CHAPTER 1
SEVEN YEARS LATER
I am haunted by my mother. I hear her voice ringing on the wind that chases the ravens from our sheep pasture, her stifled cries in the creaking of the pulley over our dry well. Her laughter glances off jagged flickers of dry lightning. Her rage gathers in low peals of rolling thunder.
The storms are only mockery. Their rainfall scarcely touches the earth anymore, and when it does, all I hear in its patter are my mother’s footsteps treading away from me, beckoning me to follow.
I am haunted by my mother … if hauntings weren’t a mystery of the dead, but rather an echo of the living. And she must be living. I will her to be. She isn’t dead, only missing—lost within the Forest Grimm. Three years have passed since she embarked on a journey there, soon after the magic of the forest had turned on our village, and she never returned.
Strips of fabric and ribbon in every color dangle from a large hazel at the edge of the forest. The Tree of the Lost. Mother wasn’t the only villager to go missing. Sixty-six others—the Lost Ones, as we call them—were also never seen nor heard from again after venturing into the forest. Each had their own reasons for wandering away since the onset of the curse, though most of those motives remain a mystery. The only known link between them is the state of despair they were in before leaving Grimm’s Hollow.
As for Mother, she should have known she wouldn’t return home. The Midnight Forest card had warned her long ago not to make a forbidden choice. But she left in search of Father, and she didn’t know he wasn’t Lost, not in that way. She entered the Forest Grimm soon after his disappearance, and she became the first Lost One.
The tokens on the hazel quiver in the summer breeze, stirring the ends of my sable hair. Mother’s hair is the same warm shade of darkest brown, but her cloth strip has been dyed rose red. Grandmère chose that color because it’s Mother’s favorite, and I spun the yarn myself from our flock’s finest wool.
I lift my hand to touch it, squinting against the morning sunlight that pierces the tight weave. Three years have passed since I first knotted it to this tree, and in that time the elements have frayed its edges and worn the cloth threadbare.
What if Mother is also this ragged and bone-thin?
I will come for you, I promise. Soon.
And by soon I mean today.
“Ten minutes until the lottery!” the village clockmaker calls.
My heart lurches like a cuckoo bird springing on the hour. I hitch my skirt to my calves and dart through the gathering crowd in the meadow. Monthly Devotion Day always draws out villagers like myself who haven’t given up hope that our Lost Ones are still alive. It also attracts those who enjoy the spectacle of the lottery and the danger that follows it. The focus of Devotion Day has always been the lottery and its culmination.
I reach the lottery table, where two glass-blown goblets perch side by side, one amber and the other moss green. Each holds scraps of folded paper with names of villagers scrawled upon them.
Today is the day I’ll be chosen—finally permitted—to enter the forest to search for the Lost Ones. Again. Again, because my name is in the moss-green goblet, discarded with others that were already chosen this year, plucked from the amber goblet on previous Devotion Days. My turn came several months ago, when I was finally old enough to take part in the lottery after coming of age at sixteen.
Claiming my chance to enter the forest through the sanction of the lottery was all I could do to save Mother from her foretold early death. It still remains my only hope. Despite the resolution I made seven years ago to make a wish on the Book of Fortunes, that choice has been taken from me.
Two years before I turned sixteen, the Forest Grimm cursed the village, and the book went missing. And soon we discovered why: someone had committed murder, and to complicate matters, they’d used their one wish on Sortes Fortunae to make it happen.
The murderer’s identity still remains unknown. All we can be sure of is that on the day the victim’s body was discovered, the Book of Fortunes vanished.
Just as mysteriously as it had first appeared in Grimm’s Hollow, the book disappeared from the pavilion where the villagers kept it in this very meadow. Many believe that a large willow uprooted itself and stole the book away with weeping branches. However it happened, the willow also went missing, and a trail of root-like footprints remained, leading to and from the pavilion.
Without the book—without a wish that so many others were able to obtain before me—I hoped the forest would compensate with kindness when my name was drawn in the lottery. But it didn’t grant me any favors. To be fair, it never welcomes anyone chosen from the amber goblet. None of us make it more than a few yards inside the forest before we’re spit back out again. I certainly didn’t.
So far this ritual is just as cursed as our village.
But today will be different. Today I’m determined to succeed. I’ve made a detailed map of the forest, gleaned from the knowledge of what the villagers remember from days before the curse when they could come and go freely. And I won’t wait another month for the lottery year to end, when the names will be reshuffled, to test my luck with it.
All I have to do is be chosen again. And for that I have a strategy.
I’m alone at the table, but I glance over my shoulder to make sure no villagers are watching. Those who are missing Lost Ones like I am are busy presenting gifts at the carved altar, just shy of the trailhead. One foot beyond it is the stark line of ashes that marks the forest border, and no one so much as lets a bootlace slip past it.
The forest doesn’t allow anyone to enter anymore, not unless they’re destined to become Lost—and no one willfully chooses that. Our offerings are given in hopes to pacify the forest to yield to our attempt on every Devotion Day.
