Robbergirl

by S T Gibson

  An old man with a gnarled beard and a pilgrim's cloak so tattered it looked like it had been lifted out of a tale of Thor's bravery brushed past her. Really brushed, so much that Helvig was gently jostled. Sickly dread shot through her.

  There were all so impossibly real. Helvig felt like she was the one back from the dead and trespassing on holy ground as she watched the ghosts silently march towards their day of holy obligation.

  She tore her eyes away from the ghosts filing in through the door and peered in through the gloom to where Gerda sat motionless. It was more difficult to see now that the lantern had been extinguished, but the moonlight spilling in through the decayed roof afforded Helvig light enough while her eyes took their time adjusting.

  The dead took their seats as though they had been assigned, slipping down the aisles and settling themselves in beside the living girl who had stolen into their midst.

  Gerda, somehow, kept her head. Helvig didn’t think she could look any paler, and her chest was rising and falling with shallow, quick breaths, but she didn’t shriek, didn’t squirm or bolt. Occasionally she would incline her head and let her eyes glide across the room, searching for her lost brother’s face, before staring straight ahead again.

  Helvig, who had grown up watching men play stabscotch and pick the purses right off town constables, had never seen someone so brave.

  The trickle of lost lives was slowing now as fewer plague victims and prisoners of war appeared out of the forest. Helvig’s heart hammered fast in her chest. She prayed that soon, this would all be over, and Gerda would see that her brother had died in the harsh north, and she could finally find her peace. Then they would go home together and warm each other in bed, and talk of more hopeful things.

  The thief peered into the church, looking for someone who matched Kai’s description. There were boys here, little ones and ones on the cusp of manhood, but none, she realized, that fit Kai’s description. He would be fifteen now, and Gerda had said that Kai was as fair as her. The only boys of proper age were a pair of twins with brown skin, darker than Helvig’s, and tightly coiled hair.

  Through the dim of the ancient church, Gerda met Helvig’s eyes. She shook her head, almost imperceptibly.

  He wasn’t there.

  As the final churchgoers arrived, the door swung shut of its own accord, making Gerda start.

  The priest began making his way down the center aisle with lethargic, labored movements. In some moments his vestments looked brilliant and new, in others tattered and gnawed by worms, and he clutched a leatherbound book tightly to his chest. He took each step towards the front of the church as though it pained him, and as he passed through a shaft of moonlight, Helvig saw that his face was blue and bloated, caught forever in the moment of drowning.

  He turned to face his congregation, raised his arms, and everyone rose to their feet.

  Everyone except Gerda.

  She blinked as though roused from a dream and shot quickly to her feet, but she was out of synch with the rest of the church. The priest held his hands above his head for a moment, ready to begin his sermon, but then he put them down.

  Helvig’s heart turned over in her chest. Wrong. Something was wrong.

  The priest clasped his hands over his middle, very sorry to have to do whatever it was he was about to do, and then his doughy face lolled to one side.

  His eyes fell on Gerda.

  The blood froze in Helvig’s veins.

  "No," she whispered.

  Gerda staggered, the weight of the priest's stare nearly bowling her over. To be so seen in a place like this, and by things that no mortal eyes were ever meant to perceive, had rattled her ironclad resolve.

  She picked up her skirts and excused herself silently, pressing past the ghost of the old woman who had sat down beside her. Every face in the room followed her, and the irritated hum of voices and clearing of throats began to echo through the tiny church.

  The ghosts shifted restlessly, turning to watch Gerda go. Some of them stepped out of their pews.

  "No," Helvig repeated, terror squeezing her heart in a vise. If anything happened to Gerda, she would never forgive herself for suggesting this dangerous errand.

  She hopped off her log and began to walk briskly in time with Gerda outside the church, glancing through every broken window and gaping hole in the wood to get a glimpse of what was happening inside. To her horror, the shades were following Gerda, slowly at first but then with a vigor the dead had no businesses possessing.

