Anxious now, we sweep onward, up, up, up the mountain as snowflakes flit to and fro around us, within us. It isn’t here, they flutter, they mutter. We cannot find it.

Our body, our body, our body.

Our mistress will not have forgotten us.

We move faster now, searching, gusting through the trees. The castle. She will have brought our body to the castle. But there is no castle, only snow and mountain and pine. There is no bridge. There is no one to welcome us, no one to grant us entry. If she would’ve stayed—the one with the nasty words, the one with the golden patterns—if her spirit would’ve fragmented, we would have found the castle. We would have found our body.

But she did not fragment. She did not stay.

Now she is alone.

You’ve failed, Nicholina.

Nasty words.

Your mistress needs her more than she needs you.

Our mistress has not forgotten us.

Perhaps your body won’t be there at all. Perhaps you will die.

We spiral again in agitation, in fear, and streak the mountainside. Already, we feel ourselves spreading, drifting, losing purpose. We cannot linger long without a body, or we will become something else. Something helpless and small. A cat or a fox or a rat. There are many ways to become a matagot, oh yes, but we will not become one. Not us. We are not forgotten.

Something scurries through the foliage, and we dive, eliciting a shriek of fear from the creature. It matters not. We need a body until our mistress returns. Until her mistress shows us the way. Nasty woman, like her daughter. Nasty witch.

We crouch inside the mink’s body and wait. Time passes differently to animals. We track shadows instead, quivering within the roots of a tree. Hiding from eagles. From foxes. We smell our mistress before we see her, and we hear her sharp, impatient words. She argues with Morgane. She speaks of Morgane’s daughter.

We leave the mink and follow behind as towers and turrets take shape. A bridge. Fire has ravaged each structure. All around, white ladies knit and weave their invisible patterns into stone. Into wood. Into windows and arches and shingles. We do not care about castle reparations. We sweep for the entrance, hiding from their prying eyes, curling through the smoke. We feel the pull of our body now. We feel it here.

Our mistress hasn’t forgotten us after all.

Up the stairwell, down the hall, into the small, sparse bedroom. Our body isn’t on the bed, however. It isn’t on the pillow. The bed is empty, we cry in dismay. The bed is bare. We draw short, quivering, as we search. As we follow our body’s pull. As we find it on the hard stone floor. But the bed is empty. Confusion swirls. The bed is bare.