Ingrid Struppin, who lost her husband, drags her patched skirt away from the line and sets a bowl of porridge on the altar. Gretchen Ottel, who lost her brother, bends her willowy frame to rest a bouquet of wildflowers beside it, then sneezes. She claps a hand over her mouth and stares ahead wide-eyed. That sneeze surely crossed the line, but thankfully the forest doesn’t stir.
“Gesundheit,” Hans Muller tells her, steadying a cup of ale by Gretchen’s wildflowers—weak ale if it’s anything like the jug I bartered a skein of yarn for five days ago. Once the cup is placed, he scampers back from the line of ashes. As he removes his straw hat and bows his head, he murmurs something. I think it’s the name of his Lost mother, Rilla.
The villagers’ offerings are more meager than they once were, but they’re the best anyone can afford nowadays. The curse that fell upon us three years ago takes a harder toll with every passing month. This meadow is proof. No flowers bloom here anymore. The parched wild grass is too choked by thorny drought-tolerant weeds.
As futile as Devotion Day always is, our desperation to save the Lost Ones drives us to play out this ritual month after month. No one, including me, knows what else to do to regain the forest’s good graces, cross its border, and be permitted to make the dangerous journey to recover the Lost.
And finding the Lost is only half the task. The lottery winner is also expected to obtain the Book of Fortunes, wherever it’s hidden in the Forest Grimm. If the woods allow it to be retrieved, we believe the curse will be lifted. The land will be healed, and the Lost will find their way back home.
This much we’ve learned from a riddle that the book left behind. Not all of Sortes Fortunae went missing. A single page remained in the pavilion on a pedestal, and on that page were the following green-inked, magicked words:
A murderous wish
An end of peace
The curse is wrought
My blessings cease.
Falling water
Lost words found
A selfless wish
The curse unbound.
The first half of the riddle explained what set the curse in motion—a wish on the book that resulted in murder—and the last half revealed how to break the curse. The riddle also gave the only clue to how to find the book: near “falling water.” A waterfall seems the obvious conclusion, but if it were that simple, the Lost Ones would have already found the book and returned home. None have.
No matter the difficulty, I vow to find Sortes Fortunae. It feels just as much my destiny as the one Grandmère foretold for me. The Fanged Creature card may have spelled my untimely death, but I won’t let it happen before I save my mother from her death. Ending the curse and saving her—they’re both intertwined. I need the book to make a wish to rescue her from the forest, as well as her fate.
When I’m sure no one has eyes on me, I refocus on my task. Quick as a falcon, I pluck a handful of folded papers from my apron pocket, cast them into the amber goblet, and rush away.
Seconds later, a youthful baritone voice calls from a few yards behind me, “Where are you running off to, Clara?” I know he’s smiling from the teasing lilt of his tone. “I can’t remember a time you missed the lottery, even when you weren’t old enough to enter.”
I fight an eye roll as I slowly spin to face Axel. Of course he had to rub in our age difference, as if the two years between us mean he’s gleaned that much more experience in the lottery. He’s only ever had his name drawn once, same as me.
Every year more than thirty villagers place their names in the amber goblet, of their own free will, but only one name is drawn monthly, when the dark of the moon has passed and then waxed to a crescent. A sign of good luck for travelers. The people of Grimm’s Hollow cling to any superstition that might help bring back the Lost Ones and break the curse on our village.
I haven’t answered Axel yet. I’m still scavenging my brain for an excuse as he walks toward me with that easy swagger of his, confident yet unaffected. Like everything else about him, it exudes a natural charm he’s oblivious to, which makes the village girls bat their lashes in such a flutter you’d think they’d developed tics.
They’d need to bat him over the head with a cudgel to get him to notice. He’s only ever had eyes for one girl, and she’s Lost just like my mother.
“Well?” He leans his weight on one leg, hands stuffed in his homespun trouser pockets. His casual air carries over to the rest of his appearance. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled back to reveal corded tawny arms, and his spruce-blue vest is unbuttoned, flapping in the breeze like bed linens on a clothesline. He chews on the end of a long piece of straw that glints as golden as his perfectly imperfect tousled hair. “What’s the rush?”
I fold my arms at his smirk. “I forgot my hat. If I’m chosen today, I’ll need it.”
“You never wear a hat. Not here, not anywhere.” His river-blue eyes lower to my nose. “All those freckles say the same.”
I shrug. “Today they begged for shade.”
Silent laughter ripples across his broad shoulders. “C’mon, Clara. I saw you throw something into the amber goblet just now.”
Heat surges into my cheeks. “It was only clover for good luck.”
“Clover isn’t white.”
“It is when it’s in bloom.”
His smile deepens, and he nods, humoring me. He pulls the straw from his mouth, dips his head nearer, and whispers conspiratorially, “How many papers were in your hand, hmm? How many times did you enter your name?”
I whirl to bolt, but he catches my arm and turns me back around. He’s a full head taller than I am, and standing this close, I have to tilt up my face to meet his gaze. I do so begrudgingly.
“Do you really think I’ll snitch on you?” He gives my arm a playful rattle. “You know me better than that.”
I suppose I do. When my father was alive, Axel used to help him during the lambing season. I helped Father too, as often as Mother and Grandmère could spare me.
Copyright © 2023 by Kathryn Purdie
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