  Helvig resisted the urge to dash inside and pull Gerda to safety, or to yell for her get out of there. Any sounds she made now and any action she took could topple the knife's edge balance between life and death inside the church, and break whatever spell was keeping the ghosts from taking full, terrible notice of Gerda.

  The murmuring grew to grumbling, the cleared throats to territorial growls.

  Gerda stepped faster and faster across the floorboards, somehow resisting the temptation to break into a run. Her beautiful face was ashen with terror, and her lips were pressed tightly together to keep from screaming.

  Then, one of the dead children reached out and grabbed for the hem of Gerda’s dress.

  She shrieked as she pulled away.

  The enchantment fell apart.

  The dead lunged forward in a unified wave, scrambling over each other and crawling across the pews to get at her. The young and the old, women and children, all clawed at her skin and tried to seize her dress. It was like a nightmare Helvig couldn't wake up from, and ten times worse than the dreams in which only she suffered, and not her dear friend.

  She hooked her fingers into a chasm that was once a window and hoisted herself up, ready to crawl inside the belly of hell if it meant she had a chance of saving Gerda. But the witch had managed to shake her assailants off, and was sprinting blindly for the door and for freedom.

  Helvig pushed herself off the wall and fell heavily into the snow, but she was up in a flash. With all pretenses at stealth gone, she tore around the building shouting Gerda’s name. Svíčka had taken flight and was screamingly wildly, swooping low over Helvig’s head.

  Helvig turned the corner just in time to see Gerda burst through the front door. The moonlight caught her contorted expression. She was so terrified she hardly looked like herself.

  To Helvig’s horror, the ghosts followed, still raising unearthly cries as they squeezed through the door three at a time. Svíčka dashed in erratically to peck at faces or hands, but they seemed not to feel any pain. They were driven forward by a blind, wild need unlike anything Helvig had even seen before, not even in starving animals or men staring down a death sentence.

  Gerda skidded down the steps, landing on her hands and knees. She scrambled forward in the dark and Helvig knew that if she didn’t make it back through the same gate she had entered from, she was worse than dead. Helvig didn’t know her lore as well as Wilhelm, but she understood the idea of spirit gates, and the landmarks that acted as tenuous barriers between this life and the next.

  "Run, Gerda, run! The gate!"

  Gerda was mere feet away from safety when a ghost who looked like he could have been a blacksmith during his earthly life seized hold of her cloak. He dragged her backwards, and her scream came out choked. She had only seconds before she was overtaken entirely.

  Helvig burst through the gate, throwing out an elbow to knock away a burn victim who lunged at her. She grabbed the nearest part of Gerda she could reach, which happened to be her ankles, and started dragging her back towards the gate with all her might.

  For an awful instant Gerda looked like she may be torn in two by the opposing forces vying for her life, but then she fumbled with the clasp of her cloak until finally it came free.

  Her beautiful fur flew backwards into the mass of attackers, who shredded it to pieces.

  Gerda stumbled through the mouth of the gate, wheezing like she was on her deathbed. She couldn't stay on her feet for more than a moment, and Helvig san
k down with her into the snow as she fell. Snow bled through the knees of her breeches, but she didn’t care about the cold or the wet so long as Gerda was alive.

  Helvig cupped Gerda’s face in her hands, terrified by her rolling eyes and gasping breaths.

  "Are you alright? Gerda, tell me you’re alright, please."

  Svíčka landed in the snow beside them. She took up a bunch of Gerda’s hair in her beak and gave a frantic tug, trying to wake her.

  It took the witch a moment to catch her breath, but then her eyes refocused and she clutched Helvig’s hands.

  "I’m fine," she panted, already pulling herself to her feet. "We need to keep moving, they’re—"

  Her voice died as she glanced fearfully over Helvig’s shoulder, and the thief followed her gaze. What she saw staggered her even more than the ghosts who had so dutifully filed into their pews.

  The churchyard was empty. The old gate hung harmlessly on its frame as though it had not, moments ago, permitted a human girl access to the realm of the dead, who had in turn raged against its narrow mouth as they tried to drag her back.

