“I see you’ve been making use of the powder,” the healer remarked dryly as she shut the door behind her. This time, she carried her own satchel, and she placed it carefully on Marta’s bed as she leaned over the sleeping woman. Extending two fingers to Marta’s neck, she pressed gently beneath her jaw for a breath, and then drew back with a nod. “She’ll sleep well, and wake refreshed.” She turned to Edda. The lone candle in the room cast thick shadows upon her creased face, reflecting off her white eyes and making her almost frightening to behold. “And you. I had thought you would call again.”

Edda swallowed thickly, nervous and a little afraid. She had given some thought to how this conversation would go in the time she had spent waiting. All she had concluded was that she had neither the time nor the skill to skirt the matter at hand; the healer knew something, and she needed to figure out what. She had no memories of this woman from her previous life, so there was the possibility that trying to enlist her help could go terribly wrong. But this was the last, desperate thing she could think of before she’d be thrust straight into the fray of Cachtice Castle tomorrow.

Still, she hesitated, unsure. “My arm,” she gestured, holding her splinted wrist up in the dim light.

The woman cackled loudly, a sound as sudden as a crack of thunder, and Edda flinched. “We both know that is not why you called me here, Miss Belten.” Nonetheless, the old woman inspected her injured arm carefully. She ran her fingers along the reddish rash that had spread just above the cloth of the splint, lending Edda’s otherwise white forearm a ruddy, almost sunburnt hue. “From the salve, no doubt,” she tutted, “The swelling around your bones has gone, though. This, too, will pass in a few days.”

The silence stretched long between them, during which time Edda’s anxiety only grew. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth, and all the words she had planned were forgotten. The only ones she could remember were the ones she choked out, a question and a statement simultaneously, “Blood and smoke.”

“Indeed.” The edges of the old healer’s mouth turned up in a small smile. Slowly, with more grace than Edda would have expected of a woman so bent with age, she seated herself on the edge of Edda’s bed. She adjusted the brownish shawl she wore around herself, holding it closed before her chest as she spoke, “But we get ahead of ourselves. You wish to speak of a curse, and you do not even know my name.”

“A c-curse?” Edda stammered, uneasy. It was fantastical enough that she was here, alive, ten years in the past. She was not sure how many more improbabilities she could accept before losing all sense of reality.

“Or a blessing, perhaps,” the woman conceded, thumbing the edge of her shawl, “Most likely both. That is the way of it, I’m afraid.” The woman paused, as if to let her words sink in. “Call me Gretel, dearie. I will call you Edda. After all, there is little propriety about those who stink of witchery.”

Witchery! Edda shook her head in outrage. Fear bloomed rapidly in her chest. Witch, they had called her, and she had died for it. “I am not a witch,” she hissed. She would not be called one again in this life.

“And so it may be,” Gretel answered patiently, “But that does not change the fact that you smell of one.”

“No,” Edda insisted, her voice shrill with alarm, “Such things are but tales. They are not real.” Marta had frightened her with such superstitions when she was younger. But she was a gullible child no longer. “They are not real,” she repeated, as though to convince them both. As though to ignore the fact that she had, very recently, been executed for witchcraft.

Gretel laughed again, sudden and loud and booming. “Maybe they are not real in the big towns and cities. Maybe the people there have forgotten or choose not to remember. But they are real here, Edda.” That gummy smile graced her face again; coupled with those vacant eyes, she made unnerving company.

Without realizing it, Edda had wrapped her arms around herself, as though to shield herself from the woman’s words. “It cannot be,” she maintained.

“Then tell me, dearie,” Gretel said softly, “Tell me why you smell of blood and smoke.”

Edda shuddered, staring at the woman with wide, bewildered eyes. “I...cannot explain it,” she said quietly. Perhaps she should not have said more than this, but she found that she could no longer keep it to herself. The reality of what had happened to her demanded to be known. “I died,” her voice trembled as she said it, but still it spilled out, “I was burned.”

The smile vanished. Gretel’s face darkened, those white eyes narrowing. “Do you speak the truth, girl?” Her fingers, which had been playing lightly over her shawl, clamped down.

Edda found that she was crying, overcome with silent, quivering sobs. Speaking the words aloud had somehow given them a substance they had lacked before, as though in keeping them to herself, she had prevented them from materializing. But now, in admitting it to someone else, she realized how real, how horribly, terribly real it was. She had died. She had burned to death. She had felt every moment of it.

“Hush, child.” Gretel extended a firm hand to Edda’s knee, clasping it tightly as though to keep her from disappearing. She did not ask Edda to confirm whether her words were the truth again. She did not even ask her to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding her death and return to life which, Edda realized, were far more complicated than she had let on. Gretel’s brows were furrowed with thought, so low over her eyes that they were barely visible any longer. She simply sat, still as a statue, and waited for Edda’s weeping to subside enough to continue their conversation.

