The Dragon & the Alpine Star

by Allison Norfolk

  The young woman smiled extra wide whenever anyone addressed her as ‘Frau Beck.’ The honorific was close to a year old, and she had never quite gotten over the thrill of hearing it. She was a wife, married to a man she adored and who adored her in return. Soon she would be a mother to their first child, with hopefully more to come.

  She homed in on each stall that had what she needed and completed her purchases with practiced ease. She and her husband both had lived in this town all their lives and Wilhelmina could hardly go ten yards without spotting a familiar face. Her basket was soon piled high with fresh produce, some of it with the dirt of the field still on it, and with packets of spices and bunches of herbs.

  At her last stop, the butcher’s for a cut of beef, the butcher’s wife caught Wilhelmina’s arm as she made her way toward the door.

  “Frau Beck, do you have a moment?” the middle-aged woman asked in an undertone.

  “Of course,” Wilhelmina replied. She allowed herself to be drawn into a quiet corner. “What can I do for you, Frau Karol?”

  “We have birds nesting in our chimney,” Frau Karol confessed.

  “Oh dear, not again!” said Wilhelmina.

  “And it’s such a terrible lot of trouble to get them out, and they always come back. I was talking to Frau Häge down the street, and she said when they had the same problem two years ago you made them a little herb packet to tuck on a ledge in the chimney and they’ve not been troubled since. I was wondering—?”

  “Of course.” Wilhelmina nodded.

  “How much do you usually charge?”

  “Two pfennig only, for something so small,” said Wilhelmina with a shrug. “To be paid at the time of delivery.”

  Frau Karol’s face brightened. “We can do that. It will be worth not having Johannes crawling all over the roof again, breaking his neck as likely not. When can you do it?” She looked doubtfully at Wilhelmina’s full, tight belly, which at this stage looked as if she had shoved a large ball beneath her dress where it rested awkwardly as if ready to fall out at any moment. “If it’s too much trouble before the babe comes…”

  “Not at all. Frau Heller tells me the babe will come when he’s good and ready, and he hasn’t given me any of the signs yet.” Wilhelmina rested a hand on the bulge, and felt a sight kick nudge her in response. She suppressed a smile.

  “Well, she would know. She’s delivered more babes in all her years than that tree over there has leaves, and she has the tree’s own wrinkles to prove it.” Frau Karol nodded out a nearby window to indicate a gnarled apple tree in their yard. “She raised you, didn’t she? I believe I heard that somewhere.”

  “Yes, she did. As best as she could. She won’t let me handle deliveries alone until I’ve birthed at least one of my own, she says so I’ll know how it feels from the other side. It makes a more sympathetic midwife, apparently.” Wilhelmina pouted and rolled her eyes.

  “Your elders always know best, girl. And what does Herr Beck say about his wife working outside your home?” asked Frau Karol, her genial demeanor shifting to mild disapproval.

  “He says the more coin, the better.” Wilhelmina stroked her hand slightly down her middle. Allen did indeed say that every time she brought in pfennigs from charms, potions or helping Frau Heller with a delivery; he usually ended the statement with, “since we have every hope of many more mouths to feed,” and a smile and a pat for her belly. Given that she’d felt their baby fluttering within her exactly four months after their wedding day, there was little evidence to dispute the cheerful prospect of a house full to bursting with Beck children. It had been a joint dream as long as they’d been sweethearts.

  “Well.” Frau Karol hesitated. “If he doesn’t mind, then…” She trailed off, shrugged.

  “Would tomorrow be convenient to deliver what you need?” asked Wilhelmina, changing the subject back to their original topic. “As you say, I don’t want to wait too long, or you might not have it for several weeks.”

  “Yes, yes, that would be perfectly fine. Thank you so much in advance, Frau Beck.” Frau Karol was all smiles again. “Good day to you.”

  “Good day, Frau Karol.” Wilhelmina took her leave, shaking her head over the older woman’s old-fashioned ways.

