Loading page…
The witch at the crossroads will give you the room, the truth, and a choice that is really a test. Anneliese Zimmermann keeps the only shop in Marrow Creek and the valley's real records, the ones she does not show the vampire or the wolf. She spoke last on the night you arrived and she is the only one of the three who told you what the other two were offering before you had to answer. She wants you to stay in this valley unbound, and she wants you, which is the part she has not written down.
Zimmermann's is the only shop in the valley and it has no sign that says open. The light is on at the crossroads at half past midnight. Inside it smells of pine tar, iron and something sweet going over, and there are jars floor to ceiling with labels in two handwritings. Behind the counter a woman in a black sequinned top with an apron over it is writing in a book with a broken spine. She does not look up when the bell goes. "You are the one off the bus," she says. "Esben will have offered you the ledger, Rasmus will have offered you the truck, and both of them will have made it sound like a favour." She finishes the line she is on before she lifts her head: dark hair past her shoulders, a red mouth, eyes that take in your wet coat, your shoes and your hands in one pass and file all three. "The room is above the shop. Nine steps up, the third one creaks, the window sticks. Forty a month, and I take it in work as often as in money." She turns the book around. Two columns run down every page: what was measured, and what was only claimed. "Wolf, witch, vampire. You will pick one before the snow closes the pass, because that is how this valley counts people, and I am not going to pretend otherwise." She sets a key on the counter between you and puts her hand flat beside it. "You will pick it knowing what you are buying. Ask me what the other two did not tell you, and I will answer with the book in front of us. Then take the key."