  There was no evidence of her struggle except a little mound of kicked-up snow and a strip of tattered white fox fur.

  Gerda shivered, either from fear or from cold, and Helvig shucked off her boxy outer jacket. The night was mercilessly cold, but she had more layers to spare than Gerda, and she would happily walk home with a chill in her bones if it meant Gerda could keep warm.

  "Where did they go?" Gerda whispered as Helvig draped the jacket over her shoulders. They were trembling, and Helvig smoothed her palms across them and gave a reassuring squeeze.

  "I don’t think that’s for mortal minds to know. Come on. Let’s get away from this terrible place."

  Gerda turned around and sagged into Helvig’s arms, and the thief crushed her in a tight embrace. Helvig held her until they were breathing as one, their faces buried in each other’s necks, and until Gerda had stopped shaking.

  "We’ll sneak back into the tent and get as warm as we can," Helvig murmured. "And we’ll get some proper sleep. I promise you I’ll steal you a new cloak Gerda, even more luxurious than the one you had before. Or I’ll make one, from finest stoat and rabbit, so soft you can hardly believe."

  The witch’s body had just begun to soften against Helvig’s own, but now she straightened. Helvig trailed off, abandoning her dreamy reverie.

  Something wasn’t right.

  Gerda scooped Svíčka up out of the snow and cuddled the small black bundle of bird to her chest. Her face was so solemnly resolute it could have been carved from ice.

  A light in Helvig's heart flickered out.

  "Kai’s still alive," Gerda said. "I have to go north."

  ELEVEN

  "You can’t just go charging up into the ice at this time of year with no caravan to protect you," Helvig huffed, kicking up snow as she rushed to keep up with Gerda. The witch was pushing through the forest with dogged determination, pressing fir branches forward and almost hitting Helvig with them when they flew back. "It’s suicide!"

  "I can’t stay here another day knowing that Kai is alive," Gerda responded, out of breath from her exertions. They had set off from the church at a ferocious pace and she had no intention of slowing. She had put Svíčka back on her shoulder, and the bird was bobbing its face in and out of her curtain of hair as though it were a game.

  "What about trolls, imps, the ghosts? The days between Christ’s mass and Epiphany belong to them. You think what happened to you in that church was scary? You haven’t seen anything in these woods yet, girl."

  "I’m alive, aren’t I? I’ll be able to manage for a few days more."

  The encampment was up ahead, a few dwindling cooking fires casting an orange glow on the trees. Gerda burst through the treeline and marched towards Helvig’s tent, head tucked down against the wind. Her hands were stuffed deep in her fur muff, and her skirts swirled around her in the snow.

  She was leaving, Helvig realized. This may be the last time they ever saw each other. All without Helvig ever having the chance to say everything she wanted to.

  Gerda ducked into the patch of trees where Bae slept soundly, and gingerly cupped Svíčka in her hands. Murmuring softly, she stroked her feathered head with her little finger, eyes full of motherly concern. She was acting like Helvig wasn’t even there.

  "This is madness," Helvig said. She was loitering at the edge of the trees, numb from the cold and from the blow of Gerda’s sudden departure. She was really going to lose her, and just as they had begun to grow close.

  Gerda carried on coddling her pet, kissing her tiny head like she was never going to see her again. But of course, it was Helvig she was abandoning, Helvig who she had taken up for a time as a charming diversion and now felt perfectly comfortable casting aside.

  "For God’s sake at least look at me," Helvig said. Her body had developed a keen skill for turning fear into anger during her life as a highwayman, since anger was more useful in a fight. A familiar, jittery rage seeped into her blood now.

  Gerda placed Svíčka delicately in the boughs of her preferred tree, and then brushed past Helvig towards the tent, hardly meeting her eyes.

  "I know what I’m doing," she said in her papery wise-woman voice.

  "You’re being stupid," Helvig blustered, darting into the tent after Gerda. "I won’t let you go."

  Gerda spun to face her, defiance in her eyes. Helvig was surprised by her aggression and took a faltering step backwards.