“That is not what I expected,” Gretel said finally, her voice hard. Edda sniffled in response, wiping her face with the bed quilt. “Common magics, I know; magics that are part of the land and the people of this country. But the magic you speak of is a great and terrible thing, Edda. One which I know little of. One which very, very few are even capable.”

Still raw with emotion, Edda managed to choke out, “But I am not a witch.”

Gretel nodded her assent. “No, I don’t believe that you are.” She pulled her hand back, and Edda found herself cold without the woman’s touch. Gretel continued, raising a hand to her face, “I am able to know some things with certainty.” She tapped her cheek, just below one of her eyes. “I traded my eyesight for it.”

Edda could not suppress the wave of relief that washed over her at the woman’s words—to the point that she all but ignored the woman’s admission of witchery. She knew she was not a witch—she was not even sure she believed in their existence, despite what the woman before her was saying. But part of her had wondered, some small, trifling part of her. They had called her a witch, executed her as a witch—and she was still alive. If nothing else, it certainly sounded like some of the tales Marta had told her—of witches and their immortality.

“I don’t understand,” Edda said, and she was not sure to what part she meant it.

“It is one rule that binds all witches,” Gretel said slowly, “For every boon granted, an equal toll exacted.” Once more, her hand stiffened on the edge of her shawl. “That is why, Edda, the blessing of your life must have been bought with a horrific curse.” Gretel held Edda’s gaze with her own milky one; and though Edda knew she was blind, she could not help but feel like the woman saw and knew everything. “And only a blood witch would be capable of paying such a price.”

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Edda could feel the color drain from her face. She shook her head, looking down at her lap. “Impossible,” she murmured—but the lines between what was possible and impossible had long blurred for her. She did not know of any other explanation to justify all that had happened; and perhaps it was all connected, somehow, some way. Blood witches—the worst of their kind--putrid, rotting ghouls who drank the blood of innocent children and stopped the hearts of their parents. She had been executed as a blood witch. If Gretel was to be believed, it was because of a blood witch that she now lived. Perhaps her every move, every breath was at the mercy of a blood witch. A cold thrill ran through her, and she glanced up at the old healer quickly, then back down at her lap.

Of course, Gretel noticed her swift movement. She barked out a short, clipped laugh that held little humor. “Don’t look to me for blood witchery, child. I am no blood witch.” Gretel took a deep breath. “I’ve had my worries, with what has happened in the village of late. But I did not want to believe it. Blood witches are not normal things. They do not appear often. And yet, it appears there is one among us.”

It was a terrifying prospect to consider; that the monsters that haunted only the blackest of dreams, the most sinister of tales, were not only real but here. And somehow bound up with her, with the reason she was alive. And, possibly, with the reason she had died in the first place. Edda quaked. It was one thing—a daunting thing—to circumvent the unfortunate fate that had befallen her when she had thought that fate to be orchestrated by man alone. She had guessed it to be her own simple stupidity that had led her to become prey to some nefarious plot of the nobility—and that was certainly enough of a hurdle to overcome. But she could not fathom how to deal with a being born out of the most horrendous imaginations. If this was truth, she was doomed as sure as she had been the first time around.

Gretel, for her part, did not seem any more enthused by her revelation than Edda was. She wrung her old hands restlessly in her shawl, and those blind eyes were distant, consumed in thoughts perhaps no less morbid than the ones Edda entertained.

“What do we do?” Edda finally whispered, at a loss. It was almost laughable, now, that she had thought a pot of black pigment could save her.

Gretel closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. Her hands stilled, and when she spoke it was with a surprising lightness, “Well, I suppose the first thing to do is to confirm it for ourselves.”

“What!” Edda exclaimed, her voice louder, more frightened, than she had anticipated, “Are you quite mad? I’ve no desire to confirm anything!”

“And what would you suggest?” Gretel challenged, but her face and sardonic tone showed that she already knew where Edda’s thoughts lay.

Edda’s voice wavered, but she answered nonetheless, “I will leave. I’ll convince Marta tomorrow, and we’ll go back to Hesse. Blood witch or no, I am certain now that this is no place for me.” Her words were the words of a coward—but really, what more could be expected of her? She was a mere merchant’s daughter, and she had been through enough. If Gretel was a witch as she claimed, she would be able to figure it out on her own.

Gretel pursed her lips. “And you assume the blood witch will not follow you? Already you’ve been touched by its filthy magic. Already you are at the center of this.”