  At home, she put the purchases intended for their table in the kitchen, then went to the little corner that made up her workroom. Most of the beams of their house were taken up with drying bunches of herbs and everything was permeated with their earthy smell, but this corner was where she mixed ingredients.

  Older lore might call her a hexe, a witch, and while the term was accurate enough, there had been herbwives who used plants as a conduit to magically bend the world to their will for time out of mind, before people had even settled down to cultivate crops. At least, according to Wilhelmina’s mentor in hedgewitchery, Frau Heller. The old woman taught her more than the midwife’s trade; someday Wilhelmina would take her place as the town’s purveyor of charms of all sorts as well as birthing babies and dispensing herbal remedies. As the request from Frau Karol had shown, now that Wilhelmina was a grown woman some of the smaller inquiries had already started to come to her.

  Most villages and towns had one hedgewitch, perhaps two if there was a younger apprentice like Wilhelmina being groomed to the post. Cities had more, since the concentration of people meant that they could coexist without infringing on each other’s territory, but there was usually only one who watched over a given area, connected by webs of correspondence to their fellows when advice or unusual ingredients were needed.

  Wilhelmina and Frau Heller were unusual in that they were not related. The potential to learn hedge-magic tended to be passed down the female line in families; mother to daughter, great-aunt to niece, older cousin to younger. Wilhelmina’s parents had died when she was only four and there had been no other relatives to pass off the orphaned girl to. Wilhelmina to this day still had no idea how Frau Heller had known she had inherited the potential for magic, but she was as grateful as she could be even though the old woman was prickly as a holly bush. It was easier now that Wilhelmina had married and moved in with Allen and she only saw her mentor once in awhile. Wilhelmina hoped that she wouldn’t have such a fractious relationship with her own daughter, if she had one. Almost without thinking she brushed a hand down her round middle.

  The request from Frau Karol was a simple one. It took a full half an hour to make, however, because reaching the rafters for bunches of herbs this far advanced in her pregnancy was a dubious prospect at best and Wilhelmina took every precaution to avoid falling. Once she had everything she needed, mixing things in the right proportions and infusing the result with the power to discourage birds from nesting was as easy as breathing. Different herbs had different affinities, and knowing which did what took years of study. Added to that, the more you used your magic, the more power you had, and Wilhelmina had been practicing since before she could remember.

  Her next project, a charm meant to ward her husband Allen from small harms like splinters, stubbed toes and the like, took considerably longer and she still wasn’t happy with the result by the time the slanting light told her it was time to begin preparing supper. She fastidiously replaced everything she hadn’t used, then emptied the bag of dried herbs she had created out the back door into the yard, dispelling the charm as she did so. She would try again, perhaps tomorrow, if…

  …if she didn’t go into labor between now and then. She grinned at the prospect and stroked her belly again. The baby had given every indication he intended to stay exactly where he or she was for now, but that could change at any time. If she hadn’t gotten so heavy in the last few weeks, Wilhelmina felt sure she would be dancing a polka every time she thought of meeting her child. In lieu of that, she bounced on her heels a bit, but even that made her wince and she quickly stopped.

  Dinner was almost finished when the door banged open and a young man’s voice called, “Mina, I’m home! Any movement yet?”

  “None yet, Allen. Y
our son’s quite comfortable where he is.” Even though she privately wanted a girl, she knew Allen wanted a boy with all his heart and she always humored him when she spoke of their coming child.

  Into the room danced Allen Beck. He was an average man in appearance in every sense of the word: not particularly tall, nor short, nor thin, nor wide. His hair and beard were of a tint somewhere between blond and brown, and except for a few freckles across his several-times broken nose, his skin was the slightly bronzed tan of someone who takes his work outdoors when the weather permits. The most interesting thing about him was a pair of bright blue eyes, the cobalt blue of an evening sky just after the sun goes down. And yet despite everything that should make him blend into a crowd, to Wilhelmina he was the bright center of her heart. Her eyes drew to him whenever he was in the room like a needle to a lodestone.

