Chapter 16: The Woman From the Pass

Anke came up the ladder behind me and looked where the boy was pointing.

She didn't say anything at all.

She went back down the ladder so fast she missed the last three rungs.

Then she was at the gate, dragging at the steel bar she had made herself.

"Anke," I said. "The law. If you go out that gate..."

"Then burn me," she said, and threw the bar into the snow.

She ran out onto the salt road in her house dress, with her hair full of snow.

I went after her, and Gerd came after me with a lantern, swearing at his leg.

Half the feast came out of my hall behind us to see what the shouting was.

The woman on the road had stopped when she saw us coming.

She was young and round-faced, with a long black braid over one shoulder, and her dress was thin blue cotton.

Her arms were bare.

The snow was melting off her skin as it landed.

Anke stopped three steps away from her, in the middle of the road.

"Lotte," she said.

The young woman stared at her for a moment.

Then her face crumpled.

"Anke? What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in Kessbach, you idiot."

Anke grabbed her.

They held on to each other in the middle of the road, and Anke made a sound I never want to hear again from anyone.

The town stood in the snow behind me with its lanterns and its cups and said nothing.

Gerd lowered his lantern.

"That's the cold one," he said hoarsely. "Kranz's cold one. She burned. It's in his book."

"Then the book's wrong," I said.

After a while Lotte lifted her face off her sister's shoulder and looked past her.

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