Edda couldn’t breathe. She dropped her face into her hands in despair. My god, she was so foolish. Like a rabbit caught in a trap, she flailed miserably for escape, unable to accept that there was nowhere to go but into the hunter’s net. Her fate had been sealed the moment she woke again in this horrible second life. “I want to live,” she whimpered, pathetic even to her own ears, “I am scared, and I want to live so desperately.”

She heard Gretel’s sigh but could not bring herself to look up at the woman. “I am scared, too,” the old woman said quietly, “But my whole life I have dedicated to helping others. Even in the face of a blood witch, I cannot change what I am meant to do. The night is long, but it passes. You must choose.”

Choose, the crow had told her, too. It did not feel like there was much of a choice. Surviving Cachtice Castle was one thing—it had taken most of her courage, already, to accept that she would have to return there—but this was another matter entirely. That the two were likely intertwined only terrified her further. The caught rabbit was all but helpless against the hunter, but sometimes hunters took pity—it was nothing but meat before a beast.

Finally, Edda raised her head to look Gretel in the eyes. “How—how would we confirm it?” she managed, aware that she still put off the choice she had been asked to make. But it was not unreasonable to understand what was being asked of her before agreeing to it, right? Already, she knew so little of why her life had ended the way it had the first time around—even though she had lived through all the events leading up to it. This time around, she would have to understand. She would force herself to, because she did not want to die.

Gretel nodded. “Has Mistress Jozsef told you anything of the village?” Edda shook her head, glancing over at the sleeping Marta, and Gretel continued, “The villagers whisper, but they whisper freely. I am certain she has heard. This past year, there have been…unnatural events.” Gretel’s fingers were once again anxious at her shawl. “Dead cattle. Still-born calves. More than usual, but there have been bad years before.” Gretel paused. “But a few months ago, hunters started coming upon dead deer in the forest. Untouched by the wolves, when in winter they will eat anything that falls before them. It is enough for people to start worrying.”

“But dead animals do not mean there is a blood witch,” Edda said, almost with relief. If this was all, then perhaps the woman was simply losing herself to age. Perhaps there was still hope for her survival.

“No,” Gretel admitted, “Disease could cause as much. I have not seen the carcasses, so I cannot say. But a few men claim that they cut into the fresher ones and found grey flesh. With not a drop of blood.”

“Is…is that unusual?”

The old woman managed a wry smile. “Blood does not flow from the dead,” Gretel said, “It binds and clots. But it should still be there, thick in the vein.”

“But it is just talk,” Edda argued, eagerly now, “Perhaps, they simply did not see the blood.” In all the stories Marta had told her of blood witches, they fed on humans—usually the young. If it was a blood witch—and she was not convinced it was—that only killed cattle and deer, then surely they could leave each other be?

“Perhaps,” Gretel said, “Talk is easily distorted in small villages—that is what I told myself, as well. That is, until the girls went to the castle and never returned.” Edda’s eyes widened, her pulse quickening. The small sense of respite that had been growing in her was promptly extinguished. Gretel bowed her head, and her fingers were tight again on her shawl. “Many of our girls go to work for the Countess, so when summons came for one, we did not find it unusual. The Countess fell ill some two years past, after her son left for school in the capital, and we assumed they were short-handed in caring for her.”

Gretel rubbed a hand over her face, and her voice was strained, “But after a few months, she stopped visiting her family in the village. We were told she had run off with a man. And they summoned another girl to take her place. And then the same thing happened again.”

Edda’s lips and hands trembled. She had not known of any of this. The servants who had come and gone in the castle had barely registered in her awareness—how many of the village girls had she met and never seen again, without even a second thought? She had been charged with murder before her death—could murders really have been happening in the very castle she pretended to rule?

“Olah and Varga, their names were. And after meeting you, I am almost certain of what has happened to them,” Gretel continued, sorrow evident on her leathery face, “But I need to be sure. I must know my enemy to fight her. And while I can look into the reports about the animals, I have no business in the castle.”

“But I do,” Edda whispered, her hands clenching upon the bed quilt with such force that her injured wrist ached sharply.

Gretel gestured affirmatively. “It is the first year since she fell ill that she has hosted guests. Please. Please find out what is happening at the castle. To stop this, I must know.”

And perhaps, to survive, Edda needed to know, as well. Maybe there would turn out to be no blood witch, and she would simply come to understand more of what had really happened at Cachtice Castle while she had been stupid and oblivious. It could help her avoid repeating the same mistakes. But maybe, just maybe, if the stuff of black dreams was indeed reality, at least she would know that her death had been, and was, inevitable. At least, then, she could accept her fate.

She took a deep, shuddering breath, and made her first choice.

“I will help, Gretel. But to do so, I will need your help, as well.”