  He swung down on her around the corner of the table and planted a kiss on her lips that lingered a second…and then a second more. Finally Wilhelmina grinned against the kiss and pushed away. “Dinner will be ready any minute, if you don’t distract me so much I let it burn.”

  “Heaven forbid I be served a burned dinner,” Allen grinned back, and went out to the back to wash his face and hands at the water pump. He worked in a shoemaker’s shop and often came home covered in rust-colored stains from the leather he worked with, or inky splotches from boot blacking.

  “I’m going to the tavern in a bit, to have a drink with the boys,” he said over dinner.

  Her stomach clenched a little; she did not like to be alone in the house in the evenings so late in her pregnancy. If she called out during daylight hours odds were good a neighbor would hear, but at night many would be abed. But she put on a smile and said, “Of course. Don’t stay out too late.”

  Thus after supper he kissed her again, thoroughly, kissed her belly through her dress, put on his coat and hat and went out the door again. She heard him whistling cheerfully all the way down the road.

  Wilhelmina hummed the same tune under her breath as she cleaned up from dinner, lit a few candles against the growing gloom, and went back to her worktable. Instead of performing magic, she got out a piece of paper and a pen and sat making calculations, trying to figure out where she had gone wrong in her proportions earlier. When her eyes grew heavy, she put everything away and began to make ready for bed.

  She had hardly finished unlacing the front of her dress, however, when a pounding came at the door. Her heart started and she couldn’t suppress a gasp. Then she patiently redid the laces, more difficult than it should be because her fingers were puffy from pregnancy and her hands were trembling a little from surprise and nerves over who could be calling so late and with such urgency. Her stomach knotted further with nerves and frustration at her clumsiness. At last, she managed; all the while the pounding continued on the door.

  Wilhelmina picked up the last candle she’d left burning, which was nearly down to a stub, threw a shawl over her shoulders and went to answer.

  She nearly got her own nose broken by throwing open the door rather than calling out first. The man at the door had his fist raised, ready to pound again, but managed to check himself in time.

  “Frau Beck!” he gasped, and she recognized him.

  “Why, Herr Schertzel! What brings you here in such a state?” His eyes were wide and frantic.

  “It’s Allen. He’s…there was a fight.”

  Wilhelmina clenched her jaw. If her husband had one weakness, it was a tendency to brawl when he had too much to drink. “Is his nose broken again? I’ve told him time and again…” She trailed off at the man’s expression. “No. You’re not serious.”

  His mouth twisted and his face went even paler. “It was an accident…he fell. I shouldn’t have come, not with the state you’re in…” He glanced at her belly. “But I didn’t know what else to do. He’s in a bad way.”

  Her mind went black, and then arrowed forward, giving her an odd sense of razor-sharp focus that kept panic at bay—for now. “Wait here.”

  She darted back to her work area as quickly as she could manage, putting her hands beneath her stomach and hoisting as if that would take some of the unbalancing weight. It rippled uncomfortably in response, the baby shoving back forcefully from within. The hard poke made her gasp, and she had to clutch a chair briefly. Then she recovered, and went on.

  Her heart sank as she beheld the empty counter. Frau Heller had admonished her always to keep a basket of fresh essentials packed and ready for any emergency she might be called to, but lately Wilhelmina had neglected it. All she had was the old basket she had last packed probably four months previously, on her final surge of productiveness that had come mid-pregnancy before hauling her belly around had begun to feel like a chore and she had started to let a few minor things slide here and there to save energy. After all, who would be calling on a woman known to be late in pregnancy for an emergency when there was a perfectly competent older midwife to take care of things and a doctor in town as well? Now she regretted not following her mentor’s advice no matter how much her body complained. Some of the herbs would be too dry to be useful, but there was no help for it now.

  She seized the basket anyway and went back to the door. Even that effort had left her panting a little, and there was still the trip to the tavern to consider.

  “I can carry that for you,” Herr Schertzel offered, holding out his arms.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said, handing it over gratefully. It wasn’t very heavy, but she would need all her concentration to move as fast as she could manage to the tavern a few streets away.

