year and a half ago. Pieter and Joachim had been with her, or she was not sure how she would have borne the grief. One of the last acts of Mother’s Earth Elementals had been to make her a grave in the abbey yard and cover her over; when that was done it was only the brownies that tended the house, garden and chickens, and the faun that watched over the goats that remained. It was only at that graveside farewell that Giselle had learned how old Mother really was—at least a century, according to Pieter. That had been almost as much of a shock as Mother’s death.
She rose and turned to go, to find there was a priest coming up behind her, an inquisitive look on his face. “Is there anything you need, my son?” he asked. Giselle smiled.
“No, thank you, Father,” she replied. “I just wanted to light a candle to my mother’s soul.”
The priest peered a little more closely at her—no doubt because she was a stranger to his church—and then his face lit with recognition. “Ah! You are young Gunther von Weber, who won the shooting contest! That was most impressive. One of the finest exhibitions I have ever seen!”
Giselle laughed a little. “I suspect my dear mother had a hand in my victory, Father. And perhaps the dear Virgin too, although I would never be so blasphemous as to pray to win.”
The priest beamed his approval of such sentiments. “Well said, as well as well done. But you are very young to be so skilled.”
Again, Giselle laughed. “I learned to shoot my rifle as soon as I was able to hold it to my shoulder,” she replied—which was close to the truth anyway. The rifle that now seemed like an extension of her arm had been heavy enough to unbalance her when she began under Pieter’s tutelage. “Mother and I were alone, and knowing a single bullet stands between you and a bear that wishes to kill your goats or root up your garden is powerful incentive to become skilled.”
Not quite true, because Mother didn’t need mere bullets to safeguard her property from animals, but it was an answer that made the priest nod with more approval.
“Well, I will not keep you from your well-earned celebration,” the priest said, and sketched the sign of the cross between them as Giselle bowed her head for his blessing. “Go with the good God, my son, and prosper.”
Giselle left the church, blinking a little in the sunlight, and made her way through the Maifest crowds slowly, having to pause every now and then to accept the congratulations of one or another of those who had seen the shooting contest. Mittelsdorf was too big to be called a village anymore; “town” was more appropriate, so the Maifest was fairly large, and the shooting contest prizes well worth competing for. Of course she hadn’t signed up for the contest as “Giselle”; no one would ever have allowed a female to enter. She was disguised as a young man with her hair cut short, and ironically, in her typical hunter’s gear of worn loden green wool, she could have been the younger brother of the hunter “Johann Schmidt” who had attacked her six years ago.
Or perhaps not. Her attacker had been dressed in a much finer and far newer version of her own hunting gear. The shabby, bastard cousin, perhaps.
She called herself Gunther von Weber, and what brought her here to Mittelsdorf was what had brought her through a string of five towns and villages so far this month: the prize money for the shooting contest.
Right now there were a lot of stall owners trying to tempt her to part with some of that money. The town’s only inn was overwhelmed with customers, far too many to feed, and there were plenty of stall owners taking advantage of that. The scents of grilling sausage, of hot pretzels, of roasting chicken, and of fresh pastry assailed her on all sides. And if she’d been inclined to indulge herself in other ways, there were drink tents set up with Maiwein and Maiboch, and plenty of peddlers with temptingly pretty things. She could even have bought some of those pretty things without anyone blinking an eye as long as she invented a sweetheart she was buying them for! But she was determined to keep her money in her pocket . . . and she was just glad that it was tradition for the villages