracks of the hounds.

  Just a delicate field of white, glittering almost cheerfully in the morning sun.

  As it soon turned out, the evidence she did have would do her no good.

  She told her father the story—every word a singular truth. And he listened, rapt, even horrified. He studied the seal on the ring and the locket’s portrait with speechless awe. He went out to inspect the cellar door. He stood a long time, staring out at the empty horizon, beyond which lay the Aschen Wood.

  Then, when Serilda thought she could stand the silence no longer, he began to laugh. A full belly laugh tinged with something dark that she couldn’t quite place.

  Panic? Fear?

  “You’d think by now,” he said, turning back to face her, “I’d have learned not to be so gullible. Oh, Serilda.” He took her face into his rough palms. “How can you speak these things without so much as a hint of a smile? You very nearly had me fooled, yet again. Where did you get these, truthfully, now?” He lifted the locket from her collarbone, shaking his head. He’d gone pale while she recounted the events of the night before, but color was now rushing back into his cheeks. “Were they a gift from some young lad in town? I’ve been wondering if you might be sweet on someone and too shy to tell me.”

  Serilda stepped back, tucking the locket beneath her dress. She hesitated, tempted to try again. To insist. He had to believe her. For once, it was real. It had happened. She wasn’t lying. And she might have tried again, if it hadn’t been for the haunted look lurking behind his gaze, not entirely covered up by his denial. He was worried about her. Despite his strained laughter, he was terrified that this one could be true.

  She didn’t want that. He already worried enough.

  “Of course not, Papa. I’m not sweet on anyone, and when have you ever known me to be shy?” She shrugged. “If you must know the truth of it, I found the ring stuck around a fairy’s toadstool, and I stole the necklace from the schellenrock who lives in the river.”

  He guffawed. “Now that I’d be closer to believing.”

  He went back inside and Serilda knew in that moment, in the deepest corner of her heart, that if he wouldn’t believe her, no one would.

  They had heard far too many tales before.

  She told herself it was better this way. If she wasn’t beholden to the truth of what had happened under the full moon, then she would have no qualms about embellishing it.

  And she did dearly love to embellish.

  “Speaking of young village lads,” Papa called through the open door, “I thought I should tell you. Thomas Lindbeck has agreed to help around the mill this spring.”

  The name was a kick to her chest. “Thomas Lindbeck?” she said, darting back into the house. “Hans’s brother? What for? You’ve never hired help before.”

  “I’m getting older. Thought it’d be nice to have a strapping young man to do some of the heavy lifting.”

  She scowled. “You’re barely forty.”

  Her father glanced up from stoking the fire, chagrined. Sighing, he set down the poker and stood to face her, brushing off his hands. “All right. He came and asked for the work. He’s hoping to earn some extra coin, so that…”

  “So that what?” she prompted, his hesitation making her tense.

  His look was pitying in a way that turned her stomach.

  “So he can be making a proposal to Bluma Rask, is my understanding.”

  A proposal.

  Of marriage.

  “I see,” said Serilda, forcing a tight smile. “I didn’t realize they were so … well. Good. They’re a charming match.” She glanced at the fireplace. “I’ll get some apples for our breakfast. Do you want anything else from the cellar?”

  He shook his head, watching her carefully. Her nerves hummed with irritation. She was careful not to stomp or grind her teeth as she headed back outside.

  What did she care if Thomas Lindbeck wanted to marry Bluma Rask, or anyone else for that matter? She had no claim to him, not anymore. It had been nearly two years since he’d stopped looking at Serilda like she was the sun itself, and started looking at her like she was a storm cloud brewing ominously on the horizon.

  When he bothered to look at her at all, that is.

  She wished a happy, long life on him and Bluma. A little farmhouse. A yard full of children. Endless conversations about the price of livestock and unfavorable weather.

  A life without curses.

  A life without stories.

  Serilda paused as she threw open the cellar door, where just last night she had hidden two magical creatures. She stood in this very spot and faced down an otherworldly beast and a wicked king and a whole legion of undead hunters.

  She was not the sort to pine for a simple life, and she would not pine for the likes of Thomas Lindbeck.

  * * *

  Stories change with repeated tellings, and hers was no different. The night of the Snow Moon became increasingly adventurous, and more and more surreal. When she told the tale to the children, it was not moss maidens she had rescued, but a vicious little water nix who had thanked her only by trying to bite off her fingers before it jumped into the river and disappeared.

  When Farmer Baumann brought extra firewood for the schoolhouse and Gerdrut encouraged Serilda to repeat the story, she insisted that the Erlking had not ridden upon a black steed, but rather a massive wyvern who blew acrid smoke from its nostrils and oozed molten rock from between its scales.

  When Serilda went to barter for some of Mother Weber’s raw wool and was asked by Anna to again repeat the fantastical tale, she dared not explain how she had fooled the Erlking with a lie about her magical spinning abilities. Mother Weber had been the one to teach Serilda the technique when she was young, and she had never stopped criticizing Serilda for her lack of skill. To this day she liked to gripe about how the local sheep deserved to have their coats turned into something finer than the lumpy, uneven threads that would come off Serilda’s bobbins. She probably would have laughed Serilda right out of their cottage if she heard how Serilda had lied to the Erlking about her spinning talent, of all things.