  They had to stop for her to rest too often for her liking, and Herr Schertzel ended up having to take her elbow to help her along, but they made it in the end.

  A table in the tavern had been cleared and Allen’s body laid upon it. A cluster of men in battered work clothes ringed it, hats in hand and tension in every line of their bodies. When Wilhelmina entered, several turned towards her and a hush fell. Expressions showed only a little relief, and several became even more worried, lines deepening in the flickering candlelight and turning the familiar faces into ghoulish caricatures.

  Herr Schertzel kept a hand on her elbow, and only he knew that he had to catch her as her knees tried to buckle. But she clenched her jaw and forced the muscles in her legs to keep her upright, and to take her over to the table.

  Allen was still breathing, but in a very quiet whistle only audible because the tavern had gone still. Wilhelmina shuddered as it brought to mind his whistle fading away down the street as he left the house earlier. There was a huge gash on one side of his head that had bled through the makeshift bandage someone had tried to create with a pile of rags.

  Wilhelmina stood and stared, paralyzed with horror, for a few eternal seconds. Then she shook herself, blinked, and had Herr Schertzel put her basket down on another nearby table. She sorted through it frantically until she found the packets of yarrow and comfrey and tore them open.

  The yarrow was brittle, dead, and useless, and the comfrey only barely viable. “Does anyone nearby have a garden with yarrow?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  All she got back was blank looks. Of course the men wouldn’t know; it was usually women who kept the household gardens. Fighting the urge to scream and throw things, Wilhelmina turned back to Allen.

  She worked her way around the table to the side where the wound was and sat down heavily. Using the table to conceal her movements, she mixed the yarrow and comfrey together, then removed the crude bandage and tried spreading the dry, crumbling mixture while bringing her will to bear.

  Nothing happened.

  She tried again, but the wound didn’t shrink or show any sign that her magic was working. With the wound uncovered, she could easily see the dent in the skull and the fragments of white bone flashing through the red blood as it oozed. Even if what was in her basket had been fresh and ready, there would have been little she could do. With damage this bad, she might have been able to d
o something if she had a few hours to mix and prepare. Allen had mere minutes, and even as she had been sitting here his breaths had been coming slower.

  A sob choked its way out of her. She reached for his limp hand, which only a few hours before had tucked itself so readily onto the back of her head as he kissed her. Her own heart pounded frantically, as if by beating fast enough it could pump blood for the two of them. A dull, throbbing ache was beginning in her head and belly, but they both seemed distant.

  They all sat and stood that way in the tavern like a macabre tableau, watching in complete silence until Allen’s chest rose and fell…and did not rise again. Wilhelmina waited, knowing it was useless, knowing he was gone. Her trembling increased, but they all seemed caught, frozen, and no one moved to touch her or offer comfort.

  Her own wail of despair surprised them all, including herself. At almost the same moment, the baby, confined tight as he was, seemed to push out hard with all of his limbs in different directions as if trying to escape. She felt him shift down within her. Spikes of agony radiated outward from her womb. Wilhelmina crunched inward, clutching her belly. More sobs forced their way between her teeth, her chest heaving and subsiding painfully. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath.

  And then, abruptly, everything went dark.

  Chapter 2

  Spring 1920. Brig, Switzerland.

  “Ah, buongiorno, Signora Fiorello. What can I do for you today?” Frau Beck looked up from grinding early strawberry leaves into a paste and smiled at the woman a little younger than she who had just entered the front room of her flat. Wilhelmina’s Italian was halting, but after a year it was improving steadily. Nothing would remedy her thick German accent, however.

  “Signore Fiorello—my husband’s father, you remember?—his gout is acting up again. The balm I bought from you last month helped so tremendously, I wonder if you have more?” As a native of Brig in southern Switzerland, Signora Fiorello spoke both German and Italian, but she humored Frau Beck’s desire to practice her Italian and replied in the same language.