Witch, Wolf, Woods

CHAPTER 1: DIFFERENT IN THE DORMITORY

Katja opened her eyes, wincing at the stabbing pain racing up and down her arms. She hated waking up in pain, but then again, she also hated being trapped in a nightmare.

Gazing up at the stone ceiling above her bed, she rubbed her eyes, trying not to think about the bad dream. While the beginning of the dream varied, the ending was always the same—she was standing in a meadow, surrounded by thorn-laced vines whipping back and forth, eager to pierce her flesh.

Katja didn't remember ever hearing a story about such grotesque plants, and she certainly hadn't come across it in any of the books she'd read, but she had to have picked it up from somewhere. How else would someone who was only six years old be able to create such horrors in her mind?

Shaking her head and feeling slightly embarrassed at being able to imagine such terrible things, Katja grabbed her blue flannel robe from the end of her bed. Sticking her stocking-clad feet into her slippers, she padded across the room and climbed up onto the window seat, pulling her legs against her chest.

Dawn was just breaking, spreading warm rays of early fall sunshine across the Neckar River. The river ran in front of the castle, and Katja could see a thick mist seeping out of the trees on the opposite bank. The grey fog moved slowly, threading a course between each and every tree trunk in a way that made it difficult to tell if the mist was being affectionate or menacing.

Her scars always hurt more when the mist blanketed the forest.

Katja leaned to one side, resting her temple against the cool windowpane. She often found herself sitting here as her gaze made its way across the river, her eyes drawn to the dark expanse of forest on the other side. The Schwarzwald, also known as the Black Forest, was so named for the thick canopy formed by the trees, evergreens that towered above the forest floor and grew so close to one another they blocked the sunlight, keeping the world below in a state of almost perpetual darkness.

She stared at the imposing pines and gnarled oaks, extending their twisting branches in ominous invitation, beckoning her to the one place she was forbidden from entering. That should have been enough for her to put it out of her mind, but she couldn't—no matter where she was in the castle, she could sense the forest, a living, breathing presence in the back of her mind.

Perhaps the fact that witches such as herself weren't allowed in the forest was part of its appeal, part of the reason she found herself gazing at the trees, wondering what it would be like to stand beside them, to place her hands on their rough bark, to walk beneath their leaves and experience their world for herself.

But then again, she'd never been the sort to take an interest in something simply because it was forbidden; if anything, rules made her feel safe and she wasn't inclined to seek a way around them...which only made her interest in the Schwarzwald all the more inexplicable and offered further proof of how different she was from those she lived with.

Katja didn't want to be different. More than anything, she just wanted to fit in and feel normal. But Fate or Chance or some other faceless entity appeared to have other plans, as everything in her life seemed intentionally designed to make her stand out as much as possible.

To begin with, there were her scars. Katja caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window and leaned closer, carefully tracing a finger over the scar she hated most, the wide gash running from the corner of her left eye down the middle of her cheek until it disappeared at her jaw. It was bad enough to have scars on her arms, but having one so prominently carved into her face was almost unbearable.

To make matters worse, no matter how many healing spells or poultices she and the elder witches had applied to her skin over the years, nothing made the scars disappear.