  "Won’t you?" Gerda demanded. "Will you walk off into the ice and white with me, then, not sure what will be waiting for us on the other end? Defy your father and abandon the men who answer to you? I think not."

  Helvig’s lips burned. She remembered one of Wilhelm’s longwinded stories, about an angel pressing a fiery coal to the lips of one of God’s chosen and commanding him to prophecy.

  She felt sure that whatever words passed her lips next would be just as true, but like the prophecies in Wilhelm’s good book, she feared her truth had the power to destroy lives.

  "I would follow you down to death if you asked me. Just to make sure the Devil didn’t have his way with you."

  Gerda huffed. She did not appear to be impressed.

  "That would be a very poor use of your time. I assure you I'm not worth the effort."

  "Gerda." Helvig's tongue was heavy with words unspoken. "You're my...You're the finest girl I've ever known. You must know that by now."

  The witch gave her a pitying glance. She was kneeling by Helvig's bed, tucking her few meager possessions back into the leather bags she had carried them in when she arrived.

  "I know, Helvig. And I'm all the sorrier for that. But I promise you I am quite forgettable. You should love this free life you live here in the woods, and not worry about me."

  She turned away, rolling up her few items and stuffing her bags with them. Helvig couldn't stand to watch. She had hoped their trip to the church would delay Gerda, maybe even convince her to give up her search entirely. Instead, it had only stoked the furnace of her devotion to her brother.

  Helvig knelt in front of Gerda and clasped her hands so they couldn’t put anything else away.

  "Listen to me," she said, voice hoarse. She fixed Gerda with her most sincere look, squeezing the girl’s hands to keep her own from trembling. "I may not be a real princess, but I can love you just as well as one. If it’s a beautiful maiden you want, I’ll braid up my hair and wear skirts and sweet perfumes, and if you tire of that and want a dashing prince, I’ll be that, too. I’ll steal you bottles of sherry and dresses of every color and sapphires big as your eyes. I’ll lay my spoils at your feet and let you drink from my cup. God, Gerda, I’ve only known you a little while but I’m so...Just stay with me, and you’ll want for nothing. I’ll learn to be good, and sweet, and polite, I promise."

  Gerda brought one hand up to cup Helvig’s cheek. Helvig couldn't decide if Gerda was trying not to smile, or trying not to cry.
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  "I wouldn't want you sweet, or polite. I like you just as you are, wild and forthright, and I already think you’re better than good. But I can’t stay."

  She leaned in to kiss Helvig’s cheek, a soft, lingering kiss that was much closer to Helvig’s mouth than was strictly necessary. The thief bit back a groan of agony and pleasure, her emotions whipping themselves into a maelstrom inside her chest.

  Why couldn’t she feel something that was the right size, for once? Why not just a little bit of disappointment, or a manageable twinge of desire? Why did she have to be overcome with devastating, abasing affection whenever Gerda looked at her with all that pale fire in her eyes?

  It wasn’t fair. Other girls didn’t have to learn how to manage all of these emotions for the friends who plaited their hair or slept in their beds. Other girls didn’t have appetites that terrorized families and brought ruin down on whole towns.

  "He could still be dead, you know," Helvig said. "If he died in another region his ghost would be attending another mass, probably. Or he could have already moved on. One slim chance of finding him isn’t worth your life."

  "He wouldn't. He would have waited for me. I'll still take my chances, for Kai's sake."

  Helvig felt wicked for thinking so, but oh, how she wished Kai really was dead, in a grave that Gerda could visit and weep over and adorn with cowslips and daisies. Not because she wished any ill on an innocent boy, but so Gerda could be free of this obsession that was wearing her thinner and thinner every month she spent out on the roads calling his name. True mourning would not be pretty, Helvig knew, and Gerda might withdraw into herself and close her heart off to outsiders, despite their best intentions. But Helvig was willing to accept that if it meant that she was nearby to take care of Gerda in her grief, to cook her fresh venison and bandage her feet and make her smile with wicked tales, if only every once in a while.